January 2008 - Posts
(originally posted on BlogBaud)
Before coming to Blackbaud in 2004, I spent many moons on the interactive design/information architecture/user experience/visual communication side of the world. So while I’ve been immersed enough in the technical bits & bytes to grok about it — my interest and passion has always been with the human rods & cones side of things.
A major focus when we started building our Blackbaud Interactive group was to provide a comprehensive set of design services. This meant bringing in a lot of talented designers with experience in both the for-profit and nonprofit world. I’m proud to say that we now have one of the largest and most experienced interactive design teams serving the nonprofit industry operating from both our Charleston and London offices.
Blackbaud Interactive recently began work on its 100th complete website redesign project built on NetCommunity. What started out as a new part of our overall online design services has grown dramatically. The team does a variety of redesign strategy, information architecture, usability testing, content analysis, creative concept and styleguide design, and other services for our clients. I thought I would share some important lessons learned to help organizations about to undertake any website redesign project.
Don’t Accept Blind Designs: There is still a practice of design shops offering to do “blind design” or “speculative design” in an attempt to earn a client’s business. This usually involves a design shop taking some thrown together or recycled designs and presenting them as part of their RFP or proposal. There might be some initial “ohs” and “ahs” but these fade once discussions start about a client’s goals, objectives, brand, etc. Good creative work never happens in a vacuum. Good creative work takes careful analysis, two-way discussion, and uses a proven process that brings the best ideas to the surface.
Don’t Design by Committee: A camel is a horse that has been designed by a committee. Committees often destroy the creative process because more minds don’t necessarily mean more great ideas. Groups of people have the tendency to pile on so many extras that the original concept collapses under its own weight. Getting buy-in from various stakeholders is important, but our experience has shown that making a single individual or small group responsible for approving creative concepts is the best approach.
Don’t Fall Prey to the NASCAR Effect: The homepage of a website is one of the most important parts of any online presence. And everyone wants to have their program featured front-and-center. This explains why the main page of so many sites resemble the front quarter panel of a stockcar. Lots of graphics, icons, links, sections, callouts, and content in a small space — all fighting for eyeball attention. If everything is important, then nothing appears important. Not to mention that their are actually some heuristics around how much is too much and what is usually just right.
Don’t Move All of Your Old Stuff: If you bought a brand new house, then you probably wouldn’t you just move all your old stuff in without doing some clean-up. Otherwise you end up with a great new place that quickly starts looking just like your old digs before too long. A site redesign offers a great opportunity to go through all of your content, images, etc. and give them all a good scrub down. In addition to any new information architecture or content analysis activities there should be some content cleansing. A good rule of thumb is updating or dropping any non-historical content that hasn’t been updated in eight months. Also check the website traffic logs for least visited pages that might need to be revived or retired.
Don’t Launch without a Soft Launch: Sadly, I’ve seen it too many times. After months of redesigning a brand new site comes the big public unveiling and within minutes someone finds a typo or a broken link or something worse. This usually happens because there wasn’t a soft launch of the website to certain key insiders and a select group of external constituents. Get a fresh set of eyes on the site before launching it to the rest of the world. Even the best designers and content authors develop a certain amount of “tunnel vision” from staring at the same pages for too long. They practice the coin toss for the Super Bowl. You should practice the launch of your website.
These are just some of the key pitfalls to avoid when launching your newly designed online presence. The website you save might be your own.
(originally posted on BlogBaud)
There are a growing number of nonprofit focused blogs and I keep an ever growing list. Here are some blog entries that caught my eye this morning:
Allan Benamer - Allan’s latest entry is about Project Agape and his concerns that their Causes application on Facebook is not raising a tremendous amount of funds for nonprofits. I think it’s way too early to declare the winners and loosers because relationship building doesn’t translate into dollars over night.
Beth Kanter - Beth has a good post about the Social Media ROI and she references a blog entry from Tim Davies in the UK about Comparing Social Media with Paper Media to get a better perspective on things. This is some good thinking. If you took half of your 2008 printing budget, then what could you do online to get better results?
Don’t Tell the Donor - “A fundraiser” is concerned about the impact of a recession on nonprofit organizations. The entry also references a live discussion put on by The Chronicle of Philanthropy where several experts from the industry give their Outlook for 2008. Worth reading.
Marc Pitman - Marc covers “Fundraising Secret #11: Don’t be a Ned” using a reference from Groundhog Day. The entry explains why marketing approaches that sound more like an insurance salesperson are dead on arrival.
Philanthromedia - Susan Herr wraps up here three-part series on Promoting Sustainable Change in Africa. Content like this is really valuable because it deals with impact. Showing the impact of a program, not just the high-level goals, is an effective way to engage constituents online.
(originally posted on BlogBaud)
Yesterday’s 2008 Digital Communications for Charities Conference here in London was pretty interesting. A very big crowd, some good presentations, and a lot of great discussions. The panel discussion about transparency got rather spirited as everyone seemed to have an opinion about what and how much to disclose to supporters. It also seemed very clear that not-for-profits in North America share some of the same challenges and questions as those in the UK and Europe.
