Best Kept Secret?

January 31, 2007

Since last August, Dalton Fuqua at Craver, Mathews, Smith & Company has been systematically monitoring the online communications streams of fifty nonprofits — a broad range including advocacy groups of all persuasions, educational institutions and health/medical organizations.

He's been looking for interesting practices, patterns, innovations, trends, etc.

I've had a peek at his findings and was struck by one in particular.

Of the fifty organizations with which he registered online, using a nom de plume, ONLY FOUR experimented with contacting him in the mail.

So why is that a big deal?

Because the evidence is mounting that online prospects (including those who have signed-up online for a non-donating purpose … e.g., petition signing and e-newsletters) are quite responsive to direct mail appeals. Personally, I've seen e-petition names significantly outperform historically best-performing direct mail rental lists.

Target Analysis Group makes this important “migration” point in its recent Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis (see this Agitator post on their study):

“… a substantial portion of online donors migrate steadily to direct mail in lieu of online giving as they continue to renew and support the organization.”

Across their study group (12 organizations), a median of 46% of online-acquired donors gave via direct mail in their renewal year.

Can I guarantee this will be every group's experience? No, the data, as consistent as it is, is still limited. And, as TAG points out, groups vary considerably in how they have gone about mixing the two channels.

But, if it holds, this is a pattern of huge importance to nonprofit fundraisers. At the very least, each organization with any significant online fundraising experience (or even just a sizable email file) should be testing the proposition for yourself. By keeping donors segregated by channel for fundraising purposes, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.

I'm prepared to bet that truly integrated direct fundraising programs, smartly combining online with direct mail (and even telemarketing) appeals & cultivation, will outperform any “silo” programs. Of course this means your online folks and your direct mail folks need at least talk to each other (and preferably, be organizationally integrated)!

Not testing this important possibility is a cardinal sin. And if you're leaving money on the table as a consequence, you oughta be fired.

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More Online Benchmarking Data

January 30, 2007

Last week online benchmarking analysis just released by Convio. Take a look.

Convio presents a wide range of metrics culled from a panel of thirty Convio clients. Unlike Target, Convio doesn't reveal the clients whose data was used; instead, data is reported by issue groupings or “verticals” — animal welfare, environmental, Christian, health, public affairs, public broadcast.

The data is certainly worth reviewing, but I have to say I think Convio could have put more effort to mining their data for useful insights to share with the rest of us. After all, they've been at this quite awhile now, and hey, with GetActive acquisition, they're bucking to be industry leader! Too many of their “tips” seem far too elementary or superficial for the state of play these days.

For example …

    • How to improve web traffic? Promote yor URL everywhere. Offer compelling content. DUH!
    • How to grow your email file? Run viral campaigns. Ask for email addresses every time you interact with your constituents, whatever the media. Brilliant!
    • How to improve online fundraising results? Ensure good list quality. Make an effective case for support. Why didn't you think of that?!

Here's an example of how Convio could possibly have done a better job of helping us all move the ball forward.

They report that the median sign-up rate for converting website visitors into registered constituents for all clients in the study was — IMHO, a paltry — 2.8% per month. In other words, for each 1,000 visitors, only 28 captured email addresses. Thousands upon thousands of visitors are coursing through nonprofits' websites — at their own initiative, mind you, so they must have been motivated — but 97.2% of them are not finding anything so compelling as to make them want to sign-up for more.

Yeah, I know some might be repeat visitors who are already registered; even so, 2.8% conversion sucks.

So how, Convio, could we get better visitor conversion? Convio does note that its Christian client segment gets a 12.5% conversion rate (help from above?); next best is the “Environmental” segment at 4.7%. Convio suggests that the better conversion by the Christian groups is “due primarily to their innovative use of content such as rich media as a benefit of registration.”

ELABORATE please. Or at least identify the Christian clients so we can all rush over to their websites and see their better practices firsthand.

We all need to get better at this online stuff. Hopefully next year (they promise an annual update), Convio will give us some deeper analysis to chew on.

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What Political Campaigns Can Teach Nonprofits

January 28, 2007

With the 2008 presidential campaign underway, candidates like McCain, Clinton, Romney, Obama, and Edwards are already dueling for the “best internet campaign” honors.

These articles from the Washington Post, as mainstream as it gets, and Clickz News, an internet marketing online trade pub, provide excellent overviews of the variety of online stratagies and tactics that well-executed and funded political campaigns are employing.

Nonprofits should follow the political internet campaigns closely. There's a lot to learn here on someone else's dime. Here's why.

