What it Means to Engage

One of the great pleasures of my job is working with Convio clients who are true innovators in nonprofit marketing and fundraising to define how we can collectively move the state of their art forward. 

It was just such a conversation with our client advisory board two years ago that focused us on the need for a more holistic approach to constituent engagement, which we’ve come to formally define as “the sum of all activities, across all channels, and across all facets of the nonprofit, that allows it to engage next-generation constituents, manage lifetime relationships with them, and optimize their support for the organization.” 

Know more than their name

We’ve invested a tremendous amount since then to expand our products and services to help our clients achieve this vision, culminating with the release of our new Convio Luminate™ solution. 

But why, exactly, is achieving constituent engagement so important?  We asked our advisory board to paint a picture of what it would mean to their organizations and constituents, and this is what they shared:

• “When constituents feel like they have the ability to define how they interact with us and define their relationships with us”
• “When a constituent contacts us we will give them what they want instead of what we have on the shelf”
• “When our messages are coordinated within and across channels”
• “When our staff understands who we serve and who we interact with to fund that work”
• “When our marketing department looks beyond just acquisition metrics and starts making decisions around lifetime value and ROI”
• “When everyone at the organization makes more data driven decisions”
• “When we can scale success and take the best of what one part of the organization does and apply it to all parts of the organization”
• “When we have maximized the long-term, mutually beneficial relationships that exist between the individual and the organization”

What would successful constituent engagement mean to your organization and constituents?  Share your thoughts with us and we’re happy to keep evolving this as we work together to make it a reality.

Meet Cynthia

Meet Cynthia Balusek, Convio Support Manager and first interviewee for the new Connection Cafe podcast series. Each month you'll get to meet a Convio employee like Cynthia and learn what makes them tick. Sit back, relax and have a listen.

Connection Cafe Podcast 1 - Cynthia Balusek

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Socialnomics Book Report

Remember back in sixth grade when you had a summer reading list?

Big nerd that I am, I never quit having a summer reading list. The 2012 Summer Reading List for me included some light reading like The Confession (ok maybe that one wasn't so light...) and Water for Elephants and also some real homework, Socialnomics.

If you are more of a Cliff Notes type student, well, I’m going to be your enabler (though I do encourage you to read it the old-fashioned, word-for-word way). Here are some of the stand-out points from Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

• “Only five percent of users go to the second page” of search engine results. That means if you are a horse organization in Wichita and “horses, Wichita” doesn’t bring you up wicked fast, kiss those web visitors goodbye. Employ Lacey’s content marketing tips to help make your site front page news.
• “Today 80 percent of all companies use social media tools to recruit” ergo, professional people are on online. Ergo, your organization needs to be online, especially on LinkedIn; not just for recruiting mind-blowing talent but for connecting with talented volunteers, donors, etc.
• “[The most popular Facebook application] was an application called ‘Causes’ with almost 20 million active monthly users.” Great news! People aren’t just talking about what they ate for breakfast, they are using social media to affect change. Now you know: people like personal/social fundraising and you need to help them do it for your cause.
• “By engaging constituents directly, [the Obama campaign was] able to raise a staggering $660 million in campaign contributions.” As if you needed another reason to become really good at engaging your constituents.
• “The concern is whether the can give their loyal fans something to pass on that makes them (loyal fans) look cool.” At Convio, we hope fundraising and marketing tips make you look cool to your boss and peers. At your organization, what would make your constituents look cool? If you aren’t sure yet, that’s OK. Just ask your constituents.
• “It’s vitally important to fish where the fish are” and the fish are online. The fish are also listening to the radio, watching the news, reading magazines and having good old-fashioned get-togethers. I have one hyphenated word for you: Multi-channel.

And since when the teacher asks you for critical analysis you can’t just talk about the stuff you liked, here’s a few points that I disagree with or at least am bummed out by

• “Oral communication skills decline.” Sad, isn’t it? I vote we rebel by insisting on giving good presentations, making phone calls and having in-person meetings. Remember the battle cry: Multi-channel!
• “Investing time on social media actually makes you more productive.” Not sold. But then again, I’ve basically always had social media so I’m not really sure what my productivity looks like without it.
• “Social media allows individuals to take real-time inventories of their lives and helps answer the age-old question ‘What am I doing with my life?’” Seriously? I dig social media but maybe this one is taking it a bit too far.

A few silly/sad points aside, Socialnomics was a good read overall. I was highlighting and note taking up a storm. I recommend picking up a copy for yourself and at the very least knowing and acting on this one decree: Organizations need to be online and interacting. Now.

Seriously Dreamy Cultivation Events

These seriously dreamy cultivation events are especially great for major donors.

I got goosebumps when my colleague Rachel Muir (founder of GirlStart & voted AFP Fundraiser of the Year by her peers) first described to me her tried-and-true method for creating high-impact cultivation events that – while NOT fundraising events, per se – seriously moved the needle on community support in the long term. Part art & part science, her approach played to the inherent strengths of current & prospective donors.

Her focus on scalability & repeatability startled me. Add that these events would cast community leaders in (well-supported) starring roles as high-impact volunteers, & my old brain started forming new synapses.

