Giving in a digital world

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Archive for the ‘Online advocacy’ Category

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Great presentation on the emerging philanthropic web by Christine Egger of Social Actions

Posted by Bryan on July 12, 2010

I had the very great pleasure last week of finally meeting face to face with someone who I can honestly say has changed the way I think about online fundraising over the last 18 months or so – that person being Christine Egger of Social Actions.

I first came across Christine and the work of Social Actions back in early 2009 when I blogged about their ‘Change the Web Challenge’. Since then I’ve had the opportunity to share ideas on open source thinking and the evolution of online fundraising and wider microphilanthropy through numerous email, Twitter and Skype exchanges with her – every one of which has left me with an excited “now I get it” feeling about what the future of online microphilanthropy might hold.

So, when the Institute of Fundraising asked Jason Potts and me to plan-out the Digital Fundraising channel for their National Convention here in London, Christine was naturally top of my list of ‘big thinkers’ to get onto the convention platform. Which is why we finally came to be having coffee in the Convention Hotel last Monday morning.

You can see Christine’s Convention presentation above – or even better view it on Slideshare here complete with full notes to help explain the finer intricacies of “Designing and aligning for the emerging philanthropic web”.

Grab yourself a cup of something, sit back, and take some time to think through the ideas Christine shared in her session – from understanding where open giving markets fit into online fundraising to ideas on how to design your own activities to take advantage of the way the philanthropic web is developing, it’ll be time very well spent.

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Posted in crowdfunding, Online advocacy, Online Campaigning, Online fundraising, Social networking | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Advice on Twitter use – based on what top US companies are NOT doing

Posted by Bryan on December 1, 2009

It’s often the way with things like Twitter that you tend mostly to hear stories about how well people are using them. Which can leave you with something of an inferiority complex about the fact that you haven’t actually had time to begin testing them properly – because you’ve been too busy raising money.

With this in mind, it’s worth taking a quick look at a free report just released by PR Agency Webber Shandwick entitled ‘Do Fortune 100 Companies Need a twittervention?’ – because their research revealed that as much can be learned from what big US companies are doing wrong as from what they are doing right when it comes to Twitter use.

Apparently 73 of the Fortune 100 companies are on Twitter, with 540 Twitter accounts between them. However, half of these accounts have fewer than 500 followers, three-quarters rarely ever tweet, and 81 are inactive – either abandoned after a specific event or simply placeholder accounts protecting against brand-jacking.

The report goes on to consider whether the accounts convey any form of personality or particular tone of voice – with over half registering a FAIL on this. It also examines how the accounts are being used, and then offers a summary of best practice – comprising advice which is as relevant for non-profits considering adding Twitter to their online communications programme as it is for big corporates.

Overall, the report concludes that for the majority of Fortune 100 companies Twitter remains a missed opportunity – which will hopefully make any fundraisers with a Twitter inferiority complex feel just a bit better that they’re not so far behind as they might have thought.

There is no doubt that Twitter can form an effective part of your online programme. But its use has matured extremely quickly and with this have come certain specific expectations on the behalf of Twitter users – which can only be met if you understand and follow best practice when you’re using it.

It’s no longer sufficient just to get your organisation a Twitter account and then play about and see what happens. At best that’s likely just to be a waste of your time and at worst could have a negative impact on your brand in the eyes of those online consumers you’re looking to engage with. Over the last couple of years there have been masses of different reports written on what to do and what not to do – so start by learning from other people’s successes, and failures, and then you’ll be in a far better position to capitalise on whatever Twitter-based opportunities might be out there for you.

For more specific guidance on using Twitter for non-profits, here are a couple of guides to start you off:

If anyone has other non-profit specific Twitter guides that they would recommend, then do share details of them by leaving a comment below.

 

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Posted in Blogging, Online advocacy, Online Campaigning, Online fundraising, Twitter | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

15 UK organisations competing for 2009 Non Profit Website of the Year

Posted by Bryan on November 23, 2009

The Twitter feeds are starting to run hot with requests for Followers to vote for the various sites nominated for the 2009 People’s Choice Website of the Year Awards, with the full line-up of shortlisted nonprofits looking like this:

2009 markes the sixth time these awards have been organised by online research agency MetrixLab and they are apparently the  “largest annual ‘people’s choice’ website awards” around, with members of the public ranking the sites based on ‘design’, ‘navigation’, and ‘content’.

