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 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 8/3 part 2

From AFP: Nonprofit Technology Blog…
Nonprofits use pilot site to post events, causes
Linking to an article from Democrat and Chronicle.com, the AFP blog calls attention to the use of pilot sites by nonprofits. According to the article, over 100 nonprofits are using the “Do Good” pilot site that connects readers with information about a variety of charitable causes. It allows users to post information about events, causes, and nonprofit jobs. Tools like “Do Good” can help drum up support and interest in nonprofit activities in an easy, cost-effective way.

From Beth’s Nonprofit Blog…
Crowded Roads Ahead for Charity 2.0: How to address scaling and cause fatigue?
As the use of the internet and social media continue to expand, it’s important to address the inevitable issue of media clutter. Beth’s Nonprofit Blog discusses the recent coverage given to nonprofit clutter, and offers some insights on how organizations can continue to raise funds and promote their causes in a crowded field.According to Beth, building a movement around a cause rather than a brand, and ensuring that social media initiatives are properly scaled, will allow nonprofits to succeed amidst competition.

From Frogloop…
Is Your Nonprofit Complying with State Charity Regulations?
This week, Allyson Kapinat Frogloop blogs about the regulations that accompany online nonprofit fundraising. If a nonprofit raises money on the internet, than it needs to ensure that it is in compliance with state laws. These regulations can be complicated: for example, as Allyson points out, a charity based in one state may have to register itself in other states if the residents there make donations. Nonprofits should be aware of these rules, and should stay up-to-date on compliance.

Social media strategy – where do you begin?

Social media has so many tools and web sites it’s overwhelming to know where to start. Atlanta-based social networking strategist David Nour has researched over 400 social networking tools at his consulting firm according to this Richmond Times-Dispatch article. 400! But there are probably three to five that would work well for your association. So where do you begin?

When I present about social media tools, I like to point out that there’s only one Three Letter Acronym in social media (that’s RSS, Really Simple Syndication, used for subscription notifications). But the most popular social media sites have some strange names, I must say. Twitter sounds funny if you say it three times fast. Facebook is two words put together, without using CamelCase. LinkedIn is another word combination that does use CamelCase. The site del.icio.us recently changed its name to delicious.com. Another site you haven’t yet heard of is probably lurking around the corner, right?

Overcoming intimidation

The word “lurking” evokes dark corners, the unknown, and scary scenes. I believe intimidation is part of the difficulty in getting started. I appreciated this line from Hammock Inc’s blog, Conversational Media. “It’s understandable that social media can be scary, but don’t let it prevent you from meeting your association goals.” Their blog post, How to Become Your Association’s Social Media Champion,  goes on to talk about becoming or finding an internal champion.

Listening first

I also encourage a listen-first attitude. “Listening” to social media means setting up Google Alerts for your association and searching for keywords that are important to your association’s goals. The notifications can be emailed to you periodically (daily or weekly). It can mean going to search.twitter.com and entering keywords or hashtags (pre-selected keywords or acronyms prefixed with a # sign), and then subscribing to the results of that real-time search.

Establishing goals

A reasonable approach is to step back one step and look at your overall content and communication strategy and the overarching goals your association has. Is it raising awareness of issues? Increasing connections to other members? Developing killer content for learning?

Analyzing constituents

In May 2009, the ASAE’s Associations Now magazine ran an interview titled “People First: The Key to Social Media Strategy” where David Nour does an excellent job of describing the 90-9-1 rule of engagement in any community event (or party, as his example shows.) This rule applies for mailing lists, wikis, online groups, and special interest groups. There’s a small core group of people, about one percent of the group, who will be very active in the group. Nine percent will contribute from time to time, but a full 90% will only read or observe but will never contribute.

The book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, authored by Forrester analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, has a Social Technographics tool available online that describes a ladder of participants in combination with their demographics. At the top of the ladder are Creators, those who write blogs, publish videos they’ve created, and so forth, might make up a large portion of your member’s demographics. But if many of your members are Inactives, those who do not participate at least monthly in the social networking and creation activities listed, like reading blogs, reviews, subscribing to feeds, you may want to reconsider whether your association’s goals can be met with the use of social media.

