When: Thursday, July 1, at 10:00 am PST / 1:00 pm EST

Cost: FREE

Register at: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/237301601

Presented by:

• Dave Raley, director of new media, Masterworks
• Jacob Smith, new media strategist

Who should attend?

• Those interested and intrigued in the evolution of technology use in the nonprofit world.
• Those interested in using new strategies in their fundraising and marketing/communications programs.
• Those in roles responsible for fundraising and marketing/communications, as well as in general positions of leadership.

The world is changing. And micro-engagement techniques are gaining steam. This was especially evident during the Red Cross’s relief efforts in Haiti following their devastating earthquake earlier this year. To date, their text message-giving campaign has raised $32 million — nearly 8% of the total funds the Red Cross has raised for Haitian relief.

But micro-fundraising isn’t the only technique that’s gaining relevance. Four other micro-engagement strategies are also gaining popularity — micro-blogging, micro-advocacy, micro-volunteering and micro-connections. We’ll examine examples of each strategy to illuminate trends in the micro-engagement sphere.

At the end of this webinar, you’ll:

• Know the key trends in micro-engagement for 2010.
• Understand how you can tap into these trends to increase engagement in your organization.
• Act on practical recommendations to stay on the leading edge of micro-engagement in 2010.

At Masterworks, we’re committed to helping you maximize your Kingdom impact. That’s why we’ve put together this enlightening and practical webinar – for you!

Register HERE for Micro-Engagement Goes Mainstream

Please feel free to share this with your peers and colleagues who may be interested!

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP, 2003 Server or 2000

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

Join Carter Wade and Kn Moy and learn more about the Donors for Life® strategy that will help you redefine how you engage your donors. 

Space is limited.Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/778613520 

A great donor experience will create faster, better and more sustainable revenue than the typical donor cultivation approaches used today that churn-and-burn higher and higher percentages of your donors every year. We can’t keep doing what we’ve always done because the things we’ve always done are causing the very problems we are facing today in donor acquisition and cultivation. 

We know that the experiences that donors have can turn them into lifelong donors and advocates for your organization. Engage with us on the conversation!

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. It’s not too late to register!  

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP, 2003 Server or 2000 

Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

More angry protestors are beaten back by the Basiji, the Iranian regime’s oppressive militia. Neda is an innocent bystander passing through. Not even innocent bystanders are safe. A Basiji sniper bullet rips into her heart. She lays on the ground bleeding to death. Her father cries out for help.

Within days, her face is everywhere in Iran. Protestors hold posters of her face emblazoned with the slogan “we are all Neda.” She’s become an international symbol for the courage of the people of the Green Revolution. A reminder of the brutality of the Iranian regime.

All because of a cell phone video.

Traditional media outlets were almost completely locked out of the events of the last few months in Iran. But people around the world have followed the emotional protest — all because ordinary Iranians captured the destabilizing protests on the street, feet away from the military and militia, with their cell phones.

None of this would have been possible without Twitter, texts and cell phone audio and video.

One of Masterworks’ clients, GAiN, used these same techniques in responding to last month’s devastating earthquake in Haiti. GAiN president, Duane Zook, was in Haiti just a day or two after the quake to assess and report. He sent in reports via phone that were uploaded with photos. The result? Compelling multimedia reports that connected donors in an immediate way to the urgency of the need. Each report was highly trafficked and motivated people to give generously.

Hear Duane Zook’s reports from the field.

How can nonprofits produce gritty video and audio reports? How can they bring their donors to the core of their work?

By using their field personnel as a built-in media corps for fundraising.

As I understand it, there’s cell phone access even in the most remote, far-flung areas. Almost any cell phone made in the last few years has audio/video/image capability.

These cell phones could capture day-to-day compelling stories; giving nonprofits the chance to showcase the heart of their work in a raw and compelling way.

Of course, staff members need to learn that videos of smiling aid workers don’t help raise money. Cell phone video of conditions in a refugee camp or a video of a homeless man who is struggling to survive on the street do. They could provide the most compelling argument for donors to give . . . a window into the real-life problems that their gifts help solve.

Thank you attending Kn Moy’s and Rory Stark’s presentation on the “Age of Engage” at the Engstrom Insitute on September 24-25, 2009 in Denver, Colorado.

Here is the Download PDF of the presentation.

The following videos were also shown during the presentation:

Masterworks and Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign – 1 Meal 1 Hope

Social Media Revolution

Please contact Shannon Covey at 360.621.8371 if you would like a presentation similar to this one given to your organization or if you want additional information about Masterworks.

I’ll include an extended excerpt from that post here – it’s worth the read:

Why Insiders Want Fresh Design

You stare at the thing all day, years on end. Of course you think the UI looks tired. Count the number of “exposure hours” you’ve had to your own design. If you’ve worked on the same design team for a few years, those hours likely reach into the thousands.

In contrast, your typical user has probably spent only a few hours looking at your design over the last few years. Remember Jakob’s Law of the Internet user experience: users spend most of their time on other sites.

People usually spend no more than 2–3 minutes on a website, so even if they visit your site daily, they’d run up only 30 exposure hours over 2 years. More commonly, even loyal customers will spend less than 5 hours on your site each year. With so little time spent looking at the design, customers won’t tire of it anytime soon.

