This blog is all about do-it-yourself nonprofit communications and marketing. I love helping small and medium-sized nonprofits communicate more effectively with their members, donors, volunteers and other supporters, so that together, we can all make the world a better place. I do that as a blogger, trainer, speaker, coach and consultant.
I believe that even the smallest nonprofit staffs with the most modest budgets can achieve tremendous results through savvy marketing and communications. I hope this blog and my online marketing training and other resources encourage you to do just that, while helping you grow personally as a nonprofit marketer and communications professional.
Three teams made up of consultants from four different agencies (Beaconfire Consulting, Forum One Communications, Free Range Studios, and Firefly Partners) got together on a Sunday for a strategy and design competition. Their challenge was to remake the online presence of Youth Speaks, a nonprofit presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs. They were all given the same information and amount of time to develop their programs.
Each team, comprised of 3-4 of the consulting firm frienemies, then presented their online strategy and home page redesigns for the first time at the conference. Take a few minutes to check out the slides to see what they came up with. You’ll see how some very creative firms go about a project like this, how they define online goals, set priorities and timelines, and use a blend of tactics.
loving team 2’s real focus, storytelling, bringing in rural areas, building fan base for artists
loving team 2’s thanks for attending email the day after event to get people to go online to share their impressions.
team 3’s emphasis on artist’s own pages that they can really customize is nice touch.
think I like team 3’s home page the best, but team 2’s strategy the best.
What made this session so good?
The Open Sharing. How often do we get to see four leading firms talk openly about how they would approach a real project, in quite a bit of detail? Uh, never. This one session saved Youth Speaks thousands and thousands of dollars, but it also let all of us learn about ways to approach these kinds of projects too. I admit that I feared that the firms wouldn’t want to give too much away and the proposals would be lightweight, but instead they were really packed with substance. Kudos to the four firms for really sharing their best ideas!
The Collaborative Spirit. This could have easily been set up as a firm-against-firm competition. But by blending the teams, it removed the real-world winners and losers element, and made it much more fun and less pressure-filled (at least it felt that way as someone in the audience – not sure how it felt to be on a team!)
No Right Answer. While there was certainly overlap between the three approaches, this session proves that there is no one right way to do online marketing – so don’t believe anyone who tries to convince you otherwise. Yes, when in doubt, follow the conventional wisdom or best practices, but don’t be afraid to try something new or to put your own twist on it. Although the intention was for the audience to vote on the winner, people were apparently having trouble getting a signal in the Hilton basement, so they did a “Make Noise” vote instead and called it a tie. More proof that there is no “right way.”
I would love to see more collaborative makeovers like this in the nonprofit marketing world. It doesn’t have to take on the whole Iron Chef theme. You may recall that Britt Bravo asked Nancy Schwartz, Katya Andresen, Nedra Weinreich, and me to review the Social Actions home page back in October. Here’s what we all said.
That wasn’t structured as a competition, but the outcome was similar – lots of concrete ideas that a real nonprofit can sort through and use, while also letting others learn from the analysis and strategies as well.
By the way, it was fabulous hanging out with Nancy, Katya, and Britt at the conference. (Photo of Britt and me by Nancy Schwartz. Photo of Nancy, Katya, and me by Nice Waiter at Foreign Cinema).
I’m already mulling over ways to pull them into some kind of Iron Chef / Extreme Makeover Something or Another for next year’s conference (Mark your calendars for NTC 2010 in Atlanta, April 8-10). Your ideas for a session? Or something we could do sooner online? Leave a comment.
When we talk about fundraising through social media (and we had many of these conversations at 09NTC this week), the discussion always turns to how we should go about converting into long-term donors those friends of friends - people who gave to the cause because a friend of theirs and an existing supporter of ours (let’s call her the “Original Fan”) asked them to.
The standard advice is to come up with a cultivation campaign that introduces these new people to the organization over time and encourages them to become involved as a volunteer or donor on their own, directly with the nonprofit.
The problem is that this treats the Original Fan, whom we sometimes call the evangelist or über-friend, like some kind of inconvenient or spent middle man. For many nonprofits, the Original Fan is anything but a middle man; instead he or she is more like a gatekeeper or nightclub bouncer. It’s only through the Original Fan that the nonprofit will have access to those people and their wallets.
