Guest Blogger

Social Community Impacts Volunteerism

What’s the sure fire way to make certain your constituents continue to volunteer for your cause – ensure they are emotionally invested to the organization. Allowing your volunteers to be able to find other volunteers through your online directory, post messages about their upcoming events, blog about their experiences, and share pictures within your community site, empowers them to be more committed to the cause and yields higher fundraising for your foundation!

1. Establishing a Discussion Group - When your volunteers can post and reply to messages to events they have an interest in, it facilitates a type of community in which volunteers feel more connected with their peers and committed to the cause. Through Discussion Groups they can coordinate logistics, share creative ideas, discuss marketing and communication strategies to increase attendance and involvement, share their stories, and receive feedback from their peers leading up to, and after the event. Higher engagement of volunteers yields a more significant commitment to the cause and subsequently higher fundraising dollars for the organization.
2. Creating a Blog within your Community - Why send the traffic back to Word Press and Blogger? You want your volunteers to be able to share their stories of volunteering at a homeless shelter, building homes for their neighbors, and running marathons for great causes within your community. Bring the traffic back to your private online community site that is branded for your organization. This also enhances SEO by allowing new members to search for keywords and having your volunteer’s blogs appear in the search results within your community site. The easier it is for volunteers to be able to share their experiences from the events or their personal story with the organizations, the more likely they are to be engaged and invested in the organizations. Higher emotional investment indubitably yields higher contributions.
3. Enhanced Volunteer Directory - Volunteers want to network with those whom they will be working with. They want to see their profile pictures, learn more about their bio, job history, volunteer history, and see if went to the same Alma Mater.  What better way to do that than to have them search for other volunteers in the communities and events they are involved with, add them as a friend and send them direct messages in advance of the event? This pre-event relationship building, instantly builds stronger connections for the volunteer members and helps foster the sense of community which the organization is trying to instill.
4. Sharing within a Resource Library - Your Volunteer Champions can upload pertinent documents within the community for the volunteering events which can be easily referenced at any time from the volunteers smartphones and community site. This also builds a knowledge repository and archives of the agenda, project management, logistical, and budgetary plans. The easier it is for volunteers to be able to see the relevant documents pertaining to the events, the more likely they are to be engaged and invested to the organizations.

Angelika Lipkin is the Manager of Strategic Partnerships for Higher Logic, a social media and mobile software company for associations and nonprofits. Angelika specializes in fostering relationship development, developing social media engagement strategies, and consulting organizations on launching private social networks.

5 W's of P2P Social Media Hubs

Social media is a great opportunity for your participants to spread awareness, recruit more participants and of course fundraise, ASSUMING they have the right tools and know where to find them. Make this easy for your participants by creating a social media section on your website to serve as the hub for all social media activities. 

To reach optimal results you need to provide the who, what, where, when and why in an easy to find location for your participants to access this information during their online experience. Be sure to make the webpage user friendly and clearly identify the actions steps needed for each opportunity. It is critical that you clearly define which social media channels participants join your online communities compared to the resources available for them to use in their social networks. Today we are going to focus on just resources you want participants to share.

Who: 

Recommend who participants should reach out to by providing a list of the most common social media platforms; Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter and YouTube. Include icons and links. It is important to highlight that while the participant may favor one social media platform, their potential donors may be prefer a different platform and it is a best practice to share their messages across all platforms.

What:

Provide both images and messaging for participants to share to each of their social networks. Customize the messaging for the different types of participants who might be using these images.  For example, If your are going to provide a selection facebook timeline images, try to include a message like "Walk with me!" that would appeal to Team Captains along with a "Volunteer with me!" message aimed at your Volunteers. 

Where:

Host all of this information on one page on your website so anyone visiting your page can access it but then link to this page inside the Participant Center. Identify the page as Social Media Resources and link in both your left navigation and home page. Refer to this section in all of your communications and drive participants to this hub for all social media activities.

When:

TODAY! Ideally, These resources should be set-up and ready to go when you launch your campaign, but it is never too late to add them.  

Why:

Peer to peer fundraising is only successful when participants are empowered to reach out to their personal networks to solicit donations.  Each day, more and more of the population is using social media as the primary means of communication to their friends, family, co-workers and acquaintances.  If you are not providing social-friendly tools to your fundraisers or burying those tools in hard to find places on your website, then you are leaving precious fundraising dollars on the table for your organization's mission.

