In today’s Wall Street Journal, technology columnist/blogger Ben Worthen wrote an interesting article on the 30^th anniversary of the first spam email. Since that first invitation to an open house for a new computer, spam has grown to an estimated 90 percent of all electronic messages sent.

To celebrate, ok, highlight the anniversary, I thought it was a good time to feature an article and blog post that help you make sure your email is getting through.

The first is from Convio Chief Scientist, Dr. Bill Pease. Culled from his oft-requested conference session on things that affect email delivery and the best practices required to avoid common delivery problems, the article provides insight that can help you succeed.

From the “oldies but goodies” section, Holly Ross (the post is an oldie, Holly is NOT) provided ten steps to improve email deliverability on NTEN blog last year.

Gary Thurek, the father of spam says people started complaining about his email immediately. He never sent another. Now, if only the Viagra pushers and Nigerian Princes would stop… Well, we can wish. But if you want results and not wishes use the opportunity of this infamous anniversary to share these tips across your organization.

In addition, share your best tips here and we’ll compile them for a future post. Also, share some of the worst tips you've heard and we can put them on a list too. We heard some at a session in San Diego a few weeks ago that made our clients and team cringe - things that good email marketers stopped doing years ago were touted as best practices - but that is a future post. You can also visit the resource center with lessons learned from nearly a decade of research and collaboration with clients and partners on email practices.

And don't blame Gary - as he puts it, blaming him for spam is like blaming the Wright Brothers if the airline loses your luggage.

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.

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.

Here's a quick (2 min) video interview with Randy McCabe from MPower by Tad.

MPower has made waves in the nptech world recently with their open-source offering of their powerful CRM product.  According to Randy, over 120 downloads of their product have occurred just during the AFP conference.   In total, more than 500 downloads have been requested just since they made their announcement less than a month ago!

It's exciting to see the attention MPower has received and a bellweather for future changes in our industry.

This morning I attend a session on "Attracting and Cultivating the Next Generation of Philanthropists" at the Association of Fundraising Professionals International Conference in San Diego. An interesting generational divide was apparent in the session.

As Sue Acri of Ketchum spoke about the generational attributes of the new generation of philanthropists, the conversation quickly turned to using Facebook and MySpace to engage with constituents. That's when one of the "Baby Boomers" said, "Facebook, MySpace and those things are nice, but how do we bring them into a real relationship?"

To which one of the "Gen Y" members in the room stated. "That is a real relationship."

Another "GenYer" added that these young philanthropists "want to participate, but not in traditional ways. We'll start our own organization if we don't like the way you run yours," he added.  In a follow-up question to this young man he said that he and his peers want to engage in various channels, not just the Internet, but since that is the "best and most efficient way to communicate, I assume that if you can't do that well, you're too bureaucratic for me."

After some time, Sue helped people understand that these channels need to be part of a strategy. Creating a Facebook site to say you have one will not pass the transparency and authenticity test for the next generation - a site is not a strategy.

Another person questioned the amount of resources needed and ROI on regular updates to the Web site or tying to keep a Facebook and MySpace presence real. An older gentleman in the back commented that he was glad he didn't have to show an ROI on his annual report. All interesting perspectives based on generational differences and technological sophistication.

As the session was coming to a close a young women in the back of the room, stood up and said, "These are the same questions about Facebook and MySpace that we asked about the Web several years ago. It ain't going away. We have to meet this audience's expectations if we want to engage them."

As I listened, it appears that the research completed with our partners Sea Change Strategies and Edge Research into the expectations of major donors online and today's insight into the expectations of the next generation of donors is closely linked. Nonprofits still have a great deal of opportunity to engage the next generation and major donors through the Internet - "it ain't going away."

It seems we that what we have here, might just be a "failure to communicate." Is that failure a generational gap or a technical gap? What do you think? I welcome your perspective.

Earlier this month, we saw the release of a new report "Ready to Lead?", an enlightening survey of the next generation of would-be nonprofit leaders by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Meyer Foundation, Idealist.org, and CompassPoint Nonprofit Services. For those of us who believe that strong leaders are the backbone of strong and successful organizations, the report has some troubling warnings along with some hopeful signs.

