Why don’t my friends like me on Facebook?

...Well actually they do. But lately, I've noticed an interesting trend: I post something on Facebook that I think is fascinating, hilarious, or some deep revelation into the mysterious world of Miriam Kagan, and my social sphere reacts in...dead silence.  Failed in my effort to get instantaneous gratification at my own personal awesomeness through likes and comments, I am subsequently delighted and confused by friends who say things like "your Facebook status the other day made me laugh out loud" or "you know, it seems from your Facebook posts like your coworkers are really funny" a few days later, when we are say having coffee.

While my inner social addict silently pouts—"if you liked my status so much, why didn't you actually 'like' it and show the rest of my social universe how awesome you think I am?”— the fundraiser and strategist in me can't help but think how this kind of behavior and interaction applies to ways nonprofits are trying to engage with their constituents.

Advice abounds about tricks and tips for engaging the social sphere.  You should use certain key words. Post your comments in the form of a question.  Post photos—people like pretty things.  Ask for photos – people think they are good at taking them. Respond to comments. Retweet. Pin things.  Pin things in a very specific way. Make videos. Annotate them. Animate them.  And all of these are certainly appropriate tactics to be found in the social marketing toolkit for constituent engagement. 

The part that's still very tricky for most is measuring the impact of these activities.  So we start with the industry-wide best practices: How many people like you on Facebook? How many should? Is 10K enough, too little, too many?  Not sure?

Try calculating a ratio of how many people comment and/or like and/or share your posts divided by how many like your page.  So maybe that gets you an “engagement” ratio.  Similarly, how many retweets? Hashtag mentions? Video views? Clicks on embedded links? Conversions? If your embedded donation form isn't getting traffic, does that mean your FB page has no ROI?

A little trickier, but doable, is calculating your most engaged supporters' social media reach: if they repost your post, how big is their network? If they share your video? Retweet you?  What is your followers' average Klout score?  Metrics, metrics, metrics.

But there is a different kind of reach that is much harder to calculate:  the word of mouth/human network reach.  How do you measure the impact of motivating and activating your network offline or via word of mouth and the direct or indirect influence social media efforts are having?  How do you value the actual impact of your “inactive” social media connections? 

Marketers are certainly working hard to figure this out.  Media mix attribution models attempt to measure the relative influence of “supporting” channels to ones where an action or purchase is actually made (maybe I saw the promotion on FB but didn't click on anything, then bought an item from the catalog).  Social CRM and social media appends attempt to connect social media with constituent and consumer profiles to track integrated interactions (note: this is mostly only possible for consumers with relatively lax profile settings. As in, if you can't find me on Facebook, you can't connect me to the Miriam you have in your CRM). 

While measuring the ways humans chose to spread information and WHY on any given day they chose a specific method to do so may never be a 100% data driven, there are some additional approaches to consider in trying evaluating the indirect influence of your social media efforts:

• Qualitative research/focus groups. Basically:  if you want to know, ask people.  Put together a focus group or two.  Get a good cross section of your constituents—not just those who are most engaged, and ask them.  Does social media influence their “offline” behavior/engagement toward your organization? How? How often do they actually pay attention to your various posts/tweets/pins even if they don't do anything to let you know they are reading them?
• Qualitative research part II.  Surveys: Basically, ask people again. Online.  Use Facebook surveys. Use actual surveys. Listen to people's feedback.  “They all say they like our Twitter account, but none of them retweet any of our posts!”   Perhaps that's ok. The easiest way to fight those kinds of arguments inside your organization is to remind folks that it's important to listen to what constituents are telling you they like/need to build stickiness.  Wave those survey results around.  
• Think creatively and take advantage of indirect attribution opportunities even if you don't have a fancy attribution model (and yes, those are things are both awesome and fancy), and can't match 70% of your constituents to a social media profile. For example: think about your online donation thank you page and autoresponder.  We like to put all sorts of stuff in those: matching gift info, connecting to social media, other ways to get involved, etc. How about adding a link to a quick post-donation survey (you know, like the commercial folks do), to ask a few questions about the transaction experience...and sneak one in about anything that influenced your donation decision? If someone chooses say "Facebook", ta-da, you are able to attribute their decision-making.

