Downturn Guide to Online Fundraising & Marketing

Long Island Center for Nonprofit LeadershipSUMMIT 2009 – June 2, 2009

Jono SmithVP, Marketing

Network for Good

www.networkforgood.org/npo

Key Takeaways

• Why online fundraising is the great equalizer

• The basics of an effective online marketing and fundraising strategy

• Selecting and implementing online marketing & fundraising tools

• An introduction to Web 2.0 for Fundraisers & Marketers

• The Case Studies– Email Marketing Best Practices

– How TNC engaged a new audience on Flickr

– To Blog?

– What’s the deal with Causes on Facebook?

• Bottom line: A few good ideas to try at the office

Meet Network for Good

Download the slides from www.fundraising123.org

Why Online Giving is the Great Equalizer

• At Network for Good, 50% the donations go to 1% of charities (excluding crisis giving)

• The rest – 25,000 nonprofits – are spread out along the long tail

• Small to medium-sized nonprofits account for 70% of giving via Network for Good

Sources: Fund-Raising Cost Effectiveness (James Greenfield), Cost-Effectiveness of Nonprofit Telemarketing Campaigns (Keating, Parsons & Roberts) and Network for Good.

Giving Through Network for Good is More Efficient than Traditional Means*

Because it costs less to get that $ online

Costs to Raise $1

$0.63$0.25

$1.25

$0.00

$0.50

$1.00

$1.50

$2.00

Direct MailAcquisition ofNew Donors

Direct MailRenewal of

Existing Donors

ProfessionalTelemarketing

Network forGood / Online

Cos

t to

rais

e $1

$.07

Who Is Giving Online?*

• Online givers are young (38-39 years old)

• They are generous -- ($163)

• Men and women give online in equal numbers

• Virtually all (96%) have given to charity before, but 38% haven’t given online before

*Network for Good Study, “The Young and Generous”

Why Are They Giving Online?*

• It’s easier than writing a check

• It’s a fast way to provide disaster relief

• It can be anonymous

• They like recurring donations

*Network for Good Study, “The Young and Generous”

How much is being raised online?

Issue Area 1 yr avg $International $19,795Religion $13,335Public & Social Benefit $11,654Health $10,861Education $10,777Human Services $9,439Environment & Animals $9,330Mutual/Membership Benefit, Other $6,994Arts and Culture $5,814

Network for Good DonateNow Subscribers April 30, 2008-April 30, 2009

How much can a small nonprofit raise?

• Budget: under $250,000• 1284 nonprofits• $9.2 million raised• Monthly average: $603• Annual average: $7,200

– Network for Good (2007)

Key Takeaways

• Why online fundraising is the great equalizer

• The basics of an effective online marketing and fundraising strategy

• Selecting and implementing online marketing & fundraising tools

• An introduction to Web 2.0 for Fundraisers & Marketers

• The Case Studies– Email Marketing Best Practices

– How TNC engaged a new audience on Flickr

– To Blog?

– What’s the deal with Causes on Facebook?

• Bottom line: A few good ideas to try at the office

Downturn Strategy: Maximize Net Revenue

Before you spend another dollar on marketing or fundraising, I would ask three questions:

1. Does it increase donations

2. Does it boost incremental revenue?

3. Does it protect an existing revenue stream?

Online Strategies vs. Tactics

• An online strategy is a plan of

action for using the internet and other digital mediums to achieve a goal or set of goals.

• Your website, Facebook, Twitter, SMS, Email Marketing, SEO, Banner ads, etc. are all tactics that can be used to accomplish that end.

10-Point Online Check-Up

1. Is your URL guessable?

2. Do you use website design strategically?

3. Do you provide relevant content? (Marketing + Journalism!)

4. Can you collect email addresses on your website?

5. Can you accept online donations on your website?

6. Do you tell your story through pictures, videos, or podcasts?

7. Do you have a blog?

8. Do you use email marketing to drive traffic back to your website?

9. Can people find your website in search engines?

10. Do your publish your URL on every communication,

both online and offline?

Rule #1: Focus on the Donor Experience

What kills online donations?

• Usability is the ‘donation killer’

• Turn-off factors:

– 2 in 10 people can’t find where to donate

– 4 in 10 people don’t donate because of poor design,

cluttered pages and unintuitive layouts.

