Gayle Thorsen (pictured at left) is back with another great article to share with us here at Step By Step Fundraising!  Over the past year, Gayle has been kind enough to share with us her recent articles from her blog ImpactMax.  

Gayle has been in the nonprofit communications world for more than 25 years, the last 12 as the communications head for two large foundations:The Minneapolis Foundation and The McKnight Foundation.

Take a few minutes to visit ImpactMax and read all the terrific articles Gayle has posted there. It will be time very well spent!  Thanks, Gayle!

Blogs vs. Facebook for Nonprofits

Over the past few months, I’ve helped a couple nonprofit clients who are ready to move into social media decide whether to go with a blog or Facebook. (I’ll talk about Twitter strategies in a future post. It’s kind of a different animal.)

Greetings!  I would like to welcome back guest author Joanna Miles. Joanna is a marketing consultant at Beaconfire, where she works with clients to create successful fundraising campaigns and online communications, and uses analytics to help engage users online.

Beaconfire helps nonprofit organizations that serve good causes accomplish great things on the Internet by designing and building Web sites and crafting online campaigns that make people care – and act.

I’d like to thank Jo for sharing her time and knowledge with our readers!  Please check her site out!

Your nonprofit doesn’t need a blog

Blogs may no longer be as trendy as Twitter or FourSquare, but they’re still on that list of social media “must haves”. If your nonprofit doesn’t have a blog, someone probably thinks you should.

It’s possible that they’re right; a good blog can be a real benefit to an organization, giving you a strong voice and a controlled channel to converse with your supporters.

But not all blogs are good.  A bad blog — one that’s rarely updated, where the content is full of marketing gimmicks or spam runs wild in the comments — can do you more harm than good. If you can’t put real effort into maintaining it, it will make you look lazy, and could even hurt your reputation.

Don’t get me wrong. I love blogs. But I love  good content even more, and a blog without good content isn’t much of a blog.

Before you take the plunge in starting your own blog, consider what you’re getting into. If you can’t answer “yes” to almost all of these questions, a blog may not be the right channel for you, at least not right now.

Will one person be in charge of updating it? If you don’t have a staff member who’s excited about it, and has the expertise to maintain it (or at least the will to learn), your blog may languish without attention. They don’t need to do all the writing (in fact, a blog may work best with many writers from across your organization), but someone needs to run the show.

Can you update often? You don’t need to post every day, or even every week, but any blog needs regular posts to draw readers. If posts are few and far between, readers will lose interest. If you don’t have staff with time to devote to blogging (and a manager to oversee the schedule), along with a steady stream of potential topics, you may not be able to maintain the volume you’d like.

Do you have good content to post? A blog is a great place to tell stories and share news that don’t fit into your other communication streams. But if all your best content goes to your email newsletter, or (worse yet) you face a monthly struggle to identify good content for your emails, then a blog is just going to compete, and will likely take second place.  Without compelling and unique content, geared towards your blog’s audience, you might as well be recruiting those readers straight to your email list.

Do you have an audience in mind? At the outset, you should have an idea of who will read your blog, and what it will add that they don’t get from your other communications. It could be a demographic group. It could be core supporters who want to know more about what you’re up to. It could be other bloggers. But it should be someone.

Will you allow comments? Blogs, like any social media, are about conversations. But plenty of nonprofits don’t allow comments on their blogs. Sometimes there are good reasons, but more often, comments are blocked out of fear of negativity.  Without commenters, a blog is a one-way news stream. In that case, why bother with a blog? Why not just update a news section on your website?  Comments, both positive and negative, generate energy around your cause and give legitimacy to your voice. You’ll certainly need to develop guidelines, and take the risk that negative voices will seek you out on your blog… but if you can’t take that risk, then your blog isn’t really a blog.

Will you monitor comments? On any blog, you’ll find good comments, boring comments, unflattering comments… and junk.  It’s usually a good policy to allow and engage with commenters who disagree with you, but it’s always necessary to set some standards.  There’s nothing more unprofessional than a slew of spam comments on each of your posts.   Even comments from “real” people should be removed if they are irrelevant or vulgar.  A spam filter will take care of most of the problems, but you still need to pay attention – encouraging the good commenters, engaging the controversial ones, and shutting out the truly unwanted.

