Building your housefile (list) is one of the key ingredients in developing a strong online presence. Like Sally discussed in her post on April 22, it is important to welcome a constant flow of constituents into your online home.  But, what are the next steps in maintaining that list?  Once you have a good list going, it is vital to keep that list clean, dust and clutter-free.  Mom always told you to keep your room clean.  Why should your constituent list be any different? 

Here are some tips to keeping a clean list:

• Decide on what data you want to collect and how you want it to be organized in your database.  For example, if you want to have a field in your database to store information on constituents’ pets’ names, decide where you want that information to live in the database and how you want to get it there.

• Draw a map.  Create a flowchart.  Put together some document with all of your database fields and the naming conventions for those fields.

•  Make sure all individuals in your organization have that document.  This will ensure that everyone in your organization will use the same naming conventions and mapping process when creating the online forms you use to collect constituents’ information.

•  If you have uniform response options you want to have listed on multiple choice questions (that are going to be used on many of your online forms), decide upon the answer options and make sure everyone in your organization has a document outlining those response options.

•  Clean up duplicate records often.  If you have the time to do this regularly, it can save you time in the future.

Essentially the most important ingredient to keeping your housefile (list) clean is to dust it regularly.  Empower your organization by coming up with a clear and outlined process of how you collect and store your data.  Doing so will allow you keep a tidy housefile that is easy to report on and analyze.

This was a record year for the Hill Country Ride for AIDS, held last Saturday, April 26, in Austin, TX. In a soft economy, we raised more money than ever before by Ride date--$575,000--beating our amount raised as of Ride day last year by $60K. We had 20% more riders than last year. It was a record year for the number of teams and the amount of money raised by teams. I'm pleased to say that Team Convio turned in a very respectable $14,000. And  I raised $7000 individually, surpassing my initial fundraising goal by over $2000! All of my fundraising--and almost all of the Ride's--takes place online, using Convio's TeamRaiser component, which enables individual participants to maintain their own web pages and donations, as well as to roll those up into a larger team's fundraising totals.

What follows for those of you who are interested is my journal entry for the weekend:

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It's Sunday morning, and I am basking in the memory of what is always the best day of the year for me--albeit with sore muscles and the sun still burning on my face!

The 9th annual Hill Country Ride for AIDS began Friday night with registration, packet pickup, and pasta dinner followed by an hour of opening ceremonies. It was a joyous time to greet fellow riders ("You look so different with your street clothes on!"), connect with crew from last year, and to remember why we ride. I sat with my team, Team Convio, through the evening. We heard a moving testimonial from a young woman who lost her "step father" to AIDS.

Back home after packing my gear and getting my bike ready for the following day, I retired early at 10 p.m. for the day ahead. I went to sleep to the sound of a thunderstorm and hail, wondering what the next day's weather would bring. But when I woke up, the rain had cooled the temperature down and cleared out the humidity. It was a beautiful clear spring morning!

I got an on-time start from the house at 6:30 a.m., arriving at 7:15 at Krause Springs, some 35 miles west of Austin, where we would start and finish the Ride. The morning was perfect for riding. Our team of 10 members was resplendent in our gold, white and purple Team Convio jerseys as we gathered at the starting line for a final team picture.

Riding out into the spring morning, the cluster of 480 riders quickly thinned into singles and pairs and small clusters. I rode for most of the morning with my boss and his wife. The scenery was beautiful: the Texas wildflowers were still in bloom in subtle shades of yellow, blue, red, and cream. I pulled into the lunch pit stop by 12:00 and 31 miles, earlier than usual since I had not elected to do the extra 20-mile extension this year.

Only 12 miles to go after lunch, but what a 12 miles! At 6 miles out, we encountered "The Hill." This was our steepest climb of the day, and the Ride had posted volunteers to run alongside us as we cranked up the last hundred yards of the hill. I was grateful for all my training that enabled me to grind it out without getting off my bike, but my heart rate was 170 by the time I crested the hill! We stopped for a well-deserved rest at the top to enjoy the incredible vista before us and to cool down on popsicles at the hilltop pit stop before riding into camp.

It was mostly downhill the final distance. At 5 miles out, we encountered a new feature of the Ride: the 2-mile "Ride of Silence." I rode through it solo, remembering the names of many friends and acquaintances lost to AIDS. I coasted into the finish line to the shouts and cheers of the many people lining the road. It was truly a triumphant moment--and I was beat!

By finishing early this year, I was able to take advantage of some of the recreational amenities of the camp: a wonderful swim in the natural springs pool, complete with a pounding waterfall to soothe tired muscles, then a relaxing chair massage in a quiet grove of trees.

