Network for Good: Economy Is Down, Charitable Giving Is Up

The biggest time of the year for online fundraising is rapidly coming to a close, or so I'm reminded daily by the emails I receive from charities that I follow alerting me to the fact that I have just 5 days, 2 days, 48 hours, or "still time" to make a tax-deductible donation. But how will it all end? Will charities see the usual rush of year-end gifts made online? Will giving be up or down in these tough economic times?

Network for Good just released some stats that show online charitable giving is up, even though the economy is down:

• Philanthropic procrastinators are flocking to the Web to make their year-end charitable donations this year, despite the downturn in the economy. More people are giving, though at lower dollar amounts than years past: Network for Good is seeing a 50% increase in the number of donations in comparison to this time last year; the donation amount is up 20%. We have been processing approximately $500,000 in donations per day since the beginning of December and we expect an even larger spike in the next few days which are typically up to $2 million per day in the last days of the month.  Annually, about 45% of annual giving occurs in December alone and we forecast $75 million in donations processed this year, which is 30% growth from last year. 
• More people are giving the gift of charity. We saw huge growth in the gift of charity this year.  Network for Good saw record sales of its Good Card (www.networkforgood.org/goodcard) - a gift card with stored value that can be redeemed as a donation to any of more 1.5 million charities. This year we have sold over $1 million in cards, and we were averaging 500 cards sold per day through December 25th.  We also have an increasing demand of people looking to send them for the New Year.

How Much Email is Too Much?

By now, your organization's holiday campaign is coming to an end and the year-end email message is going out or is out to your housefile. But, maybe open rates aren't where you expected them to be this time of year. You can blame the economy (we all can), snort about the fact that people aren't at work this week, or wonder if the ever-changing changing email spam filters have kept you from reaching into your constituent's inbox. Eventually, the question will be raised, "are we sending too much email?"

There is no overall magic number for the number of email messages sent by an organization. Your org can send two or 100 messages and may or may not be inundating your housefile. There may be a severalmagic numbers specifically for your organization. That's right, your housefile is not one giant block of people to blast messages, these individuals came to your organization for a specific reason. Now you have to tailor your messages' content and frequency to address those interests. However, with a few tips and best practices, this is an easier task than you might think. Even if you are already doing some of these tips, make sure your organization is doing all of them.

Review Open/Click Rates: Why are they up or down? What did the subject bring to the open rate? Did you get a lots of clicks/actions? Where in the message did you get the most clicks, top or bottom? Which items in your newsletter performed the best? This may tell you what people like about your newsletters and what you can focus on with more targeted and less frequent emails.  

Newsletter Frequency: Tell your constituents whether your newsletters will be delivered weekly, monthly, bi-monthly (careful with that one, right?) or quarterly. Be sure to be constituent with your messages. If you plan to send a newsletter every third week of the month, be sure your production won't miss a week. 

Rotate Out Donors from Appeals:If you have three appeals in a series, do your donors need to see every appeal? The first one, sure. Afterwards, be careful how many times you reach out to donors. Remove them whenever possible to assure that you don't kill their interest with too many appeals.

Advocates Expect More:Too many emails may not apply to your hard-core advocates. If you are a 501c4, constituents usually expect to see a lot of messages. Your hard-core supporters want to stay in touch with your actions, so message away. Geo-target constituents whenever possible (why does someone in Montana care about a New Mexico policy?). Also, try using newsletters, blogs, social networks, and feeds for one national item instead of an email blast, just to gauge response rates without the use of email. This test can show you how your advocacy networks respond without email.

"Survey Says": Ask your site visitors, constituents, donors, and advocates why they came to you and what they would like to see. This is as simple as a five question survey:

• How did you hear about us: be sure to list most common online and offline marketing methods, such as news story, ad in paper, calendar mailing, etc.
• What information would you like to receive: Specify newsletters, advocacy messages, volunteer messages, RSS feeds for blogs and news releases, etc.  
• Do you prefer HTML/Text messages: This is a common tool for most CRMs and mail tools, just be sure you specify it and ask in the survey. You may be surprised how many people receive text messages.
• Select interests: List five-eight checkboxes programs, services, or offerings for constituents. before you act on any interests, take a look at the most selected interests. Now, see how you can segment your audiences and work these interests into yours newsletter and appeals.
• Text field for comments: Read these results! Even if you only get ten of them, there may be some very informative answers that will shape your email program.

We all know that email open rates are declining. So, it's more important than ever to tend your org's housefile. Want a magic number for emails? OK, try 12-15 and see how your various messages and audiences fit within that number. Keep the clutter to a minimum, stay relevant and viable, and keep your messages essential.