Most national organizations with widely understood or broadly supported missions should probably go ahead and try to establish direct relationships with all of those friends of friends. But nonprofits with specific geographic limitations or niche missions (e.g., diseases that affect relatively few people) should move forward much more carefully and deliberately, checking to see just how likely it is that the friends of friends will actually convert into long-term, direct donors.
For example, I recently donated to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, because my friend Nancy Schwartz asked me to as part of her birthday celebration. While I certainly support the mission of food banks in general, I live in North Carolina. Nancy is the sole reason that I donated to this food bank in New Jersey. No matter how many newsletters or appeal letters the Community Food Bank of New Jersey might send me in the future, it is extremely unlikely that I will ever give them another dime.
Unless, of course, Nancy – the Original Fan – asks me to.
That’s why when the executive director of Positive Wellness Alliance (PWA)- the beneficiary of my own birthday fundraiser and also a very locally based organization – asked whether she should add the names of my donating friends to her prospect database, I told her no. (I serve on the board, so that’s why I was asked. I doubt few Original Fans are consulted at all – which may be part of the problem.)
Instead, I asked her to send a thank-you note directly to my donating friends and invite them to sign-up for PWA’s e-newsletter, should they want to. I’ve asked her not to message these people again otherwise. Why?
Because as the Original Fan, I know these people are giving because of me, and because I asked, not really because of the cause. While I’m sure that everyone who donated to PWA supports the mission, just as I support food banks, nearly all of the people who donated lived outside the geographic service area, and I believe it’s extremely unlikely that they would give again on their own.
Unless, of course, I – the Original Fan – asked them to.
I hope it is clear by now where I am going with this. While your nonprofit should definitely spend some time coming up with cultivation strategies for friends of friends, it is equally important (and more important for local or niche organizations) to develop strategies to keep your Original Fans fully engaged and willing to fundraise again and again for you.
The food bank and PWA don’t need strategies to reach Nancy’s friends and my friends; they need strategies to keep Nancy and me and all of the Original Fans happy with the organization and excited about its work so that we will continue to tap our networks on their behalf. It’s just not worth twisting ourselves in all different directions trying to convert these people into direct donors when it’s both easier and more productive to more fully engage the Original Fan.
Does your org have strategies of either kind — for friends of friends or for the Original Fans? Where do you think nonprofits should put the most priority? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it.
Yesterday I attended a workshop organized by one of my favorite bloggers (and NTC roomie) Nancy Schwartz on how you deal with branding issues for your organization within social media. The panel featured Danielle Brigida, National Wildlife Federation; Felicia Carr, National Parks Conservation Association; and Wendy Harman, American Red Cross.
Nancy created a wonderful guide to the session (Word doc) that contains even more great stories and tips than came out in the live event, so download that. What I found most interesting is the debate about whether to centralize or decentralize your brand online. Of course, there is no right answer and you need to sort out what’s best for your organization. Here’s how these three groups are dealing with it.
Danielle at NWF says they are branding many of their individual programs online (Ranger Rick, a campus ecology program, Green Hour for families, etc.). While they hope all the talk about these programs feeds back up to the overall NWF brand, they believe that allowing their supporters to segment themselves and talk about their very specific interests within NWF is a good thing, even if it dilutes the overall NWF brand.
Danielle says that because they are decentralizing their social media presence, they are also empowering and trusting their staff and giving them the ability to represent their own programs online without a lot of heavy handed management. One additional benefit of this approach is that various programs within NWF retweet and link to each other, introducing fans of one program to many others.
In contrast, Felicia at NPCA believes that brand confusion for her organization, particularly with the National Park Service (a federal government agency) is a big problem for them online. She would prefer the NPCA logo to be on everything and does not want individual program managers to set up microsites or their own pages on Facebook. She prefers the more centralized approach.
Felicia also shared a story about how a fan had created a fundraising Facebook Cause for NPCA, but had included a huge National Park Service logo. In contrast to what Clay Shirky suggested – that people will not blame the nonprofit when fans get their facts wrong – she found the opposite to be true. The National Park Service was quite miffed with NPCA, even though they had nothing to do with the Facebook Cause page and had already asked the fan to take off the logo (without getting a response.)