Awards aside, it’s also interesting from a general online engagement perspective to browse the shortlisted sites to see just what the different organisations are doing to make their websites especially attractive to online consumers.

Unfortunately, what is most striking is that so many of the landing pages deluge you with so much information and so many calls to action that you end-up with an engagement opportunity overload likely to lead to option paralysis for all but the most focused visitor. I’m not going to name and shame the worst offenders – as I’m sure you’ll spot them if you have a browse.

However, there are some noteable exceptions. British Heart Foundation goes for a cleaner approach, with clear integration with its current advertising campaign and iPhone-like buttons for “quick links”. Likewise, WWF’s homepage goes for simple clarity from the outset – with a wonderfully striking close-up of a Tiger staring out at me and then two columns entitled “We do…” and “You can…”, alongside four clear engagement buttons.

Greenpeace’s blog-style landing page with calls to action in the sidebar also works for me, helping me focus on the key things they want to tell me about the UN Climate Summit (including a great embedded YouTube video) while still making clear the range of personal responses I can make.

Voting in the awards is open until 8th December and the winners will be announced on 15th December.

 

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Posted in Online advocacy, Online Campaigning, Online fundraising, Web design | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

Help with writing your Social Media guidelines – from over 70 different organisations

Posted by Bryan on September 22, 2009

Social Media Guidelines

The incredibly fast adoption of Social Media over the last couple of years has left many, if not most, organisations in something of a spin – as, in very short order, something that was at first dismissed as the preserve of the young and the geeks has become an unavoidable key component of mainstream communications.

With this recognition has come the need to better understand and manage the use of social media by organisations – including charities and other non-profits – leading to the desire to develop social media guidelines to help ensure that everyone across an organisation works together to get the most from this new technology. However, this is not as easy a task as it might sound. Where do you start when trying to write guidelines for something that is, at its heart, often about engagement through spontaneous, unstructured conversations?

Well, one very handy place to start is Chris Boudreaux’s Social Media Governance website, where he has very helpfully collated links to social media guidelines from over 70 different organisations – including the American Red Cross and Easter Seals, as well as a diverse range of other corporate and public sector organisations.

While the very organisation-specific nature of Social Media usage means that it’s unlikely you’ll find an exact fit for your own guidelines – reading how others have approached the same challenge should certainly help you set off in the right direction.

 

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Posted in Blogging, Online advocacy, Online Campaigning, Online fundraising, Social networking | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

Some interesting thoughts on Quantum Fundraising

Posted by Bryan on July 28, 2009

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There’s an interesting article by Jon Duschinsky in the latest edition of the Resource Alliance eNewsletter, where he introduces the concept of ‘quantum fundraising’ as a way of explaining how people increasingly want to come-together online to make something happen – but then to disband and move-on to do something different elsewhere. Jon says…

People are increasingly self-organising and using the tools of the flat world platform – the web, networks (physical and virtual), tribes, omniscient communication – to effect change in different ways. Linear society is fading from our present. We have entered the age of quantum society, where people come together under a shared vision to effect change before disbanding and going off to do other things.

He goes-on to examine what can be learned from Obama’s grassroots fundraising activity as a guide to how to make quantum fundraising happen as well as to highlight what he believes to be one of the Obama team’s few errors – going against the quantum fundraising idea by trying to maintain the community that formed to get him elected when the mass of those involved have moved-on to other things.

It’s well worth a read as a fresh take on the challenges fundraisers will face in the future as they seek to engage with supporters in our networked society.

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Other related Giving in a Digital World posts:

What is the future for membership organisations within our networked society?

Social Actions – open source microphilanthropy in action

Posted in Online advocacy, Online Campaigning, Online fundraising, Social networking | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

US retailer lets donors choose in Facebook charity campaign

Posted by Bryan on May 22, 2009

I just spotted this fun video from the American Red Cross encouraging people to vote for them in the “Bullseye Gives” campaign being run on Facebook by US retail chain Target, and it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to mention the campaign since it launched earlier this month.

From May 10th to May 25th, US Facebook users can go to the Target Facebook Page and vote (once daily) for which of the ten charities listed they would like to receive a share of a $3 million donation from the retailer. The charities in the list being the American Red Cross, the National Park Foundation, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Operation Gratitude, Feeding America, the Parent Teacher Association, HandsOn Network/Points of Light Institute, the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Kids In Need Foundation and the Salvation Army. After May 25th the final voting results will be announced and the $3million split between the charities accordingly.