More reading:

Gilbert Center
Building Your Online List

Katya Non-Profit Marketing Blog
5 Ways to Get People to Sign Up for Your Email List

Network For Good
How to Get More from Email

Not your father’s gift card

I recently received a gift card (thanks boss!) to an online charity site where I can choose what cause I want to support. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, and I love it.

(And I’m not the only one who does.)

Think about it:

• The gift giver gets to give a meaningful, eco-friendly, tax-deductible gift, through an easy online shopping experience.
• The gift recipient gets to contribute to a cause that they care about.
• And most importantly, the charity and those it serves gets much-needed funds during a difficult year.

The charity gets a little buzz too. I’ll tell my boss which cause I gave to and how I decided on it. And he might trust my judgment and regard that organization highly now too. Ditto with my friends who I'm telling (and who may very well be getting charity gift cards as presents this year...).

So nonprofits: make sure your Guidestar and Charity Navigator listings are up-to-date, as many of these gift card sites, like Network for Good’s GoodCard, display your organization’s profile from there. There will be thousands of potential supporters scouring nonprofit descriptions in the coming weeks as they redeem their gift cards. Others sites allow you to enter your charity or projects to be listed, so submit yours if the gift card site is a good fit for your organization.

And last minute shoppers: if you're looking for a quick and meaningful gift idea, look no further. Charity gift cards are great for coworkers, friends, and family – including your father.

Charity Gift Card Websites:

Network for Good “GoodCard”  
http://www.networkforgood.org/goodcard/

DonorsChoose “GivingCard”
http://www.donorschoose.org

Global Giving Gift Card
http://www.globalgiving.com/

Charity Choice
http://www.charitygiftcertificates.org/

Social Gifting

The next revolution in online shopping has arrived – social gifting.

The first of it’s kind – ever – and arriving as an application on Facebook (and soon to MySpace) is Gimme!, a social gift-giving tool that allows one person to gather a group of their networked friends to give a gift card to another friend.

Socialwise, Inc., the application developer, describes the application as “[providing] an easy way to organize a group gift for anyone—even yourself—by allowing users to contribute to a gift card from our collection of top retailers or a pre-paid debit card. The recipient can then choose their own gift, insuring that he or she will always get a gift they love.”

The quality of retailers is impressive, it includes Amazon, iTunes, Borders, Overstock, Motherhood Maternity and several others. The process itself is easy, it’s quick (2 steps) and because it’s on a social networking platform - it’s removes that awkwardness of group gifting and instead provides a good-hearted informal atmosphere to do something that is typically too formal to initiate.  Consider one example I’ve conjured:

• A co-worker goes on vacation; while away she gets engaged and changes her Facebook status. She receives tons of comments on the change.  You set up a Gimme! $100 gift card to BedandBreakfast.com, and invite all your mutual friends to give so that she can have it when she arrives as gift from everyone.

Or to use as a practical joke:

• You notice a friend of yours is wearing the same shirt in every picture he posts or is tagged on in Facebook. As a joke, you set up a Gimme! $25 gift card towards the GAP to present to your friend so that he can get another shirt. Of which your friends will want a picture.

The approach is different, but natural too. And following the forward-thinking of the Causes app in Facebook, the developent of an application like Gimme! only confirms what we already know- the potentials to leverage social networking is becoming very real.

Read more about Gimme!
MaketWatch: Gimme! Offers Innovative Approach to Holiday Gift Giving via Facebook
SocialWise: Socialwise Group Gifting

Learn more about SocialWise on their website: www.ideaedge.com

Twitter as a Growth Tool

I seem to be getting asked the same question a lot in the past few weeks by clients, friends, and just people in general who want to pick my brain.  Everyone I run into wants to know why Twitter is useful and if it is worth their time.

The truth is that Twitter is very powerful if done properly.  Just recently over the Thanksgiving holiday I was part of a project called TweetsGiving which was a 2 day campaign by Epic Change to raise $10,000 for a school in Tanzania as well as get people to share and realize how much we as a whole have to be thankful for this year.  The site entire campaign specifically targeted Twitter as it’s primary marketing point.

Within the first 3 hours the site had already hit the 25% mark to the fund raising goal, and after 47 hours the goal was completely met.  Although there was some word of mouth and the site did get a very good number of mentions on blogs and news sites, had it not been for the use of Twitter I do not think this would have been as successful.