Will you promote your blog? The main reason for writing a blog is (presumably) to have readers. How will you bring readers to you?  A message to your email list might be an obvious first step, but promoting your content in an ongoing way – by highlighting popular posts on your homepage, integrating blog content into your email stream, tweeting your favorite posts – will help your readership grow.  How can you encourage your colleagues to promote and take advantage of the blog in their own work?

I’d like to welcome Gayle Thorsen (pictured at left) to the Step By Step Fundraising Blog.  Gayle has been kind enough to share with us one of her recent articles from her blog ImpactMax.  I first came across Gayle’s writing on a Blog Carnival hosted by Sandra Sims, the founder of SBSF.

Gayle has been in the nonprofit communications world for more than 25 years, the last 12 as the communications head for two large foundations: The Minneapolis Foundation and The McKnight Foundation.  She was the first community foundation vice president of communications appointed in the country, and helped pioneer issue framing, issue campaigns, and communications evaluation in the philanthropic sector. She’s now a nonprofit communications consultant in the Twin Cities area.

Her recent passion is helping organizations figure out how they can start using Web 2.0 tools to raise visibility and funds, ignite support for their efforts, empower their partners, and make the world a better place. All within a constrained budget. It’s possible, step by step.

Take a few minutes to visit ImpactMax and read all the terrific articles Gayle has posted there. It will be time very well spent!  Thanks, Gayle!

Cultivate new supporters fast: A five-week “on-boarding” plan for nonprofits

These supporters have taken a huge first step—they’ve responded in some way to your communications and showed an interest in your cause. Now it’s up to you to get them engaged as fast and effectively as you can. CK calls this “on-boarding.”

One way to do that is to set up a rapid cultivation process through email. The example given in the webinar was a from a wildlife protection organization, but this strategy is widely applicable to other nonprofits.

The process kicks in immediately when the supporter gives you his/her email address, and lasts 5 weeks—with two emails sent each week (on Tuesday and Thursday) for a total of 10. Each email is educational and inspiring, with clear yet different calls to action. The whole sequence is structured as a ladder of engagement that creates much more knowledgable supporters and greater potential for their financial support.

The content of this 10-email sequence is all important. This is not just a means to a donation, it’s the opportunity to open the door to a long-term relationship with people who feel as passionately about your cause as you do. If your emails aren’t interesting, substantive, and valuable to your supporters—they’re going to be viewed as a nuisance and people will unsubscribe or not open them at all. (You need to track opens and unsubscribes carefully throughout the five weeks to gauge how successful your email content is. If lots of people keep unsubscribing or not opening throughout the first few weeks, you may have a content problem.)

To give you an example of how this might work, here’s the sequence of emails sent by the wildlife protection organization:

Week 1 Tuesday, welcome &  link to their organizational blog; Thursday, about seals with a link to their seals blog

Week 2 Tuesday, more education about threats to seals and a link to a petition to sign; Thursday, info about whales and a whale quiz

Week 3 Tuesday, info about orangutans and a video about them; Thursday, info about elephants and an audio about them

Week 4 Tuesday, more about elephants and a petition to sign; Thursday, a chance to pick their favorite endangered species and take a survey

Week 5 Tuesday, about bears and a donation appeal (the first, you notice); Thursday, more about bears, and another donation appeal

Again, you need to craft really great emails! This campaign triggered a pretty steady 21% open rate throughout the 5 weeks, which is a good sign that people remained engaged with the content. Compared with new supporters who were just mailed regularly scheduled communications, new supporters exposed to the rapid cultivation process took more actions and made first donations quicker.

And a word to the wise—once you’ve quickly engaged your new supporters, you have to keep them engaged! Be sure to immediately acknowledge their donations with a communication that tells them what their money is going to help you achieve. This 5-week process is only the beginning.You certainly won’t want to continue emailing them twice a weeks, but your long-term engagement strategy should be as thoughtful and effective as your short-term cultivation strategy.

This is a great way to increase your rate of conversion from supporter to activist to donor. Kudos to Common Knowledge for sharing it!

Recently, I read a very insightful article titled Fearing What They’ll Say on Facebook on a terrific site called Kivi’s Nonprofit Communication Blog.

In her article, blogger Kivi Leroux Miller wrote about the challenges non-profit organizations face in determining what is appropriate for employees and other representatives to share on the non-profit’s Facebook page or other social media outlets.

This is an issue that I have been thinking about ever since this form of communication has become so wide-spread. I am very cautious by nature and tend to err on the side of not saying anything rather than blurting out something I can’t take back. Therefore, there is a big part of me that is intimidated by the spontaneous nature of Facebook.