And PS:  not that you asked, but my most popular Facebook post ever  (generating over 30 comments and a subsequent 5 hour debate over dinner with some friends), was from a question I remembered a professor asked us during an ethics and values class in college: “If someone handed you an envelope that had your entire future written down in it, would you open it and read it?” Would you?

5 Easy ways to end up in a budget hole

Budgets. The mere mention of them can cause entire departments to suddenly come down with the flu.  It can sometimes feel like we are on one endless budget cycle—one that starts 6 months in advance (hey, we need a draft lots of folks can provide input on), goes through 900,000 revisions and scenarios, and then at some point, leads into potentially monthly reforecasts when cash flow doesn't line up to within 3% of initial forecast... No wonder everyone gets so sick!

Many of us may be in budget season as we speak. It's now almost the exception to the rule that someone actually lives on a calendar year.  Trying to keep track of clients’ fiscal years can be a fun mental exercise for some of us consultants to stay alert…

But I digress. The thing about budgets is that as they keep getting more complicated—integrated programs, cross-department planning, multiple vendors, hundreds of affiliates with revenue share to be accounted for, and all sorts of big unknowns like “the economy”,   can make for one complicated spreadsheet (with multiple tabs mind you). And that's just version 1, scenario 1, baseline growth rate, pilot affiliate roll up.

As we swim in the complexities, I thought it might be useful to point to some of the less complicated details that can be easy to overlook, but, when not accounted for, can make a pretty big impact to the bottom line, especially the expense side of things, that, frankly, no one wants to have to explain to the Board.  If you're going to have to build a 97 page deck, you don't want it to be because:

1. You guestimated your expected performance next year.  Sure, sometimes a guestimate is all you have to work with, like when starting up a brand new program from scratch, but, that should never be your go to if you have a program with past performance indicators and are able to understand your file composition.  Know your file, forecast its performance, and understand its dynamics.
   This is what can provide you a realistic expectation of future performance. Ok, so maybe this first point is not a small detail, but rather key to a good budget.
2. You are planning to do testing in direct mail and didn't account for the cost.  Considering throwing in a calendar with that label package you mail? Even if you only mail that to a 50,000 test panel, at the added cost of say $.50 a calendar in a test quantity, and then bigger envelopes, etc, etc, art, etc etc, did you budget that extra $25K you are going to need? The test may be totally worth it, and you could even come out with more cash in hand, but if you didn't plan for it, you're going to have to find that testing money somewhere….Also:
1. Evaluate and plan for an overall increase in the cost of paper, etc, as necessary. The years of cut throat production prices just to stay in business seem to behind us.
2. Speaking of which, if you've got a DM winner from last year you plan to roll out with but it's a more expensive package, don't forget to budget in that extra few pennies per piece 
3. Postage expenses: so, most of us don't live on a calendar year, but postal costs do tend to go up annually…. Even if we stop cowering from the constant threat of an exigent rate case, if you've mailed anything out first class out or first class back you can mostly count on that being more expensive come January 1st. Take a look at your budget—anything going in the mail in the new year with a nice first class stamp on it? Plan for that. A million pieces at an extra $.01/per piece is an extra $10K that has to come from somewhere.
4. It's not just direct mail. Planning to send out more email? Expand your site? Do something integrate mobile? That's great! Even better if you have the in-house talent to do so, so you're not expecting to have to pay someone. But, have you checked if you are nearing your usage limits? Or the number of pages you get? Are you going to have to buy up? Probably a good thing to budget for before it turns out you can't host that special content area, or email out whatever campaign.  And that cool Twitter campaign, possibly using some processor who might charge a higher % than you're used to? Don't forget to discount that from the revenue.
5. Freemiums: man, are those things expensive in test quantities. Think about your testing themes for the year ahead of time. Planning something big offline? Always consider where you could combine and test online, TM, etc. And not in a “hey, we have a bunch of X leftover lying around, why don't we throw it in over here and see if it works” kind of way (well ok, sometimes we all do that), but wouldn't it be great to say “hey, I could never afford to test this as part of my online sustainer acquisition budget, but since offline is ordering 10,000 of these, the vendor is willing to throw in 200 for online for free!”
1. Side note: fulfillment costs for freemiums. The expense that if unplanned for, can be the bane of an otherwise successful campaign.
6. Bonus tip: Always have a slush fund.Stuff happens. Opportunities come along.  Or, gaps appear. Someone leaves. A crisis happens. A slush fund may be the difference in the content for that 97 page deck for the Board….