Twitter allows people to follow and keep up with others they are interested in, build large contact networks and reach out to those people when you need them.  With TweetsGiving they began with several well know and heavily followed members on Twitter who were very interested no only in the concept of what the site was trying to do but also the impact they could have.  After these people posted about it, more followed.  Not only did the donations come running in but as people shared what they were thankful for it simply expanded the network of people who were seeing the messages from TweetGiving and driving more people to check it out.

In just those two days the site had over 9,000 absolute unique visitors, and over 16,000 page views with visits coming from around the world.

This is not the only example of how you can use Twitter.

Twitter is a great source for building a brand and loyal follower group. By allowing you to post messages as often as you like, forcing you to keep those messages short, and providing a way for people to share your message with a large number of other people who may be interested you can develop quite a following.

Since the message has a character limit you do have to make sure you can get your point across in efw words. This is great at helping to narrow down and get directly to the point, with no beating around the bush or long drawn out emails.

Twitter can also help to show activity, in many cases with nonprofits and small businesses people want to know you are actually doing something. It is human nature to be skeptical but if someone sees you Tweeting several times a day with what people are doing in your organization or updates on product development then it provides a means of being more transparent easing the tensions people have.

Twitter is also a great way to get volunteers involved. By giving them a way to also promote your cause or product you are simply expanding your customer base. It is really a word of mouth campaign done over a digital age technology. Volunteers can post links to you, updates on what they read from you, and share even more about what they are doing.

A great example is for a nonprofit organization that has several satellite groups working in multiple places the volunteers on location can Tweet from a computer or even in some cases their cell phones giving people real world real time updates to the impact the organization is having.

An example on the business side would be a product development company with multiple products in testing, or even products that have been released. If you have your engineers constantly updating people on fixes, availability and testing they can see just how dedicated you are as a brand to making a solid well produced product.

The best part of Twitter is the cost.  It is a free service this means the only cost of using Twitter is the 1 min it takes to have a person post to it.  For those looking at a solid ROI you can get it here if you make a dedicated effort and use the right strategy for your situation.  If you need help determining the right strategy for you I would suggest speaking to someone well versed in your particular market.  If you need help finding someone who can help you in your field send me a message and I will help you get in the right direction for your needs.

A few of our favorite things

Oprah shares her favorite things with her audience. While I'm nowhere near Oprah-status, I thought I'd take the opportunity to do the same. The best part about my favorite things is that they are all FREE and could help increase your productivity, enable you and your coworkers to work together more dynamically, or even reduce costs at your organization.

Basecamp (www.basecamphq.com)
Basecamp is a full-fledged project management tool and one of the few on this list that comes in different price plans. The free version lets you have unlimited users posting notes about one project. If you need one place to discuss a project and track who's saying what, Basecamp is a great tool. The other plans starting at $24/month also include To Do lists, milestones, and file storage. A shoutout to Matt for bringing us Basecamp.

FreeConferenceCall.com
Really, it is free. No commercials or advertisements. You sign up and receive a free conference call number that is yours to use whenever you want, no reservations or schedules. If you're looking for the downside, the only one is that the phone number provided is not an 800#. But really, with nationwide calling plans, this is almost no issue at all. After each call you receive a report of what numbers dialed in and for how long.

Compete.com
So you know your web site gets 10,000 unique visitors each month. The bigger question is, how does that compare to your competitors. Compete.com will tell you. The free plan gives reports on URLs you request for Visitors, Engagement, and more.

Tinyurl.com
There are times when you don't want to scare off a potential donor or constituent by posting a long and unmemorable web address. Tinyurl is a good choice if you're current CMS system doesn't offer something similar. Enter your long URL and Tinyurl gives you a much shorter version. You can customize it as well.

Firebug extension for Firefox (http://getfirebug.com)
Firebug is an amazingly useful tool for diagnosing HTML and CSS coding on a web page. After downloading and installing the extension to Firefox, you can view and edit the HTML or CSS for the page. If you're not sure which CSS is pushing that column too far left or why the spacing is way off between your navigation and your content, you simply start Firebug and roll over elements on the page. It will display the related code. Overall, this has probably saved hours of production time over the last year.

Bubbl.us (www.bubbl.us)
Use it for mind-mapping, org charts, or simply brainstorming. This handy website lets you create bubbles of your ideas. And the best part, you can allow others to also edit the same diagram. In less than 15 minutes I did an outline of online marketing concepts and then invited my coworkers to edit the outline. This is a great tool for outlining your organization's 2009 campaign plans, marketing plans, org structure, or any other concept that you need to quickly outline and review with others. You'll easily be able to export your diagram to a jpg or png file for use in other documents or insert the HTML into your page. You can see a list of my favorite things below.