A shower and change of clothes later, I felt human again as I walked down the hill to the ampitheatre for the Remembrance Ceremony. This is always the most solemn event of the Ride, a time to remember why we ride and to hear a list of names read of people who have passed away from AIDS. The list grows longer each year as the Ride grows and more people want to remember friends and loved ones.

After the ceremony, we ascended the hill to gather for a Mexican dinner under a big tent. The silence broken, over 800 people--riders, crew, friends, and family--gathered to enjoy one last meal and to hear the final totals for the Ride. This was a record year, with more riders (480) registered than ever before, and more money raised than ever before--$575,000.

What an awesome day!

Let me cut to the chase.  This is a plea to get as many people as possible to take the NTEN CMS Survey.  This survey will feed into the most exciting piece or industry research to come along since the Wired Wealthy Report.

One of the things I do as Convio’s CMS Evangelist is spend a lot of time thinking about how to help nonprofit organizations use web based technology better.  What does “better” mean?  Well, in my opinion, I think we can all do “better” managing our web technology to objectives in two categories. 

The first category has to do with how well technology helps us make our public facing web presence as strong as possible.  Are we engaging new constituents?  Does the site look professional?  Do constituents find our content truly valuable? Are constituents supporting our organization’s objectives – be they learning, donating, or taking action?

The second category centers around how well technology allows us to be more strategic than tactical.  Does maintaining the site take lots of time from our IT team?  Can our business oriented staff manage content without taking 22 days of training?

These objectives can be affected positively or negatively by the choices we make regarding technology.  One of the biggest challenges to making good choices about the technology to use is the lack of information.  There’s nary a technologist alive who could tell you with relative certainty what tools people are using, what ones are good, and what ones are tough to use.

This is a long way of saying, “I think you should take a few minutes to take the NTEN CMS Survey.”

For a few more days, NTEN is asking people to tell them what works and what doesn’t.  They’ll compile the results shortly and make them available to the public.  This research effort is groundbreaking, as no one else has (or has made public) the results of such a survey.

So, help your colleagues and help yourself, take a few minutes to take the NTEN CMS Survey.

A few years ago, I read an article on the Wilson brothers, Owen and Luke, the dynamic film stars who burst onto the Hollywood scene via the unlikely success of a film called Bottle Rocket. If you don’t know who they are, this is what they look like:

The article paid special attention to Owen, as he was the bigger start at the time. In particular, the article covered Owen’s unusual ability to “get things done,” as the article said. Apparently, Owen had the personality to make a crazy amount of connections within the Hollywood producer set, and when someone wanted a movie to actually be made, Owen was the guy to get involved. Even if he wasn’t going to be in the movie, if Owen was talking about it and pushing it, the money and other resources had a way of showing up.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the term Social Capital. and what it really means. The idea I had in my head seemed a lot like what Owen Wilson apparently has. To be sure, I started at Wikipedia and its definition of the term.

The bit that I found interesting in that definition is the importance of connections. It made sense to me. After all, they always say, “It’s who you know that matters.” But the definition doesn’t go into enough detail, does it? Owen Wilson surely couldn't know more people in Hollywood than everyone else? He was a relative newcomer. In other words, Social Capital is not just about how many people you know. One look at my son tells me that. As a first grader, he seems to know an inordinate amount of older kids in the school, or at least they know him. We walk through the halls on the way to his classroom and at least 4 fifth graders wave and say hi to him. When I ask him who these kids are, he replies, “I don’t know.” Now, he has acquaintenances, but he clearly hasn’t made a meaningful connection with these kids. This problem is exacerbated in social software, because the ease with which we can make “friends” means we all end up with many, many connections that are essentially meaningless.

So, social capital has to really be about the quality of the connection in addition to the quantity of connections. Tara Hunt proposes a different definition that includes great things like Reputation, Influence and Access. Now we’re talking, I think! If my connections enhance any of these items, I’ve really gained something. Of course, Tara knew that. She said on her blog, horse.pig.cow, that “The success of the network is directly correlated to the amount of Social Capital it can help its members build.” (Click here to see the entire post) She goes on to say that the real barrier to switching social networks is how much social capital is lost by making the switch.