It concluded that while there is a diverse and committed next generation of nonprofit leaders waiting in the wings, there are roadblocks to their wanting to make the leap into the highest levels of nonprofit service. Commonly cited barriers include a lack of mentorship from existing executives, overwhelming fundraising responsibilities, lack of a real work-life balance, and insufficient life-long earning potential. This comes on the heels of a 2006 study that showed three out of four executive directors planned to leave their jobs within the next five years because of burnout, inadequate compensation, and overwhelming responsibilities for fundraising.

Hmmm... sound familiar? Our nonprofit leaders of both today and tomorrow, despite their vision, vigor, and values are daunted by the challenges of personal finances, fundraising, and family obligations.

As organizations face financial hardships or seek to drive all "overhead" out of their budgets, often the first cutbacks come at the expense of training in emerging technology and leadership development. We do this at our peril. It undercuts our own ability to recruit and grow talented and committed nonprofit professionals at the time when we most need to fertilize the soil for future development. Having a meaningful job where you can make a difference does not mean you should do it for no money, no hope, and no opportunity.

Board members, your legal responsibility is to make sure the organization is well managed and fiscally sound. So what's your leadership development plan? It's better to grow the talent you have than to keep training new staff off the street. Pay them like the stars they are because without them, you don't have an organization. Insist on creating a place where the best and brightest people in your field want to put their hearts and minds.

Existing nonprofit leaders and executives, are you worried there's a group of committed employees ready to take your job? You should be so lucky! Mentoring isn't a burden, it's an investment. Of course nonprofit jobs are demanding, but they should also be rewarding, stimulating, and intellectually challenging, too. The difference between good and great is the strength of the team around you. Mentor a strong leader — I promise you'll get as much out of it as she does.

To those of you on the front line, don't wait for someone to pull you up the ladder. Take your nonprofit career seriously and reach out to a leader you admire — in your organization or another — and start the conversation. Learn about technology your own. Read and understand the reports to your board. Network. Ask your friends in the for-profit world how you might be able to benefit from any training or tools they have. For those of you who have been at it a while, take advantage of the new public service loan forgiveness program to eliminate your higher ed loans after ten years of nonprofit service!

The good news in "Ready to Lead" is that despite all of the apparent challenges, there are smart and capable professionals ready to take on the work for social change. Commit yourself to taking the next step toward making it happen.

Do we have an answer to the age old question - "can money buy happiness?"

Maybe not, but researchers from Harvard Business School and the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, say their research suggests that how people spend their money may be at least as important as how much money they earn.

The study, published this week in the journal Science, was featured in an article in the Monday, March 21 edition of The Boston Globe. The article and study, Money makes you happy - if you spend it on others, suggests that money, spent on other people can make you happier.  

It is a fascinating article. The people who reported the highest level of happiness were those that were giving money to people or causes in need, regardless of income. 

So tell your volunteers, advocates, and other supporters it's time to be happy - give. We can all make the world a happier place.

According to the article one of the researchers, Elizabeth W. Dunn, wrote up the study, close to Christmastime. She "decided that instead of giving her family things, she would get them gift certificates to a website that allows people to choose various philanthropic projects to support.

"I've never gotten more positive responses to any gift I've given my family," she said. "I was giving them the gift of giving."

Shout out to Watt Hamlett, one of Convio's fine Solutions Engineers, who shared the article with me.

Earlier today we released a new study with SeaChange and Edge Research showing quantitative results that prove major donors are in fact "wired" and online. For nonprofits who have resisted using online communication strategies over the years,  this research illuminates a major proof point that online efforts can and do elicit responses and donations from the “wired wealthy” – those who donate at least $1000 to a single organization over an 8 month period.
Internally, we’ve discussed the implications and impact these types of findings could have on various nonprofits, but it’s been noteworthy to point out bloggers' reactions to these findings.

Kami Huyse at Communication Overturns noted that “many non-profits are missing the boat with this Web-savvy constituency” in an entry discussing the report's findings this morning. Huyse also noted the work of Beth Kanter, a social media consultant for nonprofts and prolific nptech blogger, as a prime example of how to connect with donors. She cited Beth’s recent success with raising money using social media during the America’s Giving Challenge.

Joanne Fritz of Nonprofit Online Orgs points to a major take-away of the research that “even though these 'Wired Wealthy' give online and use charity websites, they are not terribly impressed by those sites.” She also provides a list of links to other information on wealthy donors.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Elizabeth Schwinn also wrote an article on the wired wealthy data along with Read Write Web’s Josh Catone who also posted a entry about the research.