What Natural Gas and Email Have in Common

Confession time: when I am not thinking about everything fundraising, I am a part-time energy economy dork. Meaning, I spend a lot of time thinking about carbon consumption, energy mix, whether it will be resource scarcity or technological progress that might one day wean humanity from carbon…

As a direct marketer, I’ve spent a large portion of my career in traditional marketing (Direct Mail (DM), Telemarketing (TM), and a little direct response TV). Early on, my inner tree hugger had to reconcile the millions of trees that it took to get DM campaigns with 5% response rates out the door with the cold reality that it was this sort of marketing that was the lifeline of many organizations’ revenue.  I secretly hoped that at least those other 95% recycled….And I couldn't help but draw parallels in my mind about marketing channel mix and energy. 

In my mind, the comparison works this way:
DM=oil
TM=coal
DRTV=Nuclear
Email= Natural gas
Mobile, social, geolocation= solar, wind, geothermal

In the energy marketplace, coal and gas are still king. Get rid of either one of these and most of our houses won't have electricity, most of our cars won't drive.   Over the years, both energy sources have become more efficient—gas mileage for cars has improved, coal power plants have been forced to implement all sorts of clean coal technology, but we may at some point run out of both while complete non-reliance is years, and likely decades away.  Sure, there are the outliers: people living “off the grid”, whole villages in Africa using solar cookers, but largely, we all sigh and agree that while progress is made toward other forms of energy, coal and oil are in our lives. 

Starting to sound pretty familiar? So direct mail and telemarketing  (offline) for the large part rule the roost. Perhaps not the cleanest or most glamorous, but they power the revenue engine.  And sure, there are also the nuclear believers—folks who've made DRTV work on a sustainable basis, but like the Frances of the world, they tend to be the outliers in the traditional revenue power equation.

And then there is the current energy industry darling, email, ahem, I mean natural gas…. The cleaner, cheaper,  newer kid on the block, with the potential to replace some of the older sources, and in some instances, doing so quickly.  It is also the one folks who are used to coal and gas are most comfortable with. Traditional marketers have for the large part embraced email as part of their marketing mix and are recognizing this channel as increasingly the driver of growth in revenue, donors, and reach for organizations. 

What about solar, wind, and hydrogen?  They are the energy gold rushes of the modern century, with folks thinking there are millions to be made, but turning out to be more complicated, slower to take off, and requiring huge economies of scale.  And the reality of these industries is even they will never be truly independent--we need to account for what might happen on non-windy days, or cloudy ones. Under the right circumstances (disaster fundraising for example) there is money to be made, and the technologies are evolving, but for most organizations they still constitute a very small percentage of the revenue mix and are mainly a constituent engagement tool for now.

How do countries (and organizations) approach energy (channel) mix in an environment that seems more in flux than ever? I am not going to claim to have the answer, especially because for the largest countries (organizations), this is the more difficult to navigate with so many stakeholders involved.   But a few thoughts:

