Jordan Viator

Guest post by Emily Goodstein, Account Manager at Convio

Last week I adopted a wonk. His name is Matt and he loves skinny ties, cooking non-hippy meals, and enjoying televised sporting events. 

No, I didn’t welcome a new member to my family, but I made a donation to OMB Watch (a Convio client doing amazing work to promote open government, accountability, and citizen participation) as part of their “Adopt a Wonk” campaign.  The campaign, which puts a personal face on a set of very “inside the beltway” issues, uses short YouTube videos and Convio donation pages to allow constituents to get to know the people behind this government oversight group.  Because of me, Matt is now able to spend time posting a blog entry on OMBWatch.org about the lack of government oversight that lead to the BP Oil Spill (you’re welcome, Matt).

The campaign may be a good fit for your organization if you’re looking for ways for constituents to learn more about you, your staff, and the issues you work on (and then feel compelled to make a donation and support you)!

Here’s how OMB Watch did it:

Short Video Interviews
The organization created short videos of their program staff and posted them to their website. 
• The videos are accompanied by little pieces of personal and organization specific information.
• You may consider using an inexpensive Flip video camera (which uploads directly to your computer and comes with very easy-to-use editing software, too) to create these types of little video clips.

Cheeky and Informative Text
The little blurbs about each staff person include humorous anecdotes and important content related specifics.  Here are some examples:
• “When he’s not complaining about the heat, you’re likely to find him cooking up non-hippie meals or aggressively enjoying televised sporting events.”
• “Lee's job is to expand the rights of nonprofits nationwide so that American citizens have the power to advocate on their own behalf.”

Concrete Use of Donations
My favorite part of the campaign is the different activities that one can support when choosing donations of different sizes. 
• For $25, a donor is able to support an OMBW staffer writing a blog post about workplace safety or the BP oil spill.
• A gift of $250 allows a member of the OMBW team to testify before Congress about fiscal responsibility. 

I really like the way OMBW included links to several of their advocacy campaigns in the donation options for each wonk up for adoption.  This way, a fundraising ask is also leveraging constituents to action, as well.

Other organizations have used similar tactics to put a personal face on sometimes wonky, technical, or super scientific issues.  Check out these great examples:
• Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation’s “Geek…It’s The New Chic”
• Environmental Defense Fund’s “Adopt a Nerd”

In its second year,Lights.Camera.Help. is once again bringing the worlds of philanthropy and video together to inspire and move people through multimedia.

If you aren’t already familiar with LCH, it’s a nonprofit organization that works to help other nonprofits use film to spread awareness and action for their causes through volunteer matching, education and its annual nonprofit film festival.

The second annual, three-day film fest is taking place this weekend in Austin, Texas and it’s not too late to get involved and be a part of the fun. You can do three main things to help the growth of this great cause and experience the event for yourself:

1. Watch the amazing videos from this year. Submissions came in from around the world and LCH received more than 100 more submissions in 2010 than in 2009. 33 videos were chosen and are available for viewing online.

2. Attend any or all of the three days of film screenings this weekend. Day screenings are taking place: Thursday, July 29, 7 to 10 p.m. at the Mexican American Cultural Center; Friday, July 30, 7 to 10 p.m., at the Millennium Youth Complex; and Saturday July 31, 2 to 5 p.m. at Space 12 with the closing party from 7 to 10 p.m. following the screening. Tickets are available at http://lch2010.eventbrite.com. (Note that all proceeds go to the winners)

3. Donate to the winners of this year’s festival. Can’t make the live event or want to do more to support the winners of the festival? Make a donation to for your nonprofit peers’ amazing work.

Added bonus: as if LCH wasn’t fun enough, this year Gowalla is helping support the cause. That’s right, you can get a brand new, shiny badge to show your support and involvement at the event when you attend any of the film festival days this weekend. Props to our hometown geolocation leader, Gowalla!

Hope to see the Austin community out in full force this weekend at the event!

What’s better than a local, happy hour Tweetup? Why, a Tweetup bringing together the tech and nonprofit communities to discuss and live-tweet ways to leverage the power of the social web to do good, of course!

If you’re in the DC area, be sure not to miss this week’s Nonprofit & Technology Tweetup hosted by Convio(@convio) and Nasdaq(@nasdaqomx) partnering with local organizations and professionals committed to advancing civic engagement and bringing change through social media technologies. 
 
Register to attend the event live, this Thursday July 22 at the Convio office at 1255 23rd Street, NW, Ste. 650, Washington, DC. The fun starts at 6pm.

Along with lots of live social networking and refreshments, an informal panel will offer insights into the topic of social media for social good from the perspective of the following speakers:

- Geoff Handy, Vice President, Media and Online Communications at The Humane Society of the United States

- Jordan Viator @jordanv (that’s me), Interactive Communications Manager at Convio Inc.

- Danielle Brigida @starfocus, Digital Marketing Manager at the National Wildlife Federation

- Wendy Harman @wharman, Social Media Manager at American Red Cross

- Frank Gruber @frankgruber, Founder of TECH cocktail

Be sure to follow us for live coverage from the event using the hashtag #nptweet.

And if you can be there, send us your questions and feedback via Twitter and we’ll work to include your comments into the live discussion.

Happy tweeting!

Everybody loves a great best practices guide, especially when it’s one that can help you do your job better and more effectively. And with such impressive growth in the world on online fundraising, nonprofit organizations are realizing the power of the Internet more and more with each passing day and looking for best practices to help leverage the Internet to raise funds.

A new nonprofit online fundraising guide from Convio does just that.  With 40 pages chock full of best practices, tips for success and examples from other nonprofits exemplifying online success, the guide covers basic concepts for taking advantage of the Internet for your fundraising programs.

