#COMMUNICATIONS: Make Your Next Fundraiser An Online Conversation Too
A Twitter Wall adds dynamism to even the smallest event
Though weather in the mid-Atlantic continues to flirt with spring while staying surprisingly loyal to winter, it is the season to be planning summer festivals, fundraisers, and rallies. And if you really want to stay on top of your nonprofit’s schedule, start planning your end-of-year banquet as well (and use Tungle). But in this day and age, a nonprofit’s fundraising festival should be but one component of a multi-media plan to engage constituents, volunteers, and supporters both at the event and in the social networks of those attending.
We have recommended ‘Tweet Tables’ in previous posts, and today we draw on a really useful compendium of ideas from Trevor Jonas at Mashable.com.
Popularity: 2% | Category Advertising, Blogs, Cause Marketing, Communications, Community, Crowdfunding, Events, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Gala, Geo-Location, How-to, iDevice, iPad/Tablet, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Media Review, Mobile, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Media, Public Relations, Reviews, Site Administration, Social Media, Social Networks, Storytelling, Technology, Technology for Nonprofits, Twitter | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#INTERVIEW: Sean Triner, Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist of Pareto Fundraising
Sean Triner is co-founder and “chief evangelist” of Pareto Fundraising, a direct marketing firm working in Australia, Hong Kong and New Zealand exclusively with nonprofit organizations. Sean is a frequent speaker and consultant at international fundraising events. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a regular contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: How is your direct marketing model different from the U.S. model?
SEAN: The key difference is volumes. The whole population of Australia is about 20 million. Also, the costs of things are extraordinary. Cars are 40%, 50%, even 60% more here. Petrol is 50% more than in the U.S. With such small populations and such extraordinary costs, to get a direct-mail package out costs literally three times as much. The printing is three times as much. The postal stamp is three times as much. The mailing-list purchase prices are up to three times as much.
Popularity: 2% | Category Communications, Community, Copyrighting, Cross-Post, Development, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Fundraising, Interview, Major Gifts, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Perspectives, Publications, Storytelling, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#ENVIRO: CBS/EcoMedia Partnership Expands To Bring Revenues To Green Nonprofits
The alliance between CBS/EcoMedia began just last year in an effort to bring advertising dollars directly to nonprofits, and the success of the program is beyond doubt as five more nationally recognized environmental nonprofits have recently joined the ranks. The effort of the partnership is allow corporate sponsors who buy advertising through the CBS conglomerate to direct some of that money toward the nonprofits themselves. According to the EcoMedia mission statement, “We’ve developed partnerships with cities across America, all of which have environmental projects in need of funding. When companies advertise with us, dollars go directly into these projects, thereby turning traditional television commercials, radio spots, online advertising, and outdoor billboards into EcoAds.” − as this advertisement demonstrates:
Popularity: 3% | Category Advertising, Cause Marketing, Civics, Communications, Environment, Grants and Funding, Greening, Marketing, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Press Release, Public Media, Public Relations | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#INTERVIEW: Joanne Fritz, The About.com Website Guide on Nonprofit Charitable Organizations
Joanne Fritz is the guide to About.com’s “Nonprofit Charitable Organizations” site. A former high school and university teacher, she has also been a senior manager at two nonprofits and two universities. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: Is About.com a blog or something else?
JOANNE: About.com is sort of its own animal. It has close to 1,000 guides. Each guide is an expert in a particular topic area. Each of us has a mini-website that includes a blog. So when you first see, for instance, my landing page, it has the blog, but then over to the side are topics, and those links will generally lead you to articles that are meant to be evergreen information. We typically use the blog to keep up with what’s happening in the here and now. The articles go into more depth and are more like reference materials. We’re constantly creating evergreen content because most of our traffic comes from search, and they turn up on one of our articles. I usually blog at least three times a week. There’s a lot going on about nonprofits these days, so it’s a constant struggle to keep on top of it.
Popularity: 3% | Category Blogs, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, eNewsletter, Facebook, Fundraising, Interview, Marketing, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Perspectives, Publications, Social Media, Technology for Nonprofits, Twitter, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#INTERVIEW: Jeff Brooks, Nonprofit Blogger, Author, and Creative Director
Jeff Brooks has been working on behalf of nonprofits for more than 20 years and passionately blogging about fundraising since 2005. He writes the Future Fundraising Now blog and is creative director at TrueSense Marketing. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: What do you consider to be the greatest challenge of being a good copywriter?