Wendy at American Red Cross says that chapters and individuals had created so many different pages and groups on Facebook that Facebook actually asked the central office to consolidate the American Red Cross presence. There were so many different pages that it was actually hard for users to find what they were seeking. She has worked hard to make sure that there is a consistent look and approach for the American Red Cross across multiple social media sites, and after a brand revitalization project, has created a handbook of standards and is now teaching employees about how to use it.
I attended “The Seven Things Everyone Wants: What Freud and Buddha Understood (and We’re Forgetting) about Online Outreach” this morning with two of my favorite big brains in nonprofit marketing: Katya Andresen of Network for Good and Mark Rovner of Sea Change Strategies.
–Beware of the Gartner cycle of tech hype. This is the path that new tech takes. Inflated expectations. Realize it’s not “the cure. ” Plunges to trough of disillusionment. Many tech tools stay there and die, but some do go up to the slope of enlightenment. In the tech world, we are always on the steep slope, but the reality is that the people we are trying to reach with our nonprofit communications are on the slope. So while nonprofits are all consumed with getting into social media, the people we really want to reach are just now regularly using e-mail, blogs, and video. We are chasing the new thing, but that takes us to a place where our audience isn’t. And bad content through new tech channels is still bad content.
So what do you do? Make your email remarkable before you go down the Twitter hole. Make your blog fabulous, which means well-written , very visual, short, not fact-laden text. Every post should tell a story.
–Convey a humbling vision: “Give profit and gain to others, take the loss upon yourself.” Make your supporters the star of the show. Show them incredible return on the time and money they have given to you. Use stories to take people to a shared place – Marketing 3.0. Keep showing your supporters what you can do together. Make donors feel like proud parents of your org.
–Keep it Simple, Silly. If you throw 20 balls, or 3 balls, at someone, they will probably catch just one – or none. So why not just throw one ball at a time? Same with messaging. If you have three articles or three calls to action in your newsletter, you’ll be lucky if the reader gets just one of them. Don’t bombard people with too many choices.
Katya and Mark shared some other interesting points that I’m mulling over for future blog posts. More from the conference soon!
I planned to live blog from the Nonprofit Technology Conference today, but the Hilton was obviously not prepared to host a tech conference, because the wireless was down most of the day. No wireless, no live blogging. So, instead, I’m going to post a few summaries here.
This morning, Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody” presented a great session that he summed up in five words: “Group action just got easier.” Of course, he’s talking about social media. What do nonprofits need to know about social media and how to approach it?
Social media is a profound change in the way people get information and what they do with it. Here are a few of my favorite take-aways from the session:
–With sharing on social media, “a problem solved by one person is now solved for thousands of people.”
–People can organize without having an organization. And they don’t need your org’s permission to organize around something related to your organization.
–Small groups of people are in the middle of the largest collaborations – used Wikipedia as the example. Looks like tons of contributors, but actually a small number of people are doing an overwhelming amount of the work on any particular page.
–You can now put together a group that isn’t just listening but that can talk back and to each other. Many-to-many pattern, PLUS the media-to-many pattern. It is as if when you buy a book, they ask if you want them to throw in a printing press for free.
–Social media is free-loader tolerant – unlike most in-person groups.
–The meaning of tools is much less influenced by the designers than we are used to.
–Flash mobs – social media is not just a source of information, but of action. Flash mobs started as a way to mock the participants and now it is a real tool for organizing with an enormous variety of uses – users control what happens with social tools, not the designers. Take twitter – who cares what you are eating, but look how people are using it now!
–”Things get socially interesting when they get technologically boring.”
–You matter if you can find a way to create value. Big opportunity is in the convening power and letting people discover people. But also need to learn how to make that staying power. Need that continuity. Not something institutions are doing well now.
–”Failure for free” and “fail informatively” – this is the attitude that organizations need to approach social media with. Try it. Need lots and lots of experimentation to make sure that we get something good out of it.
–Some mystery in what will take off and what won’t. No secret sauce to making convening power work. Go where your people are now. Do searches on own names, but exclude results from your own sites – easier to see everything else. Don’t hire consultants, hire your own 23-year-olds.
–This is not about technology change, but culture change.
–Most important things not yet known about social media? Role of emotion is going to be a huge part of the story in the next year. As media moves along social rather than broadcast channels, the media landscape will be driven by the emotional – look what’s happening with the swine flu example.
