What Rainie says, much of it related to the explosion of social media and mobile communications, applies to all messaging and communications, which makes these observations pertinent to fundraisers, and especially those in advocacy groups.

Some key thoughts:

• With hugely expanded networking capacities, there are many more — and new — civic actors, many operating independently.
• Four messaging opportunities — to traditional ‘paid media’ and ‘earned media’ now add ‘owned media’ (e.g., websites, customer service) and ‘shared media’ (e.g., social sites, YouTube) … all requiring communications strategies.
• Six stages of engagement — observing (Lurkers matter, he says), following, endorsing, contributing, owning, leading.
• Migration of authority away from organizations (like your nonprofit) to — traditional experts with new platforms (e.g., blogs), amateur experts who are avid contributors (some with tribes), new algorithmic authorities (e.g., Google, Bing).
• Different ‘attention zones’ — continuous partial attention to media streams, immersion in ‘deep dives’, info-snacking in free moments.
• All organizations under more scrutiny, where trust depends upon transparency — surveillance (powerful watch the ordinary), sousveillance (ordinary watch the powerful), coveillance (peers stalk peers).
• Age of big data is upon us, giving new power to analytics.

This is a powerpoint presentation, so you will need to fill in the blanks yourself. But it’s well worth the mental effort … a very stimulating presentation.

Lee Rainie, you deserve a raise!

Tom

But whether you’re new or a relative ‘old-timer’ with respect to social media, here from The Nonprofit Quarterly is an intelligent article that will help you think through what you’re doing — Four Reasons NOT to Use Social Media … and Why to Use It Anyway, by Christine Durand and Kristen Cici.

Their four reasons not to use …

1. It’s a fad — it’s going away soon anyway
2. What’s the ROI? I can’t see that it’s worth it
3. People will say bad things about us
4. Our supporters don’t use social media

Christine and Kristen examine the ‘truth’ behind each of these concerns, but then deliver the case — and sound advice — for doing it right. Hint: very explicit goals and metrics to measure progress against them are critical.

Nice job guys.

Tom

P.S. Thanks to Debra Richmond for the heads-up.

While this guide specifically looks at online political advertising, any nonprofit looking to target and engage a constituency online will find it very useful.

As the guide says: “What makes video advertising unique is its ability to incorporate calls to action and enable supporters to easily respond. So, not only can campaigns target a persuasive message to voters, they can fulfill secondary goals like generating email signups, helping voters find polling places—and, yes—raising cash.”

In other words, the techniques and tools presented in this guide are applicable to just about any online call to action.

While the guide provides case studies and strategic/tactical advice from various consultants, perhaps most useful to nonprofits will be the basic ‘nuts and bolts’ information — costs, online advertising types, format standards, video ad networks and what they offer, and various ad technologies that can add interactive functionality to online video ads.

Kate Kaye, you deserve a raise.

Tom

In my book, improving that rate of interaction is the toughest challenge for any nonprofit’s web team.

If anybody out there is doing better at ‘capturing’ website visitors, I’m sure Agitator readers would like to hear your secrets!

Especially since the job is getting harder by the day.

Along come social media sites, with their own engagement challenges.

And now comScore has just released some new data on on US mobile phone use in regards to social media.

Says comScore: “In August 2011, more than 72.2 million people accessed social networking sites or blogs on their mobile device, an increase of 37 percent from the previous year. Nearly 40 million U.S. mobile users, more than half of the mobile social media audience, access these sites almost every day, demonstrating the importance of this activity to people’s daily routines.”

Facebook alone has 57 million mobile users.

Adds comScore: “Mobile social networkers also were likely to interact with brands on these sites with more than half (52.9 percent) reading posts from organizations/brands/events. One in three mobile social networkers received a coupon/offer/deal, with one in four (27.7 percent) clicking on an ad while on a social networking site.”

Sure, plenty of opportunity. But how to capture it?!

The margin of error for ‘not getting it right’ on a small mobile screen is tiny. Mobile users want to see and (maybe) react instantly, often in a context of high distraction. Or they’re gone in a flash. They’re rarely on mobile to browse.The design challenge is huge.

Your run-of-the-mill website homepage is almost certainly inadequate to the task of engaging mobile viewers. As noted, already it works only dismally for leisurely web browsers, who can see much more of what’s on offer … and often, that’s too much!

And so, your work gets harder! Sorry.

Tom

With more time being spent on social nets, and Facebook in particular (it’s now having half billion user days!), it’s a platform nonprofits have to master. And at the same time, everything that’s ‘good’ for Facebook isn’t necessarily good for marketers … or for personal privacy.

Here are three articles that might give you some perspective on Facebook.

Probably of most direct and immediate help to nonprofits using Facebook is this excellent review of the current Facebook situation by Beth Kanter. As usual, her advice (which I read as ‘cautious optimism’) is sound, and her piece includes several very useful links to related resources.

Next, I’d point you to this item from Social Media Insider giving a commercial marketer’s perspective. Advises this writer, David Berkowitz: “There is no question that marketers need Facebook more than Facebook needs marketers. What do you do about it? Be engaging. Be relevant. Figure out what’s social about your brand. Set objectives. Measure results. Budget accordingly.”

