In Montreal, the group L’Itineraire is going to use the city’s old parking meters to help raise funds for the homeless. The project is being led by municipal politicians and they hope to have 34 fundraising meters up and running by the end of July.

I’ve never heard of such a thing before and thought it was really cool and wanted to share it with you. If you’d like to read the full article, it’s on The Chronicle Journal site.

Whatever your comfort zone, these technologies are here and as the public grows more Web savvy, they expect you to be up on the latest trends. One of my favorite parts of this new tech wave is that it’s relatively low impact on one’s budget. The Internet has in fact given Joe Public the keys to authorship through numerous free social networking and blogging sites. (They even let me on!) So, aside from the obvious commitment of time and creativity there’s no reason for you not to join the game.

Next question: What might a nonprofit use such tech for? Well, on a VERY informal basis, I surfed to a few well known nonprofit Web sites who I figured would be up on their tech and might offer some good examples. I found stories of volunteers and people touched by the organizations, but they had pretty much all gone through marketing first. What I was hoping for was a direct voice of organization members and volunteers.

Never fear, this building is full of people who work with wonderful people like you every day. So I asked around and found an org (who is a client) who is doing some very cool things—Jesuits of the California Province. I do want to say that I’m not trying to hawk our products here. I just want to point out some of the ways this org is trying to connect with current and new constituents as soon as they surf in. And if you have some other great examples, send them in! The more people see, the more ideas we can generate.

The Jesuit Home page offers options to compose multimedia prayers, listen to or download podcasts, join discussion boards, read blogs, or listen to music composed by Jesuits. There is lots of other information on the page, but these are all interactive ways to give surfers a full picture of what the organization does. It also gives them access to other constituents and the people who make the organization work. This means that surfers are connecting at a person-to-person level with real, unedited people. And that makes a big difference.

I can offer up another example—Science online. Science is a well-known, high-profile scientific journal, also part of the nonprofit community, that normally serves just the scientific community. On their Web site, however, they’ve expanded their outreach to try to include educators and a broader audience. Full articles are restricted to members, but you can see right in the middle of the page a link to their podcasts, which provide free access to the same topics covered in the journal. Their multimedia site also offers interactive videos perfect for use in the classroom and complete with teacher resources.

In this case, Science is opening up parts of their value that is normally reserved for members only and sharing it in a new, more accessible way (way more user-friendly then the peer reviewed articles). This offers extended benefits to teachers, who may surf on more often for teaching tools, and students, who may start by saying “This is neat” and end by having a serious interest in science.

The point is there are ALWAYS ways to make your site more interactive, adding value and a gee whiz factor at the same time. That translates into more people who want to check out your site, who want to spend more time on your site, who tell their friends about your site, and who ultimately may be more likely to get involved.

I have to admit, sheepishly, that I’ve never really thought about day of week or time of day with regard to sending email. It’s become such an all consuming and amorphous medium that if you’re like me, you start checking it shortly after waking and don’t stop until right before bed–seven days a week.

But when you’re trying to get someone’s attention to act on your product, in this case, your mission, timing can be important. The article, “Timing for Success: When to Fill Consumers’ Inboxes,” gives the lowdown from marketing professionals about when they get the best responses from emails. For example, Tuesdays generally see the busiest email traffic, while Saturday sees the least.

Most of the information is anecdotal, but it offers a great starting place to think about how you can make sure readers have the time to open and respond to your message. Now get emailing!

• Consider your audience. You have people of all backgrounds and experiences surfing as equals. To accommodate this wide-spread audience, you’re going to want to write at about a ninth grade reading level or less. Newspapers generally follow this principle. They want their work to be as accessible as possible and so should you.
• Think about attention span. (again) As we continue on in our sound-byte driven, media overload world, people’s attention spans seem to shrink at a rate equivalent to the speed with which new toys for them to play with are developed. Not to be cynical or anything. What I’m trying to say is that you need to get to your point quickly. If you don’t capture attention quickly, your reader might surf on.
• Think about the mechanics of reading on screen. Depending on the machine a person is using, the screen size and thus the amount of text seen can vary widely. This is one of the reasons that long Faulkner-esque paragraphs don’t work well. Also, it’s really hard to follow visually as you scroll. Keep paragraphs shorter with a decent amount of space in between them.

Another quirk of Web reading is the effect your Web site’s design might have on readability. Always think readability when you’re looking at design! It doesn’t matter how pretty your site is, if you’re using yellow text on a checkerboard background, I, at least, will have a headache about five minutes after I start trying to read. If I even decide to put in the effort.

I’m absolutely sure none of you have gone to that extreme; however, color choice may have a bigger impact then you think. For example, my mom once had a boss who was colorblind. Someone sent her an email with callout text in yellow. Guess what? She didn’t see anything.

If you want to learn more about Web readability/accessibility, check out the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Keep these high-level tips in mind, and all the wonderful things your high school English teach taught you about grammar, and you should be headed on the right track.

Before I get to the meat of what I want to talk about today, a very quick intro. Unlike some of the others on the blog, I’m a bit less techy. I’m a word person. As such, I want to talk about the power of words…

What first drew you to your own organization? What was it about the mission, the people, the results that made you want to dedicate your time? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Whatever the answers to those questions, those are probably the same things that are going to motivate donors and volunteers. As you all know, it’s much harder to say no during a face-to-face solicitation then it is over the phone or through the mail. If your communications with prospective donors and volunteers personifies your mission, it’s going to be equally hard to say no.

Use the voice of the people on the ground—blogs from community organizers or field agents, videos of the direct benefits of your work, recordings of the beautiful music you create, and donor stories that tell why a person had to give are all ways to get your message out there.

This is what your freshman composition teacher was talking about when he or she said “Show; don’t tell.”

It’s one thing to say my organization provides medical help to third-world countries. It’s another to show you the before and after pictures that show what a difference removing a five-pound tumor from someone’s face makes (if you’re brave—some of the images are on the graphic side: http://www.mercyships.org/site/c.agLOI4OFKrF/b.1078001/k.AC82/Success_Stories.htm). Creating that human connection is what makes people open their hearts (and subsequently, their pocketbooks).

You’re probably saying, “We already do that. We have a whole section on our Web site for success stories.” But that generally requires digging. It means that someone has to care enough about your organization to go looking for the story. You want to catch the casual surfer and keep that person’s attention. Keep your success stories. Having that library shows the range of your successes. But also feature a Reader’s Digest version of your most compelling success on your Home page. Link it to the full version and the rest of your successes. Keep the stories human and include whatever detail pulled at your heart. Combine it with easy access to a donate button and who knows what might happen.