First, political campaigns' use of the online medium is all about zero-sum, cutthroat marketing … moving the hearts and minds (mostly hearts) of individual people and engaging those individuals in an ongoing, motivating conversation (leading to volunteering, proselytizing, donating and, of course, voting). No luxury here of “long term” brand building or laying the groundwork for a multi-year (decades) crusade for human rights or poverty reduction or global security.

These are roughly two-year-long winner-take-all marketing campaigns with a beginning, middle and end. Individual behavior (i.e., donating, voting) must be influenced or not in that time frame, then game's over. Watch how that affects online engagement tactics … the last thing a political campaign wants is passive viewing. That should be true of nonprofits as well.

Second, most of the political online campaigns will in fact be multi-media. And the smarter campaigns will adroitly blend traditional one-way campaign media — television, radio, direct mail and telemarketing — with the engagement tools offered by the online medium (including mobile media).

Obviously not all campaigns will be smart at how they go about this. Still, lots of lessons to be learned here about message consistency, media planning, cross-platform coordination, multi-purposing of creative work.

Third, political campaigns are all about targeting, and NO medium offers sharper or more dynamic targeting opportunities than the internet. Increasingly shrewd online methods will be used by campaigns to identify and then reach with precision messaging the various constituencies who are most favorably disposed to their candidate.

And the messages will be high impact, more and more using video and live/archived online events. Again, a lot for nonprofit marketers to watch and absorb.

Fourth, no candidate, even the relatively ancient John McCain, wants to be seen as out of touch with younger voters. And these folks of course are the most avid and savvy online users. Hence every campaign will have a sweatshop of smart young internet techies who will try anything and everything to use “old” tools (e.g., cell phones) new ways and penetrate “social networking” realms (MySpace, etc) to make sure their candidate is suitably hip and plugged in.

Your nonprofit might not be targeting under-35 year olds today, but sooner than you think you will need to worry about how to reach these folks to advance your mission. Watch the candidates as they try, and see how they fail or succeed.

Fifth, all the political candidates will try to use the new media (as a catalyst) to influence, even manipulate, the old media (which is still where the vast majority of voters hang out). That's part of the reason for this season's de rigeur campaign launches via YouTube … a way to ensure the mainstream media pick-up a very polished and packaged image of the candidate. If you're the communications or PR person in your nonprofit, watch this fascinating interplay between new and old media unfold over the next two years.

Of course, on the darker side, each and every campaign will pray for its opponent's “macacca moment” … the flub or insult or foot in doodoo captured on video by campaign volunteers (even staff) dispatched for that very purpose. Candidates will inevitably become more guarded and scripted, which is too bad for the democratic process. But still, if you're looking for lessons in ruthless guerilla warfare, this is the phenomenon to watch.

As the articles cited above report, online campaigning is already underway full swing. So get your notebooks out and start learning!

And, come May 18th, a good check-in point might be the Personal Democracy Forum 2007: The Flattening of Politics, which promises an all-star line-up of practitioners and pundits to review the impact of new communications technologies on the political and issue advocacy process.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Don't Miss these Posts, new media, online advocacy, online fundraising, politics | Leave a Comment 

If We Build It, Will They Come?

January 26, 2007

According to Vinay Bhagat at Convio, online giving has grown from $250,000 in 1999 to more than $5 billion in 2006. So what do we know?

Target Analysis Group and DonorDigital have collaborated to produce an excellent study on online giving patterns. Importantly, this report looks at online giving in the context of ongoing direct mail programs, using multi-year actual data … a first as far as The Agitator has seen, making the report “must read.” In fact, if you run a direct marketing program for a nonprofit and you do not read it, you oughta be fired!

Direct mail and donor data was supplied by an impressive range of organizations — the Alzheimer's Association, Amnesty International USA, CARE, Covenant House, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Humane Society of the US, Mercy Corps, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, National Parks & Conservation Assn, Union of Concerned Scientists, and US Fund for UNICEF. Another internet benchmarking group will be assembled in mid-2007. Be there or be square!

Key bottomlines for The Agitator:

    • The internet is serving primarily as an acquisition medium — a median 56% of all online donors to these groups were new in 2006.
    • Online-acquired donors have twice the three-year value of direct mail-acquired donors.
    • The longer a direct mail donor has been giving to an organization, the less likely they will begin giving online.
    • It remains to be seen how much the marketing tactics employed by different groups affects donors' online behavior — for example, the online renewal experience of these groups seems weak compared to others we've seen.

