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 10/19

From Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog…
You! Up Against the Wall!
A great post from Kivi’s blog about how to improve your photo taking skills of volunteers and other events for use across multiple areas of your organization.

From Panopea Consulting…
Configuring the SMTP server
An interesting technical entry with helpful instructions on settings for the SMTP server used to send emails from iMIS.

From AFP Blog…
Facebook’s Gift Shop Sings A New Tune – washingtonpost.com
AFP blog posts about a new opportunity to donate via Facebook’s gift shop.

What We’re Reading, Week of 10/12

From Acronym…
What have your members taught you?
A great way to wind down week! This post from Acronym reminds us that we should not only look at what we can DO for association members, but what we can LEARN from them.

From AFP Blog…
New Video Series Helps Exempt Organizations Understand Redesigned Form 990 Requirements
AFP posted a link to a helpful video for exempt organizations that explains recent changes to the Form 990.

From NTEN…
Blog Action Day 2009 Climate Change: Technology in the Climate Movement
NTEN and 9,427 other blogs from 150 countries with 12,896,974 readers are smashing the debate  about what impact the online world has on offline action with these numbers and think about the over 12 million people around the world who are raising their consciousness about climate change. NTEN posts some highlights.

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).

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.

Interview with David Drinnon from Second Baptist Church

David Drinnon is an associate pastor and the Director of IT & Websites at Second Baptist Church. Their website, second.org, integrates many different technologies and social media is an important aspect of the content they offer on their website. I asked David some specific questions about his experience with social media and websites for a large, multi-site church body, and here is the interview for us all to learn from. Thanks David for taking the time to share your unique experiences!

What is the most common question you get from church staff about the value of social media for your organization’s goals? What’s the most common question you get from church members?

The most common question I get from our staff is, “What value does social media bring to our church?” It is a great question. Many people view social media as a time waster. After seeing posts like “off to a breakfast meeting” or “working for Jesus in my jammies this a.m.” (all real posts on Facebook as I write this), wouldn’t you conclude that you have better things to do? Nevertheless, it does have value and I believe skeptics fail to make a distinction between its common use and its potential use. People commonly use social media as intended by its creators…a tool for self-promotion. They all ask the same questions: “What are you doing?” (Twitter), “What’s on your mind?” (Facebook), “What are you working on now? (LinkedIn), and no one describes it better than You Tube, “Broadcast Yourself.” The Christian ethic demands a different use of these tools. I think Lee LeFever in his video Social Networking in Plain English rightly identifies the potential of these tools. He says that social media allows us to see connections that are hidden in the real world. As a church, this gives us significant insights into the relationships of our members and visitors and becomes a powerful tool for communicating prayer requests, encouragement, birthday wishes, invitations to attend church events, and most importantly evangelism opportunities. The big challenge before our church now, is know how best to use these tools to maximize their full potential.

The most common question I get from church members is, “How do I ensure that my child is not doing something they shouldn’t online?” Most parents are specifically referring to social media since that is the hub of activity for many young people. Thankfully, I am glad they are asking. Pornography is just one of several issues parents are concerned about, cyber-bullying and predators to name a few. To equip our parents, we have done several seminars on internet safety and parenting in the digital age. We also have a great counseling center staffed by licensed professionals who work with individuals and families facing relational or addictive problems.

You’ve done event blogging to gain a wider audience for the impact of your youth retreats and your blog entry showing the results with web statistics and a map of unique visitors is a powerful visual on the impact. What’s your favorite story that resulted from the event-based blog’s reach and impact?

Wow, that is a loaded question. So many great things resulted from the on-site coverage of our student Beach Retreats. I think my favorite story that resulted directly from our efforts with the blog was a comment shared by a parent during one of our live blogcasts. She wrote,

“I shared the Beach Retreat Blog with a nurse at work today, and she looked at it for at least 30 minutes, asking lots of questions. She is very far from Christ. It was so neat to share the Blog and pics with a coworker, and sense God’s Presence working.