Once you've figured out the 5 W's, you should be well on your way to creating an impactful, easy-to-use social media hub for your participants to promote your event and thier fundraising activities. 

Interested in Learning More?
Sign up today for a free webinar "How to Kick Start Your P2P Event’s Social Media Strategy."

Today's post was prepared by Nancy Palo, a Senior Consultant in Blackbaud's Strategic Services team with an specialty in TeamRaiser and peer-to-peer fundraising. She brings more than 10 years experience in the event fundraising space and is looking forward to helping nonprofits implement solutions to increase their special event fundraising & recruitment.

Prior to joining Blackbaud in April 2012, Nancy worked at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in California and New York where see oversaw the Society’s largest single day Walk MS and Bike MS events, raising more than $30 million during her 8 years with the organization. She studied Communications and Business at the University of San Diego and works remotely from her home office in New York City.  

In Our Own Words

Editor’s Note: This week the Convio team has reflected upon our journey: funny times, client successes, company progress and our future. We've enjoyed including you with Gene's post Monday, Sara's post Tuesday and Gary's post yesterday. And now a little more as we continue to share, in our own words, our Convio.

First from Angie McDermott, VP of Human Resources

For me, it takes the form of a love letter.

Dear Convio,

When Gene asked me to serve as your VP of Human Resources in 2006, you were such a kid – so scrappy, so brave, so eager to please, so eager to learn. You stole my heart early on in our relationship. It turns out you are the best company I have ever worked for and with. You’ve set a standard that will be hard to replace. I am filled with gratitude and appreciation for this very special experience.

Now look at you….You’ve come so far, so fast. You’ve been blessed by fabulous caretakers - with Gene, Vinay, Jim and the rest of the leadership team. You were carefully and attentively nurtured through all your awkward growth phases. You weren’t always easy, but you were always loved.

When I joined you, there were 133 Convions. We are now about 450 strong. When I joined you, we occupied one small office Austin. You are now thriving in 7 locations across the US and the UK. We added three wonderful companies to help you mature faster – GetActive, StrategicOne, and Baigent. (What an impact each new team made!) Your revenues grew from $21M to $80M. Your impact on the world grew from nothing to $1.35 billion for fuelling the noble work of our clients.

So as I say “Goodbye” to Convio I say “How’s it going, Blackbaud? How can I help?” I’ll be staying on as the VP of Leadership Development and Culture. 

And second from Marc Cannon, VP of Services

My first introduction to Convio was a Friday afternoon meeting with Gene. ‘Con’-vio, as I was incorrectly pronouncing it, intrigued me. I was coming out of Adobe and the Silicon Valley environment and this was a big change for me. Gene and I talked intently for the next hour plus and he made such a positive impression on me that over that weekend I spent a fair amount of time getting a lot smarter about the nonprofit market and Convio. I was also looking for a company with a leadership team that had been around the block in terms of growing companies, as well as one I really clicked with. I got to experience a Vinay interview which absolutely made my head hurt with Vinay’s incredibly insightful questions. After several more meetings, and Gene’s demand that I correctly pronounce the company’s name, I joined Convio. That was a little over three years ago and it has been a wonderful journey ever since. 

Convio was a first for me on a number of fronts; first foray into a company serving the nonprofit market, first Austin-based company after living in Austin for 15 years, first company I could go on a Saturday morning motorcycle ride with other Ops team members where we covered some serious Hill Country territory and certainly the first company where the head of HR wrote a note to my wife Mona welcoming us to the Convio family.

Of course it wasn’t all positive and carefree; there were challenges of all shapes and sizes, including running out of bread at the end of the month when you really needed that PB&J to make it through the day. I am filled with wonderful experiences and memories of all that we have accomplished over the years. 

Although this week marks the end of many Convio traditions, it also marks the beginning of some great opportunities for all of us and our clients. I look forward to what lies ahead and know I am in great company as we all take that step.

Old Family, New Family

This week, these words have added significance. Within one week of my five year anniversary at Convio, we will say goodbye to an incredible company as we prepare for an even brighter future ahead. Sara summed it up so well her post yesterday of what an exceptional executive TEAM Gene has put together here at Convio. It has been a pleasure to be a part of something so special. Gene has lead a team of very high capability and high integrity individuals who challenge each other everyday but also support each other through thick and thin. Very rare that such a team be built through the constant change and demands of a public high-tech company.