The events she created would provoke unforgettable *personal* experiences that participants wouldn’t be able to stop talking about - with colleagues, friends, and family.

I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point, I hugged her.

And then I begged her to share her strategy. And so she let me write up this Major Donor Cultivation Events guide, which includes her formula, sample events, a preparation checklist, and even a script for the *very important* post-event dialogue with participants.

As a donor, I really hope fundraisers will take advantage of this method. I can’t think of a more efficient way to provoke the necessary light bulb moments among movers-and-shakers. As a board member, I’d have been proud to invite my friends and colleagues to serve as volunteers at such events, learning about the mission  - yes – but more importantly having their own personal look at the impact being delivered. And with the focus on minimal time commitment, convenience, “ready-room” support, & the networking possibilities, I’d have been more than pleased to participate, too.

Someone needs to keep inspiring big giving that strengthens our communities. I hope it will be you.

Turning Engagement into Empowerment

The following post is by Joshua Gee. Joshua is a public relations professional, political technologist, social media nerd, amateur public policy wonk, Eagle Scout, bleeding heart liberal and a son of the American Revolution. He currently works as a Digital Strategist at Alipes CME and previously served as New Media Director for Governor Deval Patrick’s successful re-election campaign. He has also worked on several political campaigns and in Public Affairs at Edelman New York. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/jgee and at his blog, joshua-gee.com.

Most of us have some experience with many of the things we consider engagement on this blog. We have strategies for crafting compelling email campaigns or fostering communities on different social networks. We know how to work with our volunteers and donors to get them to support our organizations. We know how to engage our supporters, but what about empowering them?

That is what we did when Deval Patrick ran for reelection Governor of Massachusetts. Traditional campaigns rely on a field plan that focuses on phone banks, going door-to-door, and rallies. Larger ones have new media, press outreach, and advertising strategies. The silos occasionally overlap, but not very often. In the end, you get a structure like this:

That was the structure we had used successfully on the Governor’s first campaign. However, we knew it wouldn’t work this time. We were in the middle of a recession, Governor Patrick was at a historic low in the polls, and Senator Scott Brown had just been elected in a huge upset, energizing the Republican party and deflating Democrats.

Beyond the political realities, we were facing a voting public that was better than ever before at filtering out messages they don’t want to receive. Gmail filters out the unimportant as a matter of course, people are getting savvier at managing their social networks, and when was the last time you answered the phone when you didn’t recognize the caller ID?

We felt that we would have a very hard time engaging with our supporters and communicating with the general public if we utilized the same old tactics. We needed more from our supporters than just making phone calls, knocking on doors, and stuffing envelopes.

When someone asked how they could help, we didn't ask them to attend a phone bank or write a check. Instead, we asked them to pledge to talk to 50 of their friends about why they supported Governor Patrick. We didn't care if the people they talked to were Democrats, if they planned to vote for the Governor, or even if they were registered to vote; we just wanted them to have those conversations. We asked our supporters to become organizers.

Eventually, our organizers got more comfortable talking about the Governor. Once they had exhausted their initial round of conversations, we started sending them messages and campaign updates so they could go back to their circle of friends and keep them posted on the election. Not only were we drawing people who were likely supporters closer to us, we were reaching new groups and networks traditional campaign tactics might miss. People were getting updates about the campaign from their friends and neighbors – a much more powerful source than any newspaper article or TV ad.

We also equipped our organizers with new digital tools to help them communicate with their friends quickly, to report back the campaign, and even run their own fundraising campaigns. By the time we finished, we ended up with a campaign structure that looked something like this:

In the words of one political journalist, this was "a plan that some think is somewhere between moronic and insane." It was a nightmare to track and very hard to hold our regional organizing staff accountable. But that was the point, we weren't trying to build a movement based on contact percentages and Voter ID totals. We were trying to empower our supporters to have conversations. That meant our campaign would win the book clubs, the soccer fields, and the coffee shops where people make their life decisions. Beyond that, we were giving our supporters the tools to run full-on campaigns, doing their own field organizing, communicating, and fundraising within their social networks. This let us reach around around media and technological filters.

It wasn't perfect, and we still ran robust traditional field, finance, and communications campaigns to complement it. It also required a lot of trust in our organizers. We basically said, “You know how to talk about the campaign better than we, the campaign staff, do.” Some of them didn't always do a great job, and many of them pushed back strongly at the new things we were asking them to do.

However, many, from campaign neophytes to seasoned veterans, embraced this idea and went far beyond what were asked them to do. By the time the primary rolled around, we had over 7,624 organizers who had identified 33,404 voters. This was comparable to the number of IDed voters we had in 2006, when then-candidate Patrick was skyrocketing and we had a competitive primary driving us. People were regularly talking to their friends and neighbors about the Governor, and his approval rating had climbed from 28% to 49% percent.

So, as you read another blog post on how to squeeze a higher open-rate out of your next email campaign or see a link on the top ten ways to have great conversation on Twitter, take a step back. Engaging with your supporters in those ways is great, but really empowering them to represent your organization is better. It is messy, it requires a lot of work and trust from both you and your supporters. However, your supporters are smart and they believe in the same things you do. More importantly, they have social networks -- online and offline -- that, with a little prodding, they will use to help your organization achieve its goals.