Molly Brooksbank

The past 36 hours have been crucial for disaster relief organizations across the world as they reach out to supporters requesting donations, volunteers and general support for the efforts to help Haitians in need. And at a time when many organizations are moving quickly and may not have the time to outline a formal, full-fledged strategy for outreach, I wanted to share 7 best practices that can help any organization looking for guidance on how to make the greatest impact during such a devastating time of need.

1. Hijack your homepage to make Haiti the focus if it is a significant fundraising effort. Use clear calls to action to donate and share through social media or TAF.
2. Include a clear description in news articles and relevant forms of the role your organization will play in the relief effort. Particularly note any past work in Haiti or any teams already on the ground.
3. Make it clear what people are donating to.
   • Avoid sending people to a general form. There are two problems with this: 1 – savvy donors will question where the money is going and 2 – other donors will assume it is going to Haiti. However, without systems set up clearly designating it, your organization will not be able to fulfill the donor intent, which can also lead to a PR nightmare.
   • If they are donating specifically to the Haiti effort make that clear. Monitor how much you are raising and make sure the funds are designated to that effort – they cannot be repurposed elsewhere unless you make it clear that once the need it met additional funds will go to preparedness for the next emergency / wherever the need is greatest / etc.
   • If you’re concerned about the degree of designation you can or are willing to support for online giving, promote a general emergency relief fund but make your purpose clear. Use language like “Donations to this fund go to emergency relief work.” Cite examples where you will use the funds, e.g. in response to natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes. Make it clear where funds might be used: worldwide? Countries including….
4. Be careful how you’re using monthly giving now for the same reason – you probably don’t want it on a form designated to a specific disaster.
5. Best practices in form design are critical – above all right now, make sure forms are short (using the minimum number of fields) and display any 3rd party verifications of your effectiveness/legitimacy in the effort, including Verisign, Charity Navigator Ratings, Charity Watch Ratings, or BBB status.
6. If you have a social media effort, now is the time to provide relevant updates. Do retweet or post links to news articles that will provide value to your friends and followers, but only post when you have something of value and interest to say.
7. Do plan to send follow up email messages including information educating disaster donors about your broader mission and offering them the opportunity to become a regular member or monthly donor (within the next few weeks). Right now lack of supplies is a major obstacle in the relief efforts. If monthly donor gifts (or any additional gift) help your organization to prepare in advance for emergencies and ensure rapid response, make that part of the appeal.

The above 7 quick tips should help guide any nonprofit organization looking to help online in this crucial time in the right direction to connect with supporters, maintain proper communications and produce results online - both in raising needed funds and creating a groundswell of public support. 

Expanding on Sally’s post last month, Online Advocacy - Using Petitions for List Building, here are a few of my favorite nonprofit pledges. Unlike petitions, which are specifically political, pledges can promote any kind of action or invite general participation. Pledges can be a very effective outreach tool and the lists tend to be of a very high quality.

• CARE's "I Am Powerful" campaign from last year
• An "interactive monument" from the Anne Frank Museum (It’s also a nice screensaver)
• Amnesty International’s "Tear it Down" campaign against the detention facilities at Guantanamo
• "12 Months to Sustainable Good", a campaign microsite from Outreach International targeting students

Are pledges really just a smokescreen to gather emails?

I suppose they can be, but I think these examples demonstrate another possibility. Like any other nonprofit communication, your pledge has to be authentic. Just like newsletter subscriptions, these pledges act as tools to educate and engage, and serve as an entry point to broader participation.

To make your pledge work, you have to be prepared to respond to your signers' enthusiasm while it's fresh. If you have a stated goal, update them on your progress. If you can, tie the pledge into a broader campaign. But above all, make sure you're prepared to follow up signatures immediately with offers of other, deeper ways to engage with your nonprofit.

What can you genuinely ask for in a pledge, and what can you offer in return?

• Education: Elucidate the need you address and how supporters can contribute.
• Emotional Connection: Find common ground with potential supporters through your most compelling stories.
• Participation through Outreach: With a pledge, you give current supporters a reason and a means to share your mission with their friends and family, as well as a non-financial way to support your organization.
• Readiness: A pledge can help you build a base and keep your organization front of mind for the moment when a timely response is critical. Be clear in your pledge about your goals and about any communications the signer is opting in to.

Got any great pledges to share? Post them in the comments!

Some people like tuna from a can. Me, I like sushi. Like your email housefile, it’s all about how fresh it is and how you slice it. And fish that are carefully chosen and sliced with skill are more valuable than the stuff in a can for a reason.

Eric Rardin at the Care2 frogloop blog has posted an excellent calculator to help nonprofits answer a key question: What’s the value of an email? It’s a question Care2 has been taking head on since it’s important to how they connect activists and donors to causes.

As he mentions, Care2 gets this question a lot. As a consultant working with nonprofits, I ask it a lot. How should organizations be building a housefile? How do you prioritize? What tangible and intangible benefits can an organization offer to build a list directly? Are appends worth it? Should you advertise online? And for all of these questions – at what cost? If you’re trying to build your file, you need to be able to assess expenditures for acquisition and you need to be able to determine which source is most valuable.

In other words, you have to know where to get the best fish.

Tom Belford at the Agitator observed that if you’ve been running online campaigns for a while, you should already have your own way of measuring the value of email addresses and should be taking into account the cost of acquiring those addresses, but nonprofits are definitely all over the map on this one. Depending on where you are, this calculator may be a very good starting point for you.

The calculator gives results based on a number of campaigns per year. Seems simple, but you have to know what you mean by a campaign—it’s usually not just email responses. Email alone typically drives about 15% of donations and the rest comes from a variety of other sources. A single campaign could include donations driven from direct mail, search, viral referrals, or from activists, volunteers and information seekers who just happen to respond to an appeal while visiting your site.

Since the calculator uses a number of responses rather than a response rate, you can pretty much define your own terms, but if you want to compare your results against the benchmarks provided from our 2008 Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study, you’ll want to consider all online gifts in a one-year period, divided by the number of individual emails. In other words, the easiest thing to do is use your aggregate numbers as a single campaign.

If you’re already calculating the value of email, but you’re not looking at the multi-year implications, this is a great reminder to add it in. How fresh are your addresses? You can keep email addresses fresher through good communications, but there will always be some that become unusable.

If you’ve done that, try taking some different kinds of slices. Can you find the value of various relationships online (e.g. advocates or volunteers)? Are there constituents who are more valuable because of higher engagement (the people who open your email and read it)? Segmenting your file to speak to constituents in context can improve response rates, but you have to know your baseline, and if you want to learn to make beautiful sushi, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time studying fish.

P.S. I’m using tuna as a metaphor so I have to mention this tuna-related game developed by Conserve Our Ocean Legacy. It also conveniently happens to  demonstrate an innovative way to educate, engage and list build at the same time. (You won’t see my name in the high scorers list. I got netted at 70,193).