• A wholesale abandonment of investment in the sources powering the economy isn't the way to go in the hope that the other sources will become scalable “soon enough.” From a direct marketing perspective, this means to me that if DM and TM are a large chunk of your revenue, some level of investment and maintenance has to continue.  Many organizations learned this the hard way during the acquisition cuts of 2008-2009 trying to save money during the economic downturn. Organizations are still digging out from the impact this had on their houseflies and the lasting impact on their revenue.
• Invest at a faster rate in the new channels and allow for the learning curves. New technology is going to be more expensive. Campaigns aren't going to work like you thought they would.  But, if reliance on a source whose growth potential is diminishing is not the goal, then not only must programs, but also channels diversify at a faster rate than might be comfortable.  I am not saying jump into say mobile head-first, spend a lot of money, and hope something happens. In fact, the strategist in me would kick you if you did. But plan for the investment you will have to make in these channels and the systems and technologies that will be required to support them.
• To reinforce the two points above, "conservation" alone is not the solution. As a colleague put it: "you can't conserve your way into infinity with energy plans, just like you can't cut all marketing to 'save' money. It will in fact do the opposite. Ultimately, for both, you have to expand the options not reduce them to continue to grow."
• You don't have to keep up with the Joneses. Try to stop looking at what your neighbor is doing. I mean, if she just installed some solar panels, go on over there and find out what they are, but think about whether they are right for you before rushing to install them. Maybe the city is planning to install them for you anyway?  Or maybe your house isn't facing in the right direction. Maybe you are a great candidate for geothermal heating!  The best example I can think of this is the rush to “communities” a few years back where lots of folks invested in “closed” communities, only to have it turn out that folks were elsewhere, say Facebook, and had no desire or impetus to join others. And most organizations that spent money developing their own have had to let go of those and focus on herding their sheep in someone else's social pastures.

Bottom Line:  Not everyone (or organization) has the same access to, or need of, the various fuel types (channel types).  So it is important to understand what is necessary and achievable within your own environment, and not rushing to be a fast follower just because everyone else is doing it.  In the end, it will take a blending of each to establish energy (fundraising) equilibrium, and the recipe could be quite different from one nation (organization) to the next.

Daily Calendar Reminder: Start with Why

Why do we all do what we do every day?  That seems like it should be easy to answer: depending on the mission of our organization, it might be because we care about animals, want to cure a certain disease, or depending on your role, maybe because you want to be the standard-bearer in the industry around social media, or fundraising, etc.

Often, it seems, however, we forget what we believe in as the minutia of what it takes to get things done every day takes over.  We start to campaign for campaign's sakes.  We worry about not meeting budgets because Boards will get upset.  We think of donors in terms of when was the last time they gave us a gift, rather than WHY they gave it to us in the first place.  And so the why we do what we do every day gets muddied.

I have been thinking about this since I watched an awesome TED talk by Simon Sinek about what he calls “the Golden Circle.”  His premise is beautifully simple: companies, individuals, and organizations that succeed lead with what they believe in and why they do what they do, rather than selling products, chasing glory, etc.  His examples are mostly commercial: why does Apple succeed over say, Dell or HP? Why did the Wright Brothers win the flight race when so many others were better positioned to take flight? 

Simon's talk got me thinking about what we (the collective nonprofit space), do every day.  We certainly give a lot of homage to mission, but how well are we communicating what we believe in a way that appeals to the WHY not the HOW?   Donors and constituents may seem fickle. It's hard to tell what motivates them, so we like to throw the entire kitchen sink at them.  How much we've invested in XYZ, how many people/animals we've helped, what our 5-10-15 year annual fund goal is…but how much of that do you, as a donor or constituent of your favorite organization, actually remember? 

Compare this to the campaigns/causes that seem to come out of nowhere and explode, go viral, start a whole movement…and we all wonder: why? What is their secret sauce?

Listening to Simon's talk, it seemed to me that answer was clear. These campaigns communicate, with little effort and little need for explanation, what they believe in, and in a way that connects with those who believe in the same thing in a most fundamental way.

Think about some of the iconic or fastest spreading campaigns and causes of our industry:

Beat Cancer. Enough said right? We believe cancer can be beaten. (No note of how, where, what, just that it CAN be).  How much more do you need to know (put your constituent hat, not your “behind the scenes marketer” hat on)?

The pink ribbon.  Anyone wearing a pink ribbon communicates a simple message (regardless of which organization's pink ribbon they are wearing):  Breast cancer is bad.  I believe in curing it.

Charity: water.  Why the success? Because the founder fundamentally believes in his ability to make a difference and his network believes in him.

This kind of “belief” messaging is even more important for social media: there are short attention spans, limited characters, competing media, and so much clamor.  Communicating WHY you believe rather than what and how you are going to go about doing about it can be the key to capturing someone's attention.

