Are You a Data Geek Superstar?

We just attended the "Super Heros of online Fundraising: Become a Data-Driven Strategist" breakout session at the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference (10NTC) in Atlanta. The session was run by Sarah Dijulio of M+R Strategic Services, and she posed some profound points and questions for online fundraisers.

 

For instance, when you use data to drive your strategic decisions, you'll make better decisions, avoid mistakes, and achieve a higher return on investment. But how do you transform your organizational culture to become data driven? And what kind of data are we talking about anyways? How do you sift through the massive volumes of online data to discover what is truly relevant? Superhero costume is not required.

Wilderness Society and AARP tried some targeted $5 vs. $10 ask email campaigns. AARP ran a deadline fundraising goal-oriented messaging campaign that resulted in a 144% increase in response rates over its usual average, while Wilderness Society's email campaign actually underperformed. The difference between the two campaigns was that Wilderness Society targeted non-donors, while AARP's targeted non-donor activists (i.e. people with a history of taking political action in emails) -- it only goes to show that when supporters are engaged in some form (e.g. advocacy) they are more likely to donate.

What should you test as an email campaigner? One thing M+R has tried is monthly giving asks, using javascripted pop-ups over the donation form that offers the monthly option. Another example is Mercy Corps, which allows people to start the donation process from the home page. Then there is Amnesty International, which does something similar, but shows users which program area the donation will go to -- a person from Amnesty in the audience raised his hand and shouted, "It worked!"

But in testing, there are several important questions you have to ask:

• What goal will this help you meet?
• How much of a lift can you expect? Is this likely to produce significant improvements?
• How long will it take to get statistically significant results?
• How much time will it take to implement?
• Is the lesson you learn applicable to future efforts?
• How will you evaluate the results?

One of the things that M+R heard from Amnesty was that adding the Verisign logo next to a donation button improved conversions. M+R ran with the idea with other clients, and found that this led to a 12% increase in response rates for the nonprofits that used it. 

So then how do you evaluate your test results? Try creating a data grid, and make sure your sample sizes give you statistically significant results (i.e. you might have to call that stats geek friend from grad school). But there are several rules of thumb to follow:

• Bigger sample sizes are better
• 400 responses is usually valid
• The smaller the metric you are measuring, the bigger sample you will need (i.e. if you have a list of 100,000 people, a 4% response rate = 4,000. so you can run an A/B test with groups of 10,000 each)

A great online tool for evaluating all of this is the Google Site Optimizer Duration Calculator, which allows you to speculate tests on pageviews to your donation forms. 

As most people know, M+R invests a lot in nonprofit data research, and we're all grateful they do. But tactics like the ones Sarah exhibited today can be tweaked and accommodated to any nonprofit of any size. It just takes a little planning and guidance. Once those systems are in place, you can become a data-driven superstar by second nature! 

You, The Citizen Philanthropist

Last night I attended the Citizen Effect: A New Approach to Philanthropy event at the swanky new U Street office of Affinity Lab, which is a brilliantly organized space for creative businesses, non-profits and start-ups — a geek commune done right.

In the tradition of Global Giving, Care2, Change.org and Facebook Causes, Citizen Effect is yet another attempt to connect socially concerned people with the cause of their choice. Or so I thought.

Citizen Effect's founder, Dan Morrison, opened his presentation with a story-telling Malcolm Gladwell charm (minus the hair), telling us about the people who inspired him, and moving into Citizen Effect's founding principles, which go something like this:

When you hear "philanthropy" you think of Bill Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the other titans of industry that set aside some of their riches to help solve the world's challenges. But when I hear "philanthropy" I think of high school students, young professionals, yoga instructors and accountants.

Ok, that was pretty much ripped from the MeetUp.com event description. But it mirrored, in a nutshell, Dan's build up to the Citizen Effect product. And what separates it from the better known crowd-sourcing philanthropic competitors is the way it centers the focus on the Citizen Philanthropist — you.

The notion of the Citizen Philanthropist (CP) is not new. It explains why there are so many small nonprofits devoted to specific areas of concern. Everyone has a friend who joined Peace Corps and returned to start a nonprofit to help some village in Zambia. Citizen Effect cuts to the chase, lining CP's up with their passions.

I applied to be a CP myself, and was most impressed with the application process.

