A couple of months back I heard about the trials of a great smartphone-based service called Square that allows anyone with an iPhone or Android smartphone to take credit card payments – or donations – simply by registering, downloading an application, and plugging a little square card reader into their phone’s headphone jack. At that time, as I mentioned in an article on Smartphone Fundraising, a beta version of the service had been tested for fundraising at events by Charity:Water and also by Reshma Saujani, a democratic congressional candidate for New York’s 14th District whose fundraisers were using it for door-to-door fundraising – and it struck me what a fantastic service this could be for any fundraiser looking to raise donations at events.
Essentially, a Smartphone version of the traditional charity collection tin – for credit cards!
The great news is that the trials seem to have gone really well, and Square is now available for anyone who wants to take credit card payments – and has an iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Android Phone.
The bad news is that it’s only available in the US, with no current plans to bring the service to Europe. Although the question is being asked quite a bit on the @Square Twitter feed – so here’s hoping they do expand it sometime soon.
I’m just back from holiday and straight-away immersed in all sorts of client work, as well as getting-down to preparing presentations for several conferences I’m speaking at over the next few months. As it’s often only at conferences that I get an opportunity to meet folks who subscribe to my blogs, I thought I’d give them a quick plug here – then if you’re attending you can come by and say ‘hello’.
The first is the 2010 National Convention for Fundraisers in Ireland, which is being held in Dublin on March 23rd and 24th. I’m presenting late morning on 24th on ‘Community Fundraising 2.0′ – when I’ll be talking through some of the latest online fundraising developments worldwide as well as focusing specifically on some really interesting home-grown Irish initiatives.
Next month, from 14th to 16th April I’m over in Germany at the Deutscher Fundraising Kongress, presenting sessions on ‘Using Research to Generate Supporter Insight’ and ‘Online Community Fundraising’. I know that quite a few German fundraisers do subscribe to my blogs – so hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to meet some of you there.
Then, of course, in July (5th to 7th) it’s the Institute of Fundraising National Convention here in London, where I’m co-presenting a ‘Hot Topic’ session with Jason Potts of Think Consulting – where we’ll be sharing what we think are some of the hottest developments in digital fundraising. Given how quickly things are changing in the digital space, that’ll be one that we prepare right at the last minute!
Last week saw the launch of The List of Change, a new ranking of the top English-language change and cause-related blogs – providing a very handy way to find some new sources of news and information of interest to nonprofit marketers and fundraisers.
The ranking is based on each blog’s Technorati Rank, Technorati In-Links, Bloglines Subscribers, Alexa Points, Google PageRank, and Yahoo In-Links, which are combined to give a score out of 100.
Currently the top score of 95 goes to Beths Blog, while at the opposite end of the 127 blog list is The Changebase. Right now this blog – Giving in a Digital World – is hovering mid-table at 66, but things change daily as the various components of the ranking change.
It’s been an interesting three days this week, with the first ever IFC Online eConference taking place – bringing together an estimated 500+ attendees from 42 countries world-wide, through an entirely online conference.
Unlike traditional ‘real world’ conferences, it’s tricky to be sure just how many people are ‘attending’ an online conference. The IFC Online organisers at The Resource Alliance tell me that 387 ‘sites’ signed-up for the event, but the number of individuals at each ‘site’ who watch the sessions can vary massively – from one individual to, in this case, a group of more than 70 people who gathered together in Jerusalem to attend. So, I’m not sure exactly how many people attended the two sessions I presented, but I did spot around 160 ‘sites’ logged-on in places ranging from the US and Latin America, right across Europe, to Singapore, Korea, and Australia – which made for a good crowd.
If you’ve never attended a big web-based conference like this, and it was my first time – both as an attendee and a speaker, then the screengrab above will give you a bit of a feel for how it works. Presenters speak over VoIP and use Powerpoint presentations just as if they were in a convention centre with people infront of them, and throughout the session people can ask questions and make comments by typing into the Chat/Q&A box. Must admit, when I kicked-off my session it felt a bit odd sitting all alone talking to my Mac – but once the questions started coming-in onscreen the whole thing came to life and it was great fun.
Some really interesting speakers too, including Scott Goodstein, External Online Director for Obama for America, and Premal Shah, President of Kiva. And what was particularly handy is that all sessions are recorded, so attendees can catch-up on any they missed or re-watch any session they found especially useful. (Except for Scott Goodstein’s session, apparently – which is a pain, as I missed that one myself).
One other thing that struck me was just how much more Twitter activity was going-on amongst the attendees at this event than at the main IFC just last October – when there were a lone two folks Tweeting for all they were worth. This time, there was a pretty constant stream of Twitter commentary coming through under #ifconline – and even a degree of consternation when Twitter went down for maintenance right in the middle of a session yesterday evening (London time).
With so much buzz these days focusing on Facebook fundraising and Twitter campaigning, it’s nice to hear of a good-old email campaign delivering great results for a nonprofit – in this case for Ecojustice Canada (pointed-out to me by old friend and former colleague Lynne Boardman, now at Harvey McKinnon Associates in Vancouver).
Born out of a desire to help protect an endangered community of Canadian west coast killer whales, the appeal highlighted their plight by explaining that only 83 of the whales remained and asked supporters to take action on their behalf by becoming one of the first 83 people to give a gift to the Honour an Orca Campaign. In return for a donation of $50 or more the donor would not only be supporting a lawsuit to help protect the remaining 83 but they, or a nominated friend or loved one, would also receive a holiday season card and set of wildlife postcards.
The appeal was emailed to just 4,900 supporters and other contacts but returned over 160 donations – beating the 83 target within three days – with an average gift of over $90, raising some $15,000 in total and helping make 2008 the best year yet for Ecojustice’s online fundraising programme. Not only that, they also received a great response to a direct mail campaign sent at the same time, assuaging fears that increased online income might cannibalize offline donations.
