My “batteries” are almost back to 100 percent after the Convio Summit. What a fantastic week with our clients and partners. I mentioned in my “chat” with the crowd at the opening session that the innovation in the Convio client base is 10x what it was just a few years ago. Our clients are truly setting the pace for how the NP sector is engaging supporters and constituents in new ways. On NonprofitLive.TV I was asked to look into my crystal ball and tell the world what things look like in 5 years. I gave the best answer I could, but frankly, it is impossible to see that far ahead. Just comparing the work of our clients and partners at our Innovator Awards ceremony from two years ago is an apples to oranges comparison. They have embraced our Open strategy, our knowledge of the web and partnered with us on best practices and they still want more, which we intend to deliver. They have committed teams that are using the medium to motivate and drive passion out of their constituents that we haven’t seen before.

I am sure at the end of 2009 glasses of bubbly will be raised across our market in hopes that the tough times are in the rear view mirror and that 2010 will provide a return to growth in philanthropy. And yet, while times have been tough from a monetary standpoint, the Convio client and partner base has in many ways made 2009 a great year.

As we conclude our 10th Anniversary, I want to thank our clients, partners and the nonprofit community as a whole for your support, insight and acceptance of Convio - it has led to our mutual success. On behalf of the entire Convio family – thank you!

With the Holiday Giving season ramping and the recession having a negative impact on donations, charities are expanding their eCommerce offerings to better meet consumer’s needs.  We are finalizing research into the holiday giving plans of consumers, but preliminary data show that 61% of online consumers plan to give online this year, up from 51% last year – that’s more than 106 million Americans giving online in the last 4 weeks of the year. 

Nearly 21% have not yet decided how much to give and to what charity.  According to the National Retail Federation U.S. consumers plan to spend an average of $682.74 on holiday-related shopping, a 3.2 percent drop from 2008. According to research in by the Chronicle of Philanthropy the top 400 charities expect 2009 giving to be down by as much as 9%. While there is no doubt that this is not good news, the data does shed light on opportunity.
 
Of that 106+ million people looking to give, there are about well over 20 million Americans who might be torn between buying a gift for a loved one or friend and giving to charity. Thus, we have talked to a number of clients who are giving constituents the best of both worlds this holiday season – giving the gift of charity and giving a gift from charity.
 
Our founder and CSO, Vinay Bhagat was quoted last week in The New York Times about the trend, and today our client American Red Cross was also written up in the Times about their first "Gifts that Save the Day" catalogue.  The Yellowstone Parks Foundation is offering their first online gift this year, and online stalwarts like World Wildlife Fund, Defenders of Wildlife, Oxfam America, Humane Society of the United States, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburg, UNICEF, Animal Humane Society, Project Bread and dozens of others are making it easy to give gifts to the people that mean the most to you and give to charity.
 
You can give everything from a traditional ornament  to lions and tiger and bears (Oh my) (really you can adopt a lion, tiger and/or bear), you can give bees and goats or even a pile of manure for that special someone...a little more traditional you can give museum membership or buy that Andy Warhol replica that would look great in the hallway...the really neat thing about shopping online from charity is it is easy to find the perfect gift for anyone – even the person that has it all. I'm really looking forward to seeing my teenage daughter when she learns she's getting manure - She'll be happy when she learns it supports Oxfam. Most importantly the gift you give to the person you love support causes that feed, protect and care for children, the poor and the homeless, protect wildlife and the environment, educate and enrich our communities and make a difference in the lives of millions of people – that is the true spirit of the season.

I KNOW that I have left off some examples of how our clients are using eCommerce and other Convio products to bring gift giving and giving together this year, so I ask you to share your opportunity here – let’s create a clearing house for online gifts that make a difference this holiday season.

Let’s help make the year-end giving season come alive for your friends, family and the nonprofits that make a difference.

Just coming out of the Homepage Design Slam session at the Summit, I wanted to provide a brief recap for those who couldn’t make it. Don Roach, our Art Director, and I led the session and got some great (and brave) volunteers to project their homepages and subject them to constructive critiques from their peers. Each volunteer got a party favor in the form of a large Post-It tablet sheet listing some quick fixes they can consider to optimize their homepages. I’m hoping it will be a great tool for them to use to convince others in their organization to make some iterative changes. Don and I made a list of 10 Commandments for designing effective homepages, which we shared with the group to use as guidelines as we reviewed each page.

