A DonationPay Takeaway

For nonprofits, nothing demands security and reliability quite like online payment processing. So when I told a New York-based client about DonationPay, a full-service, customizable platform whose 3% per-transaction fee is the only charge its clients see, I shouldn't have been surprised when she laughed, "What's the catch?"

Today I got on the phone with Noah Sochet, who founded DonationPay a year and a half ago with Angelina Strosahl. Ever since the two met in college, they've been running Duo Web Marketing in Olympia, WA, consulting a variety of industry clients including nonprofits.

"We would often find ourselves having to explain to our nonprofit clients the incomprehensible fee structures of some online donation platforms," Noah said, adding, "And I'm not saying that to bash the great services that are out there, it's just a complicated business."

It is indeed. Try explaining to a university development officer who just invested half his budget in a CRM with payment processing that he has to manage a separate merchant account for transactions. Then try explaining that the university's name won't even appear on his donors' credit card statement, which will instead bear the name of the merchant account processor. And when donors request charge backs on billing descriptors they don't understand, the merchant account processor gets slapped with charge-back fees from the credit card company.

It's that parents-are-fighting anxiety that only happens when the nonprofit and for-profit worlds collide -- and when your parents fight. "The ugly truth about credit card fees is that they are purely for profit and not necessary," Noah said in a relaxed West Coast manner.

In this context, Noah and Angelina teamed up with Meritus Payment Solutions, a branch of Wells Fargo, for their payment processing. Noah explained that Meritus has its own merchant account gateway, which allows them to wave processing fees for nonprofit organizations. This "conveniency" setup also allows them to distribute funds collected everyday at 6:00pm -- some payment processors do this monthly -- and customize billing descriptors so that people who donate to XYZ nonprofit know where their money went.

Meanwhile, DonationPay's clients get the range of industry standard tools and customer service that nonprofits have come to expect from companies like Network for Good. The bottom line difference is that all costs are folded into the 3% transaction fee. DonationPay currently serves 126 clients, and has a staff of five, or three, depending on how you want to count it. 

According to Shabbir Imber Safdar, a San Francisco-based consultant and creator of TruthyPR, "The process of scaling for [DonationPay] will involve only scaling their customer service, not their payment infrastructure."

Shabbir recently migrated a nonprofit over to DonationPay because its previous platform had issues spanning inflexibility of form layout to limits on analytics reporting. "DonationPay appears to be a small startup, with a good focus on customer service, riding atop a very advanced payment processing engine from a larger financial processor," he said, adding, "We've worked with Noah, who has worked very hard to make us happy."       

Refudiate Your Social Media Inhibitions

Sarah Palin made Twipples of snickers and depression today when, in a tweet defending her assault on the English language, she compared her "creativity" to Shakespeare's -- one wonders if an aide was dispatched to spell check that one.

Unfortunately, there may be people out there who revel in such audacity of dope. Unfortunately, some people place more importance on swagger than on substance. Finally, and, again, unfortunately, nonprofits and their supporters have something to learn from this: Social media is an arena that allows you to own your message. It's just that some people prefer more intelligent sounding messages than others.

“The 21st century is a really terrible time to be a control freak,” the State Department's Jared Cohen said recently in a New York Times article titled, "Digital Diplomacy." (NYT editors clearly don't have the audacity to call it like it is: Twiplomacy.) Indeed, even stodgy federal institutions are letting go of their messaging inhibitions to venture into the powerful marketplace of ideas and human bonds that is social media.

But it's important to recognize what really matters about social media -- the social (and if you happened to see Katya Andresen's recent tutorial on this, you know I totally just ripped her off). Take Twitter, for example. Viewed one way, Twitter is a closet full of shoes. When you're about to go to some tweet-frenzied technology conference, you put on your running shoes. When you tweet a news link from the New York Times during your Monday morning coffee fix, you're wearing business casual. But what matters at the end of your walk or run in Twitter shoes is the person in them.

Did your followers connect? Were they enlightened? What did you inspire them to do and how do you know they did it? Was it what you had hoped they would do? These are all very critical questions to consider when setting out on your Twitter strategy and owning your nonprofit's message and cause.

Today Jocelyn Harmon blogged about the 5 roles you need to fill when building an online community team, and added her own number 6: the "bridge builder," a brilliant idea in this age of increasing diversity. I hate to add another node on an already growing list, so maybe we can call this a sub-role, or something, but online communities need a Message Maker. Not to be mistaken with an editor, this role is the human bond in social media.

There is no clear formula for achieving this. It takes doing, and growing into things. For some, it might also take having a dictionary on hand, but we've beaten that horse enough.

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! 

Social Media Veterans at the 2010 NTEN Conference

Today Changing Our World's Interactive services team is blogging from the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference (10NTC) in Atlanta, which is pretty much the mother ship of all tech-minded nonprofit gatherings. The first session we attended was titled, "Social Media Veterans," (#smvets) which was moderated by the very energetic Rachel Weidinger, who successfully turned the packed ballroom into an offline Facebook fan page/Twitter feed.