As I ticked the boxes indicating my regional interests, the amount of money I want to raise and the number of lives I hope to impact, my wheels got turning: I don't have to end world hunger, I can help feed 300 people in India. I don't have to start a national campaign, I can throw a house party.

After you submit your application, you're encouraged to peruse Citizen Effect's searchable marketplace of nonprofit programs, which are broken down by region, focus area, lives impacted and fundraising target. Most ingeniously, each program has its own blog, events and announcements, so the CP can connect with others who are campaigning on the same project.

The projects themselves are administered by qualifying nonprofit organizations, who submit their own application to and are vetted by Citizen Effect.

I asked Dan how they cope with the demand among their nonprofit partners for unrestricted funds. After all, any savvy nonprofiteer understands the marketing value of specificity and personal stories, but every nonprofiteer wants control over how money is spent.

Dan told me that while his nonprofit partners are required to earmark much of their CP donations to an actual project, they may direct a portion to its implementation costs. "But we make sure they're very clear about this on our website," he added.

My wheels were turning again.

Of course, the best thing to do is check out Citizen Effect's website, become a CP, and learn how it all works.

Using the Social Media Snowball Formula

A staple read this week in the online nonprofit sphere was Brenna Holmes’ blog post on Community Organizer 2.0 about building the California State Parks Foundation’s (CSPF) Facebook Fan Page from 517 fans to 45,000 – a pretty big honking deal.

It’s especially remarkable given that CSPF’s four-day “Friend Get Friend” campaign nearly met its original goal of 5,000 fans, then surpassed it with 6,236 fans on the following day. The campaign brought CSPF considerable media attention and encouraged about 5,000 concerned Californians to visit state parks on a weekend in June and then post photos from their visits to CSPF’s Fan Page wall.

It’s the kind of online-to-offline-to-online success that would make any digital-savvy mother proud, and Brenna’s must be smiling.

Of course, any nonprofiteer who read this wants to know how to make this narrative her own. And absent a perfect villain like the anti-progressive, state park budget slashing Governator himself, and the fierce urgency of legislative deadlines, will CSPF’s Facebook formula of smart messaging be enough?

Before we go there, let’s assume that while your nonprofit addresses a noble and necessary social need, there are no foreseeable wars, hurricanes (though ‘tis the season), forest fires or sinister bands of ninjas out to undo your good work. 

The first question you should ask is whether you’ve taken full inventory of opportunities that do exist. For instance, are you aware of Twestival Local, and that your city and charity might qualify to benefit from it if you register by August 25th?

Moreover, are you on Twitter? Why not? (Don’t worry, CSPF didn’t get there until late last July.)

The next step is to realize that success isn’t all about fortunate externalities – although they do help. It begins instead with a combination of perspective, the right tools and a winning formula. And persistence, of course, but since you work for the cause that’s in your DNA.

To see what I mean about perspective, turn back to the CSPF example with a different mindset: State parks are always under the threat of budget cuts, that’s not unusual; compared to other Republicans, you could be facing much worse opponents than Governor Schwarzenegger.

If CSPF had this perspective, there would be no state parks east of the Rockies. The point is that there may be no impending ninja attack, but your job wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a threat to your cause. It’s up to you to reframe it, and apply the right online tools to communicate and make it viral.

Let’s begin with the tools. If your organization hasn’t already invested in email campaigns, you undoubtedly intend to. Next consider the two strongest social media applications in online organizing, Twitter and Facebook. Regardless of where your nonprofit lies on the spectrum of novice to advanced, everyone shares a common interest with these tools: growth. That is, followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook.

(A quick aside: There’s been great debate over the benefits of Facebook’s Causes vs. Fan Pages applications. Your correspondent is of the opinion that Fan Pages win this one. Causes are great but have trouble sustaining over time – once dormant, they’re hard to resuscitate. Fan Pages are like the vintage Mustang you take out on weekends – they’re more timeless. And with a Static FBML box, you can embed donate or email subscribe functionalities on your Fan Page.)

Finally, the Fan Page-Twitter cocktail is ideal because both applications create communities of potential donors; have email blast-like capabilities (in fact, many practitioners have found greater returns on tweeting take-action or donate links than they get from conventional email campaigns); provide a forum for activity, media sharing and conversation; and the online audience you’re not reaching on Twitter is probably active on Facebook.

