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.

The book covers a variety of important topics related to how nonprofit organizations can leverage Web 2.0 and other social networking technologies.

The contributors to People to People Fundraising bring with them a lot of experience and this is an excellent way to either start or enhance your understanding of this important trend.

My task during the writing process was to put together the introductory chapter for the book. So the challenge was to paint a broad, but still vivid and engaging, picture of what people to people fundraising means in order to setup the rest of the book. Amazon.com has the “search inside” feature setup and the chapter appears as the excerpt. Click here to take a look at some of what made it into print, including this paragraph of prose:

“A fundamental reality of fundraising is that people give to people with causes, not to organizations. Buildings and brochures may in some ways influence people, but they cannot hold a conversation. People need to feel a personal connection to the causes and initiatives they choose to donate to. The power of personal content, communication, and collaboration all combine to create a sense of community.”

So where do we go from here? Lots of places, hopefully. Over the next year I will be spending a lot of time writing and talking about applying the notion of people to people fundraising in a variety of different ways. As always, this needs to be a two-way conversation so you feedback and ideas are very important. With that in mind there will be some upcoming ways to get engaged in the dialogue. Stay tuned…

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.

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?

That’s where SixDegrees.org, AOL Instant Messenger, and Network for Good come in. Someone had the brilliant idea to put these three ingredients into a giant Web 2.0 blender in the hopes of producing a tasty, social fundraising smoothie – and it looks like they have succeeded.

With Kevin Bacon as the natural pitchman, 6Degrees.org is asking donors to choose a nonprofit, then get 6 friends to give to the same organization. Network for Good is covering the online donations, while AOL’s MySpace equivalent AIM Pages handles the social aspect. The idea is to use a social network to form impromptu giving circles…got it?

No? Here, I’ll let Mr. Bacon tell it like it is:

All you have to do is use the AIM for Good module on this page. Simply pick the charity that you would like to rally support for, enter up to six e-mail addresses of your buddies and family members, and write them a note asking for their support. The e-mail that they’ll receive will give them the opportunity to give, right there, to the charity you’ve selected. All transactions will be private and secure.

Another way you can help is by making your own AIM Page, which can include the AIM for Good module on it too. So, when your buddies stop by your page, they’ll be reminded to get the word out and rally support with their friends and families.

While I love the concept, the whole things feels a little thrown together. When you read about it, or hear Kevin talk about it, it’s not crystal clear who is involved and exactly what you are supposed to do. With some tighter integration and better defined user paths, I can see this program really taking off. Cheers to everyone involved!

But will nonprofits flock to DoGooderTV instead of free alternatives like YouTube or Google Video? DoGooderTV will always have a captive audience looking for nonprofit content, but whether or not organizations will be willing to pay for that placement remains to be seen. Tracking…

Update: Michael says:

The site is 100% FREE! A new version is online now that allows nonprofits to create basic home pages and upload video.

That’s great news from the DoGooderTV camp - not only because the the service will be free, but social elements like creating pages are coming sooner rather than later.

Social sites are built to encourage sharing, and few things are more effective and inexpensive than viral marketing. While maintaining your own Web site will always be a priority, there are other ways to spread your organization’s story via the Internet.

Here are ten social web resolutions that can give your nonprofit an edge in 2007:

• Create a page at MySpace.com
  Your donors are getting younger, or at least they are acting younger…so should you. Reach out to them via MySpace.com this year. Setup a page for your organization, gather friends, post bulletins, and point people back to your online donation page.
• Go in-world with Second Life
  Get an account started at Second Life, and take your nonprofit into the virtual world. This is cutting edge internet marketing, so getting started now may get you closer to tech-savvy donors who are looking for something different. Have a meet-up in Second Life to discuss your annual campaign or just chat about issues. If you do it right, Reuters might show up and cover the event in the real world.

• Share videos at YouTube.com
  Engage your donors with real life moving pictures! YouTube.com has put the whole world in the director’s chair, and that includes you. Get your promo videos out there, start a video blog, and begin to integrate new videos into your campaigns. People like people, and your donors will appreciate seeing you.
• Share your photos at Flickr.com
  A picture is worth a thousand words, so even a few can help show your mission to the world. Setup an account at Flickr.com and start tagging! Add desktop wallpaper and posters that your supporters can download.
• Archive your organization at Wikipedia.com
  Do a search at Wikipedia.com - is your organization there? Get it added as soon as you can. Not only are Wikipedia entries becoming the go-to reference source, but they are showing up very high in organic search engine results at Google and Yahoo!.
• Start your own blog
  It’s 2007, which means it’s time to start a blog. Your donors are doing it, the organization down the street is doing it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your kids are doing it. You can get one setup and running in a matter of minutes with the free tool Blogger.
• Start Podcasting
  The spoken word is a powerful way to convey a message, and this is even more pronounced in the nonprofit world. The written word is a powerful force, but is easily trumped by speech. A downloadable interview with your board, DOD, or donors is be a great way to share your mission with Web visitors.
• Share your links with Del.icio.us
  Social bookmarking may be new, but I bet your browser’s favorite list is jam packed with useful links. If they relate to your mission, create an account at del.icio.us. By adding and tagging bookmarklets, you can share information with coworkers, board members, and donors.
• Join LinkedIn.com
  It’s simple…sign up at linkedin.com, network with others that do what you do, and learn from them.
• Bring the Social Web to your site
  This one is easier said than done…believe me, I know. Even if it’s just a discussion forum or blog, get something on your site that will allow visitors to participate. Go further and implement team fundraising or giving circles - these provide your supporters a vehicle to engage one another and further your organization’s mission.

These resolutions are really just ideas - hopefully a few of them will make sense for your organization. The key here is that the Web is changing rapidly, and social concepts are becoming an expectation of your donors. Use these tools now to get ahead, before you get behind.

Happy New Year everyone!