Constituent Empowerment

I want to be like J-Hud

Better Together: Today's post is written by Amy Braiterman, principal strategy consultant at Blackbaud and author of the Friends Asking Amy Blog.  As the smart minds at Convio and Blackbaud converge, Team TR is excited to welcome Amy into the P2P braintrust as an additional resource for our clients.  She supports customers with their P2P fundraising programs using a process she refers to as “data-driven strategy.”   Amy’s data driven strategy analyzes how effective event participants are using online fundraising tools and takes those results to develop an event fundraising plan. 

I want to be like J-Hud: Inspire Your Participants for the Fundraising Journey

You’re probably wondering why I’m referencing Jennifer Hudson (J-Hud) in a post about inspiring and motivating event participants, so let me explain. I had an epiphany the other day. Fundraising is like weight loss. We all want it and we want it immediately. But, just like weight loss, achieving fundraising success requires planning and hard work. Even though there are lots of short cuts on the market, to help you lose weight fast, they never seem to live up to their promises.

So, what does this have to do with event participants? The weight loss industry does a great job motivating and inspiring individuals to buy their products. We spend more than $58 billion dollars a year on weight loss products and services. I have to admit that I contributed to that total.

For the last few years Jennifer Hudson has been WeightWatchers' spokesperson. The team has created several inspiring commercials, but I think they got it right with the first one. The campaign was built around a simple and powerful statement: I Can. The commercial features J-Hud saying “before WeightWatchers my world was can’t…, but on WeightWatchers I can”. This is an awesome message. My life was I can’t, but now I’m empowered and my life is I can. This is exactly what we need to do for event participants.

In the nonprofit events world, we’re great at sharing mission information or providing fundraising tips like how to raise $500 in a week. Let’s add another tactic into the mix and take a cue from our weight loss friends. In your next email or newsletter, include a story about an individual’s or teams’ fundraising success. Motivate your participants by sharing stories about what their peers are doing. Turn them from I can’t to I can. Plus, this is a great way to recognize your participants. They’ll be excited to be featured in your email and you might motivate them to do more.

How are you motivating your participants? Are you currently sharing peer success stories?

If you’re interested check out the commercial. It’s a great message.

 Interested in Learning more from Amy?  Sign up for her free webinar on How to make Social Media Impactful, Actionable and Profitable

Innovate. Advocate. Engage.

Hot off the press! Convio's new quarterly magazine has hit the virtual stands! NP Engage is our new publication slated to release each quarter featuring nonprofit trends, highlights of our latest and greatest thought leadership pieces, popular blog articles and more! The first edition covers the importance of constituent engagement and nurturing your relationship with your supporters.

Our second edition will have a new look to go with our new Blackbaud colors! So stay tuned for the NP Engage volume 2 in Mid-July!

Check out the first edition of NP Engage now!

The Imperfect Storm

This post was written by Marc Chardon and Hal Williams. It was orginally featured on The Huffington Post, May 18, 2012.

The storm, for nonprofit organizations, is fully brewed. The demand for services is up; contributions have barely regained their pre-recession levels; government funding is way off; and expenses are rising. We are tempted to call this a perfect storm.

This turmoil, however, is actually imperfect. Although it's tempting to blame the economic downturn for all that ails nonprofits and charitable giving, the reality is that the current uncertainty is the new normal.

There are five key shifts affecting the environment for nonprofits that have co-mingled with the economy to create the potential for continued rough times if organizations don't change:

Donors are dramatically changing what they want from philanthropy. The fundraising appeals that used to bring in record donations no longer work, even in a stronger economy. Smart nonprofits want the check writer, not just the check.

Contributors increasingly shift from funding programs to investing in results. They are less interested in how many are served, than in how many are improved. Soon, information on nonprofit effectiveness will trump information on efficiency and even sustainability.

Many donors have moved from a desire to support multiple groups working on a single issue to investing more in the specific organization that produces the strongest result. Blending in for nonprofits is now less useful than standing out.

Donors want to see data, not just hear a few stories. Donors want to see data showing impact beyond the few stories that can be told. They will use the same business sense that they used to make their money in deciding how to give it away.

Execution of programs no longer defines the results. The shift is from the program to the participants and how these individuals make progress toward improving their lives and conditions. A great predictor of success lays in the extent to which a person engages in his or her own achievement.

Nonprofits cannot ride out this storm. They have to find a way to succeed within it. Put differently, we are not interested in how groups manage in tough times. Too often, that is about staying afloat. We are focused, instead, on how these groups thrive in a new reality, which is defined as both having a destination and reaching it.

So we begin the conversation, and we hope you'll join in. In the posts that follow, we'll dive deeper into our take on how to navigate the imperfect storm, organizing our thoughts as a response to the five shifts noted above. In all cases, our responses share one premise: that loosening up is better than hunkering down.