This sounded about right to me, but then I thought about Scrabble. You’re thinking to yourself, “WHAT?” That’s right, Scrabble. I like to play Scrabulous in Facebook. I play with my friends. What social capital is Scrabulous winning me, I wondered? For that matter, what social capital is the iLike application, or any number of other applications, doing for my social capital? Well, smarter people than me know the answer. Fred Stutzman has a great blog called Unit Structures where he discusses social software. In one post, Fred answers my Scrabulous question. (Click here to see the entire post)

When we use social software, we often employ the software to share. I employ this blog to share my knowledge and try to sound smart. You may share your last.fm playlist to show people that you are a connoisseur of good music. Someone else may share a particular set of bookmarked links in del.icio.us so that their fans can be kept informed of information. Yet another person might join a pool in flickr to share photos that they think are of interest to that particular community. The common thread in all of these examples, and almost all examples in social software, is that what we share reflects back upon our identity.

As social software is situated in a community, we are hard-wired to be aware of the community's perception of ourselves. For the most part, we are also hard-wired to want to win the affection and praise of the community. Good social software compliments us by enabling us to win the affection of the community.

Of course, I also use social software because it let’s me share what I think is cool, and if those things resonate with others, they make me feel good by confirming my opinion. This ties well to Tara’s notion of reputation. If I offer enough cool things on my profile and enough people confirm that they are cool things, then I become a person with a reputation for being cool.

What does this mean for non-profits and how they should use social media and social networks? Make your social network a place where your constituents can build unbelievable social capital. Make the social capital levels so high that these folks will want to spend time in your network rather than in some other network. But how to do it?

1. Figure out the main personas who visit your network
2. Figure out what they count as social capital
3. Provide them a way to build that capital within your network
4. Go out and find people who are not in your network but fit the persona
5. Tell them about all of the other people like them in your network and all of the great, valuable connections they can make and the great opportunities to share
   

But some of the most interesting developments in the analytics world are actually around qualitative user data, such as that collected through tools called Web Use Recorders. These tools record individual browsing sessions to give you a more qualitative view, from your constituents' perspectives, of your site: where their  attention is drawn, what content is overlooked, how they scan your homepage.

So now what?, you ask. If our traffic data doesn't tell us "why," isn't always accurate, and isn't "just the numbers," why do I analyze this data at all.

The answer: Triangulation with other user research methods and data sources. Traffic data is a critical - but singular - pillar of user research. Without alternative techniques like user interviews or surveys, usability tests or focus groups, even the best-laid plans of metricians and analysts can only answer part of the eternal question:

Who are our constituents, what do they want, and why do they do what they do online?

1. Pick something that reinforces your organization's brand.  If you don't really have a brand or your brand is not a good one, you'll have to start somewhere else.  Your domain name doesn't need to be your organization's name, as long as it reinforces your brand.  Also, avoid using your organization's acronym unless it is your brand, like the World Wildlife Fund at www.wwf.org.  If someone further than 100 miles from your office won't recognize it, neither will anyone in Sandusky (unless of course you're within 100 miles of Sandusky).

Unless your organization's reach is local or regional  and very well known, it's unlikely that your acronym will get people to your site.  Northport Baptist Church at www.nbc.org probably thought it was a good idea to grab what appears to be some good online real estate, but I'd suggest that it's likely a confusing domain name.

2. Pick something meaningful.  The National Trust for Historic Preservation, has launched its new site at www.preservationnation.org.  While it breaks some of the rules mentioned later, it is consistent with its brand and is memorable.

3. Pick something without room for ambiguous interpretation.  Make sure whatever you pick could not possibly be misinterpreted as something else.  What do you think exists at www.denrescue.org?  It's not a wolf advocacy organization, it's the Denver Rescue Mission (which helps people who are experiencing homelessness).  Enough said.

4. Pick something that's not too long.  I think that four syllables should be the max for any domain name.  Preservation Nation (above) breaks that rule, but is otherwise pretty good.  Consider future needs for domain names for your web presence.  If you expect to have affiliate or program elements like ma.easterseals.com or www.jointogether.org/ca/

5. Pick the best real estate you can afford.  For your corporate site, be sure to buy your domain name using the .org top level domain.  The others (like .net, .mobi. and .us) usually aren't great ideas for your main site unless your organization's mission suggests it like Free Press at www.freepress.net. If you have a program site, a .com domain name is often good, like Free Press' other site www.savetheinternet.com.  Be prepared to spend more than the annual domain name registration fee if you need to buy your domain name from someone else who owns it.  I usually won't pay more than $1,000 for a domain name unless it's REALLY key to your web presence.

So those are my rules, anyone want to argue these?

RSS is very cool.  Why?  Because it strips website content down to the bare bones and publishes it with a series instructions in a readable format that more and more web applications can interpret and reuse.

