Why do we give?

Amidst the hustle and bustle of working on new and exciting ways to fundraise, have you ever stepped back and just thought to yourself “Why do ‘we’ give?  Why do I give?” It is easy to get caught up in the next best thing in social media or the latest story for this month’s fundraising appeal.  With all the chaos that non-profit professionals juggle, it can also be easy to lose sight of the heart of the matter.  But, perhaps taking a moment to pause and do so could open up our eyes to a whole new fundraising “vision”.   By better understanding why people give and who donors are, we can better communicate with them.

While doing a little research recently, I came across several studies that looked deep into the matter of demographics:  what age group gives to whom, which ethnicity prefers giving to which types of non-profits, and the list goes on.  There are many numbers, theories and statistics floating around.   I started to think to myself, “OK, this is a lot of great information, but I think it could be looked at little simpler”.  What is the true heart of the matter? It’s your donors – who they are and what inspires them.  What are donors? People.  They are people like you and me, people affected in some way by a disease, or disaster, or financial circumstance.  While maybe not directly affected by misfortune, we all seem to know someone or somehow have been touched some issue that a non-profit organization strives to fix.  We have a connection, whether it be personally or just in our intrinsic nature to feel and care.  In Storytelling and the art of Email Writing, M+R put it simply, and I think best.  They say that we give for the following reasons:

It makes us happy.  Flat out, we just feel like “good people” when we give.

It makes us feel important.  Donating our money or time to the greater good makes us feel like we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves. And, that is a good feeling.

We want to be part of a success story.  Hey, if a horrible disease can be cured, who wouldn’t want to say they had something to do with it?

Others are giving.  It’s in our nature to want to jump on the bandwagon of something good.  While we may not think to give on our own, when we see others doing it – our friends, family, celebrities, etc. – we want to be a part of that too.

Taking a look at our core, our human nature to enjoy feeling happy, important, successful and communal, it is easy to understand why we give.  Understanding why we give can help better craft our interactions with our donors, our community.  Next time you are working on a fundraising appeal, keep these simple things in mind and remember that your donors are like you. People. Good people. After writing it, read your appeal outloud back to yourself.  Would you give?

Real Social CRM

The following post is by Michelle Murrain and was originally posted on her blog, the Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology. In addition to blogging, Michelle is a board member for Aspiration, an organization focused on software development in the nonprofit sector, and a past member of the board of NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network. Thank you Michelle for sharing this blog post with Connection Café!

So I do have social media ennui, but I am also somewhat of a data geek, and cool ways of moving social media data into one’s nonprofit data workflow is pretty important in my most humble opinion. This post on Social CRM is not going to contain one buzz phrase. It’s going to talk about one particular, interesting example of how to move social media data into a real live CRM -the one you might even be using now – Salesforce.

This example uses an app from the Salesforce AppExchange, called “Salesforce for Facebook and Twitter.” To make things just a tad confusing, this is also called “Salesforce for Social Media” and “Salesforce for Twitter.”

There are likely many more options, but this is one I’ve seen that is pretty cool, although it has its weak spots. It definitely is geared more toward the “Service Cloud” than the “Sales Cloud.”

You can set up multiple twitter and Facebook accounts, and each Facebook account can have access to multiple pages. It’s all done via OAuth, which is cool. Once you set up the accounts, you can then grab conversations:

You can filter and sort, just like records in any other SF object. You can choose whether or not to send Twitter or Facebook identities to Leads, Contacts, or Person Accounts. You can choose to create cases from tweets or FB posts as well.

You can tweet or post to Facebook directly from Salesforce:

And it works:

You can schedule tweets and Facebook posts as well.

There is a lot more you can do – it’s a pretty cool tool. The one thing I can’t seem to find – and I don’t know whether this is in development, or they won’t ever do it – is import your social graph into salesforce – your Facebook fans or your twitter followers. I’m not sure why this is, exactly. It seems a big gap to me. But then, it is the folks who engage with you who you definitely want to make sure to keep track of.

Anyway, if you are a user of either Salesforce, the Nonprofit Starter Pack, or Convio Common Ground, this is definitely a tool to know about.

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Google Analytics for Nonprofits - Part 2

This post is the second in a monthly series about Google Analytics. The first post is located here. As we proceed, I’ll share tips on how you can use this tool to gain more insight into your online marketing. I’ll start off with the basics, but then we’ll get into some advanced techniques.

If you’re not yet familiar with Google Analytics, it’s a free tool from Google that you can add to your site to give you information about how people are coming to your website and how they behave when they get there.

