Future Fundraising Now

One plus three reasons you shouldn't have a blog

Before I get all grumpy on the topic, let me say if you're thinking about launching a blog about fundraising, Welcome! The more good blogs there are, the better, deeper, and more useful the conversation is for all of us.

But before you get on the blogging treadmill, consider these reasons you might not want to go to the trouble. One big reason, then for lesser ones.

Here's the main reason not to blog:

Don't blog if your reason for blogging is to promote yourself. It's true that blogging can do a lot to promote your "personal brand." But the blogs worth reading are those that exist to serve and share. Look at me blogs are pretty obvious, and don't bring much to the table. Focus on your audience and you'll build your brand as a by-product of your value to the community.

Here are the other things that might give you pause:

1. Don't blog if you don't know much about your topic. If you've been in fundraising just a few years, you aren't an expert. Your posts will oscillate between no duh and you gotta be kidding me. If you're new to the field and really itching to blog, you'll do better changing your focus to something like Impressions of a newbie or Theory meets practice.
2. Don't blog if you don't write well. The most inconsequential and self-absorbed blog can be worth reading if the writing is superb. Someone with all the knowledge in the world but sloppy writing will produce a blog that's a waste of electrons.
3. Don't blog if all you have to post about is your or your company's products. That's the quick route to irrelevance, no matter how good you are.

And here are 10 Reasons Why Your Blog Sucks from a blog about blogging.

How to make yourself into a loathsome spammer

It seems PETA screwed up in a very instructive way. On Twitter, the organization direct-messaged more than 150 mommy bloggers with the following message:

Never-b4-seen photos that will convince parents never 2 take their kids 2 the circus: http://bit.ly/7ha9NL

The link takes you to a site that reports to show people being mean to baby elephants. The goal, it seems was to ignite some buzz about how the circus is not a good place to take kids. Because the circus is mean to baby elephants while training them.

Poor move on PETA's part. Blogger Allie Sullivan reported the incident and comments at PETA Spam Wednesday? What Not To Do:

... when it comes to social media and audience development, you can't think of a "target audience" ... you must think about the people who you will be engaging with.... My advice to any company or organization would be "don't spam, don't spam, don't spam." It's pretty easy not to do and focusing your energy on the relationships you're building everyday with your supporters will be so much more rewarding in the end, trust me!

Most of us grew up on mass media, where our entire way of thinking is built around broadcasting information of our choice to audiences of our choice in hopes that enough of them will be motivated to make the effort worth our effort.

That's not how social media work. There, the foundation is relationship and offering value. It takes more time and effort to get the word out. In fact, you can only get the word out if people want the word; you are no longer in control in the new media.

Thanks to Adrants for the tip.

Fundraising on Twitter: nice try

by guest blogger George Crankovic

Use Twitter and fundraising in the same sentence, and the response from fundraisers is likely to be, "sure, it's great for talking, but you can't use it to raise money."

Well, you can -- but in a really roundabout sort of way.

Enter twollers. Twollers are "twitter dollars" that denizens of Twitter send and receive. Each Twitter account comes with 50 twollers. Users send twollers to others to express their appreciation for sharing a tip, passing on some useful information, or helping in some way. Thus, twollers circulate in the twittersphere.

Now say for example that you hear about a charity or cause and want to support it. You can donate twollwers to the charity in acknowledgement of its good work. Your tweet might be something like this: 50Twollars@usaafrica to fund relief for Africa.

As the charity accumulates twollers, businesses or individuals can then purchase them with real dollars (at the rate of $1 for 10 twollers), and the money goes to the charity. Once purchased, the twollers are given out again to others, continuing the cycle. Twitter takes nothing in this exchange, so the charity is the full beneficiary. It's an interesting approach.

But is giving twollers as direct an experience for donors as writing a check in response to a heartfelt mailing?

No, and that's the problem. It's got to be a lot more straightforward for more donors (not just people who love Twitter unconditionally) to really get behind it. If this is the first step toward monetizing social media for fundraising, it's a wobbly one at best.

Test: Online giving fails 1/3 of the time

This is just what everyone is afraid of: As reported in The NonProfit Times at One-Third Of Web Donations Didn't Go Through, a recent experience by fundraising agency Amergent showed a lot of stuff just not working. They gave online donations of $25 to 30 Catholic charities. Here's what happened:

Ten out of the 30 online gifts could not be processed online: five organizations required the mailing address to match the credit card billing address, two didn't accept online donations, and for two the donation processes did not go through. One organization had a bill-to company requirement.

Okay, it's a small sample size, so it's not reasonable to call these results typical. But that's a stunning failure rate. If your direct-mail caging or data-processing vendor were screwing up that bad, you'd fire them, immediately.

The only excuse would be that online revenue is too small for an organization to spend a lot getting it right. Of course, that's a self-perpetuating decision: If your system is rejecting your donors' attempts to give online, you won't get a lot of online gifts.

Right now, go online and try to give your organization a gift. If something goes wrong, fix it.