This embodies everything we hoped to accomplish with the blog. The blog connected parents with their students. The event gave opportunities for parents to tell others about our church, and more importantly it gave the occasion for our parents to share with others the good news of Jesus Christ, the very mission of our church.

From reading your blog entry on Equip Them titled “Management & Leadership in a Multi-Site Church,” I learned that Second Baptist is a little different from some churches in that it is a multi-site church. How has social media and website technology helped you unify the church even with five campuses?

It is still too early to see any measurable impact that social media has had on the unity of our church. It wasn’t until earlier this year that we made a strategic move by redesigning our website to better address the multisite nature of our church. Our prior website emphasized our oneness rather than our multiplicity of locations and our site suffered as a result. The navigation and the amount of information made the website unwieldy and complex for our visitors. Our new website does a better job of balancing the two. It is one design across all locations with one home page, yet every location also has its own campus home page that are accessible from the unified home page This allows visitors to choose the location relevant to their needs. As we extend our web presence, we will continuously look for opportunities on how we can leverage the native features of the social media sites to balance our unity and diversity.

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!

Removing Barriers to Online Dues Payment

One of the common barriers that associations have with their website is usernames and passwords. These credentials are obviously imperative to ensure security around personal and financial information, however in many cases members may only visit the website once a year… to pay their dues. Of course most websites will offer a “forgotten password” option to enable members to find their own username and password themselves, however this contradicts evidence that implies that one of the most common calls to member services is “I’ve forgotten my website password”.

Recently I saw an association with a great solution to this problem, a partial login based on a link in an email.

At renewal time an email is sent to all members containing a link that they can click on to pay their dues, this link takes them to a webpage that recognises the member based on the information in the link. The website draws some very basic information from the database such as their name and their dues total, it’s important that only a minimal amount of information is drawn from the database for security’s sake. This page contains credit card payment options also so that the member can provide those details and pay their dues from a single page. As soon as the member attempts to do anything beyond this page such as view the member profile or change their password they are immediately prompted to login to continue that process. Importantly it’s the link in the original email that made this all work, so anyone who clicks on that link would also have access to that webpage. So it’s possible that if that member forwarded that email to someone else then that person would also be able to click on the link and see the same information, however I’m yet to come across a member who would be upset if someone else paid their dues.

Of course this is not going to work for every association, I understand that some renewal processes are more complicated however a large proportion of membership bodies could use this approach. It reduces demand on membership services staff as members don’t need a username and password and it provides a quick and easy experience for the members to pay their dues, a single page with no login required.

Here’s how it works (a little techy, so you can skip this if you really want to):

1. At dues renewal time, each member’s identification number is allocated an encrypted piece of text, so as an example the member number 114235 might end up looking like F6132B19-E33C-4d90-9B8E-7CDD4552A29A. This number uniquely identifies the member but at the same time does not expose the member number in any way.
2. A broadcast email tool is used to send a personalised email to each member which includes a link to the dues payment webpage including the unique number above.
3. When a member clicks on the link the web page takes in the unique number and compares that against the database, when it finds a match it draws out their name and total dues amount and presents this information on the web page along with fields for credit card payment. This page will need to be encrypted with SSL to ensure credit card details are transmitted securely over the internet.
4. When the page is submitted (with payment details) to the server it processes the dues payment and updates member details accordingly such as paid through date and dues balance.
5. An email receipt is forwarded onto the member and they are presented with a thank you page.
6. If the member attempts to gain access to any other personal information on the website they are redirected to a login page, this is managed and enforced by the content management system for the site.

I believe this is a great solution to a common problem. Especially as the focus moves away from the website being the “transaction engine” for associations and more towards it being the community it should be. Members shouldn’t be caught up in complex renewal processes, they should be engaged in interactions that will benefit themselves, other members and you on your site.