– 4 in 10 people can’t find the information they need or

find the website content unclear.Source: Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving to Non-Profits and Charities

PayPal Donor Experience

Custom DonateNow from Network for Good

Rule #2: Optimize Your Donation Page in 10 Steps

1. Does your donation page look like your website?

2. Do you offer support for one time & recurring gifts?

3. Can donors make anonymous donations?

4. Do you provide both online & email tax receipts?

5. Do you offer tell-a-friend?

6. Can you ask custom questions?

7. Do you offer an email opt-in?

8. Can supporters make tributes or memorial gifts?

9. Can your supporters designate specific programs?

10. Can you offer thank you gifts & premiums?

Rule #3: Make your Donate button obvious.

Rule #4: Listen to Understand Tools to find supporters & monitor them

Rule #5: Build your email list

Still sending your newsletter from Microsoft Outlook? Six reasons you need an email service provider

1. Your emails may look terrible.

2. You may get blacklisted

3. Say hello to your recipients spam, junk or bulk mail folder.

4. Send emails to thousands of recipients, and you'll get all the bounce-backs and auto-replies from them. So much for free time!

5. You might be breaking the law. According to the CAN-SPAM law, if someone requests to be removed from your list, you must do so within 10 business days.

6. You won't know if anyone is reading your emails.

Rule #6: Grow your Email List with Tell-A-Friend

Rule #7: Get serious about email outreach

What makes a good email campaign?

• Get serious about the subject line– June Newsletter

– 5 Tips to Fight Global Warming

• Focus “above the fold”– Most people use a preview pane when perusing their

inbox, so it’s important when laying out your email’s content to put a lot of attention on the top four inches and use that prime real estate to the best of your abilities.

What makes a good email campaign?

• Personalizing beyond “Dear Bob.”– Personalization really does boost response rates. But

don’t stop at a personal greeting.

– Try segmenting your list by gender, geography or anything else you know about your recipients, so you can personalize the content based on the people to whom you’re sending.

– After all, showing that you know someone’s first name is great; showing them you really know, respect and care about them is even better.

Rapid Donor Cultivation (RDC)

• In the online retail industry, savvy retailers noticed that online prospect affinity is typically highest for the first 30 days after the visitor opts in to the retailer’s email list.

• This honeymoon period—the high-affinity phase—is characterized by higher email open, click, and conversion rates.

Rapid Donor Cultivation (RDC)

• It turns out that this behavior is also demonstrated by new nonprofit e-subscribers.

• You can capitalize on this high affinity period by sending a stream of carefully crafted emails with select content and calls-to-action to the new subscriber over the first 30 days.

• TIP: Test a 5 or 10-email stream, ending with a targeted fundraising ask.

Sample RDC CampaignIssue1. Welcome Read article on website2. Elephants Visit blog3. Elephants Petition4. Whales Quiz5. Whales Survey6. Eagles Photo Contest7. Eagles Audio8. Puppy Mills Video9. Puppy Mills Donate10. Puppy Mills Donate

RDC Results

• The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) was the first organization to explore this innovative concept of Rapid Donor Cultivation– The time to first gift decreased by 17 days– Rate of conversion of subscribers to donors

increased by 83%– Rate of conversion of subscribers to activists

increased by 110%– Average value of first gift increased by 15%

Summary: RDC Strategy

For smaller organizations that lack robust

email programs and struggle with staffing

constraints, RDC is a cost-effective

strategy to ensure that new subscribers

consistently receive effective stewardship,

and a high quality, timely fundraising ask.

What about Segmentation?

Over 45% of annual giving via Network for Good’s donation processing system is during December; this percentage of annual giving has

remained consistent within 5% since 2003.

1. Identify donors who only give at the end of the year, and reduce the number of appeals and newsletters they receive during the rest of the year.

2. Identify donors who only give to email newsletters, and reduce the number of direct-mail appeals they receive.

3. Identify donors who have a multiyear history of not giving during the summer months, and suppress them from all impacts during the summer.

Seven strategies for success by Rory Starks. Outcomes, Feb-Mar 2009

What Other Email Fundraising Tactics Work?

• Multiple Appeal Series. Messages sent as part of a cohesive, multiple appeal campaign over the course of three weeks outperform one-time appeals, resulting in both a higher response rate and a higher average gift.

• Deadline-Driven. Appeals and series that included a deadline by which gifts must be made tended to be more effective than open- ended appeals without specific deadlines.

