Non-Profit Chas

Who should you ask for money?

2008-11-20T22:53:38Z

Fundraisers, gather round!

Who should you ask for money?

The obvious answer: People who will give you money.

But you’re not sure who will give you money, so the next answer is: People who are most likely to give you money.

Ok, then who are those people?

Smart fundraising boils down to these two things:

1. Research: Finding people who are likely to give.

In other words, you should seek out and ask for money from people who want to give you money. But people aren’t born wanting to give money to you (or if they are, they quickly learn that’s not the most financially responsible way to live ones life).

2. Development: Creating people who are likely to give.

If you can’t find people who want to give you money, you need to convert people into
those who want to give. This is the bulk of fundraising. It’s creating relationships, telling stories, holding events, making visits, etc.

It’s a process.

Who shouldn’t you ask for money?

Answer? Everyone else. That’s right, don’t ask for money from people who don’t know you and believe in your mission. Don’t call strangers and ask for donations. Don’t hold events for the general public and beg for cash. Don’t sell something that has nothing to do with your mission and expect to create sustainable value. What do you think happened to the Girl Scouts when the low-carb diet craze hit?

4 Strategic Planning Team Exercises

2008-11-18T02:51:45Z

In a couple of weeks, we’ll resume strategic planning. We took a break to figure out some urgent issues, and like any intimidating task we found it all too easy to put it off for much longer. I’ll be posting more about our efforts as we go.

Exercise Your Optimism!

Anyway, as we get started I want to go through some group and individual exercises designed to get us all thinking, challenging the world around us, and feeling optimistic.

What would you do if we had $20 million dollars?

With money issues out of the way, what would we do? Borrowed from For Impact, this question lets you dream about what you could really accomplish. It’s important to bring this back to the real world and let your dreams and vision inform your decisions.

Share a Mission Moment

I want everyone to tell a story about why they are involved in Camp Fire – why they joined, something that kept them going, etc. I’ve mentioned the Mission Moment in earlier posts, too. It reminds you why you’re here and gives you the strength to keep going.

If we were successful, what would we look like?

What is the profile of a winning organization? Dream big! Write up the characteristics that make up such an organization. Circle the things you already do, and ask what you can do to be ever better at them. How you can aspire to the others?

What are we great at?

Pair off and have each group list things that your organization does well. List only good things, and be as comprehensive as possible. Then, bring the lists back to the group and share what you’ve come up with. Based in Appreciative Inquiry, this approach is the “opposite of problem solving.” Instead, it’s all about creating more of what works.

Any others?

Do you have any team exercises that you’d recommend? Have you tried the ideas here? Share ‘em in the comments!

When NOT to do social media

2008-11-05T17:56:46Z

On the heels of deciding To Blog or Not to Blog, I wanted to share a great post from Beth Kanter about whether social media is right for you.

Don’t jump into social media before you’ve answered these questions:

Are there pressing organizational issues to address?

Are there effective or efficient ways to reach same outcomes?

Does your current/potential audience use social media?

Are you being seduced by Shiny Object Syndrome?

If you haven’t mastered the basics, you can’t make the advanced stuff work.

To Blog or Not to Blog?

2008-11-04T01:27:14Z

When I started my NpTech 101 series, I figured I could lay out some of the basics of how technology could help non-profits. I would create a bunch of tutorials on stuff that people like me (a hyper-connected technophile) take for granted.

But there’s a line where you go from how do I do this? to should I do this?

Blogging is one of those “should I do this?” things. Blogging isn’t new. It’s not cutting-edge. There are millions of potential competitors to your blog, all fighting for attention.

A blog is simply a website where the primary content is organized by when it was posted. You can think of it like a diary, where you write entries in in chronological order.

If you think of a blog as a diary, ask yourself: why would anyone want to want to read my diary?