To get a better perspective on things across the pond I reached out to one of the local experts. Howard Lake launched UK Fundraising in 1996 and it’s one of the most respected sites in the UK covering the Third Sector. We met at Blackbaud’s European Conference last October. Here are some brief questions and answers that we exchanged this week:
Q: ”The New Year always brings an opportunity to try some new approaches and techniques. What new trends in online fundraising are you seeing in the UK?”
A: “I can’t say I can see any trends across the sector, but, as elsewhere, some charities are trying out the growing number of tools - Facebook etc, blogs, podcasts, user generated content/online communities, etc. But it’s still a minority interest. You’ll see some sites now offering links from content to the social networking/book-marking sites (e.g. Charities Aid Foundation, Institute of Fundraising) but it’s still very unusual to see those icons/links on charity sites. Also, RSS is being used more, but again, it’s primarily for press releases/front page news rather than across the site e.g. jobs, appeal updates etc.”
Q: ”The Institute of Fundraising has been leading an effort to make radical reforms to Gift Aid. What do you think the future holds for Gift Aid?”
A: ”I don’t expect HMRC or government to shift on this. They can still argue that the sector isn’t making anywhere near enough of the opportunity it presents.”
Q: ”Web 2.0, social networks, and people-to-people fundraising are still getting a lot of attention, but not-for-profits are still looking for results. Do you think charities in the UK have embraced these tools enough?”
A: “No. (smiling) I think, as in past uses of new media, many charities focus, understandably on a few key elements of online fundraising - online donations, promoting events, using Google AdWords. Now you’ll have a few developing a YouTube channel, or using the new MySpace nonprofit space, but will they also be encouraging supporters to share volunteer fundraising event experience/expertise on their website? Do they know if their fundraising news alerts are being distributed in RSS? Are they using any of the free online resources to find out about grant opportunities There are very few that seem to embrace or at least test the wider range. Even now, how many UK charities have a Facebook app, or even a Facebook page? So, still lots more to try, I’d say.
(originally posted on BlogBaud)
I am in London this week visiting some Blackbaud Europe clients and presenting at the 2008 Digital Communications for Charities Conference. The event is being hosted by Professional Fundraising magazine. The main presentation is all around integrated communication and how working in silos within charities means that digital media is currently set adrift.
I have used quotations in presentations for as long as I can remember, and I usually try and put in something relevant to the audience. For this presentation (and blog entry) I’m putting a new spin on the English poet John Donne’s famous phrase:
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were…”
- John Donne, Meditation XVII (1623)
Many nonprofits find themselves awash in an island chain of programs and data silos. Every program has its own goals and objectives that often result in a fragmented landscape. Major giving programs guard their constituent information, the annual fund staff does the same, membership keeps different records, volunteer information exists in spreadsheets, and anything online is set adrift with the Web people. To build successful relationships you can’t maroon constituents on any of these islands. No constituent is an island.
Relationships between people and organizations are multi-faceted. We interact across multiple channels that often intersect in very unpredictable ways. Nonprofits have used traditional channels such as events, direct mail, person-to-person meetings, telephone, and many more for a long time. The Internet adds an entirely new and often different set of channels. Web, email, RSS, person-to-person fundraising, social networks, and other online capabilities continue to transform how nonprofits can interact with constituents.
A key change is to stop thinking in terms of online vs. offline, but instead you should start thinking of them as simply different channels. For the most part, people no longer see the spatial differences between online and offline. The two are blurred in most interactions and the expectation by constituents is that they are properly recognized no matter the channel they choose. Imagine if you deposited a check at the bank but the online banking website had no record of it. Imagine if you purchased concert tickets online but the box office didn’t know about it when you arrived to pick them up. Now just imagine what your constituents are thinking about their interactions with you.
People only come in units of one. (Or at least that true in 99.99% of cases.) Splitting them up or having lots of duplicates can have dire consequences. (Ever seen the movie Multiplicity?) A channel driven approach allows you to personalize interaction across programs, but still keeps people in one piece. This allows organizations to make more strategic decisions because they can look at all the touch points with a constituent. And running an event, sending a mailing, or personalizing content on the website is always more successful using this approach.
You can’t think strategically or act tactically if your constituents live on islands. It will only take one or two bad interactions before they build a raft and sail off to more friendly surroundings. Don’t let that happen.
(originally posted on BlogBaud)
A very popular term thrown around in buzzword bingo games for the past 20 years or so has been CRM. The for-profit world defined it as Customer Relationship Management and companies like SAP, Siebel, and Oracle have built very large technology companies around the concept. In the nonprofit world we prefer to call it Constituent Relationship Management and Blackbaud is one of a few companies that provide solutions around the concept.
CRM grew out of the disco database marketing days where companies and organizations crunched through mounds of information in an attempt to sell more widgets or reach more people. The problem with relying on just data to make important decisions is that data ≠ information. What decision makers really wanted were systems that could track every interaction, connection, transaction, and other important events to build a more informative picture of the relationship. And thus, CRM was born.