So what do you believe? And, more importantly, how many times a day do you, your co-workers, your organization, say that out loud, post it in the office, start meetings with this in mind?

CRM is the easy part

Did you really just read that?? Is this woman crazy? While I do admit to being a little nuts at times (my mother would say all the time), on this point you gotta trust me. 

When it comes to becoming an organization focused on delighting constituents (i.e. constituent engagement), implementing and optimizing CRM (a constituent relationship management system), is the easy part if you work at an organization whose culture isn't constituent centric. And chances are that if you work at a nonprofit that's been around 10+ years, has 10+ employees, and 10+ constituents, that's you.

Organizational change and evolution from a business unit, process, and progran-centered culture to one that revolves around the constituent and donor experience is a hot topic, with lots of advice being dispensed from very reputable sources. Consultants like myself are full of helpful advice on just how to do that. “Pivot toward constituent engagement,” we like to tell you. Or, “management must embrace and imbue a constituent centric attitude throughout the organization.” Last time you were at the pharmacy, did you pick up the constituent engagement attitude dispenser in the specialty item aisle?

My point here is not to down my own kind. Rather, I want to acknowledge that the change required by an organization to transform to make meaningful use of CRM is more difficult than we'd often care to admit.

Here are a few observations on ways to start thinking about how to make that change.

• Get executive buy in or you'll be swimming upstream. That is just a cold, hard fact. Does this mean you can't build your own CRM fiefdom? Sure you can. And, you can wait for the benefits of what you've done to be eventually acknowledged.  Once you've shown impact to the bottom line, maybe even the executives will change their mind. But, if you don't have a C-level champion, and one who can get stuff done, you have a long road ahead of you.

So, step 1: figure out who at your organization is in a position to say “we are doing this and that's that.” See what you can to get them on board. Use case studies, board members, major donors, promises of home-baked goods, to champion your cause.

• It takes time for people to change, so keep beating the drum. So you're the executive that's on board with constituent engagement, and you've pronounced “that's that” but your staff seem to be going about their business the usual way. Are you assuming it's because they just 'don't get it’ or maybe because they don't want to change their process?

Could be. But look at your internal structure and ask yourself: how are my employees incentivized? Does our culture and reward structure support collaborating to engage constituents?

Let's say your development director owns offline marketing and your director of communications owns online marketing and online giving. How would you behave if you were the development director with $100K lying around as the fiscal year winds down? Would you give it to the marketing person to use for an online stewardship effort that they could claim the “benefit” of in their bottom line, or would you pre-pay some of your future production costs to make your own future bottom line look better? I bet the answer would depend on how your performance would be measured.

So step 2: Ask yourself: How do we measure staff performance? Do they each have a number to meet? Or, are they collaborating toward an organization-wide goal and everyone wins if the goals are met?

• One department or one program at a time is just fine. Got a particularly stubborn (and maybe influential) detractor? Not in a position to change that equation? That's ok.

So Step 3: Change what you can.

In fact, even if you don't have that problem, you probably don't want to swallow the whole constituent engagement cake whole. Start with digestible bites. That's how we do it when we're working with our customers to move to CRM – in phases.

Maybe you can bring together the events and advocacy folks, and get them to create a combined calendar--sort out the “this name is mine” business (let's say we can all agree that during a legislative session, advocacy wins if someone has to).

Or, bring together your communications and development teams to align offline production schedules with online message planning. Yes, your offline folks need to know 4-6 months in advance. How do you make that happen?

Your daily affirmation:

A final point here, and I want everyone to look in the mirror and repeat this until you believe it:

Unless you've never heard the word CRM, you are not behind yet.

Constituent-engagement is the holy grail of our industry. Yes, there are the leaders and the laggards, but, if you are thinking about it, dreaming about it, trying it, you're in the race. Don't feel like you are lagging behind because everyone else has it figured out. They don't. Even the fancy pants commercial folks don't have it all figured out. For proof, ask one of their CMOs or CTOs about social media interaction attribution (and duck).

Interested to see how fellow nonprofit are measuring up (and rating themselves) in the CRM race? Check out Convio's Integrated Multi-Channel Marketing Report.