Guest Agitator Kristin McCurry of Mindset Direct gives us her take on the study:

Last week, Target Analysis Group released the findings of their first ever internet-focused donorCentrics collaborative group. This is available to us all, and is yet another example of their ongoing good citizenship in the sector – let’s hope they keep it up under their new Blackbaud ownership. Recently TAG convened a group of twelve organizations to share experiences and strategies and to discuss best practices in this rapid-fire area of fundraising.

Here’s the bottom line: These findings support what we as data-driven fundraisers already know - but this proves our point and is based on TAG’s large, diverse group of peers. The study essentially says that tried and true direct mail donors already on file do NOT tend to switch their giving to an online channel (see page 5 under Fig 2 and page 8 ‘Online Giving is not currently…’). They may do their research and check in on your organization’s results, but they are not using the channel to give. This was the case with members of this panel who, based on their size, undoubtedly have smooth-running machines to draw donors in online and process gifts. Where does this leave those of us in the sector who battle for a “donate now” button or worry we can’t handle a rush of giving online?

However, online donors – particularly those elusive episodic donors who come in on impulse during a disaster – will migrate to direct mail and other offline channels. So what is the right target for your organization? Is the web merely an acquisition source that requires offline follow-up and cultivation to provide lasting benefit?

Most of the organizations were big mailers and of course, this is a reflection of “what is” – current donors, current programs, current functionality on the web – not “what can be.” But the findings should be helpful for those of us trying to keep the expectations of leadership and over-exuberant boards in check.

To download the analysis with Helen Flannery and Rob Harris’s insightful overview, go to http://www.targetanalysis.com/.

Posted by admin | Filed Under You Oughta Be Fired, direct marketing, online fundraising | Leave a Comment 

Advice For Bill Gates

January 25, 2007

The Gates Foundation has been getting slammed by bloggers (see a compilation here assembled by Tactical Philanthropy) and other pundits for its head-in-the-sand (ooops, does that indicate a bias?) posture on the matter of socially responsible investing of its portfolio.

In case you missed Gates' position statement, it essentially says they're too busy saving the world with the billions they spend in grants to worry about adverse impacts from the mega-billions they invest.

The Gates Foundation posture indicates either that:

    • They are tone depth to the requirements, expectations and power of institutional leadership;
    • They are naive, or worse, disingenuous in dismissing their own capacity to assess the possibly deleterious impacts of their investments (some conceivably in direct conflict with their grantmaking objectives); or,
    • They are plain dumb or uncaring (and they are most certainly neither).

So let's deal with the first two possibilities.

First, leadership. In our book, when you're THE leader, you carry extra responsibility to, well, LEAD! It's irrelevant that most other foundations don't apply social impact screens to their investments. On the basis of size alone, the Gates Foundation has been bestowed the leadership mantle formerly worn by the likes of Ford and Rockefeller (both of whom do consider social impacts … see the Chronicle of Philanthropy's excellent review of this landscape from last May).

The leader sets the tone, sets the bar. The Gates' shouldn't lead us backward.

Giving the benefit of the doubt, it's conceivable that, as relative newcomers to the world of doing good, the Gates' and their inside advisers simply don't appreciate the degree to which the bully pulpit they occupy can carry tremendous influence. Even — perhaps especially — if the Gates Foundation were to single out and remove only one or two “bad apples” from their portfolio, the fanfare and consequent impact would be enormous. Other foundations would be encouraged to follow suit. Corporations would take heed. Who needs the publicity of being shunned by Bill Gates?!

Second, capacity. Do we buy the contention that the Gates Foundation would be unduly distracted from its grantmaking mission if it “diverted” staff from identifying the best solutions and partners for addressing the problems they have targeted? Absolutely not!

What are all those program staffers doing now, if not including in their assessments some evaluation of obstacles and impediments to progress? And surely, assuming they do so, they would readily identify, from time to time, corporate behavior that confounded their goals. All program analysts worth their salt working in any sphere should be able to identify the “bad actors” – governmental, corporate, or otherwise – whose practices are flagrantly contrary to the public interest. After all, somehow, harnessing all the brainpower available to it, the Gates Foundation has managed to conclude that tobacco investments are a “No!”

But let's move beyond criticism to a constructive suggestion. Bill and Melinda, are you listening?

How about if the Gates Foundation simply adopts a “Throw Out the Bad Apple” strategy?

The Foundation could have its program officers scan the investment portfolio once a year, and identify any particularly noticeable bad actors in their sphere of activity. Who should be identified as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution? The Foundation principals could then review that list and determine what high leverage opportunities might exist for making a very public point by either disinvesting, jawboning, or voting shares.