In our Engineering team, we are equally blessed. In over 20 years of leading software teams, I can truly say that this is the best team I've ever had the privilege to lead. On their faces you see dedication to our clients, in their efforts innovation and commitment. It is our second company together for some of us, or even the third. Such is the way it works in high-tech companies - great people want to work together with great people again and again. Or maybe it is the life-size Angry Birds games, high jump wall, hot wings contest, or 40-yard dash contests that keep this such a great place to work?

Much of the credit here goes to Dave Hart, our CTO who hired an amazing team that poured their heart and soul into this company to get it started. That original team grew from using lawn chairs from Dave's backyard to now building out one of the best high-tech workplaces in Austin. We still benefit today from his creative energies, and I thank you Dave for allowing me to grow what you worked so hard to start at Convio. Working together with you has been a terrific experience, and we wish you all the best in the years to come.

As I look back on these past five years, it's astonishing to see how far we've come with our products, but it's even more rewarding to see the success of our clients and the growth of the people on our team. It has been so rewarding to get to know so many of our clients and help you achieve your goals. There are many places that the talented people of the Convio Engineering team could work, but few places could offer the meaning of the work we do here. Through the combination of Blackbaud and Convio this meaning and connection to our clients will continue.

As we've been successful and grown, we've put a lot of energy into fostering our fun, client-focused culture. Working at Convio feels like being part of a family. We celebrate birthdays, redecorate people's cubes while they are on vacation, laugh at each other eating larger than life burritos, celebrate newborns (future interns), and help each other out in time of need.

Next week, the family gets a little larger.

Gary Allison is Convio’s VP of Engineering. He is active in the Austin community supporting the Austin Children's Shelter and serving on the board of a local nonprofit. Gary holds a master's degree in Software Engineering from the University of Houston Clear Lake and graduated magna cum laude from Texas A&M University with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science.

3 Analytics Terms for Success

We often use history to predict the future. I checked wunderground.com's history of temperature averages before selecting my summer vacation destination. Predictive analytics has become a hot-button term over the past two years as business intelligence vendors have begun to incorporate simulation and forecasting into their offers. In order to predict with greater confidence, here are three terms you must know.

SIGNIFICANT

It is easy enough for the human eye to observe, "It looks like the test significantly outperformed the control." But statistical measures are necessary to interpret the repeatability of the observed result. Statistically significant findings should be reported with a confidence level. Think of a 95% confidence interval as an indication that if you were to take 100 different samples from the same population, the test would "outperform" the control in about 95 of the samples.

SAMPLE

Did you note above that "significance" requires your sample observations to be representative of the greater population? For example, Congressional representatives are supposed to be a sample of the population within their districts. Ironically, Congress is seldom a good example of a truly representative sample. Scrutinize the universe under observation. Very likely you are making observations today that will influence your strategy implementation tomorrow. You cannot control for environmental changes over time, but as much as possible you should manage your test sample to represent the population in your future. Read more about Tests, Controls and Results.

CONFOUNDING

Be on the watch for confounding. Hidden variables that are correlated with both your dependent variable and your independent variable(s) are called confounding variables. The classic example is ice cream sales as a predictor of drowning deaths. There is correlation, but the underlying influencer of both is temperature and season encouraging both ice cream consumption and water sports. Avoid this oversight by brainstorming potential hidden variables with your colleagues.

Keep these three concepts in mind when you are creating your own predictive analytics hypothesis or reviewing analytics provided by others. When you know your level of significance, know that your sample is representative, and have accounted for hidden variables you will be able to support strategic decisions with confidence.

Rebecca Sundquist is a lead analyst in Convio’s strategy practice group, her goal is to lend confidence to strategic decisions. She investigates constituent data to uncover trends and confirm or deny hypotheses. Rebecca practices the art of info viz (information visualization) with a commitment to simplicity. She wants to help clients see clearly where they have been and how to reach their goals.

Since 2004, Rebecca has worked with nonprofit data, implementing and monitoring acquisition, renewal and reactivation practices. She also has experience with donor upgrade strategies, activity cross over and sustainer programs.