Last month we spent a whole blog post on just one graph on the Google Analytics dashboard, because there’s so much information in that one tool. Read that post first if you haven’t already. This week we’ll dig into the Visitors section.

The visitors overview page doesn’t give you much useful information that’s not on the dashboard, but many of the reports below that contain vital information about who your visitors are and what they need for a good experience on your website.

One of the first pieces of information to look at is the Browser Capabilities section. In the Browsers report, you can see who is coming from what browser and browser version and make sure your website looks good in all of those.

Perhaps your website has display issues in Internet Explorer 6 and you are wondering if you should fix your site or if people have finally migrated off that browser to IE 7 or 8. I’m surprised at how many people look at national overall stats on browser usage instead of looking at their own analytics. Look at the IE6 visitors from your audience in particular by seeing what percentage of visitors use IE & then click on the words Internet Explorer to see the breakdown by browser version. Unfortunately this data is confusing, because the chart of browser versions refers to the percentage of people on that browser who are using that version. In the examples below, there are not 17% of users on IE6, but rather 3.74%. (22% of your visitors are on IE and the IE chart shows 17% on version 6.0, which means 3.74% of your visitors are on IE6)

My rule of thumb is that if fewer than 4% of visitors are on an older browser, then it is ok to not support it. (Do not use the same logic with new browsers, which will likely grow in market share, or with accessibility concerns.)

Another useful item in the Browser Capabilities report is the Screen Resolutions report. Many older websites were created with smaller resolutions in mind, and when it is time for a redesign, the organization wonders if they can expand the width or if that will alienate some users. Unfortunately the screen resolutions report lists individual resolutions, rather than a report of the percentage of screens smaller than x by x. However, you can quickly sum the percentages of resolutions smaller than your considered target and get an idea of the size of the population.

One more useful report in the visitors section is the Mobile report. If you are considering the need for a mobile site, the percentage of users currently visiting via a mobile device can be a useful data point. Some sites are surprised to see 6 - 10% of visitors on mobile devices, even if they don’t have a mobile site. If that’s the case, then there’s no time like the present to start optimizing your site for mobile or creating a mobile version.

Check back on June 21st, when I'll jump into more exciting reports about your visitors in Intro to Google Analytics for Nonprofits #3.

Successful strategies for hiring a development professional

 The following blog is by Tara Levy, senior consultant at Greenlights for Nonprofit Success. Greenlights strengthens nonprofits for extraordinary performance and impact by providing valuable services and resources that are either free or affordable, including management consulting services, professional development workshops and conferences, in-depth research, a membership program and more. Thanks Tara for contributing!

Every hiring decision is important. Not only will a new hire will become part of your trusted team of professionals, focused on meeting your mission on a daily basis, but they will also be earning some portion of the precious resources you raise to benefit that mission. When you’re hiring the person that will be responsible for raising those resources, you really have to nail it because the viability and stability of your organization hinges on actually having the resources to do your work.
 
Whether you’re hiring a full-fledge Development Director, a Development Associate, or an Executive Director with significant fundraising duties, there are a number important factors to include in your search and hire process to help ensure a successful, strong hire. First of all, hire someone who carries around bags of money. Can’t find one of those? You’re not alone.

Here are three key strategies to consider when making your next development hire:

1. Go local. The right candidate need not be born and bred in your organization’s hometown, but they need to have some working knowledge of and familiarity with local funders in order to be successful. When you interview, ask specifically about your organization’s key local funders and those you have been trying to reach.
2. Nice is right. While a fundraiser doesn’t need to be an extrovert or world-champion schmoozer to succeed, they do need to be really nice to people. Your development staff should be good at setting people at ease, instinctively sending thank you notes, and being thoughtful and respectful to everyone they encounter. When a candidate comes to your office to interview, ask the receptionist up front about the candidate’s behavior and interaction. Be on the lookout for follow-up notes—and note if you don’t get one!
3. Have them tell you stories. It’s hard for a resume to convey a complete understanding of someone’s cultivation approach and degree of success, so during the interview process, ask the candidate to walk you through a full cultivation process for a successful donor (and share why they think it worked) and for an unsuccessful one (and why it didn’t work). As you listen, reflect upon what elements would feel natural for your organization and which might seem unwieldy or poorly matched for your organization’s culture and mission.

In addition to these development-focused strategies, I’d like to share a bonus hiring strategy that Greenlights recommends for all new hires: have your final candidates complete the DISC assessment. This quick, online self-assessment provides information and clues about a prospective hire’s communication style and what types of communication they best respond to (so you should think about whom they’ll be working with on your team).