JEFF: What most people who are not professional copywriters get wrong is they don’t differentiate themselves from their audience. That’s why most fundraising is just bad. It doesn’t succeed the way it ought to because they say, I’m going to make this please me, and then it’ll please the others and then it’ll work. Well, that’s just wrong. That’s not how you create quality fundraising. You have to know your audience, and reach out to them, and 99 percent of the time, you’re going to hate it. You may say, I wouldn’t respond to this! And you’re absolutely correct, and it absolutely doesn’t matter.
Now If you want to talk about professional copywriters, I think what is difficult is taking dry, distilled- down-to-numbers program information and making it sing. Because that’s what you tend to get delivered: We fed this many people, and that’s up x percent from last year. That’s the kind of information you get and you have to say, how do I make somebody care? That’s the minute-by-minute challenge a copywriter faces.
MKC: I’ve been reading your blog for awhile and you’ve been preaching donor-centricity adamantly. Do you get the sense that anybody’s listening?
JEFF: Some people are. The thing is, the people who are reading my blog, or reading blogs at all, are the ones who are curious, who want to grow, and who are willing to change. The ones who need the help, who aren’t donor-centric, aren’t reading anybody’s blog. They’re not curious. So there’s sort of a preaching-to-the-choir quality to blogging.
In the fundraising industry, we are not donor-centric. We are navel gazers, and we expect our donors to gaze at our navels with us. I think that’s why direct mail response rates have been dropping for seven years in a row now. It’s because what we’re doing just doesn’t work like it used to. It’s wearing out. We’ve got a new audience of direct mail donors coming on board and they are more demanding. They want to be communicated with. In their commercial relationships with the companies they buy stuff from, they’re used to service and they’re used to being talked to as who they are. Most fundraising isn’t there. It’s saying, here’s your cancer bill. Pay it. That used to work, for a few reasons. One was, the older generation was more duty-driven: You give because you’re supposed to, you give because your church tells you to, you give because your family has always given. You didn’t have to be skillful at asking a person like that, they would just say, yeah, it’s my time to give. Not only that, but the competition in the mailbox has skyrocketed. There are probably 10 times as many appeals being sent out now as there were 20 years ago. So there’s that overwhelming noise, and the fact that younger donors, and I say younger meaning under 70, are a little more discerning. We actually see a behavior of larger gifts to fewer organizations. In the older donors, 70 and up, there’s just this behavior of sending 15 or 20 bucks to everything that comes across your door. Younger donors are saying, I need to be involved here, I need to know what’s going on, I need to care. So if we don’t get on board with talking to donors, instead of talking to ourselves, we’re in big trouble.
MKC: You also seem to have some strong feelings about nonprofit advertising. Would you like to talk about it?
JEFF: You’re talking about the “Stupid Nonprofit Ads” series. That is really about what I think is a huge scam perpetrated by ad agencies and other brand experts on the nonprofit sector. They bring commercial branding and advertising practices into the nonprofit realm and then misapply them. The reason it keeps happening again and again and again is it’s the glamour of the ad world: these are the big boys, this is where the real money is, they must know what they’re talking about, right? So they come in – and very often its pro bono so the nonprofit thinks, what the hell, I might as well do it, and they get these terrible ads that have no chance of making a dent in the problems of this world and motivating donors to do anything or care, much less give. So I kind of go after it, and I’m pretty mean about it, but it’s because I feel like it’s a big con, and we need it to stop. Plus I just like making fun of stupid stuff.
MKC: Is there anybody who does good advertising for nonprofits?
JEFF: Oh yeah, a lot of people do, and it will never win an award. No one’s ever going to show it anywhere, because it’s “bland,” it’s “ugly,” it’s “old-fashioned,” but it raises money.
MKC: Tom Ahern raves about the Domain Group formula for newsletters and he keeps saluting your role in it.
JEFF: We were doing mostly direct mail at Domain, and sometimes a client would say, could you do a newsletter for us? We don’t have anyone on staff to do it. When we did them, we made money. And at that time, the normal thing was for a newsletter to lose money. We started sharpening the techniques, we did some testing. We found that to be relentlessly donor-focused was critical, that to not be afraid to ask for money was good. I have a lot of clients where you can almost count on a newsletter being a more effective fundraiser than a direct mail appeal is. That’s not true across the board, but I have not lost money on a newsletter in decades. They are an effective fundraiser. The difference is, the old newsletter said, Look at us, aren’t we cool, look at all our great programs. The articles were long and boring, the headlines were dull. We found, just like in direct mail appeals, you had to get your eyes off yourself and on the audience. The reason they’re giving is they want to change the world, so you need to tell them, yes, you are changing the world, instead of, look at us, we’re changing the world. You still tell a story about their cool program, but you turn it a little bit, so it’s, ‘Look, donor, here’s what you made possible.’ You do that in subtle ways and direct, flat-out ways.