This procedure would not require some meticulous across-the-board application of multi-dimensional social standards to each company in the Gates Foundation portfolio (a standard we recognize some others might demand).

What it would require is good judgment selectively applied with some regularity and public purpose. And if your company winds up being singled out … hey, life's unfair. There's no shortage of more honorable money-making investments the Gates' could substitute.

If this were the standing practice of the Gates Foundation, then …

    • corporations on whom the foundation took action would have a big problem on their hands (bigger than the Gates Foundation seems or chooses to recognize),
    • other corporations in which the foundation was invested would realize that someday they too might fall in the bulls-eye,
    • other foundations might step up to the plate as well,
    • the program staff would not be unduly burdened (they'd just be “re-purposing” the solutions analysis they should already be making), and,
    • we grousers on the outside would feel that at least the Gates Foundation wasn't giving corporate ne'er-do-wells a free ride.

And we poor folk could get on with the far more pleasant job of complimenting the Gates' largesse, and asking others to follow suit.

Posted by admin | Filed Under General Post, philanthropy | Leave a Comment 

Gulliver’s Travels, Shock and Awe, and Other Recent Phenomena

January 23, 2007

Lord help the Lilliputians.

Judging from the excited phone calls along the grapevine, the blog traffic, the hits on the search engines and the comments of the 50 or so folks who make up the high priesthood of the online fundraising world, you’d think that last week’s $60 million+ cash acquistion by Blackbaud of TheTarget Analysis Group and the financially undisclosed acquistion by Convio of Get Active is the fundraising equivalent of Doomsday.

I'll offer my opinion and share the thoughts of several of the principals, including comments to The Agitator by Kintera's Richard LaBarbera and Convio/GetActive's Sheeraz Haji, plus a number of pundits on all this in a moment. First some some perspective.

In reality, as a slice of the American Fundraising Pie, these firms touch a teensy, tiny –albeit very visible, noisy, and growing – part of American philanthropy. A vociferous eddy of less than $500 million in a massive $185 Billion sea of U.S. philanthropy.

A merger of any two of the capital gift development firms, say Grenzenbach Glier and Associates and Brakeley, would put into question BILLIONS as opposed to MILLIONS. But that’s not flashy “online” stuff on which in our trade the gabbing grapevine thrives..

Of course, what makes this all so fascinating is rooted in the hype and hope of database technology and the internet. And the drama is fueled by those wonderful and struggling alchemists — consultants, early adopters, and fundraising pundits — attempting to turn the hype and hope into gold.

From the perspective of both the short term and intermediate term effects on American fundraising and philanthropy, these mergers and their imagined negative or postitive effects are about as important as a merger of Versace taking over Chanel would be to the cause of clothing the world’s naked and homeless.

It’s all a matter of scale. And right now little of this fuss matters much when less than 25 cents out of every $100 in contributions comes from the systems the online companies offer; or to a bewildered set of development officers conflicted between the aggravating simplicity and limitations of Blackbaud’s “Raiser’s Edge” and the mystery, complexity, sophistication and promise of Target Analysis Group’s offerings.

Having made the point about the importance of perspective let's take a tour of last week's reactions and the experts' prognoses of what all this means.

First I started with some of the folks who run the online consultancies and have a lot to lose or gain depending on how their clients are affected by the Convio/GetActive deal …

Continue reading “Gulliver's Travels, Shock and Awe, and Other Recent Phenomena”

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American Optimism Suits 2007 Fundraising

January 22, 2007

Pew Research Center recently published survey findings regarding Americans' attitudes about their financial prospects for the coming year.

If optimism equates with donor largesse, nonprofits should be in for a good 2007.

Some key findings:

    • About four-in-ten American adults say they are living comfortably, while another three-in-ten say they have enough money to meet expenses with a little left over for extras.
    • Two-thirds of adults expect their family's financial situation to improve over the next year by a lot (10%) or some (57%).
    • 81% of adults rate their overall quality of life as “excellent” or “good.”

Among college grads, the news suggesting ability to give is even better, considering that higher education is a primary correlate of higher giving. This group pulls up the averages:

    • Half of college grads say they are living comfortably, while another 32% say they have enough money to meet expenses with a little left over for extras.
    • Seven-in-ten college grads expect their financial situation will improve over the next year by a lot (13%) or some (59%).
    • 93% of college grads rate their overall quality of life as “excellent” or “good.”

Those ages 65 and older, the historic base of direct mail giving, most of whom are retired, are the least optimistic about their financial futures and their overall quality of life.