It’s classic viral marketing stuff – authentic, very simple and highly ‘share-able’.

And, of course, the power of it being on a social network like Facebook is that each time someone votes they can also publish that vote on their Facebook feed so all their friends see it – and so the reach of the campaign grows and grows, without the need for lots of forwarding of intrusive emails to your friends.

Apparently Target has been giving 5% of its income to charities since 1946 – which now adds-up to $3 million a week. But this campaign clearly represents an excellent new way to spread the positive brand impact of this long standing philanthropy and attract massive new numbers of fans to the brand’s Facebook Page – currently standing at 322,916.

It’s also a far cry from the Facebook promotional tactics that Target got accused of back in 2007. When it was criticised for encouraging members of its ‘Target Rounders’ word of mouth marketing programme for students not to mention their association with the brand when posting positive comments on the newly launched Facebook page.

Looking down the comments on the Target page today, the vast majority are highly positive – presumably without any form of encouragement other than the great opportunity being offered to help raise funds for a preferred charity. So, the shift to an authentic and honest reason to enthuse about the brand looks like a good lesson learned by Target’s marketing people – and it’ll be interesting to see if they roll-out the campaign beyond May as an ongoing part of their CSR programme.

Posted in Online advocacy, Online fundraising, Social networking | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

2009 email fundraising and advocacy benchmark report just released

Posted by Bryan on May 17, 2009

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It’s May again, which means that the latest update of the annual M+R and NTEN eNonprofit Benchmarks Study has just been released.

The study, which provides cause-specific benchmarks across a range of email metrics is based on data from 32 US nonprofit organisations, but I’ve always found the results to be a good steer for European nonprofits too.

The headline take-out is that despite the recession most of the organisations taking part in the study saw their online fundraising up overall from 2007 to 2008, driven by more donors giving online but at lower average values than seen previously.

Beneath this overall trend is a wealth of data across both fundraising and advocacy activities that anyone involved in email communications is bound to find useful.

You can download a free copy of the 2009 report here.

The eNonprofit Benchmarks Study was first released in 2006, so it offers the potential to examine the latest data in the context of previous years to illustrate some multi-year trends. Unfortunately the latest report doesn’t provide much insight beyond the 2007 to 2008 comparisons, but you can still download the 2008 Report and also the 2006 Report (there wasn’t one in 2007) to look at the trends yourself.

Posted in Email, Online advocacy, Online Campaigning, Online fundraising | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Social Actions – open source microphilanthropy in action

Posted by Bryan on April 3, 2009

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Social Actions is a fantastic online initiative that aims to make it easier for people to make a real difference in the world, by essentially aggregating thousands of online microphilanthropic opportunities from over 50 different non-profits and other sources (at the last count) through one site with powerful search functionality.

However, what is really clever about the way that Social Actions works is that it is not just reliant on people visiting the site to search for opportunities to take actions they might be interested in. It can also ‘push’ action opportunities out to any other website through widgets that will present selected opportunities based on the specific content of the website in question. For example, there is one widget that can plug-in to any WordPress.org blog, identify the keywords of each blog post, and display related opportunities to take action. Now that is really smart thinking.

And that’s not the end of it. They are also harnessing the power of open source development through the provision of an open API that enables anyone to build an application utilising Social Actions’ aggregated data on microphilanthropic opportunities.

As I mentioned in my recent post about the new Kiva open API, the incredible power of this approach is that it offers the potential to massively increase the number of ways that people can engage with the opportunities on offer, and thereby the audience reach achieved, far faster than a single organisation could realistically achieve – by harnessing the creativity and technical abilities of enthusiastic developers right around the world.

To get the open source development ball rolling,  Social Actions launched a ‘Change the web challenge’ during March to get people to come-up with new tools to share the microphilanthropic actions on offer – with $10,000 in prizes up for grabs for the best ideas. The deadline for submissions is today and so far an incredible range of creative applications have been submitted. The top 20 finalists will be announced on April 13th and the winners announced at the NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference on April 28th.

There are several things that I especially like about the whole Social Actions initiative.

Firstly, the way in which it recognises and specifically works to meet the growing desire for people to be able to personally choose how they get involved with specific causes that interest them – in both financial and non-financial ways.