MKC: Has anyone attempted to convert the Domain Group formula to email newsletters?
JEFF: I’m trying to. I mean, we try to bring the techniques and the mindset. Email is a little different. I don’t think we’ve quite got it figured out. For now, email newsletters are nothing like as effective as print newsletters as fundraisers, and they’re less effective as fundraisers than e-appeals are.
MKC: You have been blogging since 2005. Have your goals for blogging changed?
JEFF: No, not really. The difference is, when I started, there were maybe three other bloggers in the fundraising space, and way fewer readers. Now I think there are over 100 fundraising-focused bloggers that I know about. I feel like I discover another one every week or so. And there’s just a larger audience. Thousands of people read these blogs now. That’s kind of cool. That means there’s an ongoing professional conversation happening. Before, the national conferences were the only place professional conversation happened, and most people weren’t going to those. So it was way less widespread than it is now. This is good. It means more people are able to get smarter.
Fundraising is a weird medium. A lot of things are counter-intuitive. Things work that you wouldn’t think would work, like longer letters work better than shorter letters. And there’s just a thousand little details like that. Some fundraisers seem to say, ‘We need to throw out everything we know, because it just seems so wrong to me.’ Then they watch their revenue go down the drain. This is very sad, because this isn’t just some stupid shampoo sales campaign. This matters. When you screw up, it matters that you screwed up. It means you can’t serve the way you’re called to serve. There’s a moral dimension to it.
You can follow Jeff on his Future Fundraising Now blog.
Guest blogger Don Akchin writes frequently about marketing and philanthropy at donakchin.com.
This interview series is produced with the generous support of the Nonprofit Marketing and Fundraising Zone.
Popularity: 5% | Category Blogs, Campaigns, Communications, Copyrighting, Cross-Post, Development, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Fundraising, Grants and Funding, Interview, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Perspectives, Publications Design, Research, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#INTERVIEW: Kivi Leroux Miller, Consultant, Trainer and Blogger on Nonprofit Communications
Kivi Leroux Miller is a successful consultant, trainer and blogger on nonprofit communications. She leads weekly webinars from her website. She also is the author of The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: What was your goal when you started the blogging?
KIVI: My goal from the beginning has really been to help the small nonprofit organizations that don’t have the money to hire staff or to hire big consulting firms, but because of the Internet – especially – can do some very powerful things with just a little bit of time and a little bit of creativity. The blog is just a really easy way to get that kind of content out there. On the business side, it’s been phenomenal for my search engine optimization. I say I owe 90% of the traffic to the blog.
Popularity: 3% | Category Blogs, Book, Communications, Cross-Post, Fundraising, Interview, Marketing, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Storytelling, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#SM4NP: In Search For ROI, Can We Put A Number On A Relationship?
ROI can bring strong relationships as well as income to nonprofits
Who doesn’t want a high return on investment? Whether that investment is time or money, any business or nonprofit wants to see it put to good use and wants to see some reward for it. With the explosion of social media over the last five-to-seven years, we have watched a kind of bi-polar reaction to the development of an online/social media strategy. One tendency is to believe that with the new website and Twitter plug in, your organization’s work is done. The other is to strive to boost the number of Followers and Friends ever higher, though often be frustrated that each Facebook Friend is not donating each time he or she signs into their account. Perhaps we should envision a sweet spot between such extremes, for ourselves, for our clients, and for our constituents.
Popularity: 4% | Category Advice, Blogs, Campaigns, Cause Marketing, Communications, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Internal Marketing, Interview, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Site Administration, Social Media, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Technology for Nonprofits, Twitter, Video Interview | | 1 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#Communications: Postal Rates Raised Last Week – Not For Nonprofits
The United States Postal Service has been struggling financially for the last few years. The Bush Administration saddled the service with pre-paying its future retiree benefits for a decade (2006-2016), a demand uniquely imposed on the USPS. Bush’s policy meant the service went from profits in the $1.4 billion range in 2005 to one that has laid off thousands of works, closed numerous branches, and still needs to raise postal rates in an effort just to stay open. So what he did to the postal service he did to the country.