The 10 Commandments of Homepage Design

I. Thou shalt clearly state who you are and what do you.
II. Thou shalt be able to point to where your top 3-5 online goals are represented on the homepage.
III. Thou shalt offer clear, concise navigation.
IV. Thou shalt provide scannable, up-to-date content that entices visitors to click for more.
V. Thou shalt dedicate space to each of your audience groups.
VI. Thou shalt convey a visual hierarchy so visitors know where to look and what to do first.
VII. Thou shalt include 3-4 ways for visitors to engage.
VIII. Thou shalt avoid the Flash intro or any other gratuitous animation.
IX. Thou shalt make sure most relevant content is above the fold.
X. Thou shalt balance meaningful content with relevant supporting graphics.

Do you have other ideas on guidelines to consider? If you attended our session – what did you think? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
 

What a great start to the Summit! Gilbert’s speech this morning was so inspiring – what an amazing person he is. You can read about Gilbert on his web site. The first session I attended this morning after the keynote was “No Really, Show me the money!” about merchandised giving. Molly Brooksbank from Convio showed some awesome examples of virtual gift stores and products to begin brainstorming sessions for clients who may be thinking about starting a store of their own. Check out World Wildlife Fund and Oxfam UK just to name a few. Alisa Aydin from UNICEF USA spoke about their Inspired Gifts store and the process we’ve been through together to achieve a very usable store and some amazing success metrics. Looking forward to some more great sessions this afternoon!

Yesterday, James Young and myself had the opportunity to present to packed house of nonprofit organizations on social media at Convio Summit. Over 100 nonprofit professionals packed in (literally) to learn, discuss and brainstorm on how nonprofits can set up a full-fledged social media strategies - from setting objectives and measuring success to deciding on what tactics to use and of course, selling the use of social media to management.

We were joined by a fabulous line-up of "non-experts" including Adam Steinberg from The Port, Alan Graham from Mobile Loaves and Fishes, David Neff from Lights.Camera.Help, Kenneth Cho from the Social Agency and Carie Lewis from The Humane Society of the United States. The attendees had fun reaching under their chairs to see what they had "won" -aka - their new, fake nonprofit they had to brainstorm a social media strategy for during the workshop.  

And after three hours of discussions and brainstorming....

the groups did an amazing job of presenting their ideas for the fake nonprofits they pretended to be for three hours!

And all fun and prizes aside, congrats again to Larry Oji for winning the coveted Flip cam BTW, we as presenters and discussion leaders walked away with a better understanding of just how nonprofits are using or not using social media and the pain points people are experiencing in the process of figuring out how to use these new tools.  

Our top five takeaways included:

1. Forming a strategy is a very personal exercise. There is no silver bullet.  It's an internal process that takes place over time and watching the groups discuss potential strategies illustrated this point very well.
2. Organizations have to be willing to think outside the box and yes, even make mistakes when forming the initial strategies. Seven groups presented ideas in the workshop yesterday and the most popular ideas presented were those based on creativity and different tactics than most of the people in the room had thought of.   
3. Everyone likes to talk about the tactics and often overlook the strategy. It was very easy for people to brainstorm the tactical use of social media tools, but the real challenge when they were asked to write out objectives, measurement benchmarks, arguments to management and integration tactics with existing media. As social media continues to permeate into everyday life, strategic use of these opportunities will continue to rise in importance.
4. Integration is going to be key in 2010. For the past few years, social media has been seen by most as an "add-on", something that can be tacked on to existing plans. But what came out in yesterday's discussion was the true need to integrate social media into offline, and more traditional online media such as email, and vice versa, to make each as effective as possible.
5. Organizations are still fearful using social media channels at all, much less using them to their full potential. At a minimum, these media can be used for an outbound channel and get their feet wet. But at a maximum, they can truly produce huge results. Don't believe me? Just ask a Carie Lewis, David J. Neff or Alan Graham. They'd love to tell you their success stories. I promise!

To end the session, I was asked by an attendee what "the next big thing" was going to be in social media. My answer: more real-time applications like video streaming and live blogging to allow for true real-time coverage and engagement, in addition to platforms continuing to open up and naturally become more "socially enabled".