Now for the winning formula, which goes something like this:

Goals → Urgency → Communications → Giving

 
The Snowball Formula, as I just decided to call it, earns its namesake because each element rolls into the next, making your campaign bigger and more formidable as it goes. Besides, snowballs grow, which is precisely what you want you campaign to do, not just with followers, but with generating a buzz and raising money.

Here’s how it breaks down:

Establish Goals: There’s nothing like clarity. Tell your supporters exactly what you’re trying to do. You want a million dollars, 10,000 fans/followers on Facebook and Twitter, and you need it all by this deadline. Promote this on your website (or, dare I say, a microsite?) and in email campaigns, and don’t forget to be creative: Tie your goal to a mission match (e.g. 10,000 fans for 10,000 blankets for the homeless) or donor match (e.g. 10,000 fans matched with $10,000 from ACME Co.).

Introduce Urgency: This step is best accommodated with robust communications coupled with timing. That is, constant vigilance for opportunities to exploit, such as hurricanes and marauding ninjas. More importantly, you need to sound convincing. As stated earlier, CSPF had several externalities working to its advantage. In their initial Friend Get Friend appeal last May (broadcast via Fan Page email notification), they articulated Schwarzenegger’s plan to halve the General Fund budget by July, and eliminate it by 2010. But the real urgency was introduced several sentences later when they said, “This year’s cuts are 10 times as bad so we need 10 times the fans on Facebook – 5,000 – by Friday to fight this newest proposal back.”  That’s it. No meticulous breakdown of cause and effect, no online grassroots feasibility metrics, just a few words that said, basically, you should really, really do this. Because we said so.

Sustain Communication: Your average dictator, cynic or communications consultant will tell you that power lies not in facts, but in controlling the story. Communications should remain consistent throughout your campaign while you optimize all channels of social media and email. Content is largely informed by external events, but some can be planned in advance, such as reminding your supporters about goal status (i.e. urging people to recruit more), and finding new ways to express urgency. There is also the matter of not-so-public communications: Along the way it helps to identify and enlist individuals with large online followings (it could be a Twitterphile celebrity like Ashton Kirchner, but any person with a zillion followers will do) to help contribute to the buzz you’re creating on Facebook and Twitter, especially if you decide to end your campaign with a big ask…

Get’em Giving: There’s nothing wrong with asking for money. And it actually improves your chances of reaching your supporter-growth goals if you orchestrate the giving into a singular fundraising event, such as a 24-hour offline-to-online Tweet-up event. This is because the days leading up to your fundraising day will be all about growing your supporter base. Treat it the way you would a fundraiser house party. Your friends will be happy to help you promote it, and on the party day itself, you have a captive audience that’s ready to give $20 here and $100 there. Several examples are worth mentioning, such as Charity: Water’s Twestival, Epic Change’s Tweetsgiving and PlayPumps International’s Aquathon.

There is, of course, much more to be said for social media outside of Twitter and Facebook, and even more regarding the 3rd party applications that support them. But if a strong, social media sensibility comes first, the tools will follow.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year...

Remember that Staples commercial? A father clicking his heels through the aisles with back-to-school time around the corner... Well it is back-to-school time for many, but for nonprofit communication and development professionals, even at this time of year that song may remind us of its traditional meaning – the approaching holiday season.

Not surprisingly, this week when I met with an organization to help map out their online marketing calendar for the next few months, much of our planning revolved around the timing of holiday campaigns. (Are you already gearing up for your holiday and year-end giving campaigns? If so, tell us about it @fundraiseonline.) 

If you need to prioritize your organization’s holiday campaigns, here are a few tips to help you get started:

1. Dust away the cobwebs and look back at what you did last year. Were last year’s campaigns successful and worth repeating, or do you need to start fresh? If you plan to run similar campaigns to those you did last year, consider the pace of the work. Were deadlines tight? Be realistic, and add in some extra time to manage the workload if you need it.
2. Get going on the creative. If you do plan to add some new appeals this season, consider what type of campaign you’d like to introduce. Does your organization print holiday cards that would work well as e-cards for tribute gifts? Do you have the right products – at the right price points – available to those who like to shop for a good cause? Do your tax-deductible gift reminders need a little more spice this year, given the state of the economy? Now is the time to brainstorm these ideas and get the creative juices flowing. 
3. Create a calendar that you can stick to. Take a look at this year’s calendar, and make sure you can fit in all of the messages you need. Consider emailing your house file about tribute giving (“this holiday season, give a gift that gives back”), holiday shopping (“makes a great gift! proceeds from our store help those in need”), and year-end giving (“last chance to make a tax-deductible donation this year!”). And don’t forget to consider re-sends to those who don’t open, click, or act on your original message.