This past Monday many postal rates changed. For example, first-class mail went up by a penny and its guaranteed one-day delivery (depending on distance) was removed. Or perhaps you didn’t notice?
Popularity: 3% | Category Advice, Campaigns, Civics, Communications, Community, Direct Mail, E-Mail, Fundraising, Interview, Marketing, Marketing Budget, Marketing Skills, Measurement, National/International, News and Current Affairs, Newsletter, Newspaper Article, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Politics, Publications, Strategic Marketing, Web and Print | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#interview: Tom Ahern — Author, Award-Winning Journalist, and Communications Consultant
Tom Ahern is the author of four books on fundraising communications, with a fifth on the way. An award-winning magazine journalist, he has written case statements for numerous campaigns and is a popular communications trainer and consultant. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVE blog.
MKC: You’ve written four books. You’ve trained hundreds, maybe thousands of communicators, and by now you’d expect everybody knows what to do. Yet you’re still in high demand! How do you explain this?
TOM: How fast can you actually change the characteristic habitual behavior of communications in an industry as big as the nonprofit industry? At one point there were 1.6 million charities in the United States alone, and we’re not the only mature philanthropic market.) Some of the models that are well entrenched are just, I think, wrong. Yet everybody borrows from each other, they copy each other. And so you’ve got widespread bad practices, not best practices.
Popularity: 5% | Category Communications, Community, Conference/Congress, Cross-Post, Design, Donor Acquisition, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Graphic Design, How-to, Interview, Major Gifts, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Perspectives, Publications, Publications Design, Social Media, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#Interview: Howard Adam Levy, Principal of Red Rooster Group
Howard Adam Levy is Principal of Red Rooster Group, a New York City-based branding, marketing and design agency for nonprofits. Howard, who began working with nonprofits as a graphic designer in 1991, founded the agency 10 years ago. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVEnonprofit blog.
MKC: What is most challenging about branding nonprofits?
HOWARD: Nonprofits face a wide variety of constituents, from clients, referral sources, donors, partner organizations, board members and others. So a lot more is involved in reaching out and developing messages and strategies for each of those audiences.
Businesses, especially small businesses, can make unilateral decisions on their marketing. Nonprofits are typically more consensus oriented. And particularly when it comes to the brand, you really want to get everyone’s input and have a feeling that everyone is contributing to the process of what we’re all about. So you need a process that can build consensus in a politically neutral environment and get everyone feeling really good about the brand and their role as brand ambassadors.
Popularity: 6% | Category Blogs, Branding, Campaigns, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, Design, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Graphic Design, Interview, Major Gifts, Marketing, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Perspectives, Publications Design, Slide Presentations, Social Media, Storytelling, Strategic Marketing, Web Design, Writing | | 1 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#Interview: Michael Stein, Author, Blogger, & Veteran Nonprofit Technology Strategist
Michael Stein, Senior Account Executive for Donordigital, is a veteran nonprofit technology strategist whose areas of expertise include online fundraising, email messaging, email list growth, blogging, website content, mobile messaging, and social media. With Nick Allen and Mal Warwick, Michael wrote the groundbreaking 1997 book Fundraising on the Internet: Recruiting and Renewing Donors Online.
The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVEnonprofit blog.
MKC: How did you get into this field?
Michael: About 20 years ago, I was working for an environmental group just as the Internet started to emerge. I got in on the ground floor, building bulletin board systems for Greenpeace activists and others tracking toxic chemical emissions around the U.S. I helped build the pioneering Internet provider called IGC.org that trained nonprofits to use the Internet, which then morphed into the first experiments in online fundraising on the Web for Rainforest Action Network. In the mid-1990s, I hooked up with legendary direct mail fundraisers Mal Warwick and Nick Allen, and we started to think about what the future of fundraising might look like with the evolving Internet. Together we wrote the first book about fundraising online.
Popularity: 9% | Category Advertising, Advice, Blogs, Branding, Campaigns, Communications, Community, Copyrighting, Cross-Post, Database, Development, Donor Acquisition, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Facebook, Facebook, Fundraising, Grants, Grants and Funding, Interview, iPad/Tablet, Major Gifts, Marketing, Marketing Skills, Measurement, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Permission Marketing, Perspectives, Public Relations, Social Media, Storytelling, Technology, Tools, Twitter, Writing | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
#Finance: Postage Rates For Nonprofits Realigned. Do Yours Go Down Or Up?