–When things speed up, we are good at feeling fast, but not thinking fast. May lead to more informed and engaged population, but also more hysteria. The emotional substrate is going to rise. People get caught up in moment, and actually really don’t know what they are talking about. What is obvious is the speed. Measuring in minutes or hours now.
I’m off to San Francisco tomorrow morning to attend NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference. I’ll be live blogging throughout the event, right here and on the conference pages. That means when I’m live, you’ll see my notes as I add them and you can also submit questions and comments to me that I can add to the blog on the spot (like a chat room).
All of my live blogging will take place within this one window. I’ll just pause it when I’m away. Here are the times when I am most likely to be live (these are the sessions times):
Note all times are Pacific Time. Add three hours for East Coast time.
Sunday: Off and on. In various meetings. Monday: 8:30 – 10:00 am, 10:30 – 12:00 pm, 1:30 – 3:00 pm and 3:30 – 5:00 pm Tuesday: 8:30 – 10:00 am (Unfortunately I have an early flight, so I’ll miss most of Tuesday).
I’m attending the Nonprofit Technology Conference Sunday-Tuesday (April 26-28, 2009) and will be live blogging throughout the event. That means that you can see my notes live as I type them in and you can communicate with me in real-time as I do it. You can send in questions, comments, etc.and I can respond live.
The problem? NTEN has a ridiculous number of sessions going on at one time (18 during the first breakout session slot Monday morning). With so much to choose from, I have a feeling I am going to be doing a bunch of session hopping. But I’d love your help in prioritizing which sessions you are most interested in me covering.
I’m only giving you the session titles — if you really want to know what the sessions are about, check out the agenda. But going on titles alone is fine.
Here is my live blogging page on NTEN’s site and I will also add the viewer here on this blog during the conference, so you can read and participate at either site.
If you are attending the conference, please be sure to introduce yourself! Nancy Schwartz and I are hosting a meet-and-greet for communications types on Sunday at 1:30 and I’ll be around until late morning Tuesday.
I’m going to NTEN’s NTC this year (that’s the Nonprofit Technology Network’s Nonprofit Technology Conference) in San Francisco in April. It will be my first time, and I can’t wait, because I know I’ll get to meet in person so many of the friends I’ve made online over the last few years.
I’m also excited because, though it may not look like it on the surface, I believe this conference has the potential to become the national event for nonprofit marketing staff at small nonprofits.
Why this technology conference rather than one of the more traditional marketing conferences? Three reasons:
1) Small nonprofits can afford online marketing. Using online tools and social media technology to market your organization is incredibly cheap compared to traditional print marketing. It just makes financial sense to take advantage of the technology and this conference is all about helping you learn how to do that.
2) Small nonprofits will feel comfortable at this conference. NTEN is a casual, fun group of mostly supportive, friendly people. I have no doubt that there will be a few speakers who look down their noses at small groups with little technical experience or tiny budgets, but I bet they will be in a very small minority. I’m not sure what the stats are these days, but when I asked NTEN Executive Director Holly Ross a year ago how many of NTEN’s members were techies who managed technology versus communications people who used the technology, she said it was something like half and half. In other words, there is a place for us within this organization and at this conference.
3) It’s where the cool kids in nonprofit marketing will be. I just quickly scanned the registration list, and many of the top bloggers who write about nonprofit communications will be there, including Nancy Schwartz, Maddie Grant, Mark Rovner, Britt Bravo, and Geoff Livingston. And that’s just the early bird registration. Nancy Schwartz is now on the NTEN board, which is another great sign.
I hope you’ll join us in San Francisco – and I hope you’ll help some nonprofits who can’t otherwise afford it by donating to NTEN’s scholarship fund. I just gave $25. Can you donate a few bucks? Click over to the blog to see the fundraising widget.
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Looking for the 
I would love to see more collaborative makeovers like this in the nonprofit marketing world. It doesn’t have to take on the whole Iron Chef theme. You may recall that Britt Bravo asked Nancy Schwartz, Katya Andresen, Nedra Weinreich, and me to review the Social Actions home page back in October. Here’s what we all said.
I’m already mulling over ways to pull them into some kind of Iron Chef / Extreme Makeover Something or Another for next year’s conference (Mark your calendars for NTC 2010 in Atlanta, April 8-10). Your ideas for a session? Or something we could do sooner online? Leave a comment.
