There has been much published about Pinterest and non-profit use over the past few weeks.
As she often does Beth Kanter kicked it off with a thoughtful blog post that serves as a good primer on the subject.
If you just pronounced "primer" prim-er as opposed to prime-er you lose one point. Don't worry I am keeping track of these points.
Early in 2011, I create a presentation to talk about trends to watch for in the New Year. While it is easy to make predictions and never revisit them, it’s more honest to look back where one is right and wrong.
The presentation started with a list of new things for 2010, it’s hard to believe that none of these things were well known in 2010 and many of them didn’t even exist:
- Original iPad
- Windows 7 phone and Droid X
- Mobile fundraising
- Wikileaks
- Facebook Places
- 3D: TVs, movies games
- Daily deals: groupon, living social
Wouldn't it be great if you could figure out what your constituents were thinking about? Well, it turns out that Google's Insights for Search might make you a mentalist after all.
Insights has been around for a good long while, but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting. Check out this comparison of the terms "donate" and "give."
One of the best things about working at Masterworks is that everyone is on the lookout for new ideas; this one came from Milo, our Vice President for Administration.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy wrote about two organizations using Amazon.com's Wish List to highlight items needed for donation.
The Wish List has two built in features that make it perfect for gift in kind.
For Apple devotees like me, "just one more thing" refers to the phrase often uttered by The Jobs at the end of a keynote. For you it should be a phrase you think about in your donation process. Specifically, asking your donors to share their gift with friends via Facebook or Twitter.
Eventbrite has had social sharing options on their site for awhile now and has looked deeply at the numbers. In a March blog post they reported that people are ten times more likely to share an event with friends after they have RSVP'd for an event.
This makes intuitive sense. Once you say you are going to an event you want all your friends to go.
A recent Network for Good study found that 25% of the donations Network for Good collected over the past nine years came through giving portals.
We've seen a large uptick in visits to our clients that start on charity rating sites like GuideStar or Charity Navigator in December.
So the question is, when was the last time you reviewed your information on these sites? On the surface this may appear to be a digital issue. But as frequent readers of this blog will know, a larger and larger percentage of donors are going online to check your ministry out before giving offline.
Last week I attended The 2010 Bridge to Integrated Marketing & Fundraising Conference. Overall it was a well done conference, but I have to say the sessions I attended were exceptional. So much goes on at one of these, how do you choose what to share? For something fun and different, I decided to share the wisdom of some of the tweets from the conference.
mkdm: Becky Odum: "Retention is the new acquisition."
m_sherrington: @Kay Sprinkel Grace.'we're in a vicious cycle of raising money, not building relationships'. Spot on.
The most informative session I attended at the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference had "behavioral economics" in the subtitle. Being a former Political Science major, anything with "economics" in the title has me at hello. Mostly because I believe economics is one of the few disciplines that can accurately predict how society will respond. Like it or not, we all respond to incentives, economic and otherwise. The session highlighted eight principles of fundraising supported by behavioral economics. All eight were reflected in what I hear at every creative meeting at Masterworks.
Our experience and testing has supports the central theory behind behavioral economics: that a rational argument is not always the most effective argument. If you want to read more you can download an ebook that mirrors the presentation. Mark Rovner presented principle #3: "Stick to social norms, not market norms." Mark gave an example drawn from the research of behavioral economist Dan Ariely that clearly delineates between the two. A preschool was seeing that more and more individuals were showing up late to pick up their kids. In order to stem the tide they instituted per- minute fines for lateness. The results: tardiness went up. Once the preschool put a cost to every minute they moved the mindset from social norms to market norms. Parents now did not have the social pressure to pick their kids up on time because the preschool was now being compensated. Mark went on to say that once you introduce market norms into a situation, it is very difficult to go back and get folks to respond to social norms.
During Q & A someone asked about the impact of this principle on alternative gift catalogs. The consensus was that because the donor isn't getting any benefit, the mere fact of the donation experience feeling more like shopping doesn't invoke market norms. Market norms are most likely to be created with donors when premiums are offered. The panel supported what we know from experience here at Masterworks: premiums don't acquire donors with high long- term value. If you can avoid going down that road, do it. If you already have used premiums to acquire and then likely cultivate donors, you likely have to continue that strategy with existing donors but moving forward you could use segmentation to create a "premium free" group of new and higher dollar recent donors. Incentives matter, but ministries can receive more and more meaningful support by relying on the social benefits a donation brings. Relying on market benefits and market norms creates transactional donors moved by their next premium fix, not your cause.
Today, thousands of Christians will commemorate the Last Supper, the final Passover meal Jesus ate with his disciples. Over the next few days, the ministries we serve will physically serve thousands of Easter meals in places as diverse as mission kitchens in Orlando and tents in Haiti. We know that donors love to support meals. Because we know it can be successful, we often appeal for meals much more than we appeal for the other important programs ministries provide. However, as many enter the Triduum on this Maundy Thursday and follow Jesus from table to courtroom, to cross, to empty tomb, I feel that it is important to offer another perspective on meals as sacrifice. This isn’t my idea. I came across it in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, a book by Eugene Peterson. In one discussion, Peterson is talking about sacrifice and writes:
“Hospitality is the daily practice in keeping sacrifice local and immediate: a meal prepared and served to family and guests is giving up of ourselves for another. (p. 219)”
Peterson challenges the reader to consider this humble sacrifice a worthy one, and to stop thinking that their sacrifice needs to be grandiose to count. He is reminding Christians of something I believe we often need to be reminded of: salvation is God’s work and it has been accomplished; we are blessed that God chooses to let us be part of it. Peterson continues:
We have heard from a couple nonprofits we work with that banner ads are effective, but neither could explain why. Directly generated revenue isn’t high, but when they were removed from the marketing mix, results fell. A recent comScore study may have an answer . This study found that individuals exposed to banner ads were 72 percent more likely to visit the advertiser’s website within three weeks of exposure, and 92 percent more likely to do a “brand search”. This study was conducted in Europe, so it is not completely analogous to U.S.-based nonprofits, but it is indicative of a larger trend.
According to comScore, the lift in the U.S. is closer to 49 percent in site visitation and 40 percent in searches. The actual percentages are still very small. Only 7.71 percent of individuals exposed to the ad visited the site and 3.27 percent did a search query. It seems total quantity is still very important in banner advertising to generate a significant return. The bigger issue for advertisers is the fact that none of the traffic —or, for the ministries we serve, donations — will be correctly attributed to the banner ad if a donor sees the ad and then later contributes at the ministry website.
This study indicates that we will need to continue to evolve our metrics to be able to better capture the impact of banner advertising on an overall campaign. Even to the point where it may be necessary to suspend banner advertising for a time to see its true impact.