Thanks to AFP Blog: Recent News of Note for the tip.

Email marketing: dying, or just poorly done?

Just as some people are saying direct mail is getting finished off by email, others are proclaiming email is busy getting killed by social networking sites!

Jeez. One outrageous over-generalization at a time, please.

When you see results dropping in any medium, the best response is not to say the sky is falling, but to look at the details. You'll likely see that there are clear explanations for the softening. That's what the Engagement Marketing Blog did with email, and found it In Transition, Not Fading Away.

Any softening we see in the email marketing world is largely because so many emailers are doing it poorly. Things like:

• Poor permission and opt-in practices.
• Lack of relevance.
• Overmailing.
• Lack of differentiation.
• Lack of personality.
• Poor design.

If email is dying, it's suicide.

Where it's being done well, it's thriving. Same with direct mail.

Make sure donors can reply to your emails

Who's the sender of your emails to donors? If it's nobody, and can't be replied to, you're making a mistake, says Email Insider at Email's Antisocial Sin:

Seeing "no-reply@" in the "from" address raises an immediate red flag. It telegraphs that the email is a one-way street.... the "from" address communicates, "This message is about us. We don't have time to listen to you."

Take that seriously. Email is all about engagement and back-and-forth. If you're making it impossible to respond, you're missing most of the power of the medium.

Online giving going mainstream?

Network for Good, the online donation and communication service for nonprofits, recently passed the milestone of $300 million in total cumulative online donations. (And they're moving along at a clip of $326,880 in online donations a day.)

As noted in Katya's Nonprofit Marketing blog, at Online giving: A lively spot in the lackluster economy, nonprofits using Network for Good's services this year are raising the same amounts as in 2008, but doing through smaller gifts. Here's how:

• Total number of donations is up 92% year to date.
• Dollar value of those donations is up 43%.

This may show us a maturing of online giving into a more mainstream giving medium, with average gifts moving closer to what we see in other media. That alone is good news.

Study shows why donors aren't exactly flocking online

If you spend a lot of your time trying to make online fundraising take off, here's some info that will probably annoy you: the 2009 Consumer New Media Study from Cone. Some of the findings:

• 60% of those surveyed have used some form of online or new media to support a cause, through email (33%), Web sites (29%) social networks (27%).
• 85% of respondents say new media provides them with an opportunity to learn about new issues.
• 80% believe it provides another way to support their favorite causes.
• But only 18% have made a donation through new media.

(That 18% strikes me as unrealistically high. Likely the product of self-reporting -- some who think they should or would give online say that they have given online.)

The self-reported barriers to online involvement in the survey:

• 39% said they didn't trust their effort would actually help the cause.
• 31% said they'd rather spend time and/or money supporting causes offline.
• 27% said they didn't see any existing results or impacts.
• 22% said they felt overwhelmed by the number of causes on new media.
• 19% said their favorite issue, cause or organization doesn't use new media.
• 17% said they didn't understand the tool or application.

Other than the second one, which is a media-use preference, we can help overcome all these barriers by doing stuff right online.

Download the study here (PDF; registration required).

Social media can't do it all

The way some folks are talking, you'd think Twitter can leap tall buildings in a single bound; Facebook can stop a speeding locomotive. And both are soon to bury direct mail and even email as viable means of communication. Right.

We can all use a reality check about this shiny new thing, like you'll find at 10 Things Social Media Can't Do at BL Ochman's blog.

Here's some of what social media can't do:

1. Substitute for marketing strategy
2. Succeed without top management buy-in
3. Be viewed as a short-term project
4. Produce meaningful, measurable results quickly
5. Be done in-house by the vast majority of companies
6. Provide a quick fix to the bottom line or a tarnished reputation
7. Be done without a realistic budget
8. Guarantee sales or influence
9. Be done by "kids" who "understand social innately"
10. Replace PR

And while we're on the subject of social media, here's a not-quite-safe-for-work video (the audio; the picture's no problem) called The Social Media Guru.

How nonprofits can get Twitter right

I'll just say it: Most nonprofit Twitter accounts are really awful. Boring. Self-referential. Unimportant. Are these organizations that are changing the world? You wouldn't know from what they're tweeting.

Here's some help: Twitter Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations at DIOSA Communications. Here are most of them (each one has more detail at the original post):

• Authenticity before marketing. Have personality. Build community.
• Be nice. Be thankful. Reply and Retweet!
• Follow everyone who follows you if your goal is to have lots of followers.
• Don't tweet about your coffee (unless it is fair trade), the weather, or how tired you are.
• Don't only Tweet your own content.
• Send messages, but not via auto-responders.
• Limit your Tweets to 5 per day, and no more than 6!
• Poll your followers to increase participation.
• Tweet powerful stats related to your organization's mission.
• Register your organization's Twitter account with TweetMeme.
• Favorite Tweets to build partnerships and organize Twitter profiles.
• Tweet inspirational quotes.
• Repeat your most popular Tweets.

Thanks to @joannefritz for the tip.