Make Your Nonprofit Technology Resolutions a Reality in 2009!

Right after ringing in what’s sure to be a big year in nonprofit technology, we teamed with a group of nonprofit bloggers to both share our New Year’s resolutions and to hear from you on what your top nptech resolutions will be in 2009. Our goal was to create an industry-wide dialogue and take the feedback we received – from both the online poll we provided and the comments you sent all of the participants – to better help nonprofits keep their resolutions in the new year.

With responses from hundreds of people throughout the nonprofit industry, we pulled together your insights, determined the main areas where nonprofit organizations and professionals are focusing and created a Resolutions Guide chock full of lessons learned, priorities and real world examples of how other nonprofits have achieved the goals many of you have set in place for 2009. And starting today, the Resolutions Guide is now available online.

A few of the responses we heard throughout the last few weeks included:

"To get more staff involved with building and engaging online with communities of interest and passion around the issues we address."

"We spend a lot of time and money changing information for our donors and volunteers in our database. In 2009, we're going to use our website to let our volunteers and donors help manage that for us."

"To explore what it means to take action online - beyond signing petitions and fund raising - and really stretch the boundaries of using the web for social change."

The participating bloggers who participated also shared the following resolutions of their own:

Judi Sohn resolved to "take the technology we already have and use it to help C3 focus our attention on our constituents and supporters as effectively as we focus on what we do to fight colorectal cancer"

Roger Carr resolved "to teach and coach more nonprofit organizations and volunteers how to take advantage of the online technical tools that are available for promoting their mission and raising needed funds"

Beth Kanter resolved to "use social media more effectively" 

Jeff Brooks resolved to "evangelize fundraising" and "be not afraid"
 
Matt Wilson resolved to "work to make all those things possible that aren’t currently available with the existing mobile giving applications (including our own), make them easy to use, and make them produce real results"  

Holly Ross resolved to "use technology to 'work smarter'", "experiment with technology" and "share your successes (and failures)"

Peter Dietz resolved to "scale, translate, report, change, measure, standardize, collaborate, lead and inspire"

Trew Marketing resolved to "test, measure and act", "leverage content", be constituent-focused" and "innovate"

Robert Weiner resolved to "be good to your data"

Is there another resolution or comment you would add to the lists above? Or is there any advice you would add to the Resolutions Guide?

Here's to hoping we can all look up on January 1, 2010 having accomplished all the goals we set out to achieve...and then some!

What kind of animal is your website?

Happy Chinese New Year! As we start the Year of the Ox it is a good time to take a step back and ask yourself, your colleagues and your users, "If our website was an animal what kind of animal would it be?". Lion, Tiger, Liger? Kidding aside, taking a moment to personify your website and determine a few key "personality characteristics" can help you determine how your organization is perceived on the www.

1. Is your website an introvert or an extrovert? Is the focus of the content on the outer world or the inner workings of your organization?

Extroverted example

Introverted example

2. How does your website gather information about your cause or your constituency - methodically or randomly?

Methodical information gathering

Random information gathering

3. Is your content written in an objective or subjective tone?

Objective tone

Subjective tone

4. Is your site orderly or casual?

Orderly site

Casual site

If you have taken the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator in your personal or professional life you may have been asked similar questions about yourself to determine how you interact with the world around you. And just like taking a test to determine your own personality there are no right or wrong answers. The end goal is to determine how your site is perceived outside of your organization and if that perception calls for a personality adjustment.

Adjusting or changing the personality of your site might be called for if your site is not communicating effectively with all target audiences your cause attracts. For example, if your organization works with doctors, patients and donors these audiences will only respond if your site effectively has a unique personality that speaks to their individual needs. Doctors may want methodical, objective and orderly content whereas donors might want content to be more casual and subjective and patients might want a little of both. Therefore you may need to organize your site with different funnels for each audience type so you can tailor content to match their needs and each audience type will perceive your organization as an effective agent of change for your cause.

Another situation that might call for a change in your website’s personality is a change in the status of your cause or campaign. Perhaps your cause is the defeat of a particular piece of legislation. Before the legislation is voted on you may have a site that would be classified as an extrovert. However, once the legislation is defeated the site’s personality may need to transform into an introspective one.

Revamping the personality type of your website can be time consuming and making drastic changes should not be done lightly (see New Coke). But if your target audiences’ perceptions do not meet their expectations this change might be what is needed to improve the success of your online presence.

Hedging economic uncertainty for nonprofits: expand and diversify

No industry is recession-proof, as the recent demise of the once-mighty automotive and financial industries demonstrates. The nonprofit sector is no exception. The economic problems that began in real estate and their related financial securities have created a shock wave that is rippling through the rest of the economy. For many in the nonprofit sector, the effects show up in the form of lower revenue and increased demand for services. This one-two punch puts the squeeze on nonprofit operations.

What can be learned from this event that will help guide nonprofits toward a solution to this problem? The answer lies in the root cause of the problem: too much emphasis on high-risk, high-reward strategies for revenue and investment. A brief look at how this problem affected the financial and automotive industries can give insight to how nonprofits might better navigate through the economic aftershock by diversifying revenue sources.

Key factors affecting the financial sector are lack of revenue diversity and poor due diligence. Recent years were witness to a large increase in mortgage-backed securities in the investment portfolios of many companies. The well-known trouble with these securities was the lax standards by which loan applicants were screened for sub-prime mortgages that make up a good deal of those securities. Giving too much portfolio share to high-risk, high-reward investments like these proved to be detrimental. Ask anyone who used to work for Lehman Brothers or Washington Mutual.