Want to add your own favorite things to this bubbl.us list? Comment below with your email address and I'll invite you to be an editor of the file on bubbl.us.

Debunking Fundraising Myths for 2009

Dispelling myths is not an easy task--you can anyone who does online fundraising consulting. It's amazing that despite all the success stories and articles about online fundraising, there are still organizations unwilling to make an investment in their online programs. Even worse, there's the over-promise that you if you slap a donate button your website that the money will flow in like honey. Despite the pundit (like us) and all the vendors who publish regular pieces on tools, strategy, and outcomes, some organizations keep huddling around these myths.

Organizations embrace these myths for several reasons: they have an unclear strategy, they aren't sure about the tools and technology involved, or they expect a low yield compared to other forms of fundraising.  Kimbia President Thon Morse's recent article "Debunking Five Myths of Online Fundraising" addresses some of these myths. Morse provides amazing statistics, such as $12 billion raised online in 2007 and raising 30 percent of total fund online. But, gaudy statistics aside, he offers compelling reasons to avoid the fundraising myths, especially with goal setting. Imagine raising 10% of your annual donations online? That's a big number, even for the large organizations who meet it. But, it's completely possible and will soon be the norm (we hope). Morse is correct in saying that you should consider 2009 as an opportunity to reach that goal.

So, if your stodgy CEO or head of your fundraising division hasn't completely invested in a 2009 online fundraising strategy or hasn't stayed pragmatic about it, maybe this article will help them put these myths aside:

http://www.kimbia.com/articles/five-myths/

7 Lessons from Cyber Monday

This year’s Cyber Monday – the online shopping extravaganza after Thanksgiving and Black Friday – proved that all is not lost this holiday season as sales increased by 15% over last year. Consumers – and donors – are turning to the web to find the best ways to spend their money during these tough economic times. HINT: Your website is more important than ever.

1. Deals of the Day (and other reasons to email): Retailers are sending out plenty of emails this season to remind consumers of their brand and products, and you should too. Don’t panic: you don’t need to email daily. But, give donors plenty of reasons and opportunities to come back to your site.
2. Subject lines matter. We’re not the only ones thinking about sending holiday emails. Your messages will arrive in inboxes with competing requests for money, from retail stores and other organizations. Be creative with your subject lines, and test them on smaller segments before sending to your larger list.
3. For Sale! If you have an e-commerce store, advertise a holiday sale. Free shipping has been a popular technique used by online retailers.
4. Calling all last-minute shoppers: Offer procrastinators an easy, last-minute deal they can’t refuse: a gift to your organization in honor of a loved one, with an e-card to send the honoree. It’s thoughtful, and it’s quick. (Letting them choose the date it’s sent is a nice touch too.)
5. Save a tree. Create holiday e-cards for your constituents to send to their loved ones. Free e-cards will help build your email file. Or, create tribute donation e-cards, if your top priority is raising money.
6. Be loud and proud: With everyone pinching pennies, you can bet your donors want to make sure their donations are going to trustworthy and efficient organizations. If your organization has a good rating on Charity Navigator, now’s an important time to include that “Charity Navigator 4-Star Charity” widget on your website and donation pages.
7. Tax-free! (Okay, this one is a tip from Massachusetts’ successful tax-free shopping weekends, not Cyber Monday.) Remind donors that their gifts are tax-deductible. Include language like “make your tax-deductible gift online” in emails and on donation forms, and appeal to your donors’ need to watch their wallets.

And here’s one that the Cyber Monday retailers can’t do: remind your constituents that their support is more important than ever in this economy. Include language on donation forms and in autoresponders thanking them for their support, especially now.

Happy holiday fundraising!

Foolish Giving

Today, Motley Fool, the financial solutions website for all levels of investors and individuals wanting to take over their financial lives, announced that DonorsChoose.org was selected by it’s online community as the beneficiary of it’s 2008 Foolanthropy Campaign.

For 12 years, Motley Fool as held it’s annual Foolanthropy campaign with a single mission, providing early financial education. Specifically put on it’s website, it’s long-term goal is to ensure that every young person in the world gets a basic financial education. What’s great about this is how Donors Choose’s giving model works fittingly here.

Donors Choose is a non-profit dedicated to addressing the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials and experiences in public schools. Their approach to giving is to provide the donor the same level of treatment often reserved for the established philanthropist.  Central to this philosophy, is the ability for donors to select what specific project they want to give to. The project/campaign can go towards books, pencils, a field trip, or pianos for a music class. It offers the donor an opportunity to make a unique gift towards a specific cause that they personally feel can have an impact. 

