What We’re Reading, Week of 11/9

From NTEN…
Impact of Social Media on the Nonprofit Sector
An interesting post where NTEN answers the questions of an NYU grad student on the impact of social media on the non-profit sector.

From AFP Blog…
Online giving on the rise despite recession and bleak nonprofit forecasts
A brief post that gives some interesting numbers about the status of online giving during the economic downturn.

From Small Change…
Key Pieces of Database Info
A great post from Jason at Small Change about maintaining and utilizing the information you collect on your donors.

What We’re Reading, Week of 10/26

From A Small Change…
Drowning in Agendas
A great post from Jason at A Small Change that we can all relate to. He discusses the need to balance the time that we spend meeting about a topic and actually acting on it.

From AFP Blog…
Churches connect with parishioners online
AFP posts this quick but interesting tidbit about how churches are vying for younger parishioners online.

From NTEN…
Measuring Organizational Influence In Social Media
A must-read article from NTEN about quantifying the time, effort, and resources your organization is putting into its social media program.

What We’re Reading, Week of 10/5

From TechSoup…
Happy Birthday, TechSoup New Zealand!
TechSoup celebrates the anniversary of their New Zealand partners and their rapid growth.

From Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog…
What Nonprofits Can Learn from Politico’s Success
Kivi takes an interesting look at the success of the Politico website and draws some interesting comparison.

From Acronym…
My Top 5 Things to Remember in 2010 as an Association Professional
Acronym takes a look to a new year and what it will take to be successful in 2010.

From A Small Change…
Eating Excellent Fundraising For Breakfast
Jason at A Small Change has some interesting and inspirational musings about the important of breakfast and successful fundraising.

What We’re Reading, Week of 9/28

From Beth’s Blog…
How LIVESTRONG Uses Social Media To Animate Its Community
Guest blogger Brooke McMillan contributes this insightful post to Beth’s Blog, taking a look at a few tips utilized by LIVESTRONG to ensure success in the use of social media.

From Acronym…
Purpose-driven membership
What is membership? This lengthy blog post at Acronym takes a look at this somewhat existential and lofty question with some interesting thoughts.

From A Small Change…
Results Oriented Fundraising
Jason at A small Change discusses a comment left by one of his readers to an earlier post about quantifying donations and support.

What We’re Reading, Week of 9/21

From A Small Change…
Musings on the Future of Fundraising
Jason at A Small Change writes about the changing landscape of fundraising and his predictions for the future.

From Beth’s Blog…
How to translate social listening into good twitter conversation that supports your objectives
Beth Kanter takes a look at how organization’s can better utilize social listening (the practice of using social networking sites to listen to their members and potential donors) and turn that into constructive communications via Twitter.

From Acronym…
How secure is that golden handcuff?
An interesting article about how organizations should approach at their “golden handcuff” (a program or product so important to a member that it effectively binds them to the organization).

From NTEN…
Online Donors: Why They Leave and How to Win Them Back
NTEN takes a look at an interesting problem and opportunity when it comes to online donors which they have dubbed “the young and the generous” (they tend to be under 40 and their gifts are around $100).

Twitter – fundraising’s magic bullet?

By Robin Fisk

You might be forgiven for thinking that Twitter is more hot air than substance.  Hailed as one of the key developments in recent times, confusion reigns: I’ve heard everything from “Twitter could eventually replace websites as we know them” to the kind of bewilderment shown by a grandparent on Christmas day when the grandchild asks them how their new computer game works.

It’s a fantastically direct communication channel. Whether you’re keeping in touch with the largely mundane lifestyle of celebrities or keeping tabs on friends, you do get it straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak.  But there is definitely a case of those who tweet, and the rest who just can’t see why on earth you’d waste your time doing it.

Fundraisers – caught between hoping it will just go away and feeling they ought to engage just in case it’s the future of fundraising – are just as confused.  So is Twitter more than just an online gathering of IT and media types, or can it make a real differece to fundraising?

Twitter’s fundraising poster-boy – ‘Twestival’ – ran in February 2009.  It took the form of parties (‘Tweet-ups’) in major cities across the planet, to which Tweeters were encouraged to attend and put some money in a bucket.  The target was USD $500,000, the charity was New York-based Carity: Water.

So, was it a success?  On a financial level you could say not:  projected income at time of writing is $250,000 (although other reports place actual income at half that) - it didn’t meet its target, but then no-one had run that kind of event before so maybe we can give some latitude on that one.  How about the donors – does Charity: Water get the chance to cultivate the those donor relationships for future support?  Not if it was cash-in-a-bucket fundraising that’s for sure.  But those donors may well have tweeted in Charity: Water’s favour, so that their followers would see the cause.  Awareness?  Certainly – I for one would not have been aware of this organisation’s work without the press coverage that Twestival received.