Attendants gathered to share their tips, grievances and brilliant ideas on all things social media, from Ning to FourSquare. I had a chance to interview Estrella Rosenberg, whose campaign, 100x100, is using FourSquare to launch a lobbying campaign around legislation on heart defects.

"It's not exactly fundraising, but it will get supporters engaged and active, and therefore more likely to give at a later stage," she surmised.

Enjoy the video! (This article continues below.)

Estrella Rosenberg on FourSquare from CW Interactive Services on Vimeo.

At one point in the forum, Rachel took a show of hands for how many people had organizational and personal Twitter accounts; Facebook fan pages; a blog that was very active vs. not so active. Hands shot up -- these were social media veterans, after all -- and some embarrassed laughter over the blogging activity question. Rachel picked on one person -- "You with the awesome glasses!" -- who works with the Dr. Pepper Museum -- "Give us an example of how you use Twitter."

She replied that they apply strict practices of following & thanking people who retweet them, and that Twitter also becomes a useful tool for tourists within the museum.

Another person, whose nonprofit addresses a controversial political issue, has put together a crisis plan in the event they fall victim to a political attack. Rachel then asked how many people in the room had a social media crisis plan, and only three people responded.

One of the more interesting topics was volunteer management, particularly when it comes to striking a balance between controlling your messaging and granting autonomy to your volunteers. One attendant explained that her organization maintains a very rigorous application process and engages in frequent followups throughout the life cycle of the volunteer. Another organization member said they enlist autonomous volunteer teams that each have their own Twitter accounts.

The session ended with Rachel throwing business cards around the room, and asking for people to throw theirs back at her. "You, blog about this! You, blog about that!" It was chaos, lightening-paced yet somehow, everything made sense.

Charitivism: The Gloves are Off

This morning I was scanning my Tweetdeck stream for yesterday's Artez Interactive DC fundraising & networking conference and noticed this from Care2's Jocelyn Harmon (my favorite Frogloop blogger):

Still musing on @danpallotta talk at #artezdc. We R handicapping ourselves by perpetuating the myth that low overhead = effective charity.

Indeed, I think everyone was.

It would be unfair to say that Dan Pallotta's presentation, "Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential," stole the spotlight. It was bookended with talks by people like Katya Andresen, Ted Hart, Dharmesh Shah, Judy Chang (Principal Product Manager, PayPal) and Care2's Jocelyn and Eric Rardin, all of whom knocked the ball out of the park. (A few highlights: Ted set the tone by declaring that we have moved from the era of "direct marketing" to "direct influence," and to fundraise online effectively, we'd have to "stop fundraising and start communicating"; Katya gave her first live presentation of her must read ebook, Homer Simpson for Nonprofits, which she'll repeat at the NTEN conference next week; and Dharmesh probably converted everyone in the room into avid bloggers, SEO buffs and tweeters, if they weren't already.)

But Dan's presentation was definitively special. For those who don't know, Dan is the author of Uncharitable, a rather insurgent book which argues that "society’s nonprofit ethic undermines our ability to eradicate great problems, and, ironically, puts charity at a severe disadvantage to the for-profit sector at every level."

In his talk, Dan pointed to the flurry of warnings issued by media outlets and state attorneys general about donating to relief organizations in the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake, to highlight the erroneous assumption that people ought not donate to nonprofits that report high overhead costs. 

Stop and think about this.

How exactly is a Haiti relief organization supposed to implement solid programs without skilled staff, technology and organization? There is no doubt that some nonprofits are more or less efficient than others, but why are overhead costs the litmus test?

Put another way: You should not donate to the soup kitchen that reports 30% overhead expenses (don't bother to find out that it has highly professional facilities and staff, and serves healthy organic soup). You should donate to the soup kitchen that reports 5% overhead expenses (don't bother to discover that their facilities are dilapidated, their staff rude, and their soup bereft of nutritional value).

Dan believes this stigma hearkens back to our country's Puritanical belief system that rewards capitalist entrepreneurship and humbles charity to an almost parasitic level. That is, you're not doing your job if you're working on a Macbook Pro and have complimentary coffee in the office kitchen. You are expected to run highly sophisticated software on donated IBMs circa 2001 and call hospitals in Haiti from a shared rotary phone.

Meanwhile, corporations that want to sell sugar water to children and exploit lax labor laws in poor countries are rewarded with billions. Yes, something is certainly wrong with this picture.

Perhaps the worst consequence for the nonprofit industry is that this culture forces it to lie to itself. Dan cited the statistic that a third of nonprofits with a budget of $5 million had reported no fundraising expenses.

So how is the sector expected to become more efficient when our culture forces it into dishonesty?

Dan's answer to this problem is as common sense as it is profound. Replace words like "overhead" with "implementation," or, if it's not a stretch, "vision." He closed his presentation saying, "Revisit your great dreams and infuse them with courage, and the determination to make them real."

I later ran into Dan by the elevators as he was leaving and told him I planned to use his talking points in my own work with nonprofit organizations. "Do it," he said, "we've got to get this movement going." 

He meant every word, I thought.

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.