Running a small pilot project

If your analysis shows there is interest, activity, and goals to be met with social media, start small. You can use the learning experience to build out your strategy further.

Putting it all together

Beth Kanter, a consultant and trainer to non-profits about social media techniques, has a wonderful blog post about Creating Your Organization’s Social Media Strategy Map. It is full of resource links. Taking 5 minutes to walk through the presentation at the beginning of the blog post may be the best 5 minute start to a successful social media strategy for your organization.

How about your groups? Have you had some difficulty getting started? What are your thoughts on getting started?

What We’re Reading, Week of 7/27

From Frogloop…
Taking Advantage of Wikipedia
Millions of people look to www.wikipedia.org as a starting point when they are searching for information about specific topics. Allyson Kapin of Frogloop encourages nonprofits to bear this in mind, and to create or update their organizations’ Wikipedia entries. She writes that Wikipedia can be a powerful promotional and educational outlet. As Wikipedia becomes ever more fixed in the internet culture, nonprofits should be aware of its potential uses.

From the Nonprofit Communications Blog…
The First 100 Hours: Turning Media Spikes Into Fundraising Leads
Kivi Leroux Miller’s post discusses the importance of turning media coverage into fundraising leads. According to Kivi, media coverage of an organization will lead to a window of roughly 100 hours of increased traffic and search engine hits. This time frame represents an opportunity to raise funds and increase interest. Kivi recommends using customized search ads, a strong landing page devoted to the issue that brought media attention in the first place, and social media. It is important for nonprofits to strike while the iron is hot, and media attention represents a prime opportunity to generate awareness and bring in revenue.

From AFP: Nonprofit Technology Blog…
Twittering for a cause: Web 2.0 and its philanthropic impact
Linking to a post from The Daily Tell, the AFP Blog discusses the impact that Web 2.0 has had on philanthropy. In particular, the post discusses how Twitter has become a fundraising avenue. Through campaigns such as “Tweetsgiving” and “tweet4good”, Twitter users have proven that they are generous to charitable causes. As the use of social media for charitable causes spreads, nonprofits that are not currently taking advantage of social media ought to find ways to get into the game soon.

What We’re Reading, Week of 7/20

From AFP Blog…
InfoSpace Launches Charity Search Engine
Linking to an article that appeared on www.seattlepi.com, the latest AFP Blog post discusses the launch of a new search website specifically focused on charity. www.DoGreatGood.com is the engine’s name. It will compile search results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and will donate money to charity when used. This represents an innovative new fundraising technique that internet-savvy non-profits may benefit from.

From Beth’s Blog…
The 4C’s of Social Media
Beth’s Blog features a guest post by Gaurav Mishra, in which he discusses the 4Cs of social media. Each “C” is an integral component of a strong social media offering. They are: Content, Collaboration, Community, and Collective Intelligence. Following this framework could provide nonprofit social media users with a reference point on how they can best establish and maintain their social media presence.

From NTEN: Non-Profit Technology Network
Passwords: The Biggest Lesson from the Twitter Hack
The latest NTEN blog post discusses the major Twitter hack that occurred last week. The avenue that the hackers used was very simple: they found a way to steal the passwords of Twitter employees. Though it might seem like a minor detail, the importance of creating strong passwords and changing them from time to time can’t be underestimated.

What We’re Reading, Week of 6/15

From AFP Blog: Nonprofit Technology…
Micropayments: Where Charity and Social Networks Meet – BusinessWeek
Linking to an article in BusinessWeek, the AFP Blog discusses a new form of philanthropy—Micropayments. Despite some of its hurdles, it will be interesting to see how its connection between charities and social networks will shape philanthropy.

From TechSoup…
Tips for Designing (or Redesigning) a Nonprofit Web Site
Designing a visually thought-out, informational website can be difficult. Chris Murphy offers tips to polish off your website—most important (and our favorite) no.1, Preliminary conversations. It’s important making sure all stakeholders are involved in the process.

From NTEN…
Cloud Computing 101: What You Need to Know
Not sure what exactly the cloud is? Rem Hoffmann and Rob Jordan provide organizations a quick 101 on cloud computing, and offer case studies of organizations that are using the cloud successfully.