That said, Kivi brought up some very interesting considerations in her article.  For example, she wrote about how important it is for the administration of the non-profit to be clear with the staff and volunteers when defining the difference between public and private commenting.   This is a very fine and tricky line.

An Example of What Not to Do

Kivi’s article primarily focused on non-profit’s side of the equation. But recently, I came across a Facebook  conversation that was a perfect example of what concerns me from the other side of the equation- that is, the client’s side.

In this example, the director of the program I read about opened up a discussion about a new pricing structure for entrance fees to his facility. He had a very specific rationale for why he set the prices as he did. However, the policy did not make sense to a few of his clients.

A number of them began to question his decision online. Frankly, I was surprised by how openly defiant they seemed. I thought that some of the commenters were downright disrespectful. Unfortunately, the director didn’t handle this attack very well, and he became frustrated and defensive in his written responses. He even resorted to sarcasm toward a couple of the clients.

This isn’t a huge facility, but there are several hundred people who “like” this page. Therefore, every single one of these people could read the entire ugly exchange- both sides. I wonder how the average reader feels about the organization now, after seeing how this issue was handled so poorly. I can’t imagine it’s very positive.

Now, I am fully aware that this is just an isolated incident. It is probably more reflective of this particular director than of any inherent problem with a non-profit’s involvement with social media. However, this is a trap that is easy to fall into.

Facebook Presents New Challenges

Before the advent of Facebook, the clients might still have been frustrated by the pricing structure, but the opportunity for them to collectively air their grievances didn’t exist in a such a convenient and public forum.

While a director of a non-profit has always had to have the ability to answer client concerns smoothly and professionally, Facebook presents a new wrinkle. Since the whole point of social media is to be quick and informal, it’s very easy to just sit down at the computer and fire off a response to whatever is posted, without thinking about the consequences.

Oftentimes on Facebook, these conversations pick up speed and emotion as each new comment pops up. If the director isn’t careful with how a subject is moderated, it can quickly get out of control, as it did in the example I just mentioned above. And by then, it’s too late. Everybody has seen the outburst.

As a result, I think a non-profit has to be very careful in both the discussions it opens up, as well as how it responds to questions, or even criticisms, online.

In fact, I think it would be wise to create a written policy and tape it to the wall right by the computer. It can serve as a reminder, or a speed bump, when the pace of Facebook comments reaches dangerous levels.

This policy could look something like this:

• Do not ask for people’s opinions on any money-related issue.
• Do not ask for people’s opinions on any policy issue that has been even slightly controversial within your staff.
• Do not ever use sarcasm in a Facebook posting.
• Do not ask for open-ended suggestions, like an online suggestion box.
• Do not ask any questions that you should be asking within the privacy of a board meeting.

Perhaps if the director I wrote about had such a written policy in the general vacinity of his computer, he wouldn’t have gone off like he did.

I know that some people will think I want to kill the spirit of social media. Perhaps I do. However, after having spent over twenty years working in the non-profit world, I don’t think it’s wise to publicly solicit information that is much better directed toward board members, or at least a formal advisory committee. And, I absolutely do not think it’s wise to engage the public with frustration and sarcasm.

Now, I do think it’s fine to ask for public opinion on much less consequential issues, but even these should be vetted ahead of time in order to avoid any possible controversies.

We in the non-profit world need to be very protective of our public image. We are dependant on the kindness and generosity of the public. We need to make sure that our mission is not compromised by ill-advised comments on Facebook.

What Do You Think?

Does your non-profit have a policy on what gets posted on Facebook?  Do you think my cautious nature is fundamentally at odds with the modern progression toward total openness and transparency?  Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.  I’d love to read them!

Photo by: daveynin

Today’s link roundup includes advice regarding a variety of internet strategies for nonprofits:

Integrating Your Web Site and Database for Greater Donor Engagement by Robin Fisk, FundraisingSuccess

Are you new to blogging? Read this simple primer. by Sandra Sims, Cause Blogger

Online Outreach on a Budget – the January Nonprofit Blog Carnival, issueLab’s Footnotes

15 Nonprofit Social Media Stocking Stuffers and Resolutions by Pamela Grow, Pamela’s Grantwriting Blog

Posterous.com: Email Blogging for NonProfits by Rebecca, Wild Apricot Blog

Ensuring Your E-Newsletters are Read – Not Dead – On Arrival by Kivi Leroux Miller, Network for Good

Extreme Website Makeover: From Ick to Slick! by Katya, Non-Profit Marketing Blog

Does your nonprofit have a blog?  I recently began a six part series on this topic over at CauseBlogger.com.

