AFP and NTC…Together AGAIN
	Posted by Sara Spivey at Mar 30, 2012 01:00 PM CDT Categories: Fundraising, NPtech

Next week is a BIG week for non profit professionals as both AFP and NTEN are holding their annual conferences back to back. For those of us who exhibit and/or sponsor it’s a blessing and a curse. It’s one week of pure mayhem and exhaustion getting people and equipment to both venues seemingly simultaneously. But when it’s over we can breathe for a while as the “BIG” events are under our belts. This year’s conferences promise to bring the best and the brightest from the industry together for 3 (a total of 6 of you count both shows) days of innovation and excellence.

For the first time, AFP is holding their event outside the US in Vancouver, Canada, so everybody coming from the US needs a passport. And for the first time both of them are in the same time zone on the west coast so none of us will have jetlag. I am personally very enthusiastic about both of these developments.

Just for fun, I went to one of those “learn all about the similarities and differences between Canada and the US” websites to see if there were any interesting factoids about the two destinations. Here are a few fun tidbits:

The San Francisco metro area is almost 4 times larger than the Vancouver metro area (almost 7 million in population vs. Vancouver’s slightly over 2 million), so keep that in mind when hailing a cab. Also, despite those long winter nights and all that hockey, the US still outpaces Canada in alcohol consumption per capita, so vacant bar stools in Vancouver might be easier to spot than in San Francisco. Lastly, the US is embarrassingly higher than Canada on virtually every crime statistic, except for one: More people say they’ve been robbed in Canada than in the US (per capita), so you might want to keep your hand on your wallet.

Our good friend and business partner in Canada, Michael Johnston of HJC, also shared some interesting stats about the differences in the nonprofit landscape that I thought I’d pass along. Be on the lookout for the Convio 2012 Benchmark Study (coming soon!) that highlights some of these distinct differences—to whet your appetite here are just two that I found interesting:

1. Email inboxes seem to be a lot less cluttered in Canada than in the US. The US open rate is about 18%, in Canada it is almost 30%! And the response rates are double what we see in the US. Sounds like the email channel in Canada should be high on your list if it isn’t already.


2. If there is one thing that Canadians have figured out FAR better than their neighbors to the south, it’s recurring giving! Canada has almost 100% higher uptake on monthly sustainer giving than the US, and it continues to grow at a robust 7%, so plenty of room for more.

Whichever conference you are attending, keep notes on what you notice that’s similar and different and get back to me. Love to hear your observations. And as they say in Vegas “Enjoy the Show!”