I’ve had the pleasure of consulting closely with countless unique clients with diverse missions, yet all face a common challenge. They struggle to position their organizations effectively in a manner which communicates the impact of their organization to various demographic segments. The challenge, common among most non-profits, goes beyond messaging to encompass internal operational silos, departmental or programmatic territorialism, false profiling of market segments due to lack of proper evidence, and an overall challenge in defining each organization’s role in changing the world for the community they serve in an appropriate way – all the while addressing the communications preferences of disparate populations. Does this sound like too many balls to juggle in the air? I argue this is not the case.

More often than not, organizations approach challenges such as user-intuitive information architecture (navigation) on their web site and through other communications channels without taking into account how unlike individuals will navigate and interpret information. An exercise recently conducted with one client’s technology and web review board unexpectedly triggered surprised looks as board members realized for the first time that individuals tasked with the same objective in reviewing, critiquing or navigating a web site will not only interpret and perceive navigation, visuals, interactivity, and messaging differently, but will adamantly argue that their views apply to all. They’re all disagreeing, but they’re all right – their way is “the right way.” One of the first lessons I learned in my career in non-profit fund development and marketing came to me from a mentor and VP at the world’s most popular cola creator. In chairing my organization’s PR and marketing committee, he operated under the mantra, perception is reality.

Perception is, indeed reality. This is an immutable truth. And each individual will perceive differently, regardless of how appropriately we package our organization with targeted messaging, visuals, and interactivity. I would imagine that if you’re reading this blog, you’re a non-profit professional. Furthermore, I would be led to believe that you have a particular interest in driving outcomes – fund development, awareness, program, or countless others. I’m not psychic, I simply determined my audience prior to crafting this message. You may be a membership, conservation, healthcare, higher education, grant making, social service, or another variety of NPO, but we all have one unifying commonality. We all seek to achieve one of the aforementioned outcomes, and we do so by our ability to influence individuals.

In order for us to successfully influence, we must understand our audience. As an example, as I choose words in this blog, I’m cautious about my use of constituent, member, supporter, prospect, client, community member, and other words. In marketing terms, these are all held equal as the consumer. However, my guess is that my use of the term consumer may prevent this information from truly resonating with my various target audiences, whether it be a marketing, development, program, or other executive-level officer.

Put it in perspective – it’s the equivalent of having a conversation with a current or prospective supporter, a VIP who you know everything about, whether it be from experience and relationship or BI. From recreational and philanthropic interests, to where his or her daughter practices ballet, you’re hopefully educated on who the individual is, what he or she likes, and the appropriate means by which they should be solicited. The same is true for audiences online – audiences that have hopefully been defined and segmented to the fullest extent your due diligence and resources will allow or, as is unfortunately often the case, assumed that you know their motivations and interests and structured your packages and appeals (aka information in the form of a pitch) based on false assumptions.

If the latter is the case, the most important lesson any non-profit afflicted by this misdirection can learn is that everyone is different – the best thing we can do is understand and guide our operations by this principle so that we can unite and target information by commonalities among these varying populations of clients, supporters, and prospects. After all, diversifying your target demographic is like diversifying funding – if you can build affinity with a new group, or strengthen relationships with existing groups of supporters, you’re better able to solicit and steward these individuals in the most personal, educated way. Go forth, and question your web site. Does it inspire you to get involved? Are you compelled to give? Do you come away from this interactive experience better educated about how your support (money, time, connections, etc…) impacts your organization’s ability to deliver a meaningful impact to the constituency it serves? This questioning could continue in perpetuity; however, if you said no to any of the above step back. Breathe deeply. Define your existing audience as it relates to your mission. Segment them as appropriate. And finally, craft an interactive experience that boils the blood and inspires – an experience that does so with the same standard of personal touch you would provide your most avid supporters.

Josh Hopkins is internet solutions manager at Blackbaud Interactive where he works with organizations around the globe to deliver executable, constituent-focused marketing strategies that drive fund development and engagement success for clients. Josh has worked and volunteered extensively within and alongside the non-profit sector, serving as chief marketing and fund development officer for the nation’s largest Hispanic social service provider prior to the Blackbaud team.

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!

I imagine that if you’re reading this you probably know what a giving circle is, but let me just make sure. A giving circle is a group of individuals who pool their money and, collectively, decide where to donate that money.