All this new data brings up another issue I’ve heard discussed recently: the economy and how it might and/or will affect chartable giving in 2008. Changing Our World's President Christopher Watson recently wrote a memo addressing this issue. In this four-page document, Watson points to some interesting information and data about how philanthropy and organizations have changed along with five facts nonprofits should know about the economy.  His overall point of the memo is that “nonprofits must be guided by an understanding of the past history of philanthropy within the economy and the stability of future flows of giving, not by the short-term fluctuations of particular markets or isolated business cycles.”

This insight, paired with the Wired Wealthy data, should help reassure nonprofits using online communications - whether they be email marketing, online fundraising, social media or other tactics – that 2008 will indeed be a good year to spread nonprofit seeds online to drive results.

For years now I’ve believed that the Internet could play a much more meaningful role to support mid-level and major gift fundraising.  I’m really excited to now have some quantitative research that confirms many of my beliefs and adds some really exciting new insights.

In early 2007, Convio, SeaChange Strategies and Edge Research embarked on a research effort to study the preferences and behavior of high-value donors who had given at least $1,000 to a single charity over 18 months and who had an email address on file with one or more nonprofits. We named this constituency, the “Wired Wealthy”.  We recruited 23 organizations to participate and received responses from 3,443 high value “wired” donors to a Web survey in the fall of 2007. The respondents said that they donated on average $10,896 per year. We followed up with select donor phone interviews and separately, invited nonprofit organizations to participate in a survey of their online practices with high-value donors.

For the nonprofits who shared data with us, this segment of donors represents just 1% of their active donor file, but 32% of their annual revenue. We believed this constituency was active online and that their philanthropy could be influenced through online engagement. Our hypothesis was proven correct:

• The responding donors have been using the Internet for an average of 12 years.
• They are online an average of 18 hours a week; 80% have given online and 51% prefer online giving. 
• 66% of respondents said they visit the Web site of a cause or charity before donating for the first time; of those, 49% say they visit in nearly every instance when they are considering a donation to a new cause.
• When asked how email communications influence their giving, 42% responded that they are somewhat more likely to give;18% are a lot more likely to give again to a charity if sent email with news of recent accomplishments; 41% said that they are somewhat more likely and 33% are a lot more likely to give again if sent email about how their donation was spent.

We believed that nonprofit organizations had not determined the best way to communicate with high value donors. Provided with a variety of potential strategies in the nonprofit survey, 35% said they have devised special e-communications for higher dollar donors only; 24% said they adapt email solicitations for higher dollar donors; 16% said they send email updates to high dollar donors, but not email solicitations; and 9% say they suppress high dollar donors from all emails.  Furthermore, only 31% of nonprofit organizations indicated that their major donor fundraisers were very involved in their Internet strategies.

We hypothesized that the “wired wealthy” had high expectations online that were not fully being met by most nonprofits. Once again, our hypothesis was proven correct:

• Only 8% of donors agreed strongly that charity Web sites are inspiring, and just 7% agree strongly that charity Web sites make them feel personally connected to their cause or mission.  
• Furthermore, only 8% of respondents agree strongly that emails from causes they support to be inspiring or report that these emails make them feel more connected to the cause. 
• In general, high-value donors want to have more control over their online experience, controlling both the type of content they receive/see and the frequency of communications.

Our research confirmed that not all high-value donors are the same. We observed very clear segmentation between constituents who wanted a high touch relationship -– who we termed “relationship seekers” -- and those who preferred an efficient giving experience with limited communications –- who we termed “all business”.

We are going to present this research next Tuesday April 1^st at the AFP International Conference and will be presenting it again at the DMAW/AFP-DC Bridge Conference in July. We will also host on an online Webinar.

Nonprofit organizations have made major strides in the last few years to integrate offline direct response fundraising with online marketing. The next untapped area of opportunity is mid-level and major gifts. I encourage you to read our full report “Wired Wealthy - Using the Internet to Connect with Your Middle and Major Donors” online, and attend one of our presentations so that you can maximize the online opportunity with your high-value donors.