Let remind ourselves of some facts….

Donor relationships are key to long-term loyalty and repeat donations.  Thanking them for their gift, seeking their commitment, inviting them back to see the effect of their donation, asking them to ask their friends to become your donors too – this builds long-term relationships.  One-time cash-in-a-bucket gifts are fine if you just need some cash, but you might be denying yourself the opportunity of a lot more.

Twitter is just a channel.  It needs to be understood and used appropriately: it’s going to be part of your fundraising mix, not all of it.  If it’s iPhone toting media and IT types you’re after, then Twitter might be where you find them.  But sober reality is descending upon the Twitterati: lessons are being learned – the next Twestival is asking for attenders to register and pay up front and targets are more realistic.  Sound familiar?  Of course – it’s fundraising, subject to the laws of ROI like anything else!

What We’re Reading, Week of 9/14

From NTEN…
IT Alignment Is Mission Alignment
An interesting article discussing ways in which IT departments can “realign” themselves to better ensure that they are well placed and helping to achieve a myriad of goals across the company.

From Beth’s Blog…
Dear Causes: Please Share Your Cause Exit Survey Data With Nonprofits
Beth Kanter takes a look at Facebook causes and a surprising feature that should prove useful to organizations who do outreach through causes.

From Acronym…
Why should members join?
Acronym from ASAE poses the questions for readers to sound off on, “Why should members join?” See what people have to say.

From The Chronicle of Philanthropy…
Followers and Friends Not the Only Measure of Nonprofit Success Online
Are non-profits using social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook successfully? This is the charge posed by marketer Seth Godin, though Peter Panepento (the author of the post) disagrees.

What We’re Reading, Week of 8/24

From A Small Change…
Building Community Online
This post from Jason at A Small Change blog takes a look at how organizations should go about building their online community by, in part, creating an intentional culture that fit the various cultures of your donors.

From Acronym…
Facebook fundraising: Feeding America shows good taste
Acronym from ASAE examines the effectiveness of one of the early adopters using Facebook for fundraising. To do this they look at Feeding America’s (formerly Second Harvest) latest campaign on Facebook, a “virtual Sandwich Swap n’ Share” involving the unusual duo of Hellmann’s and Best Foods Mayonnaise with musician Billy Ray Cyrus.

From Beth’s Blog…
Seven Thoughts on Slacktivism
This guest post by Ali Cherry of Beaconfire Consulting takes a look at the growing trend of “Slactivism”, the act of participating in obviously pointless activities as an expedient alternative to actually expending effort to fix a problem

From NTEN…
The Shrinking Generational Digital Divide
Sami Hassanyeh of AARP contributes this post looking at trends in demographics of the use of technology and where these are headed. Some of the findings about current usage demographics may surprise you (they did us)!

What We’re Reading, Week of 8/17

From AFP Blog…
Super Bowl of Conventions Under Way in Toronto
This post from AFP Blog talks about the American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership’s annual meeting and exposition. Dubbed the “Super Bowl of conventions”.

From Acronym…
Living through short-term pain
A fantastic article looking at the speech made by Fareed Zakaria at the ASAE closing general session and one of his final points; that “we have got to learn to impose short-term pain for long-term gain.”

From Frogloop…
Online Video: Why I’m a Believer
Changing gears, this post from Frogloop is written by a video convert. Shirley Sexton discusses her initial hesitance at jumping on the video bandwagon and what changed her mind!

What We’re Reading, Week of 8/10

From A Small Change…
Reasons Your Organization Should Blog
This article from A Small Change asks the questions Does your nonprofit use blogging to advance your mission? Why not? What’s holding you back? It goes on to list a few advantages that blogging can bring to what you do.

From Kivi’s Nonprofit Communication Blog…
Nonprofit Blogs: 5 Reasons You Do & Don’t Need One
In sort of an alternate post to the last one we read from A Small Change, this article from Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog gives you 5 reasons your organization needs a blog…AND 5 reasons you DON”T.

From Frogloop…
Five Tips to Ramp Up Your Nonprofit’s Fan Pages
Does your organization have a Facebook fan page? Frogloop takes a look at a few quick and easy steps to increase the effectiveness of your fan page and discusses how, even if you’re not raising much money of your Facebook fan page, these pages can be good for your organization.

From Beth’s Blog…
Study Released: Untapped Opportunity to
Engage High Dollar Nonprofit Donors via Social
In this article, Beth over at Beth’s Blog discusses how some organizations are missing out on the potential to target high dollar donors using their social networking outlets.