During a particularly long work conference call the other day (sorry boss) my mind began to wander and I decided to test a theoretical use of RSS.

What if I could somehow republish my favorite articles that I've collected across the internet to a website for others to see.  In about 30 minutes I figured it out and then made the video below (the video took me considerably longer than 30 minutes :)

Warning: the audio is grainy and also a bit corny.

Here's what I did:

• First I have collected hundreds of RSS feeds from various websites and use Google Reader to follow them (gotta love gReader)
• Then I "shared" the articles in gReader that I think others would be interested in reading.
• gReader creates a new RSS output of my shared items but the gReader output includes a mix of lots of topics
• So I used Yahoo! Pipes to add content filters to the shared items list, then Pipes created a NEW RSS feed for my filtered list
• I then took that RSS feed and inserted into the Convio CMS RSS Reader component
• I also created a display template with basic HTML to format what and how I want to view my RSS feed
• Save, Publish, and Voila!  I have now published a list of the most pertinent items from my shared list for others to peruse.

RSS is so cool.

Anyone got ideas or examples for how nonprofits might "mashup" a series of RSS feeds and republish the content?

Being married to a talented and beautiful anthropologist, I have found myself seeing the world through her lens more over the years.  Recently, I noticed that I’ve been paying lots of attention to how the language we use to describe our experience shapes our perceptions about things.  This affects how we see ourselves, interact with others, and solve problems.

Stop Talking About Your “Web Site”
I talk with a lot of people about how they plan to use online tools to support their organization’s mission and goals.   When I listen to the language we use to describe what we’re doing, their language tends to focus on our “web site.” As in, “we need to reach more people with our web site” or “our web site needs to be bigger.”

When an executive director pushes us to focus on a project around our “web site” to increase donations or signups or whatever, it’s not enough. It’s too narrow a definition of what, how and where we engage our constituents online.

Think about it.

Our web site exists within the much larger landscape that includes a sea of email, the mountain range called social networking, and search outposts dotting the hills.  If we don’t consider these things (and only focus on the web site) we’ve limited our ability to reach new audiences, drive more traffic, encourage donations, and engage more activists.

Start Talking About Your “Web Presence”
What I’m suggesting is that we need new language to describe what we’re doing for our organizations online.  So let’s consider thinking out side the web site and start thinking about our “web presence.” 

Let your web presence include thing like your:

• Organizational or corporate web site
• Micro (or program oriented) sites
• Editorial calendars for email and web content
• Presence on social networking sites like Facebook
• Social media sites like Flickr
• Marketing through search engines

Even if your organization doesn’t want to have a blog or twitter strategy today, it’s important to consider those things outside of your site if even to put them on the shelf for a while.  If we start by talking about our web site, we’ve already shut the door to many things that will make us successful.  So please, call it your web presence.  You'll be glad you did.

One of the key benefits of the Software as a Service (on-demand) model is the unique insight that the model provides from a data and analytics perspective. Because of that model we are able to obeserve aggregate data that helps nonprofit professionals answer three questions:

1) What online metrics should I focus on?

2) How is my organization doing? and

3) What targets should I set for my organization?

As a company we have 9 years of cummulative data and experience in the nonprofit sector, and a team of employees and partners with even more personal experience and expertise in analyzing data to provide actionable insight to our clients and the market.  Today, we are exctied to share the results of the second annual Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index™ Study with the market. The NonProfit Times has featured the research in their current issue.

One of the lead researchers, Vinay Bhagat, sat down with us for a series of interviews on the study. Today, Vinay discusses the value of the research and some of the key trends. 

Convio clients can get the full report in the Convio Online Client Community. Visit our Web site for a summary of the benchmark report and to learn more.

We would be remiss if we didn't thank the study authors Quinn Donovan, Lynette Perkins and Vinay for the many hours they put into completing this project.

Have you read the Wired Wealthy yet?  If not, Tom Belford in his popular blog, the Agitator provides a great framework of questions to keep in mind as you read the paper.

“I finally got through my reading pile to a report released about three weeks ago by Convio, Sea Change Strategies and Edge Research. The Wired Wealthy is an important study of the online behaviors and preferences of major donors (i.e., individuals giving cumulatively $1000 in a year to a given cause, through any means).

Twenty-three nonprofits provided research access to their donors in this category ... typically the 1% of donors in their universe who give almost one-third of the money.

The report drips with valuable data and insights. In fact, if you raise charitable money and do not read this report, you oughta be fired!

On the other hand, the firms and individuals who produced this report, of course, deserve a raise! And kudos too to the groups who shared their donors for the project.