Giving circles have been around for generations, and they are now becoming much more popular. Even I belong to a very loosely organized circle with some friends who support a couple of causes. We got together because we thought if we combined our money and made one larger gift to a nonprofit it would certainly make more of a difference. Have we made more of a difference? Dunno. Maybe I’ll do some analysis and make a future posting about that.

Touted as a way for people to get more involved in the fundraising process and to make a bigger impact with their donated dollars, giving circles make it hard for nonprofits to get access to individuals, where connections and real relationships are built. It’s through these personal relationships we build with volunteers and donors that our organizations grow, and how we “move” donors through a variety of stages, ultimately to a place where they are sincerely engaged in what we do. Giving circles take away our access to the individual and limit the interactions we can have at a one-to-one level. And, as giving circles grow and their interests change, it’s difficult for nonprofits to find funding for multiyear projects.

And, larger, more organized giving circles can require significant accountability reporting about the impact their contribution has made. While larger nonprofits may have the staff to fulfill these requirements, my friends at smaller organizations tell me they are hesitant to go to giving circles because of the reporting burden. Says a friend, “Going to our regional giving circle is like going to a major foundation. There are just too many hoops to go through, and I don’t have the staff to do this.” At the same time, she has found that several of her “rising donors” now give exclusively through the circle, effectively eliminating her access to them directly.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Happy Fundraising!

The text on the balloon reads, “Drive one day less and look how much carbon monoxide you’ll keep out of the air we breathe.”

The takeaway here is to always be on the lookout for original ways to get your message out there. Getting impressions via alternative methods can have great results, as seen here.

Via, AdGoodness.

• 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.

So, I’m bowling on my Nintendo Wii the other night, and got to thinking about how easy, fun, and approachable the system is as a whole. Even my parents like it! Maybe this bowling game could be put to good use? How about a Wii-a-thon?

Maybe this can actually compete with a real bowl-a-thon, but for certain organizations hosting a Wii-a-thon might appeal to a more youthful audience. This could increase participation, donations, and media awareness. Nobody is really doing this yet, so this might be a good opportunity to get noticed in your community.

Here are ten reasons why a Wii-a-thon might be right for you:

1. Bowler’s average scores are higher (more $$$).
2. You don’t need an available bowling alley.
3. Participants can wear their own shoes.
4. Physically limited bowlers can participate.
5. Bowl-a-thons could span time and location.
6. There is no cost if you have access to a Wii.
7. Bowlers can rock & bowl to their own music.
8. Participants won’t smell like a bowling alley when they get home.
9. Multiple locations could be used to increase participation.
10. Actual bowling is tired, Wii bowling is wired.

Happy bowling!

But a huge part of facilitating processes involves communication among people and departments. I’m wondering what we can do to better allow users to communicate with each other through our products? And where would this type of functionality be most useful? We’ve already taken steps in this direction in specific areas - Major Giving cultivation, for example, where we’re looking to improve the ability of fundraisers and their managers to communicate progress and status on their prospects. But I think this is an area we can explore further and really take advantage of some of the newer tools available to us.

It seems like there are some key characteristics of situations where in-product collaboration would be most useful:

• The specific context lends itself to questions, clarification, and a general discourse on the value, interpretation or significance of what is being shown. Obviously, part of this characteristic includes the need for multiple people to be interested in the context.
• There is some value in being able to capture this conversation in a centralized place and in close proximity to the subject of discussion.
• The relationship and proximity of the people involved encourages online communication. People who share a cube are less likely to use something like this than are people who are spread across departments and separated by some distance. Probably more value to larger organizations than in smaller ones.

Examples where in-app collaboration might be useful include:

• KPI dashboards and other reports - this type of data display can immediately provoke questions, clarification and discussion around its meaning and implications. Why is this trend happening? Can we expect to make this goal? What events may effect the future of this data? An ongoing discourse of this kind if very healthy for an organization, and could further enrich the usefulness of this type of display.
• Major giving cultivation - all of the intricacies involved in cultivating a prospect are often difficult to capture in a set of pre-defined fields. Ongoing conversations about the propensity and inclination of prospects could potentially be managed through in-product collaboration features.
• Event management - planning large events takes a huge amount of communication, and decisions are made quickly constantly throughout the lead-up to the event. Centralized management and documentation of the decision-making process could help ensure that decisions are communicated clearly and people don’t spend time repeating past discussions.

Relative to other more prescriptive features, in-product collaboration solves an “ill structured” business problem. In some ways, we may not know how (or if) users would employ it until it is in actual operation. How might this type of feature fit into your organization? Do you see opportunities for improving communication through in-product collaboration?