• Matching Gift. The idea of making a donation that will be doubled by another donor (or group of donors) is motivational to many online donors. A matching gift campaign also provides the perfect rationale to introduce a deadline and to send out multiple appeals, both good ways to boost returns.

Source: Online Fundraising Tactics – What Works?

Rule #8: Make your organization easy to find

Sponsored

Organic

Rule #8: Make your organization easy to findS

ponsored

Organic

Rule #9: Put yourself in your donor’s shoes.

• The biggest mistake you can make is making it about you. It’s about the audience.

• Online marketing is not a monologue.

• You are not the target audience

• Marketing is about looking at the world from the point of view of our audience rather than our own.

The Mission Megaphone

Rule #9: Put yourself in your donor’s shoes.

Make Your Messaging Sing

“Alopecia Areata Society”• Disease: makes your hair fall out• Support group: makes you feel ok about it• Benefit: Self-esteem• Awareness: Bald + women does not

always equal cancer.

Do you have a “call to inaction” problem?

• Think About Your Audience

• Who Is Your Audience & What Do you Want Them To Do?

• What Is Your Call To Action?

WHO WHAT WE WANT FROM THEM (What actions do we want them to take)

60-year-old activist Volunteer time to recruit others to our cause

40-year-old long distance caregiver

Give email address to your organizationSign up online for monthly giving

Think About Your AudienceMarketing should compel action.

1. Why Me? (Donor-centric)

2. Why Now? (Urgent)

3. What For? (Tangible)

4. Who Says? (Messenger)

Your Call to Action Must Answer 4 Questions!

Tools to engage a new or existing audience

Online photo management & sharing application—has two main goals:

1. We want to help people make their content available to the people who matter to them.

2. We want to enable new ways of organizing photos and video.

The Nature Conservancy Flickr Campaign

• Launched an annual digital photography contest on Flickr

• Promised winners of contest placement for their photos in the annual member calendar and nature.org web site

• Ran integrated campaign with e-mail cultivations, search engine ads and social networks to draw in both members and new leads

Source: Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy

The Nature Conservancy Flickr Campaign

• Allowed entrants to participate solely on Flickr, but also by sending photos directly (w/ opt-out registration for our list)

• TNC picked the finalists, but let the public vote on the winners

• Never asked for money, only for engagement

Source: Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy

Outcomes

• Over 8,500 members of TNC’s photo group on Flickr who have shared nearly 94,000 photos (~11 photos per member)

• One of the largest nonprofit groups on Flickr to date

• Great, positive feedback from members and new prospects

Source: Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy

Outcomes

• Coverage for (and many links to) our photo contest in numerous photography and nature picture blogs, discussion boards

• Over 10% click-through rate on ads promoting the contest

• Over 7,200 new e-members registered

• Over 5,000 votes for 2006 contest; over 17,000 votes for 2007

Source: Jonathon D. Colman: Associate Director, Digital Marketing at The Nature Conservancy

Why did this work?

TNC framed their call-to-action to answer all four questions:

1. Why me? The pictures helped the audience relate to the cause.

2. Why now? The contest created urgency

3. What for? People were rewarded for participating.

4. Who says? TNC put their message in the hands of their supporters.

Online Marketing & Fundraising in a Web 2.0 World

Definition

Web 2.0 is people using tools

(like blogs & video) and sites

(like Facebook & Twitter) to

share content and have

conversations online.

Reality Check

Social networks are not a silver bullet for online fundraising.

The 3-step approach to Web 2.0

People• Who are your potential wired activists, volunteers or

fundraisers?• Where can you find them?• How do they use social networks?

Objectives• Decide what you want to accomplish (hint: community first,

fundraising second)• What should you ask them to do?

Strategy, Tactics, & Technology• What tools do they need?

– Avoid “random acts of marketing.”– Don’t be just another fool with a tool

Adapted from Groundswell by Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff

To blog?

1. Are you listening to your online community?

2. Do you have something unique to say?

3. Are you willing and able to say it?

4. Are you willing to be challenged and criticized?

5. Are you willing and able to dedicate the resources to succeed?

Source: Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer blog: http://technomarketer.typepad.com/

Where is your traffic coming from?

Strategy: Person-to-Person Fundraising

Synonyms: group fundraising, personal fundraising, viral fundraising, grassroots fundraising, peer-to-peer fundraising.