This series is for anyone interested in promoting an idea or non-commercial message via blogs. Nonprofits, volunteers, activists and collectively those who I call “cause enthusiasts” can all find many benefits in blogging.

The truth is, there’s nothing complicated about what a blog is, or what it can do. Here are just a few examples of stories that can be posted to a blog that will help boost your fundraising efforts:

• Announcements about upcoming fundraising events
• Photos of items in your upcoming auction (gets people excited about attending and bidding!)
• Profiles of volunteers who made your special event successful
• Stories about service recipients who will be helped because of funds raised
• Acknowledgment and appreciation of corporate sponsors and major donors
• Progress on projects that fundraising efforts made possible

To find out more about blogging in simple terms see part 1 – What is a Blog?

Then discover the five different types of cause related blogs, examples of each and lessons you can learn from them in Part 2 – Who are cause bloggers?

The remaining four segments will be published in the near future.

Yesterday I was pleased to present a seminar in Dallas at OEG Fundraising Conference all about Online Fundraising.  Originally there was to be another presenter for this nearly two hour time block, but he dropped out last minute.  So it was all me. This was fine as I’d prepared a presentation that was a general overview all about online fundraising.

Having a great website that promotes two-way communication with potential and current supporters is an essential foundation for raising funds.  These days the public expects to be able to find information about your charity online.  Even when you rely on traditional fundraising methods such as direct mail, if a prospective donor is not too familiar with your group, they are very likely to go online to find information before writing a check.

I showed several websites during the session as examples: (If you’d like to skip directly to the page with all of the online tools, visit the directory online fundraising page.)

The SPCA of Texas site passes the 3 second test with flying colors.  At first glance it is very obvious that this is a website that is all about pets! Attendees at the conference noticed the “Help Sadie” feature right away.  The fact that it’s the only headline with a red background is not just a coincidence.  The color draws your eye to that spot. The donate button and breaking news sections also stand out because of color, size and placement.

So just at first glace you know that this is a charity (donate today) that helps pets (like Sadie) and is very active in the community (frequently updated news stories).  It was also very easy to find contact information through the drop down menus in the purple horizontal navigation bar.  Contact information is also located on the left and at the bottom of the page.  Why is it in three places?  Because this is one of the most important pieces of information for site visitors and you want it to be easy for visitors to find.

Heroes for Children is an example of a charity that has both a traditional website and a blog.  (What is a blog?) While there really should be a link to the blog in the yellow navigation bar of the main homepage, for now there is just a link to the blog site near the bottom of the page. They use the free service provided by Blogger to write news items, featured events, and spotlight the volunteers, children and families they work with.

The webdesigner created the website and template for the blog.  So they are similar in color and style. Then anyone, the directors or volunteers that are approved by the organization to do so, can easily add new items through their Blogger login.  The latest entry is automatically added to the top of the list.  A new page is automatically generated as well.  No special technical skills required!

The ONE Campaign has a very active blog that is in addition to their website.  They have multiple authors whose names appear at the top of the entries.  They report on news related to fighting poverty in the United States and around the world.

Photos and videos also play an important part of making the cause real to people who read the site.  Showing ONE events and volunteers demonstrates the strength and credibility of the campaign.  Readers can write comments (two-way communication) related to the stories featured on the site.  (ONE campaign site administrators can remove or moderate comments as needed.)  Visitors are also invited to participate by hosting a ONE banner on their own website or blog, and by joining their group on Facebook.

On the right hand side of the page you can see the RSS feeds, which will notify you by email or through an RSS reader anytime a new post is added.  (That nifty orange button is the universal symbol for RSS feeds.  Click it and see what happens!)

For More Information

These are just a few examples of how charitable organizations are getting their information out to the world through their own website, inviting participation with visitors and building relationships with supporters online.  Thanks again to all of the attendees at yesterday’s seminar for their insightful questions and comments.  I came away with some new ideas from you too!

If you’d like to get the free Step by Step Fundraising Monthly Newsletter you can sign up here.  Links to all of the sites we discussed in class, plus quite a few others are located in the directory on the online fundraising page.  If you have any other specific questions or suggestions feel free to let me know.