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On the first of July, the Orlando Union Rescue Mission (OURM) launched a new website. This website is the result of six months of: strategy, information architecture, design and programming, but more than that it is a major upgrade to OURM’s online presence.

Read more of Website Launch: the Orlando Union Rescue Mission

A few weeks ago, I posted that the Facebook demographics are getting older every day and posited a few implications:

1. Facebook may be around awhile.
2. Facebook will continue to become the killer application more and more.
3. There is hope for fundraising on Facebook.

If you want to read more of my thinking on these implications, feel free to read the post.

In the meantime, check out the graphic below from iStrategyLabs (click the graphic for a larger version):

A couple telling stats from this table:

• Users over the age of 55 have soared from less than 1 million to nearly 6 million — over 500-percent growth.
• High school and college users dropped by as much as 22 percent!

An aside — anyone know why Atlanta has seen such a huge spike? Weird.

Michael Hoffman over at See3 had a great blog post yesterday – Viral Video for Nonprofits – A Rethinking.

You should read it.

No really, you should.

Ok, now that you’ve hopefully read it, think about what that means for your organization — have you fallen to the “siren song of viral?”

As nonprofits are getting more and more excited about new media and are willing to try things, the “siren song” is a very real risk as the hunt for viral often comes at the cost of foundational, basic strategy.

Periodically clients will tell me that their number one strategy for driving traffic and fundraising is viral marketing. A lofty idea for sure. But it’s generally unwise, particularly when the fact is that there are far more proven (and yes, possibly more mundane) things you should be doing — like having a good web content strategy, driving multi-channel integration, instituting a solid email marketing program, and using search engine optimization, among other things.

My advice – don’t forget the foundational basics you should be doing every day in your hunt for the big breakthrough.

While I am very bullish on Facebook as a platform for engagement, I’m a bit more bearish about its ability to solicit donations.

The poster-child for donations on Facebook is the Causes application. Last week, the Causes folks posted that the application has passed $10 million in fundraising in two years. For this they should be applauded.

Looking closely at the numbers, my advice to ministries still stands: invest in Facebook, but realize that if your primary goal is to raise money, Facebook isn’t the best tool.

Read more of Causes on Facebook is Gathering Steam

Hi there: I want to call your attention to a front-page article in yesterday’s Seattle Times. The article refers to new nonprofits that are connecting donors to what their gifts are actually doing and specifically who they are helping. It reminds me of kiva.org that allows the donor to make a micro-enterprise loan directly to a person who needs one in a developing world.

One quote stands out:

Both SeeYourImpact and Jolkona are tapping into a generation that demands more control of their philanthropy. A generation accustomed to connecting around the world through Facebook now wants a face and a direct connection to someone they’re helping……..Technology is “democratizing” philanthropy by giving people quick access to information about the issues and tools to take action.

My gut tells me that the demand for donors to actually see specifically where their dollars are going is only going to grow. This represents a challenge for us to help our organizations think this through and how technology can be harnessed to make this possible.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009395980_philanthropists29.html

Don’t bury the lead.

And for those fair readers who thought I was buried somewhere between New Castle and Poulsbo, rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, more on that at the bottom of the post.

This statistic comes from a comScore report, but was brought to my attention by The Agitator.

Additionally that comScore report found that the average time people are watching videos is 3-5 minutes, not the 1  1/2-  to 2-minute range we advise the ministries we work with.

But before you fire up the camera for that long-form video, remember averages are often skewed by large numbers at either end of the spectrum. In other words a few folks watching full-length movies, say on Hulu.com, could skew that number up fairly easily.

Bottom line, video engages people exponentially longer than a web page alone. We used to say you had eight seconds to capture a user with a web page, now I usually say its down to two or three seconds. Which means that people, on average, will engage with a video for 80 times longer then they do with a web page alone.

So if three-quarters of the folks on the internet watch video and they engage with it nearly two orders of magnitude longer than just a web page – say it with me now – you need to be doing online video.

Personal Note: I know I haven’t been writing as often, but things are busy both here at Masterworks and at home. Family and work come first, so posting to the blog comes fourth. Second is a two-way tie between bicycling and sitting in airports. Good news, we’ve been working on some exciting stuff that we’ll announce in these pages soon!

Clay Shirky, professor, speaker and author of the new book Here Comes Everybody, gave a TED Talk last month entitled “How Twitter can make history.” He focuses on Twitter specifically, but it’s clear the general framework of what he talks about is much more about the broad implications of social media.

It’s a great presentation – you should check it out, either below or at the TED website at http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/575.

Clay was the plenary speaker at the nonprofit technology conference I attended in San Francisco a couple months ago. His talk was so great that we included some of his main points in our latest webinar – 10 Keys to New Media Success in Today’s World from NTC09, namely:

• Fail informatively
• The loss of control you fear has already happened

Check out the webinar for full details…

The shifting demographics of Facebook

There have been a plethora of articles in the last few days about the shifting demographics of Facebook. To quote one such article:

…Facebook’s seen its 35-54 demo membership blow up by 276.4 percent between June 2008 and January 2009. The 55-and over contingent grew 194.3 percent in the same amount of time. In comparison, that ever-so-sought 18-24 group bounced just 20.6 percent. The total number of Facebook users aged 35-plus in October 2007 totaled just fewer than 845,000, while as of this past January, their combined might totals just less than 8 million – 18.9 percent of the total Facebook pie.

So what does this mean for us today?

I believe it means a few things…

1. Facebook may be around awhile. While younger generations may be more apt to switch to the latest and greatest, their older counterparts are less likely to shift as quickly. And that is compounded by the nature of Facebook – if I’ve gone through all the work to connect with hundreds of friends and acquaintances, I’m not going to be too keen on rebuilding that network of people elsewhere.
2. Facebook will continue to become the killer application more and more. Think about it. Facebook is Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Classmates.com, Gmail, and AOL Instant Messenger all in one application. And now with the release of vanity URLs, it will become a public website for many people.
3. There is hope for fundraising on Facebook. Up until the last year, no matter what other barriers Facebook has faced to becoming a strong source of fundraising, the primary barrier is that the demographics were all wrong. Young people just don’t give as much or as often as their elders, in aggregate (that isn’t to say in the future they won’t become the greatest giving generation, by the way). But now we’re seeing the demographics of Facebook shift towards the sweet spot for fundraising. It should be exciting!

What do you think?

Twitter. It’s all a buzz.

Maybe you’re asking yourself the question that many are – “but what really is Twitter?” Mashable comes to the rescue with Top 7 Twitter Tutorials on YouTube. Check it out.

And if you’re feeling especially lazy, I’ve grabbed one of those tutorials and placed it just below.

Happy tweeting.

A number of themes emerged from the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco last month. If you weren’t able to make it – have no fear! We’d like to share with you the top 10 themes that emerged at the conference – keys to success online in 2009 and beyond.