So wind down from the summer, and gear up for what is sure to be a critical holiday giving season for many nonprofits. Let’s hope this season really is the most wonderful time of the year for your organization, and those whom you help.

Using your website to “go green” (and make green)

Let’s face it. The troubled economy is not making it easy for fundraisers this year. And this St. Patrick’s Day we could all use a lucky leprechaun to lead us to the pot of gold.

While the economy is getting most of the news coverage these days, “going green” has had its share of the limelight as well. Here are a few easy ways to build lists and raise money while going green this year.

1. Create online-only constituents and publications
From banks to cable companies, there is a growing trend to get rid of mailed, paper statements and to interact exclusively online. While you shouldn’t entirely do away with offline newsletters and direct mail, there are some constituents who may appreciate receiving online-only communications from your organization – particularly if it is coupled with a “going green” message.

Consider emailing a segment of your list and asking them to help you save money and trees by opting in to online-only communications; include a tell-a-friend feature here as well. (Alternatively, segment recent online donors who have never given offline, and keep them out of offline mailing lists.) Target these constituents differently in the coming months by reinforcing your appreciation of their online-only status. You may be able to send more frequent emails to this group as well, since you are not balancing online and offline calendars.

A more drastic but not unheard of measure is to take a regular publication out of print, and create an online-only version in its place. Proceed with caution, but since you can learn much more about your donors through their clicks – and since a reader is more likely to forward to a friend than they are to drop off a few hard copies with friends and family – the right analytics and segmentation could make an online-only version even more profitable.

2. Be less “printer-friendly”
Ever received an email that includes in the signature a request to “consider the environment before printing this email”? In a few easy steps, you can add a similar message near printer-friendly links on your website and in email stationery.

3. Offer seasonal ecards
Use holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, Mother’s and Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Valentine’s Day as timely reasons to publicize your organization through e-cards. Free e-cards help grow your house file, and allow the sender to give an eco-friendly online greeting to a loved one. Tribute e-cards raise funds by allowing the sender to make a donation in someone’s name rather than purchasing a tangible present. Both varieties can help build lists and raise money, without any need for paper.

Going green and making green don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Offering more unique opportunities for online communication will help save trees and money, and may also be seen as an effort toward responsible spending of donor dollars.

Go green, and you might just find that pot of gold after all.

Wasting time with an email newsletter?

Email newsletters a waste of time? It’s an interesting debate… and maybe even a tempting argument. (That sure would free up some of your workload.)

Obama’s camp has been quoted as saying that email newsletters are “a waste of time and effort and should be ditched.”

But like Vinay Bhagat, co-founder and CSO at Convio, I beg to differ.

Sure, we know that open rates are declining thanks to increased image blocking and email overload. And yes, sometimes it does take a while to write and get approval on organizational emails.

But expecting your subscriber base to respond to endless calls to action, without ever hearing inspiring updates on what they have helped change (like policies), or save (like the rainforest), or end (like hunger), isn’t such a good idea for organizations. According to Bhagat, “Political campaigns are short lived and maximizing participation during the campaign cycle is critical. In contrast, nonprofits rely on building long-term donor relationships.”

It’s worthwhile to determine who on your list enjoys reading and relies upon your email newsletters to understand your organization’s mission, needs, and achievements. Remember that there are likely as many “relationship seekers” as there are “all business” types on your list.

So while it might be tempting, don’t give up on your e-newsletter just yet. Here are some do’s and don’ts to help you manage the time and effort you put into your email marketing campaigns.

DO:

• Make emails, including organizational e-newsletters, as short as possible.
• Create and use an email newsletter template, so that preparing them each month (or week or quarter) is easy.  You’ll be less likely to forget including important components like that donate button or a featured program this way too.
• Target e-newsletters to segmented groups based on their interests. If some people only open, click, and donate to particular campaigns (like dogs vs. cats, or prevention vs. treatment), then send them email content accordingly.