Source: Peter Deitz, Social Actions, Founder

The process of gathering money and other gifts in kind, by empowering individuals to solicit from and

communicate with prospective donors of their own choosing through the use of Web 2.0 (i.e., blogs,

widgets, images, video, face-to-face interactions and other social media).

The Causes application for Facebook adds the ability to solicit and make donations from within Facebook.

Causes on Facebook

Causes on Facebook

• Allows American and Canadian 501(c)(3)s to recruit supporters and fundraise directly on Facebook

• Raised $3.2MM for 25,000 charities since June 2007

• 13MM total installs, 5MM monthly active users

Facebook Cause: Love Without Boundaries

• Has raised over $150,000 from 4,115 donors.

• A small nonprofit with just 3% overhead and an all-volunteer staff, Love Without Boundaries seeks to give medical care to orphans in China in hopes of readying them for adoption.

• Their staff, who are older, non- traditional Facebook users, were able to spread the cause through their social network, bringing in thousands of Facebook users who had never before heard of their small nonprofit.

Love Without Boundaries

“…every bit of the fundraising was done by people like me, recruiting friends and

sending emails. The old model--wooing big donors--requires considerable time

and expense, albeit with bigger payoffs.”

Lessons Learned

1. Focus on audience values not your own2. Choose the right messenger

– Think like the Marine Corps: the few, the proud

3. Have faith in your audience 4. Provide a sense of urgency5. Plug your wired fundraisers into great

tools & resources6. Trust leads to results

Facebook Resources

For tips and resources, visit:• http://www.fundraising123.org/social-networking

Including:• Starting a Cause on Facebook• Everything You Need to Know About

Using Facebook as a Nonprofit Marketing Tool

•Page Impressions, Visits, Unique Visitors

•Time Spent, Pages per visitor

•Emails opened, click-throughs

•Videos viewed, audio plays

Engagement & Reach

•Number of Mentions, Posts, Comments

•Recommendations

•Mentions-per-user

•Send This To A Friend

•Inbound links

Word of Mouth

•Offline media mentions

•Online media mentions

Earned Media

•Higher search results

•Greater search results “share”

•3rd party results

•Customer/stakeholder feedback

•Product sampling

Research

Search Visibility

Measurement Ingredients

Source: Qui Diaz, Livingston Communications: www.livingstonbuzz.com

4 Rules for Fundraising & Marketing in a Web 2.0 World

• Don’t let your online presence be just a “brochure” website

• Go to where people are, using the infinite variety of the Internet

• Flip the funnel: Tap into user participation (person- to-person fundraising, wired fundraisers, social media)

• Don’t get carried away by the hype; you still need all the offline stuff

Closing Thought…

Inspiration + Know how + Tools =

Change the World

Contact

• Jono Smith, VP of MarketingNetwork for Good 240.482.3211 jono.smith@networkforgood.org

• Website: www.networkforgood.org/npo• Learning Center: www.fundraising123.org• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jonosmith

References

• Beth Kanter’s Blog: beth.typepad.com

• Nonprofit Marketing Blog:

www.nonprofitmarketingblog.com

• The Nature Conservancy: www.nature.org

• Peter Dietz/Social Actions: blog.socialactions.com

Bonus Tip: Inspire Your Supporters

• Next time you find yourself agonizing over how to inspire someone to care about your

issue — whether its frogs or children, hunger or unspayed pets — back up a step.

Put aside your faceless statistics of catastrophe, step away from the “Canaries,” and

think about telling us something personal and true. Don’t tell us why we should care,

tell us why you care. We really want to know.

• Tell your organization's founding story once a year. Communications guru Andy

Goodman calls this one of the "sacred bundle" of stories - a profound reminder of the

deep values and moral struggle that gave rise to your organization's existence.

• Have a genuine cultivation strategy and calendar. Send emails to donors that thank

them, that report back on how you've spent their money and then offer an inspiring

anecdote or factoid. You can't thank donors enough, and chances are, you don't.

Make it a point not to ask for donations in these communications.

Bonus Tip: Inspire Your Supporters

• Ask your donors for their feedback and opinions on a regular basis.

Remind them that you know there are people behind those email

addresses.

• Offer periodic live chats or phone-in briefings with your CEO. This is

a staple of major donor fundraising, inexplicably absent from the

online giving scene.

• Offer real-life glimpses into the life of your organization. We are

entering an era when authenticity is arguably the paramount value in

marketing communications - a potentially massive shift from the

fakey-fake formula that still guides most direct mail.