Make the most when social media kicks In

2008-10-31T18:50:03Z

This week, I marveled at the power of social media:

I posted a blog article about Laws of Client Work that got some link love, resulting in some nice traffic, new subscribers, and great connections.
On eduStyle I got feedback from other higher ed web folks about some of our recently launched Notre Dame websites, revealing some browser quirks our team needed to fix.
Brazen Careerist featured one my posts on their homepage, introducing me to new readership.
Several of my friends and followers posted links to my stuff on Twitter, leading their followers to suddenly begin following me.
How to take advantage of the social media attention

1. Meet new followers. When I get a comment on my posts or a new follower on Twitter, I check out their profile or website. If they’re interested in me, I might be interested in them.

2. Subscribe to your new friends. I like to give a trial run on new blogs and twitter users… if I follow a user, it’s because I am want their contributions – not just another number on my profile. Twitter isn’t about a high score to me. If it doesn’t work out – if I find myself skipping past their content regularly, I’ll unsubscribe.

3. Listen. As I wrote in Shut Up and Listen to the Internet it’s easy to find conversations pretty much in real time. If you’re an active member of the community, no matter how small your role, you can be better prepared to respond if you know what’s going on.

3. Participate in the conversation. I try to post responses in my comments, but I also make an effort to comment on the new blogs I’m trying out. My network grew a little bit, and it helps to strengthen those new ties by reaching out.

4. Follow up with new, contextually relevant content that offers some value. My social media post did fairly well, so now I’m following up with my suggestions on what to do with it. It’s the second half of the story.

5. Suggest something else. I always hate landing on a blog with a fantastic article and then discovering that they’re a one hit wonder. I might want more of the same. If you have other good content, offer a route to those posts or that might interest your visitors. I added my table of contents page as a way to do that, but I’m already planning on reworking it to better introduce new visitors to my blog. I love the “related posts” approach on sites like RailsTips.

Keep the momentum

The biggest tip of all is that you have to be consistent and maintain your momentum. You’ve done a lot of work to build your network and brand so far, so don’t let it slide by taking a month off and disappearing. Keep writing, keep networking, and keep the conversation going.

Should I Do Social Media?

2008-10-28T22:03:18Z

In my first job, I worked with a big healthcare client. They had built a new building and spared no expense. We worked with them to create a unique, powerful online community for their patients to communicate with doctors, staff, and each other. They would maintain an online journal (before the word blog was popular) and customize their experience. It was a social network for cancer patients. Six months and a lot of money later, we launched the site.

Nobody used it. Two years (and a lot more money) later, it still hadn’t been used.

Why? The client didn’t have time to mess with it. They never distributed logins to their patients. They never promoted it. They simply didn’t give it any attention. Eventually, it just disappeared.

Social media are just tools. And like any tool, you have to know how to use it, what it’s good for, and what it’s not good for. And as with any tool, you can come up with creative, unintended uses that might do the trick.

I caught myself feeling a bit disappointed today when I realized that I hadn’t really invested myself in a particular LinkedIn network. I don’t go back to check for posts, network with people, or create new content.

Then I thought about the dozen other social networks I don’t check regularly. LinkedIn, Ning, and Facebook groups… I can’t be the number one contributor on them all. Plus writing for two blogs, Tumblr, and Twitter. I’m spread so thin across the Internet that I don’t really have any effect in any of those places.

The question isn’t “should I do social media?”, but rather “how should I do social media?” And the answer is “as well as I can manage.”

Sasha Dichter’s Manifesto for Non-Profit CEOs

2008-10-27T22:43:38Z

Sasha Dichter wrote a fantastic Manifesto: In Defense of Raising Money

I’m sending this to all of my board members and encourage you to take 10 minutes to read it.

#1 Reason You’re Not More Successful

2008-10-27T13:45:01Z

I hinted at this in my posts about Blog Action Day and What All Those Fundraising Books Don’t Tell You.

The difference between success and failure isn’t smarts or money. It’s not your logo or your office or your website.

You’re not more successful because you’re not doing more.