"Outlook for Online Donations Is Cloudy, Experts Say"

"Outlook for Online Donations Is Cloudy, Experts Say." This was a headline in a Google Alert in my inbox today. Of course, my first reaction was something like charities must be worried that overall giving will be down in 2010 following such a massive response to the Haiti earthquake. But as I clicked through to the article, I was surprised to find that it was dated March 21, 2002 and was discussing what would happen to online giving after the tremendous response following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

For a moment, I was taken back to 2001 when I was working at the AOL Time Warner Foundation on Helping.org, the precursor to Network for Good. In the months before 9-11, Helping.org enabled individuals to donate to any 501(c)3 charity in the US. The idea of donating online was new to the Internet and was launched just as a majority of online users were beginning to get comfortable buying Omaha steaks using their computers and venturing into online banking. Online giving, at that time, was possible, but the nonprofit community had only just begun to consider how to integrate a Donate Now button on their website or strategically use email to cultivate constituents. And the general public had yet to be asked to make a gift online in any significant way. A Chronicle of Philanthropy report dated June 15, 2000 found that 252 large nonprofits in 1999 had raised just under $7 million in total online. Clearly, there was room to grow.

And then, September 11, 2001. Online giving literally grew up overnight. At Helping.org, I watched reports of dollars donated jump from a few thousand dollars to more than a million dollars per day. In that same cloudy outlook article was this quote from my management at the time:

"The biggest question, said David Eisner, senior vice president of the AOL Time Warner Foundation, is how the nonprofit world can move online giving from crisis giving to more normal day-to-day giving."

As we approach the 1-month mark following the Haiti earthquake and I look back on disaster giving in the nine years since 2001, I'm confident that the nonprofit world has answered whether they can integrate online giving into a normal, every day experience. Network for Good has raised over $300 million for charities since its launch, online giving continues to grow year over year, and the response to disasters has been greater and greater each time:

• September 11th: $215 million donated online of the $2 billion collected in total
• Indonesia tsunami: $311.4 million donated online of the $1.27 billion collected in total
• Hurricane Katrina: $500 million donated online of the $3.27 billion collected in total

And now, as social media and mobile giving are poised to take their place in the day-to-day normal giving operations of the nonprofit world, I am hopeful and encouraged by what the next nine years will bring.

Looking Ahead to 2010 -- Web Trends & the Philanthropy Sector

Mashable's Pete Cashmore wrote about the 10 Web Trends to Watch in 2010 on CNN.com today. I think  many of these trends could and should spill into online fundraising and philanthropy in the near future. Here are a 3 trends to keep a charitable eye on:

Real-time

The instantaneous, real-time nature of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks provide immediacy, "a sense of living in the now", and can be "highly addictive." Progressive nonprofits have been catching on and using Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages to deliver this same type of real-time interactivity.  

But I think the key here for the philanthropic sector is to move this thinking into more operations. Typically, nonprofits provide a year-end report (sometimes even into the middle of the next year) to show accountability. Board meetings rarely happen more than quarterly. Even online newsletters are monthly. Where's the immediacy? Where's the donor or volunteer's sense of being in the now?

Nonprofits, by their very nature, need to be thoughtful and diligent in their work. Whether you're raising and spending $10 or $10 million for charitable purposes, you need to be transparent with your activities. Technology though, offers a variety of tools to provide that sense of now, today, what's happening.

Ustream.com provides live streaming video of whatever you'd like to broadcast. So is there some portion of your work where you could you virtually open your doors for a day and stream work done by volunteers? Give your staff permission to try their hand at twitter and tweet throughout the day about decisions being made, grant applications in the works, donors being courted, people/places/animals/things that received assistance during that day? I'm sure some nonprofit CEOs out there will instantly pushback on the idea of saying or showing too much, but I think there's a lot of real real-time that can be communicated without giving away names or details, and as they say, timing is everything.

Mobile Payments

Personally, I can't believe it's taking this long for the U.S. to adopt mobile payment systems that are so common internationally. I know that the Mobile Giving Foundation and Mobile Commons have been around but high cost and consumer willingness seem to keep mobile giving as something of a pipe dream for the sector. Here's to hoping that PayPal, Amazon, and Square's commercial efforts can break through and make mobile payments and then hopefully mobile giving more mainstream.

Location, location, location

At first I thought posting your every location on facebook/twitter was just a fad, and I'm not quite sold on giving away that much detail of my own personal life online (or maybe I just don't go to enough interesting places to warrant disclosing my location), but I do see potential for nonprofits to test out this trend. For organizations with large volunteer or advocacy networks that aren't easy to measure or leverage, encouraging use of location-based tools to keep tabs on constituents could create an engaging and even fun or useful opportunity for a nonprofit - think volunteers of an environmental organization posting the location of where they are recycling, buying eco-friendly materials, or otherwise doing something they could label as a "green" activity... or a Foursquare-type contest to see who could volunteer at the most soup-kitchens. Foursquare is already encouraging businesses to develop customer loyalty rewards programs. Couldn't nonprofits do the same?

Changing Our World's Interactive team would love your thoughts on these and other trends that will affect the nonprofit sector in 2010.

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.