Looking at the email, I was reminded of the old direct mail appeal checklist that I often used to use when both briefing and reviewing fundraising appeals for clients:
Need – do you clearly explain the need you want to address?
Solution – do you offer a specific soution to that need?
Cost – what is it that the donor can do to help deliver that solution?
Urgency – why should they respond now and not later (or not at all)?
Donor Context – why is this appeal particularly relevant to this donor?
Donor Benefit – what does the donor receive if they respond to your appeal?
The idea is that unless you can answer each of the questions, then there is something important missing – and this goes for email as well as snail-mail appeals.
The Ecojustice campaign ticks every one of the boxes – with a very real need; a specific response to that need which required donations to make it happen; urgency based around both the plight of the whales and the timing of the law case; the context of this being a unique Canadian whale community; and the benefit of the holiday tribute card as well as knowing that you’ve done something specific to help protect the whales. All this was presented through a simple but well thought through email, that included links to the latest information on missing whales and details of the landmark lawsuit against the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Job done!
Thanks to Deanna Bayne of Ecojustice Canada for letting me share some of the details of her appeal as a guide for anyone looking to develop their own email fundraising in the future.
Using the API, developers will be able to access public data from Kiva – such as a full list of entrepreneurs requesting funds or the latest lending activity – and integrate it into whatever type of application they care to develop. Suggestions from Kiva to start developers thinking include an iPhone or Blackberry App or a map showing the real-time transfer of funds around the globe.
While this might sound all rather geeky, it is an incredibly important move for Kiva – as it acknowledges that as an organisation it can only deliver so much functional enhancement of its website and associated tools within the natural restrictions of time and money. By enabling any developer in the world to build tools that directly integrate with Kiva they stand to achieve a breadth and speed of functional evolution and audience reach far beyond anything they could hope for alone.
This is just what we saw when Facebook (5-years old this week) became the first of the mainstream online social networks to launch an API back in May 2007. Suddenly countless thousands of developers began adding functionality to the Facebook platform – everything from business applications and fundraising tools to food fight and zombie games – all of which fueled an incredibly rapid growth in member numbers.
Since then many other social network sites have followed Facebook in offering such support for application developers but, as far as I know, Kiva is the first non-profit site to take advantage of ‘going open’.
Who will be next? Will GlobalGiving follow suite or will a new entrant to the online fundraising world like soon to launch Play it Forward beat the established players to it? Whoever it is, I predict that we’ll see a lot more open-source API fundraising opportunities from online fundraisin
The organisation trialled a series of webinars last year and the success of these led to the development of ‘IFC Online’, which it hopes to make an annual event.
For its first year IFC Online will be focusing exclusively on new media fundraising because the organisers, probably rightly, believe that it will be the online fundraisers who will be the most comfortable with an online conference format. However, the plan is to expand the programme in future years to attract fundraisers from all disciplines.
The conference programme will comprise ten one-hour practical workshops (including 30 minutes q&a) delivered twice over the three day conference, plus three 45-minute plenaries (including 15 minutes q&a). The full programme has yet to be finalised, but the plenary speakers will be Kiva founder Premal Shah and YouTube’s Ramya Raghavan.
As well as the main conference sessions, there will also be an online community space with topic discussion areas, downloadable materials, etc. The organisers say that “the site will take on the buzz and frenzied pace of the best offline conferences” – which should make for an interesting experience.
Conference registration will cost US$275 (£190). For more details just go to www.fundraisingonline.com.
Online Community Fundraising was one of the big discussion topics over at the Dutch National Fundraising conference back in November, so it’s no surprise that since then I’ve noticed a growing number of new examples of fundraisers in Holland making use of social media to engage with supporters and their personal social networks online.
A couple of the latest have been health charity Astma Fons and the team behind the annual Radio 3FM ‘Serious Request’ fundraising campaign on behalf of the Red Cross – both of which have joined Vogelbescherming Nederland in making use of the YoCo online community fundraising platform.
Meanwhile, new Dutch crowdfunding start-up Play It Forward looks to have slipped its launch date just a little – with the launch countdown on its holding site now indicating a live date in February.
Carried-out during the summer 2008, the research is based on responses from 656 charities who use the Justgiving online fundraising platform and was undertaken to help better understand the current state of online fundraising in the UK.
One revealing finding was that just 5% of respondents said that they feel they’re ‘making the most of online fundraising’, with 56% in the ‘having a good go, but could do better’ category, 22% who feel they are ‘trailing other charities but not sure what to do next’, and 17% ‘way behind’.
Given the potential complexity of delivering online fundraising solutions within the fast evolving social media world I can understand only a small number being sufficiently bullish to say they are ‘making the most’ of the opportunities. But the 39% who ‘aren’t sure what to do’ or ‘feel way behind’ is a worrying statistic given how well understood some of the key forms of online fundraising, such as the Justgiving platform, now are.
As worrying is the fact that 64% describe their online fundraising as ‘adhoc’ and 48% say they do not have an online fundraising plan. It seems that a lot of organisations are still simply leaving online income to chance, without any of the detailed planning and analysis that typifies fundraising through offline channels. Given the old adage that ‘you get what you ask for’, this situation is presumably a key factor in the finding that 49% of respondents receive 10% or less of their income online (with 13% unable to say).
Is it that there is no significant income opportunity online, or is the sector still simply not taking the opportunity seriously enough? 65% of the organisations surveyed apparently feel that their on line fundraising has met or exceeded their income expectations over the last 12 months. So could it simply be that a chronic lack of expectation is underlying the absence of any real drive to capitalise on the opportunities offered by online fundraising in a systematic and planned way?
You can read Jonathan’s full write-up of the Justgiving research here.
