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 10/19

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.

Association magazines and hybrid print-online solutions

by Anne Gentle

I’ve been assisting with a report for the Society for Technical Communication about social media for professional organizations. I’m also on an editorial advisory panel helping to shape the articles and authors for their Intercomm magazine, which is printed 10 times a year and has over 10,000 subscribers. Survey results show that members still want a printed magazine, but also value the speed and interaction that an online presence can provide. So, I’ve been trying to find good examples of association magazines that work well online also.

Building a brand, educating, or raising awareness?

I’m finding that association magazines are sometimes thought of as a branch of “brand” magazines. There’s a bit of controversy on this point though. I read this blog entry that asks, “Are association magazines just flashier custom pubs?” The author says “While some associations work with custom publishers to produce their magazines, the publications they create are not marketing-based vehicles for a particular brand. To use a custom publishing study to explain habits of association magazine readers seems like a stretch.”

I suppose “branding” isn’t quite the right term for what professional associations offer their members. Is it “raising awareness” instead?

I also found a reference to the Roper study that the blog entry above cites. The bullet points they choose to highlight are:

• 85% view custom publications as a preferred source of information because they provide targeted information
• 79% view companies that produces a custom magazine as believing in its product
• 69% after reading a custom magazine feel they know more about the company
• 65% view companies that produce a custom magazine as caring about its customers

The print to online spectrum

I subscribe to a great association magazine for an association called CHADD called Attention magazine. I appreciate their hybrid approach for print and online even though it’s a pretty simple implementation with PDF files secured behind a membership login. It’s not interactive, as in, there are no comments on articles that I can see. The site touts their recent (June 2008) award for redesign from the Society of National Association Publishers.

What’s also interesting to me is that there’s another magazine called ADDitude that does a great job of online engagement. It’s free for online content and a paid-subscriber magazine for printed content. It’s interesting that the market can bear two similar magazines, but there you go. It appears is a huge range of the amount of online and print offered.

One association magazine that is a great example of online engagement even after the printed magazine has been mailed is the Associations Now magazine from the ASAE (American Society of Association Executives). There’s an RSS feed so you can subscribe to updates to the magazine’s main page. You can rate an article or write a review of it, and bookmark or share it with others with an AddThis widget.

Looking at a brand name example

An interesting note, if you do want to correlate brand and custom pubs as being similar to association magazines, Adobe magazine had probably half a million subscribers but stopped doing print production (as far as I can tell) in 2000. Archives are still available online. Adobe is miles ahead in print-online hybridization, and apparently tried a 2.0 magazine, but isn’t offering it now.

There may be lessons learned in these examples. What are some of your favorite association magazines, and how much engagement is online?

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).

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.