Motley Fool makes the case for their interest very well here:

“Sixty-two percent of school-age Americans responding to a 2006 Jump$tart personal finance survey received failing scores. Still, only seven of our 50 states require high school students to take a personal finance course to graduate. Nationwide, less than half of all teachers get support from administrations to use financial curricula.

[The United States is a] nation not of savers but of borrowers, and our dependency with credit is developed early. According to the Young Americans Center for Financial Education, the number of young adults declaring bankruptcy has increased 96% in 10 years, and by the time college students reach their senior year, 56% carry four or more credit cards, with an average balance of $2,864.”

Donors Choose approach offers Motley Fool a level of empowerment to achieve it's long term goal, and fulfill it's mission to educate, amuse and enrich.

More about Foolanthropy. Foolanthropy, moderated on Motley Fool’s website, which will be running for the next 10 weeks (until 1/20/09), asks visitors to donate to an annually selected cause. Motley Fool itself donates $10,000, and will also donate $0.02 for every comment posted on their discussion board, dubbed the “My $0.02 Cents” campaign.

Learn more about this year's campaign: How to Prevent the Next Global Credit Crisis
Learn more about DonorsChoose.org

6 Resources for Nonprofit Blog Post Ideas: Got BlogFlow?

So your organization has thought about all the reasons your nonprofit should blog and you've decided blogging is for you. Things have been going well for a while, but now you've hit a dry spell. You don't want to abandon your blog, but you're having trouble maintaining blog flow and ideas aren't coming to you as easily.

It's been said a thousand times that content is king so here are 6 resources to get your organization's blog back on the horse and help you maintain your blog flow with continuing ideas.

1. Your Audience

Your readers are a great place to start when searching for blog post ideas. Your constituents have a unique perspective on your mission and will appreciate you addressing issues they have noted are important to them. For starters you may try highlighting an idea or question raised by a reader in the comments of a previous article. This goes a long way towards developing an invested readership for your blog.

Another idea is to expand further on an article from your organization's newsletter that you know was popular with readers from your analytics data. Since you know the initial article was popular you can be confident that readers will appreciate your delving into that particular issue further, especially if you approach the issue from a novel perspective on your blog.

2. Social Networks

If your organization is already active on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook you can easily ask your followers what they are interested in learning about and what kind of posts they would like to see from your organization. You can also ask a question to your followers and share the responses you get in a blog post so blog readers can reflect and react out loud in the comments with you to the responses you present.

Twitter in particular can be a rich source of ideas that you can tap into even if you aren't active in the network. Using search.twitter.com you can input search terms relevant to your organization to view recent tweets filled with ideas, questions, links to articles, and multimedia relevant to your mission. If you're stuck for an idea, Twitter can be a great resource to get your thinking started and give you something to chew on for a post in a pinch.

3. AllTop

Alltop is a site from Guy Kawasaki where you can easily explore different topics and see the work of many active bloggers in one place. Sifting through the site is bound to spur your creativity or help you find something interesting to use as a jumping off point. The site likely already has categories relevant to your organization's issue area and there area also categories in good, nonprofit, social entrepreneurship, human rights, and green.

4. News Media

Another place you can turn to if you when you're strapped for an idea for your organization's blog is current events. Check out national newspapers or local newspapers if your nonprofit is locally based. Also don't forget about magazines and industry publications that may be hanging around your office somewhere. It's likely that many of your constituents subscribe to the same or similar publications. Developing your perspective about something going on in the world or the implications of a current event on your organization's work or the relevancy of news to your industry of issue area as a whole is likely to draw the interest of your audience as well. This is an opportunity for you to develop your blog's voice and demonstrate your organization's ability to think strategically about your environment and future.

5. Your RSS Reader

Use an RSS Reader like Google Reader to subscribe to relevant feeds. You can subscribe to the blog feeds of other nonprofits working in your issue area, experts working in your field, nonprofit news sources, and other sources so you always have something relevant to read to jump start your thinking. RSS feeds are also one of the easiest ways to ensure you don't miss news in your industry or new programs from your competitors in case you need to respond quickly to your constituents.

6. Borrow Ideas

Of course you can always cheat and borrow or riff on an idea from someone else. Many people write about blogging and ideas and lucky for you they have shared lists of blog ideas that they hope others will borrow from. Here are just a few from creative folks like Chris Brogan, Skellie and some further advice on beating blogger's block from Orna Ross to get you started.

photo by eyeliam