The Nonprofit Times has a story we wanted to pass on to our readers about the adjustments to US Postal Rates that will have an impact on nonprofits and their mailing budgets. The news is important, but not dramatic. The story quotes Anthony Conway, Director of the Alliance for Nonprofit Mailers, who was rather sanguine about the rate adjustments:
The changes reflect the CPI for October, so the USPS has every right to increase mailing charges. Nonprofits are now prepared to deal with these increases as they can be predicted based on where the CPI is. This is not bad compared to other increases and at least they are not trying for an exigent increase again.
How will the changes affect your organization’s rates?
Popularity: 2% | Category Cause Marketing, Civics, Communications, Community, Fundraising, Marketing, Marketing Budget, News and Current Affairs, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Public Relations, Publications, Report, Resource | | 0 Comments
Written by: Christopher Gardner, PhD
#Interview: Tiffany Applegate, Co-Founder of X Factor Consulting – Enhancing the Sustainability of Nonprofit Organizations
Tiffany Applegate is co-founder of X Factor Consulting, which works to enhance the sustainability of nonprofit organizations. With her marketing degree and MBA, she left the corporate world for the nonprofit sphere, and has been consulting since 2005. The interview was conducted by Don Akchin, a principal of Nonprofit Marketing 360 and a frequent contributor to the MKCREATIVEmedia blog.
MKC: On your website, you focus a lot on sustainability. I thought that sustainability was just a fancier word for fundraising, but clearly you mean something broader than that. Can you tell me about that?
TIFFANY: A lot of people do think that in order to be sustainable they just need money. But we’ve worked with and talked to a lot of organizations that may have an endowment or what they think is a large amount in cash reserves, but things happen and the funds runs out, and since they haven’t focused on sustainability they’re no longer able to survive. We’ve also seen many organizations that have a large government grant, and then when the administration changes, the focus of the grant program changes, so they lose their money and the organization is gone, because they haven’t focused on sustainability.
(more…)
Popularity: 3% | Category Blogs, Communications, Community, Cross-Post, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Fundraising, Interview, Marketing, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Nonprofit, Perspectives, Perspectives, Sustainability | | 0 Comments
Written by: Don Akchin
Marketing: Copywriting and Design Strategies for Better Donor Newsletters
Fundraising copywriter Lisa Sargent and designer Sandie Collette, of S.Collette Design, discuss how copywriting and design go hand-in-hand to make a Dublin-based charity’s newsletter overhaul a success.
Discover the strategies that helped make it happen in this case study of a nonprofit newsletter. Click here for the full article.
Guest blogger Don Akchin writes frequently about marketing and philanthropy at donakchin.com
Popularity: 3% | Category Case Study, Communications, Cross-Post, Crowdfunding, Fundraising, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Publications Design | | Comments Off
Written by: Don Akchin
Communications: Why Some Stories Work Better Than Others
Andy Goodman, a highly regarded communications consultant, reflects on the principle of “the golden theme” that runs through all great stories – then demonstrates how nonprofits can use this principle to best effect. Download “Freerange” — his monthly newsletter on best practices here.
Guest blogger Don Akchin writes frequently about marketing and philanthropy at donakchin.com
Popularity: 3% | Category Communications, Cross-Post, Fundraising, Newsletter, Nonprofit, Writing | | Comments Off
Written by: Don Akchin
It’s Not Too Late to Master Message Targeting
Image by National Library of Scotland via Flickr
You can stop kicking yourself about missing my wonderful workshop last week on “Making Your Messages Matter to Multiple Audiences.” In response to icy conditions, the workshop is opening two weeks late. So yes! you have a second chance! The rescheduled workshop is now happening (weather permitting) Tuesday, February 15, 9 a.m. to noon, at the Baltimore office of Maryland Nonprofits, 190 West Ostend Street, Suite 201. Registration fee is $50 for Maryland Nonprofit members, $100 for non-members. Do sign up on the Maryland Nonprofits website, or call them at 410-727-6367.
Guest blogger Don Akchin writes frequently about marketing and philanthropy at donakchin.com.
Popularity: 2% | Category Communications, E-Mail, eNewsletter, Newsletter, Seminar, Writing | | Comments Off
Written by: Don Akchin