Secondly, because it goes out of its way to make making a difference easy for everyone. Not only through its aggregation of actions from a host of different sources, clever search functionality, and use of widgets to present specific, context-sensitive opportunities on other sites. But also by emphasising the massive impact that even the smallest action can have, if sufficient people are motivated to take it. Social Actions’ founder, Peter Deitz, defines Microphilanthropy as any small scale activity or gesture, facilitated by technology, that carries with it some intent to do good and has the effect of transforming communities for the better – which is a significant, and potentially very powerful, expansion on traditional thinking around online community fundraising.

Thirdly, the way in which they have so wholeheartedly embraced the whole open source philosophy – engaging the wider online community to help develop the tools with which they will subsequently take microphilanthropy action opportunities to countless more people.

If you haven’t visited their site before – then go and take a look, and have a think about what you might be able to learn from the way in which they are engaging with people online.

Posted in crowdfunding, Online advocacy, Online Campaigning, Online fundraising, Widgets | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

Pifworld raises the user experience bar for charity crowdfunding websites – at least in places

Posted by Bryan on March 8, 2009

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Just a few weeks behind the originally planned launch date (which is pretty impressive for a development of this complexity) the online fundraising site formerly known as Play it Forward and now renamed Pifworld went live over the weekend.

I’ve been watching the development of Pifworld with interest over the last few months, for a couple of reasons. Partly because it is the latest of a number of innovative online community fundraising developments to recently come from the Netherlands, where the whole concept of online community fundraising has really taken off over the last 18 months or so. But also because pre-launch announcements suggested that Pifworld would offer a very different online user experience to that of established charity project crowdfunding sites like Kiva and Globalgiving – and indeed it does.

At the outset, in addition to the usual project search functionality we’re used to seeing, Pifworld’s project inventory is displayed on an interactive globe (shown above) that you can spin and zoom to see what they have available in any particular area of the world you might be interested in. All within a main screen that also displays latest funding and supporter data. This might sound like an unnecessary novelty, but actually works really well and is a fun and engaging way to see what’s going-on.

Then, when you find a project that looks like it might be of interest, in place of the traditional text and photo-based project funding request, Pifworld projects are promoted through neat little video interviews with key project staff who explain the project aims, activities, and needs – like the woman below explaining her project in India.

Now, other fundraising sites have certainly used video in places to help illustrate project activities. But I’m not aware of any which have taken the next natural step of replacing text and photo project reviews (which are often little more than on-screen versions of good old direct mail leaflets) with a far more authentic and engaging video presentation. Pifworld project updates are also video-based, so you can really see (and hear) what the team have been doing with your donation.

Unfortunately at this stage, once you’ve found the project you’re interested in, the user experience slips a bit – as the online donation process seems a bit more complex than usual. Donations are made from a Pifworld ‘wallet’ which you first have to upload 5 Euro ‘credits’ to. This can be done from vouchers or using most major credit cards (at an added transaction cost of around 1 Euro) but the overall process feels a lot less streamlined than I’ve experienced on other sites. Also the confirmation email doesn’t arrive immediately (I’m still waiting for mine). For all that I love other aspects of the site, I think this payment process could do with another look – given that it’s fundamentally what the whole site is about. It wouldn’t be the first time that an apparently very engaging online fundraising site failed to maximise income simply because insufficient thought had been given to the back-office functionality. Hopefully the Pifworld team will be watching their site analytics to ensure that people are completing their transactions and will fix this if not.

Beyond this, another very nice feature is the way that project advocacy has been built into Pifworld, with people encouraged not only to become Supporters but also Ambassadors for their chosen projects – with blogging facilities provided to help Ambassadors mobilise their personal online networks. There is also email promotional functionality and project details can be shared as an Open Social widget (although only by copying the widget URL and not through a simple pushbutton which is becoming the norm elsewhere).

So all-in-all, a fun and engaging site that will hopefully prove attractive to potential online donors of all ages – with a few wrinkles to iron-out over the coming months. Definitely a site to keep an eye-on.

Meantime, if you’re interested in what else is happening in online community fundraising in the Netherlands, then it’s worth taking a look at 1procentclub.nl and geefsamen.nl (thanks to Victor for those). As well as the latest implementation of the YoCo fundraising platform from my old colleagues at WWAV Holland, which has raised almost 1 million Euros in sponsorship donations for cancer charity KWF Kankerbestrijding’s Alpe d’HuZes cycling challenge just a couple of months after going live.

Posted in crowdfunding, Online advocacy, Online fundraising | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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