No single blog post can do justice to the richness of information in The Wired Wealthy. So I won't dribble out a bunch of teaser factoids here.

Instead, to encourage you to read it yourself, I'm simply going to list some of the questions you will find answers to (or at least guidance on): 

• Can you treat all your "Wired Wealthy" alike? The authors found three segments within the Wired Wealthy universe -- Relationship Seekers, All Business and Casual Connectors. What are their critical differences and what are the implications for communicating with each segment online?
• How do these donors relate to whiz-bang online stuff like videos and social networking tools and sites?
• How do they grade (your) nonprofit websites? How often and why do they visit them? [Warning: some depressing news here.]
• How much of (your) email communications do they read ... and how do they grade them? [More depressing news! Clue: the report refers to an "inspiration gap."]
• What kinds of online communication would be welcomed by all three segments of the Wired Wealthy?
• Do they expect to be giving more money online in the future? How do they feel about direct mail?
• What online activities do they undertake in support of the causes and charities they contribute to?
• Just how important is it to be responsive to the individual preferences of these donors and to customize communications accordingly? [This is a Pass/Fail question!]
• To what degree are nonprofits honing special online approaches to the Wired Wealthy, and are the right people involved?

If these questions -- and insight into their answers -- are not important to you, then either you are not a fundraiser, or you are not a fundraiser with a future! Read The Wired Wealthy!"

The catchphrase “Keeping up with the Joneses” is a familiar concept for most Americans.  It refers to measuring yourself against someone, usually a neighbor, using some sort of comparative measurement such as the car they drive or the brand of clothes they wear. 

Invariably, as anyone who has gotten caught up in this trap can attest, trouble eventually arises because of asymmetric information, or the idea that one party has more complete information than the other.  For instance, after trying unsuccessfully to match the Joneses lifestyle, we find out that the Joneses are not like us at all.  Turns out that the reason they could afford that new car and fancy vacation was a recent inheritance they didn’t tell anyone about.  Or maybe they simply project the perception of success while secretly drowning in a sea of debt.  In other words, the Joneses are not a good comparable if you have any hopes of not ending up in the poor house.

Nonprofits struggle with this same concept of information asymmetry.  We know exactly how our organization is performing across key metrics such as fundraising, email file health, and mobilizing advocates, but have little or no empirical data outside our organization to compare ourselves against.  “We’re doing better than last year, but are we leading or falling behind our peers?” is a common question for many nonprofit leaders.  And who are my peers anyways?  Even on the rare occasion that we get a glimpse into how another nonprofit is performing, we are still left to wonder if they are really a good comparable or not for our organization?

Because a Public Broadcasting Station’s mission and how they operate is very different than a University or Disaster Relief Organization, it is important for nonprofits to compare their individual results against a group of peers that is most like their own; ideally based on multiple dimensions.  For example, organizations with a common mission,  email sophistication (use a proxy like the size of their email file), and their organizational budget, would be a good place to start.

Undoubtedly, relevant benchmarks are important for nonprofits to measure themselves against.  But this list of dimensions is by no means exhaustive.  So before we all run out comparing ourselves to everyone on the block, don't forget our friends our friends the Joneses.  Your online results are just part of the picture.  What an organization is doing offline via their direct mail programs, events, telemarketing, and how well these programs are integrated will have an impact on online results.  And at the end of the day, remember every organization is different -- each with its own strengths, organizational challenges and goals.

Being a usability guy, I recently read about two design paradigms for navigating through lots of data that resonated with me:

• Seek Paradigm: the users ask for what they want 
• Show Paradigm: everything is displayed and the user explores and organizes it.

We went from this:

And we finished with this:

Some of the questions we asked ourselves at the beginning of the project were:

• What are our users trying to achieve when they get to this step of creating & defining filters?
• What kind of control do they expect, and can we give it to them without compromising performance?
• How tedious is the current usability and can that be corrected?
• What’s the user experience we’re going for?
• Will the result provide a pleasant, effective, and efficient user experience?

Working with other departments, our team received A LOT of support to produce this, and had a plenty of data internally and externally to help us along.

One data point concerned the oft-repeated client pain: system response.  To address this, then, to reduce page reloads and improve the system response we implemented AJAX so not every create-a-filter and edit-a-filter is a page refresh.  Everything's achievable inline, whether creating, editing, or deleting.  For example, clicking the “Create a filter” button in the top left—the primary action—causes a new filter to slide down beneath the button with all the filter configurations inline.

We're excited to see how client users respond and look forward to making similar changes in other areas of the product soon.