All the fine tuning, testing, strategic planning, and seminars won’t do you any good in a vacuum. Those can take you from 80% up.

But going from 0 to 80% is easy – it’s just a matter of taking action and doing something.

As 37 Signals often says, If it works, do more. If it doesn’t work, do less.

We stopped our strategic planning because it was a distraction from doing the work. We weren’t at a stage where extensive planning sessions were helping us. We didn’t have our house in order. We weren’t actively fundraising and marketing our programs. We weren’t collecting the right information. We couldn’t even speak intelligently about our financial picture.

So we hit “pause.” Six months later, we feel much more secure about all facets of the organization. This winter, we’re starting our strategic planning again.

GOYA

My designer friend Oak taught me this acronym: GOYA. It means “Get Off Your Ass.” Sometimes I set it as my desktop background just so I have a constant reminder (download the wallpaper) to myself that I need to put up or shut up.

So your challenge each day is to accomplish something that helps advance your mission. Call or visit a donor. Write a thank you note. Make a quick decision and execute.

5 Minutes to Online Donations

2008-10-20T15:20:54Z

I’m embarrassed to admit that Camp Fire doesn’t take online donations. In preparation for an appeal letter, I decided to buckle down and set it up. I’m going to use PayPal because we already have a PayPal account and it’s a quick way to take online donations without a lot of hassle.

How to Accept Online Donations

1. Sign up for a PayPal account, or sign in if you have one.

2. Go get a donation button:

Generate a button using their button wizard or grab the code and modify it manually.

3. Place it on your website. I created a donate now page I can use (and continually tweak) as a landing page. I also added it to the homepage and sidebar of our website so it was available from anywhere.

4. Options (beyond 5 minutes): I also took advantage of the custom thanks and cancellation page options to set up thank you messages and direct any abandoned donations back to our site. I wanted these to be in my control, not left to a generic message from PayPal.

5. Add conversion goals to your Google Analytics account. You do have analytics, right? Set one goal for getting people to your donate page and another goal for having them visit your thanks page (because they actually donated).

PayPal vs. Other Options

In the future, I’ll look to streamlining the process and moving as much of the form into my own site. I’ll let someone else continue to handle the transaction – I don’t want to store or even see credit card numbers. But I want as much of the experience and layout in my control as possible.

I’ve also looked into other services like Network For Good but the fees are higher. There is a trade-off, though – more customization, reporting, and fundraising tools. As we develop our online giving and have some expectations on volume, I hope to move to something more powerful.

GOYA: Blog Action Day

2008-10-15T16:34:43Z

Blog Action Day is a way to increase awareness of an issue and encourage some discussion. This year’s issue is poverty.

I don’t work specifically with poverty issues, though a big part of my fundraising work is for camperships that provide financial aid for campers.

The term Blog Action is something of an oxymoron. Talking isn’t doing. Discussing poverty isn’t fixing the problem.

Rather than write a lot about the issue of poverty, I’d rather encourage you to act. So once Blog Action Day is over, you have to do it some justice by taking Real World Action:

VolunteerMatch

Non-Profit Chas

Who should you ask for money?

Who should you ask for money?

1. Research: Finding people who are likely to give.

2. Development: Creating people who are likely to give.

Who shouldn’t you ask for money?

4 Strategic Planning Team Exercises

Exercise Your Optimism!

What would you do if we had $20 million dollars?

Share a Mission Moment

If we were successful, what would we look like?

What are we great at?

Any others?

When NOT to do social media

To Blog or Not to Blog?

Make the most when social media kicks In

How to take advantage of the social media attention

Keep the momentum

Should I Do Social Media?

Sasha Dichter’s Manifesto for Non-Profit CEOs

#1 Reason You’re Not More Successful

You’re not more successful because you’re not doing more.

GOYA

5 Minutes to Online Donations

How to Accept Online Donations

PayPal vs. Other Options

GOYA: Blog Action Day