Companies like General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Ford Motor Company, and Wal-Mart spent hundreds of millions of dollars on sophisticated CRM systems to sell more jet engines, shampoo, toilet paper, cars, dog food, and household items. Over the years CRM became a lot more sophisticated and companies like Amazon.com, Costco, JetBlue and Target took things to a whole new level.
What these innovators understood was that it was very myopic to define “customers” as just people that purchased one of their products or services. A much broader view is that customers can also be influencers, trendsetters, early adopters, referrers, and have a hand in other important roles. In a highly competitive global market, managing those relationships and retaining those relationships has never been more important. The word “customer” has been redefined.
Nonprofit organizations have also been making the transition from “donor database” systems to solutions that enable the entire constituent relationship to be managed. They understand that fulfilling their mission and satisfying the needs of stakeholders requires more than just a place to put data about dollars and events. Organizations have been gradually embracing the concept that a constituent isn’t just someone who donates to the organization.
In the past, I’ve given presentations about the three different ways individuals ”give” to nonprofit organizations. People give their time, talent, or treasure. (cue the visuals)
An activist might give their time to support a cause, an accountant might give their talent and serve as a board member, and an alumnus might give their treasure through a major gift. (I think you get where I’m going here.) A traditional fundraising model might be entirely based on moving individuals from time to talent to treasure. But a more modern approach is to acknowledge that constituents may have their only interaction with an organization through a time/talent/treasure relationship.
I used to think that this broader definition was overstating the obvious. But I continue to talk to organizations that still have an old school view of things, and worse yet, nonprofits that have a progressive view but are stuck with systems that still don’t get it. The other limiting factor to success is having multiple disparate systems to track and manage different types of constituents. Activitists in one system, alumni in a another, donors in another, major donors in another, corporate contacts in another, online donors in another, volunteers in another, direct mail recipients in another, email recipients in another, and no ability to look across groups to better personalize the relationships.
Bits and bytes won’t entirely solve the need to redefine what constituents mean to nonprofits. This is a bigger philosophical shift to understanding that every individual and organization that interacts with a nonprofit is a valuable relationship that needs to be nurtured and developed over time. Technology can help carry some of the load , but it will take the leaders of nonprofit organizations to point the way.
(originally posted on BlogBaud)
Last week, Target Analysis Group released the latest Index of National Fundraising Performance. The index reports on fundraising results at 72 large, national nonprofits that have 39 million donors and over $1.9 billion in contributions.
There were some important findings in the latest index including the following:
- “After the disaster-heavy, record-growth year of 2005, index revenue reverted back to typical growth rates in 2006. Revenue growth over the first three quarters of 2007, however, was below historical averages.”
- “While revenue grew, donor numbers declined. This continues a decline that has been happening for several quarters; the index has not had an increase in donors since the third quarter of 2005, which brought in most of the revenue related to hurricane Katrina relief efforts. “
- “In the absence of donor growth, the revenue increases that most organizations experienced this year to date have been due to increases in revenue per donor.”
- “Acquisition and reactivation rates were both down and retention rates were fairly flat”
These trends aren’t very good and the index notes that “at some point increases in revenue per donor may not sustain overall net revenue growth.”
Mark Rovner blogged about this the other day and in the posting noted three big opinions:
- “The era of cheap direct mail and high response rates in acquisitions is over”
- “What currently passes for an online fundraising model is at best a stopgap”
- “This is not just about direct response. This is not just about philanthropy. EVERYTHING is going to change.”
I recommend giving Mark’s post a careful read because he hits the nail on the head. The revolving door of acquisition focused direct mail is in trouble and the same approach with email is equally doomed. The organizations that succeed will be those that build relationships and combine both online and offline channels to do it.
And then Seth Godin chimed in with the following comments on his blog including:
- “As soon as commerce started online, many non-profits discovered lots of income from their websites. This was mistakenly chalked up to brilliant conversion and smart marketing. In fact, it was just technologically advanced donors using a more convenient method to send in money they would have sent in anyway.”
- “The big win is in turning donors into patrons and activists and participants. The biggest donors are the ones who not only give, but do the work. The ones who make the soup or feed the hungry or hang the art.”
The reasons for the decline in donor growth are varied but the trend should be a wake-up call to all nonprofits. And the online activities of nonprofits are not immune to the problem. Many organizations have seen positive initial results through email marketing efforts, but by the second go around the retention numbers plummet. Email is no more a silver bullet than direct mail if organizations don’t retain, build, and steward their relationships with constituents.
This is why strategies or tactics or technologies that separate online and offline are ultimately not successful. Doing one and not the other or doing both of them in silos is a recipe for disaster. I’ve never met a donor that labels themselves as “online” or “offline.” How can you build a true relationship if both online and offline interactions can’t be leveraged?
While the information in the latest Index of National Fundraising Performance is not encouraging, it is good to see these issues being discussed on blogs, in articles, and hopefully in meetings as well. Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Answers? Let’s keep the conversation going…
(originally posted on BlogBaud)
The new book People to People Fundraising: Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Charities recently hit the bookshelves. It was around this time last year that I was sending the draft of my chapter in the book to the editors.
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…