Why Users Want Familiar Design

The most important reason? Users don’t care about design for its own sake; they just want to get things done and get out. Normal people don’t love sitting at their computers. They’d rather watch football, walk the dog — just about anything else. Using a computer probably rates above taking out the trash, though.

When people are visiting websites or using applications, they don’t spend their time analyzing or admiring the design. They focus their attention on the task, the content, and their own data or documents.

Thus, people love a design when they know the features and can immediately locate the ones they need. That is, they love a familiar design.

So, should you redesign your website? The short answer – Not necessarily.

Far too many organizations blame their ineffective websites on the fact that they need to redesign. It usually goes something like this – “Oh, don’t judge our website too harshly, it’s 3 years old and terrible – we’re working on a redesign.”

The problem with the “oh we need a redesign” statement is that it assumes that websites are static – that they are “born on” a specific date, and pretty much stay the same until the next redesign. But websites are NOT static – they are dynamic. They should be evolving and improving constantly.

The real work of a website isn’t in designing it and writing the initial content – the real work begins the day you launch.

That’s why we begin every website project with a Discovery Phase. Part of this process is to understand the true issues with a website against the stated goals of the organization, and to provide our expert recommendations on how to address the issues.

We do not recommend redesigns to every organization for the very reasons Jakob outlines above – many times the most effective thing we can do is to work within the existing website design to create compelling content, improve usability, information architecture, etc.

You can sign up online for FREE at by going to this registration page.

Here’s the CLA info about the webinar:

5 Keys to Successful New Media Campaigns:
Lessons from the Ministry Front Lines
“Live” 60-minute Webinar with Audience Q&A
Thusday, August 27, 2009
12:00 noon ET / 11:00 am CT / 10:00 am MT / 9:00 am PT

Want to hear how Campus Crusade is engaging donors online? Megan Hawkes (Executive Director of Constituent Engagement for Campus Crusade) and Dave Raley (Masterworks Director of New Media) have graciously agreed to unpack the lessons learned so far from their current “new media” campaign that’s generated nearly 4 million impressions and a quarter million dollars for ministry – and it’s not done yet!

You’ll discover how to:

• Leverage key trends in online giving, online video, and social networking.
• Integrate (instead of re-create) multi-channel fundraising.
• Maximize online transactions and ministry relationships at the same time.
• Touch the hearts of people with online video.
• And much more!

About our Speakers:
Megan Hawkes is the executive director of constituent engagement for Campus Crusade for Christ, a 58-year old ministry currently active in more than 200 countries, with an income of over $500 million annually. Megan has served with Campus Crusade for more than 10 years and currently gives leadership and oversight of the experiences of more than 500,000 constituents monthly both in traditional and new media environments.

Dave Raley is the director of new media at Masterworks, a Christian full-service marketing and development agency. Dave develops and conceptualizes integrated new media strategies that drive growth, using components such as websites, eMail, social networking, blogging, online video, and more.

What’s included: Enjoy PowerPoint slides on your computer screen as you listen to the presentation on the phone (gather your co-workers around a speakerphone for maximum impact). You will also have an opportunity to ask questions during and after the webinar.

Cost: No cost to CLA members. Only $29 for non-members.

Can’t attend the “live” session? No problem – recordings are available: $10/mp3, $15/CD (members) / $29 for non-members. Call (949) 487-0900, ext. 116, for an order form.

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…

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?

So for example, instead of the URL to my Facebook page being www. facebook.com/profile.php?id=123456789, it can now be www.facebook.com/daveraley. A good Facebook vanity URL will be important for organizations as Facebook becomes more and more a “hub” for their social media presence.

You can read more at http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130.

You can also get directions and special rules (like whether you can or cannot create a URL for your fan page) at http://whyfacebook.com/2009/06/10/how-to-secure-your-facebook-username-vanity-url/.

It is going to be important for your organization to grab a good vanity URL for your Facebook presence, before others do. I would counsel you to not even to wait until Monday – log in Friday night or Saturday morning to do this.

For those of you that don’t do much on Facebook currently that wonder if you should care – if you’ve ever felt the pain of creating a username when every possible combination seems to be taken, that’s what will probably happen for you if you don’t grab a URL sometime in the next week.

So go to it!

Here’s one takeaway….

Beware the siren song of social media.

In NO WAY am I encouraging you to ignore social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a whole host of others). BUT what I am saying is that there is grave danger in focusing on social media AT THE EXPENSE of your core web presence — i.e. your website.

It’s so easy to be lured by the excitement of social media.

You might ask, “Why should I spend time on my boring website when I can really engage people with Facebook/Twitter/[fill in the blank]?” And that’s just the problem — most organizational websites are boring and un-engaging!

The solution to boring and un-engaging websites is to create interesting and engaging websites. Easier said than done, I know.

Too often we’re tempted to leave that boring website behind and jump into social media as the solution. The problem with this solution is that good use of social media will increasingly drive traffic back to your website. That’s right, your exciting social media tactics will drive traffic to your boring website. Thus you still have the problem of a boring website!

It’s hard work to create an engaging and interesting website. And it’s never done. But it’s worth it.