DON’T:

• Spend so much time crafting perfect e-newsletters that you aren’t able to also produce short, timely emails with specific asks. We can’t argue with the Obama team on this one; short calls to action are critical as well.
• Ignore your e-newsletter statistics and trends. If your e-newsletter is suffering from low opens and disappointing clicks, do some testing to identify what’s wrong and make changes.

Now… back to drafting that e-newsletter and call-to-action appeal.

Also onLine: How Much Email is Too Much?

Free Lunch with Google - Google Custom Search

[Part 2 in my "Free Lunch with Google" posts series]

Now that your website can accept donations and sell products to benefit your non profit, its now time to focus on your website's usability.

At onLine, we review a lot of non profit websites, so we're always on the look out for the elements every website should have, the large donate button, the non-pixelated logo, the mission statement, etc. One feature that surprisingly is not often available is the "search bar".

It use to be that for a site to be able to have a search bar, code more complicated than basic HTML was required. Or, if you're non profit that was built on a CMS platform, an additional fee was likely required to activate it. Well, Google is sharing their search expertise with everyone for free. Enter Google Custom Search.

From Google Search Engine product page:
With Custom Search Engine, you can harness the power of Google to create a search engine tailored to your needs.

With several pages of galleries, on the field stories, board members, and products on your website, inserting Google Custom Search will help make things easy for the visitor to your site find exactly what they are looking for. To view some examples, visit Google's Picks, a list of businesses and organizations using GCS [link].

Setting up is uber-easy. After you've created your account, your control panel lists several customization options including "Look and feel", "On demand indexing" (allows you to submit a select number of pages to be quickly indexed) and "Code" (includes the HTML code that you can insert into your site wherever you want the search bar to appear).

Typically, like most of Google's offerings, the tool displays advertisements that would appear along with your search result unless you upgrade to the paid version, Google Site Search. However, for non profits and educational institutions, Google allows you to disable advertisements. Which is great! In doing this, Google gives you the option to have a clean search results page, or if you want to bring in some additional funds to you non profit, you can keep the advertisements and make money on your searches (this requires signing up to Google's Adsense for Search program [link]).

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

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.

Big Expectations from the Convio Summit 2008

This year's Convio Summit 2008 kicked off this evening at the Renaissance Hotel in Austin, TX with an opening gathering for clients and partner organizations. As the drinks were poured, the buzz for this year's client sessions is centered on a few topics: 

Common Ground: Convio launched their Salesforce-platform-based CRM system two months ago. Now, nonprofits will get to see more of the product and ask tough questions about why the product would work for their organizations. We expect to see plenty of private and group demos to take place over the next two days.

Social Networks: Social media sites continue to be the elusive goldmine that every organization wants to tap into and reap fortunes. Expanding an audience through social media has been the hot topic at a lot of conferences this year and a few panels here are devoted to Facebook applications and social media. Expect a lot of small talk to focus on how to attract and convert social media denizens to eCRM-managed donors and constituents.

Convio Open: How you get these folks from social media sites to an eCRM platform will depend partly on the Convio Open APIs and extensions. Last year, Convio Open was buzzworthy because it was brand new and an interesting concept for the company. This year, it's becoming more about how the APIs and extensions can really be used by all organizations and what are the practical applications for the enhancing the tool. Of course, most organizations still don't have the staff or expertise to create their own Facebook applications and the like. But, knowing is half the battle and just getting acquainted with the initial ideas behind Convio Open can help these organizations make smart decisions about how they can use the platform to do more for their overall online programs.  

The Economy: The elephant in the room; every conversation seems to touch upon our struggling economy. Are donations down? Are people giving like last year or in 2006? Will online continue to push at 30% overall growth rate or will it slow considerably? How can organizations meet capacity, raise money, and communicate with limited resources? How are we doing YTD from last year? Will we meet our online fundraising goals? It's doubtful anyone will have the answer, but they might have good advice on how they're tackling the issue.

We'll review some of the sessions and provide highlights from keynote speaker Tony Elischer's breakfast plenary. Couldn't make the conference and have a question? Drop us an email or leave a comment, we'll be happy to answer your questions or get the scoop on a session for you.