Posted by admin | Filed Under General Post, fundraising, philanthropy | Leave a Comment 

Vidmeter

January 21, 2007

If you need to monitor pop culture for professional reasons (sure!), or if you're just killing time before your next meeting, check out Vidmeter, a service that ranks viewing of online videos across all the major players — YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, MySpace, Atom Films, Revver and others.

The first of our readers to score a video in the top 100 — for your organization, that is, no “Crazy Jumping Cat” or “Hamster Dance Video” or bodily exposure qualifies — will win a memorable prize, courtesy of Roger, as well as the unrestrained public adulation of The Agitator.

Since I'm sure this post will cause a stampede to your digital cams and video cell phones, let me just caution …

As with every other direct marketing tool and technique, test, test, test.

Video content might significantly lift your e-mail appeal; it might not. It might draw impressive traffic to web pages describing your new major initiative; it might not. “Version A” might wildly outperform “Version B,” or vice versa. It might showcase the energizing charisma of your executive director; it might … !

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Lust

January 20, 2007

Did we say “lust?”

We meant HOUTLUST, a nifty blog originating in The Netherlands that offers a worldwide window to current nonprofit advertising and social marketing campaigns.

You're likely to see as much or more material regarding non-US initiatives as you will campaigns underway in the US of A, but all the better to get your creative juices stirred.

Campaigns currently featured include global warming (Germany), human rights (USA), women's rights (Brazil), youth counseling (UK), among others.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Pushing the Creative Envelope, communications | Leave a Comment 

Election 2006 Online

January 19, 2007

The Pew Internet Project has released Election 2006 Online, a thorough study of Americans' use of the internet in the recent elections.

While this report deals specifically with the internet as a source of political campaign news and as a vehicle for engaging with the elections, the patterns it reveals are important for all cause marketers as well.

The report indeed makes clear that an important and growing segment of the American public is turning to the internet as its primary vehicle for election-related engagement. But you should have no doubt that the same behaviors will apply to “politics” writ large … the whole spectrum of activities related to mobilizing citizens around issues, causes, and public affairs.

That said, looking at the Pew data closely, it is still important to keep the political internet boom in perspective. There's a tsunami on the way, all right, and you had better be mastering the medium right now if you operate in the political arena. But the big wave is still way out on the horizon.

To build a prime segment they call “campaign internet users,” accounting for 31% of all adult Americans, Pew included appropriate respondents to a number of questions. The “easiest” qualifier was saying “Yes” to this: “Did you get any news or information about the November elections on the internet or through email?” Not exactly a high bar if you ask me!

So, while many of these “campaign internet users” (less than one-in-three of all American voting age adults, mind you) reported that they used the medium to gather information on candidates' positions (51%), check accuracy of claims made (41%), or watch campaign-related video clips (32%), fewer actually engaged by signing up for campaign emails (9%) or contributing money (5%).

Similarly, 23% of “campaign internet users” (or 7% of American adults) did one or more of the following:

    • posted their own political commentary to a blog, website, etc.
    • forwarded or posted someone else's political commentary
    • created political audio or video recordings
    • forwarded or posted someone else's political audio or video recording

Among ALL respondents, only 15% named the internet as one of two sources where they got most election information. Even for the “campaign internet users,” TV and newspaper still rule the day as sources of political info.

Now that I've sounded this “don't sell your TVs and postage meters” note, let me repeat … The Wave IS Coming!

If your primary constituency is ANY of these — under 36 years old, college educated, earning $75,000+, or connected via broadband — Pew data says they are probably using the online medium as a primary tool for political involvement now. If they have ALL of those characteristics, and a sizable chunk of Americans do, they are definitely digesting their politics online. Even if only, as the Pew data suggests, as a matter of convenience … they want their information (political or otherwise, whether traditional or new media outlets) when they want it, and in the depth they want it.

Pew points to three likely drivers of more intensive use of the internet in the 2006 election cycle.

#1 is increasing broadband penetration (i.e., “always on,” fast … people use more).

#2 they opine is the growing internet savvy of the public (66% of Americans now have six or more years of internet experience … they know how to use the beast).

Neither of those drivers is going to reverse.

#3 is the particular interest and excitement the 2006 elections held, with possible changes in congressional control at stake. Certainly the “passion” driver won't reverse either, at least in 2008.

Read the report … it's really important stuff if you're a cause advocate or fundraiser. Just keep things in perspective … and know your audience.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Hot Research, pew internet project, politics | Leave a Comment 

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