So MPower has announced the availability of their CRM product as an downloadable open-source toolkit. (http://mpoweropen.com)

Why is this significant you ask?  Because it opens the door for further innovation on their platform (open pun intended) yet maintains the accountability and reliability of your standard vendor-backed application.  This hybrid approach is not new, but in the nptech world it's only just coming en vogue.   The smart folks at CivicSpace Labs have been offering a similar approach for a while and are steadily gaining clients and building a great tool for nonprofits.  I'm excited to see MPower adopt this strategy and look forward to following the imminent innovations that will come as a result.

"If it takes a village to raise a child, what does it take to raise a village?" Hal Roark, Executive Director for the Broadmoor Development Corporation.

During today's lunch at NTC New Orleans, I had the pleasure of sitting with Hal. Hal's organization is one of the many fine organizations that are working to help rebuild the region after Hurricane Katrina - to raise a village. While many of the challenges these nonprofits face are unique, there are certain best practices that these organizations can leverage to better use the Internet to aid in the fulfillment of their respective missions. According to Hal sometimes it is not a technology question, it is simply having someone help them by sharing the 8-10 steps needed to be more successful with an online campaign or to increase Web site conversion rates, etc. 

That is truly the vision behind Convio's Connection Cafe. And, while we would never claim to have every answer, we think that the talent and experience of our client community, Fusion Partners and staff, combined with people who write the blogs we link to (an hundreds more) and the comments and feedback you, the visitors to Connection Cafe provide, can make this spot a great resource for connecting people, ideas and technology.

Join us in the discussion, provide your feedback and comments and check out our online profile . People like Hal are counting on us. As Hal told me:

"The more all of us in the nonprofit sector learn and share, the better off we will all be."  

Here at the National Technology Conference, it seems everyone is getting their "twit" on...or their "tweet" on...or whatever you want to call it.  They're looking at their phones to catch messages from the Twittersphere. Twitter is a "social networking and microblogging service utilising instant messaging, SMS or a web interface."

Basically twitterers create an account and then select their friends, colleagues, or topics they’d on which they’d like to get short updates. Lots of people use it to exchange quick notes by phone-based text messages, instant messenger, and/or a web based interface.

Someone who works for an international relief organization asked me recently, "What should my organization's Twitter strategy be?" I looked at her and said, "Nothing. You shouldn't have one."

Called me old fashioned. Call me a troglodyte. Call me whatever you want.

It's not that I don't love web 2.0 applications as much as the next guy. It's just that I think there are a ton of new, cool, awesome tools emerging every day; BUT, very few of us have used the current technology to its fullest. In seeking to use the latest and greatest, many of us forget that we’ve barely made use of the last great thing,

I should probably be clear. Developing a Twitter strategy today probably makes sense for your organization if:

• Your organization already has an awesome online presence with lots of useful content and you need to drive more traffic to it
• Your organization holds lots of events where people who are attending will benefit from a live, collective conscience
• Your organization is visitation focused, like a museum

If at least one of the three conditions don't apply to your organization, I'd say wait on developing that Twitter strategy. Instead here are five things you can do today to improve your online presence that will return real results.

1. Think about your audience
Take ten minutes to write down who the primary audience for your web site is. Think about what motivates them to support your organization. What tasks do you want them to perform on your web site? If you were in their shoes, what kind of content and features on your web site would compel them to action.

2. Tear apart your home page
Take a long hard look at your web page...then tear it apart. If this was someone else's home page, what kind of advice would you give them? Take five minutes and make a quick hit list. Is the home page too busy? Does the design look professional? Don't forget to make the changes you identify.

3. Make an editorial calendar
Lots of people get overwhelmed by the daunting task of keeping their site up to date. Make this large task a simple one. Start by planning out web content for the next year. Depending on your staff resources (1 or 100), create a plan for your content. Time new content based on the calendar. Will you need holiday content or content around events you KNOW will happen like Earth Day, the presidential election, or your annual report? Put these things on a calendar then plan around them.

Maybe I’m wrong about the immediate value or lack thereof Twitter. I was wrong about those blogs.

I'm not saying Twitter is a bad thing...I just think that there are more important things we can invest time and energy in. If you must, however, investigate how Twitter can enhance your online presence, here's a Twitter guide for newbies. And if you want to follow me, check out my Twitter feed, here.

But please, have a heart, I'm just getting started.