Marc Chardon is CEO of Blackbaud, Inc., a global software and services provider for nonprofits.

Hal Williams is the former CEO of The Rensselaerville Institute and currently an Outcome Guide who has helped foundations and nonprofits both large and small use an outcome-based approach.

The Power of Thank You Letters

There have been a number of posts recently about the power and importance of donor thank you letters. Some have come from my incredible colleagues here on the Connection Cafe, especially Rachel Muir's "7 Ways to Say Thanks" and Cheryl Black's "Girl Scout Cookies" posts, and I have to mention yet another great article by the Agitator team reminding imploring people to test, test, test even when it comes to the thank you, but when I received this thank you update email from Charity Water, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

While I received an email thanking me at that time, their purpose was a simple update on a gift I made about 6 months prior to their Water Forward campaign. In case you're wondering, Charity Water "invested (my) money with local partners, Relief Society of Tigray (REST) and Action Against Hunger (ACF) in Ethiopia and Pump Aid in Malawi, to build and rehabilitate freshwater wells and spring protections for people in need." To top it off, they let me know that once the projects are complete, they'll send a project report similar to this one informing me on the final outcome.

Color me impressed.

It reminded me of an experience I had when I was a high-schooler raising money for a community service trip to Ecuador with Amigos de las Americas. I was responsible for raising the vast majority of the total cost of the projects, so I took to letter writing, car washing, lawn mowing, baby sitting, just about whatever I could (legally) do to raise money as a 15-16 year old kid. When it was all said and done, I had a ton of thank you letters to write. I took to the seemingly overwhelming task, and if I remember correctly, finished just before the trip started.

Once home, my parents suggested that I write  yet another thank you letter to update the supporters about all the latrines that were built, the  toothbrushes that were distributed and all of the other accomplishments that their donation made possible. I responded as any typical teenager would by saying I didn't have enough time and did everything I could to avoid it. After a few weeks (months?) passed, my mom responded by giving me the most memorable birthday gift of my life: a box of monogrammed stationary. It made the point and I turned around those thank you letters as quickly as possible.

So I'd be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to thank Charity Water for doing such a great job with their donor stewardship program and showing all of us how it's done. Rather than a box of monogrammed stationery, another donation is likely to materialize in their future.

Social Community Impacts Volunteerism

What’s the sure fire way to make certain your constituents continue to volunteer for your cause – ensure they are emotionally invested to the organization. Allowing your volunteers to be able to find other volunteers through your online directory, post messages about their upcoming events, blog about their experiences, and share pictures within your community site, empowers them to be more committed to the cause and yields higher fundraising for your foundation!

1. Establishing a Discussion Group - When your volunteers can post and reply to messages to events they have an interest in, it facilitates a type of community in which volunteers feel more connected with their peers and committed to the cause. Through Discussion Groups they can coordinate logistics, share creative ideas, discuss marketing and communication strategies to increase attendance and involvement, share their stories, and receive feedback from their peers leading up to, and after the event. Higher engagement of volunteers yields a more significant commitment to the cause and subsequently higher fundraising dollars for the organization.
2. Creating a Blog within your Community - Why send the traffic back to Word Press and Blogger? You want your volunteers to be able to share their stories of volunteering at a homeless shelter, building homes for their neighbors, and running marathons for great causes within your community. Bring the traffic back to your private online community site that is branded for your organization. This also enhances SEO by allowing new members to search for keywords and having your volunteer’s blogs appear in the search results within your community site. The easier it is for volunteers to be able to share their experiences from the events or their personal story with the organizations, the more likely they are to be engaged and invested in the organizations. Higher emotional investment indubitably yields higher contributions.
3. Enhanced Volunteer Directory - Volunteers want to network with those whom they will be working with. They want to see their profile pictures, learn more about their bio, job history, volunteer history, and see if went to the same Alma Mater.  What better way to do that than to have them search for other volunteers in the communities and events they are involved with, add them as a friend and send them direct messages in advance of the event? This pre-event relationship building, instantly builds stronger connections for the volunteer members and helps foster the sense of community which the organization is trying to instill.
4. Sharing within a Resource Library - Your Volunteer Champions can upload pertinent documents within the community for the volunteering events which can be easily referenced at any time from the volunteers smartphones and community site. This also builds a knowledge repository and archives of the agenda, project management, logistical, and budgetary plans. The easier it is for volunteers to be able to see the relevant documents pertaining to the events, the more likely they are to be engaged and invested to the organizations.

Angelika Lipkin is the Manager of Strategic Partnerships for Higher Logic, a social media and mobile software company for associations and nonprofits. Angelika specializes in fostering relationship development, developing social media engagement strategies, and consulting organizations on launching private social networks.