American auto makers rely heavily on the manufacture of SUVs and light trucks to contribute much of their profit. The over-emphasis on producing these high-margin vehicles exposed the auto makers to fluctuations in the price of the fuel needed to power them. When Americans began to feel the dual squeeze of rising fuel prices and economic trouble, sales of these expensive and inefficient vehicles plummeted...and so did the cash flow of the Detroit Three. Scrambling too late to diversify their product base, American auto makers are on the ropes, paying the price for putting their eggs in the SUV basket.

What do these two occurrences have to do with nonprofits? Each example is a lesson in misjudging risk when valuing the reward. Many nonprofits rely heavily on the contributions of corporate donors, philanthropic foundations, and wealthy individuals giving major donations. The reward is that there less work that a nonprofit must perform to secure a donation of considerable size, as compared to the effort involved in cultivating a large donor base of smaller donors. The risk of relying on major gifts: there are fewer people involved in the decision to reduce or eliminate the major gift. If you have a major donor giving $1,000, and a hundred donors giving $10 each, and then all 101 of the donors are asked to give during difficult economic times, which group will yield more gifts? Hint: it's easier to ask for $10 from a person under financial stress than to ask for $1,000.

Evidence from interviews I've conducted with several nonprofits confirms that many are experiencing a drop in major gifts during the recession. Yet most are simultaneously experiencing continued healthy growth in total donations from large donor bases giving smaller amounts. In many cases, the growth in 2008 has been consistent with or better than prior years.

A recent study conducted by Management Consulting Services suggests that many nonprofits are responding to economic difficulty by asking more people for donations.

How can a nonprofit hedge against the risk of relying on major donors? Diversify. Expand the donor base. The power of the crowd gives a natural hedge against the concentrated power of the major donor. The effort given to cultivate a large donor base and develop engagement pathways for those constituents is worth the reward in both good and bad economic times. 

Blog for Choice Day 2009

Today is Blog for Choice Day 2009, an event organized by NARAL Pro-Choice America.  This is the fourth annual such event and is meant to organize pro-choice bloggers to write about choice, raise the profile of reproductive rights, and educate their readers about the issue.  Individual bloggers sign up and commit to devote at least one blog post on January 22 to the topic of choice.  This year, the topic is "What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?"

The organization is also encouraging people who participate in Blog for Choice Day to post a link to their blog post in the comments for today's post, and will highlight individual blog posts throughout the day.

I like efforts like these to organize individual bloggers around a particular theme - Blog Action Day is another example.  This kind of constituent empowerment effort as an organizing strategy is smart.  On a constituent level, involving your members in an effort like this builds loyalty - everyone wants to feel like they're part of something, and writing a blog post (and maybe even getting highlighted on the organization's website or blog - everyone wants their 15 minutes!) binds the members more tightly to the organization.  While I'm not aware of any studies in this specific area, it seems like a logical hypothesis that people who participate in this type of effort would be more likely to take action on action alerts and to donate to the organization.  Feel free to educate me in the comments if this type of research has been done.  :)

Also, there's a benefit to the organization beyond building constituent loyalty - the message is getting out in a highly coordinated, yet authentic fashion.  By putting a question to your supporters - in this case, your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress - the organization gives direction to supporters about what to write about without being heavy-handed or trying to over-control the message.  For bloggers, authenticity is key, so people who participate are writing their own posts and not regurgitating talking points.  And especially for bloggers whose readership includes family and friends, rather than a larger news-oriented blog or website, this is basically word-of-mouth marketing.

Choosing January 22 for the day is a good choice - it's the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, so there are plenty of hooks for individual bloggers to shape their comments around.  It's also expected that today might be the day that President Obama repeals the so-called "Mexico City Policy" or "global gag rule" - also excellent fodder for bloggers if or when it happens.

So personally, my top pro-choice hope is that NARAL Pro-Choice America is able to use Convio's suite of tools to effectively empower their constituents to make their voices heard to decision makers on issues of choice in 2009.  And that I'm able to help them do it!

Five Recipes for Nonprofit Success on YouTube

Ramya Raghavan, Nonprofits and Activism Manager at YouTube™, recently shared with our Connection newsletter readers a video explaining the five kinds of content that nonprofit organizations might consider creating this year and cites examples of organizations who have executed these types of “recipes” well.

Here's a quick summary, but be sure to check out the full video — there's tons of great information packed into 4 minutes!

Through its YouTube Nonprofit Program, the video sharing site YouTube™ has been able to help thousands of organizations fundraise, raise awareness, and spur their supporters to take action on a number of issues both online and offline. However, the common question most nonprofits still ask is "what kind of content performs best on YouTube?" Or put another way, “what content can nonprofits create to help achieve online results?”

While there isn’t one single recipe for success, Ramya’s “top 5” list includes:

1. The Public Service Announcement (but not your grandma's PSA!)
2. The Video Campaign
3. The Fundraising Appeal
4. The Training Video
5. The Serial Vlog (vlog= video blog)

If you’re a Convio client, check out this short YouTube extension demo on how you can easily and seamlessly integrate YouTube video into your online campaigns, websites and other online communications.

And if you have any special content recipes of your own, share them here!