The guide is a “must read” for any organization eager to learn how to better harness the Internet, or for organizations looking for a good refresher and update on newer tactics. Here are a few central tips and takeaways I had after reading the guide:

1. Building an Email Address File: The first step you need to take is building your list of constituent email addresses.  By building your list, you are developing online relationships with the people who care about your cause.

2. Developing Online Relationships with Supporters: The Internet is a fast and cost-effective communication channel to engage with your constituents.  You can build relationships through proper engagement and, in turn, build on your online campaigns.

3. Raising Funds Through Run/Walk/Ride Events and Personal Fundraising Sites: Peer-to peer fundraising does more than just raise money for your cause.  Many organizations have discovered the effectiveness and efficiency of tapping their biggest “fans” for fundraising events such as walks, runs and rides.  Personal fundraising websites are also a way to tap into supporters throughout the year outside of run/walk/ride events, as well.

4. Key Metrics: There’s no use in running a campaign if you can’t figure out its level of success.  Your organization must define its goals and track metrics to determine how successful your campaign has been.

5. Online Constituent Relationship Management: It’s time to involve your donors, your volunteers and your supporters in more than just one activity.  Get them involved in multiple ways to help benefit your organization.

6. Social media: Social technologies are becoming an increasingly important part of an integrated strategy for nonprofit organizations to list build and raise awareness and funds in online campaigns.

7. Examples, examples, examples:  The guide includes tons of examples from nonprofit organizations of all shapes and sizes. Different case studies of all of the different tips provided in the guide help provide a more robust framework and understanding of how anyone looking to raise more funds online can optimize their programs.

The above 7 only hit the tip of the iceberg of what the nonprofit online fundraising guide offers.

Think something else in the guide should be higher on the list of takeaways? Have a great example you don't see in the guide? Share here after reading!

Measuring the return on investment for any organizational effort is a standard of doing business. Was the recent direct mail you sent worth the investment? How much is your online fundraising augmenting offline efforts? Was the social media plan you implemented worth the time you spent running it?

In a rapidly changing media landscape it can be overwhelming for organizations to know how to properly measure the various types of impact being made, especially when it comes to social media efforts. And analyzing this data for meaningful takeaways is something many organizations haven’t even considered at this point.

While the area of social metrics continues to evolve and grow, there are five main tips all organizations should follow when measuring social media activity for ROI:

1. Define success metrics before starting campaigns.
How will you know what campaigns are successful if you don’t know what success looks like? In the same way key performance indicators are outlined for website metrics, fundraising goals or advocacy efforts, define successful outcomes from social media and keep these top-of-mind while building a social presence and/or campaign. For example: define goals such as raising certain amount of funds on a specific social fundraising campaign or set a goal of getting a pre-defined number of people to take action. Specific and easy to assess.

2. Keep an ongoing dashboard of metrics updated regularly.
To properly highlight positive trends and insights pertaining to social media metrics, a regularly updated dashboard containing key metrics over time helps maintain reporting in a scalable fashion. In starting, define what metrics should be measured per social media tactic employed and ensure all meaningful elements are measured. For instance, if you are using Twitter as a key tool in your strategy Twitter followers, references to your organization and number of new followers each week demonstrate awareness growth. Retweets, referrals to website and donations sourced from Twitter illustrate engagement. Go through what metrics are meaningful to you (and no, these are not universal for every organization) and define them per channel/tactic.

3. Be realistic in what you want to track - don’t get lost in the data!
Have you ever found yourself overwhelmed in Google Analytics? Similar to your website, the metrics to potentially measure are endless, and social metrics multiply each passing day as new tools are introduced. Rather than trying to measure everything, start small. Begin with measuring the top 10 - 15 metrics and grow this number as applicable for the number of tools used and the complexity of your campaigns. This makes measuring less overwhelming and analysis much more realistic. It also ensures that you don’t put yourself into analysis paralysis and increases the likelihood you can realistically keep up with reporting over time.

4. Measure actionable items.
All the metrics in the world won’t do any good if you can’t derive actionable meaning from them.  A number of basic metrics like number of Twitter followers or Facebook “likes” are not truly actionable.  But, analyzing trends for noteworthy incidents helps for future optimization. For instance, if you see a spike in followers, you can reflect on the activity that helped create the boost. If you experience a surge in donations or web traffic, find what messaging was effective and replicate it in the future. If you discover top influencers and advocates, reach out to them to help in future campaign outreach and grassroots communications. In the same way you analyze and test email marketing and website activity – follow a similar approach with social.

5. Leverage existing online tools to easily track metrics in a scalable manner.
With so many metrics, finding each granular metric can be a time-consuming task. Where can you find number of retweets, who your influencers are, when you are being mentioned on Twitter, trending topics in your industry, etc…? With a little insight into readily-available online tools, managing you social media reporting can be built into your ongoing information gathering process. Tools such as Spredfast, Social Mention, Bit.ly and Twitalyzer can respectively help manage your social campaign calendar, send daily reports of activity, track click-throughs of URLs and highlight potential influencers to help spread your cause.  Don’t track each metric individually, use existing tools to help streamline this part of your work. It will save you time, and also help ensure that you can actually manage measuring and reporting with all the other work on your plate.

Regardless of your specific social media strategy or tactics, ensuring the right ROI metrics are properly tracked and utilized is a crucial key to success. It proves success, helps you learn how to optimize programs for the future and helps make a case for a place in your communications strategy.

For more ideas on tracking, as well as a sample reporting dashboard, list of metrics to consider and a complete list of tools to help you get started, see the below “Getting Strategic With Social Media” presentation with examples of the above, and strategy information from the Wendy Harman of the Red Cross and Jaime-Alexis Fowler of Pathfinder International.

Have your own pearls of wisdom for social media ROI measurement? Sharing is caring – leave me a comment to add to the list above!