A report from his agency on the changes notes: “The new changes should generate a tremendous amount of additional content on Facebook. That means brands will have an even harder time breaking through the clutter. Brands will have to be even more strategic, creative, and relevant to their fans to stand out.”

And for those of you who worry most about privacy, this Wall Street Journal article — Facebook Defends Getting Data From Logged-Out Users — should stir your juices!

I confess to still being an email guy, and a blogger on the side. But Facebook, warts and all, is a force to be reckoned with. As Beth says, however, stay focused on results … a ‘friend’ is not a result.

Tom

Here’s the official descriptive blurb:

The Social Change Impact Report “provides a detailed picture of the state of social change engagement in America: Americans’ beliefs about social change, the issues they care about, the motivations behind their engagement, the actions they are taking to further social change and the tools they use.”

Heaps of interesting stuff here if you’re in the social change or advocacy side of the nonprofit sector.

But here’s what grabbed me: “Americans say they are most likely to get involved in social change in the future as individuals acting on their own or in informal groups (52%)”

And: “Nine out of 10 Americans (88%) agree that digital technology can turn interest in a cause into a movement more quickly than anything else.”

Couple these two proclivities together and you see the potential large-scale abandonment of major social change and advocacy organizations.

Who needs them (i.e., your nonprofit), when you can do it all yourself, or with a few social net friends, digitally?

Faced with this ‘do-it-yourself’ mentality, what is your organization doing to maintain its relevance? If your core business as a nonprofit is supplying timely, specialized information on what to do to save some small bit of the world (isn’t that what most advocacy groups do, in essence?), are you relevant anymore to — or needed by — net-savvy would-be activists?

A possible ‘macro’ reason for the fall-off in donor retention?

Tom

Today we have even more social net data from Nielsen.

Like Pew, Nielsen notes some especially strong growth amongst older demographics, in this case pointing out that internet users over age 55 are driving the growth of social networking through mobile devices. 40% of all social media users access these nets via their mobile phone (37%) or IPad (3%) .

Nielsen reports that social nets and blogs now account for 23% of the time Americans spend online. The core demographic — female, age 18-49, educated.

While the research didn’t ask specifically about charitable giving, the report does note that 70% of active online adult social networkers shop online, 12 percent more likely than the average adult Internet user.

I would hypothesize a similar ‘consumer’ pattern with respect to online giving. Evidence: Social netters are 26% more likely to give their opinion on politics and current events. And without giving stat details, Nielsen says that offline, active adult social networkers are more likely than the average adult Internet user to be found at political rallies … tweeting, no doubt!

Finally, 53% follow a brand on a social net … it could be yours!

Tom

P.S. The report indicates usage of all the major social net sites, and includes some limited international data as well.

Says Pew in its latest study:

“Fully 65% of adult internet users now say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago. This marks the first time in Pew Internet surveys that 50% of all adults use social networking sites.”

And regarding Boomers, our largest giving cohort:

“… among the Boomer-aged segment of internet users ages 50-64, social networking site usage on a typical day grew a significant 60% (from 20% to 32%). ‘The graying of social networking sites continues, but the oldest users are still far less likely to be making regular use of these tools,’ said Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and co-author of the report. ‘While seniors are testing the waters, many Baby Boomers are beginning to make a trip to the social media pool part of their daily routine.’”

So, Boomers are climbing aboard the social sites in appreciable numbers … 51% have now “ever” used a social site. Beginning to hold fundraising interest for me.

Tom

But then I saw this video, reporting on what they have accomplished to date and hope to achieve next.

The 2011 September Campaign. Our 5-year-anniversary video from charity: water on Vimeo.

The video itself is great. It tells an inspiring story about what average donors — raising money in every way from lemonade stands to birthday gifts to dance marathons — can help accomplish, and shows the concrete results in dramatic fashion. Lives improved in so many ways from the simple step of providing clean local water.

Excellent program and superb fundraising.

But then I reflected a bit on the message.

Part of it featured a Ethiopian — described as a national hero — who has been painstakingly bringing freshwater to his fellow Ethiopians, one well at a time, constrained only by the fact that his team has only three drilling rigs … and most of the country to go.

Charity: Water wants to get him one more rig … so they’re asking donors for the $1.2 million required to purchase and fully support one mobile drilling rig.

All of a sudden, it occurred to me that this request of lemonade stand donors bordered on the obscene.

The very request for $1.2 million of charity money simply underscores the total failure of the international development community — from the World Bank on down, and including national governments, both rich and recipient. These entities have squandered literally billions on failed development projects for decades.

Then a tiny, by comparison, charity comes along and shows everyone how important — and relatively simple — it is to improve millions of lives by meeting a fundamental human need … clean, easily accessible drinking water.

Here they are, begging for your lemonade stand proceeds to buy one rig, when some incompetent, probably corrupt, bureaucracy could write a check for a hundred of these rigs in a nanosecond.

Don’t you find that upsetting, even obscene?

I don’t ask that to denigrate the program of Charity: Water. I’m glad they’re showing the world how to get the job done. And maybe by doing that, they’ll embarrass some dripping-in-money development institution to make a first-ever meaningful contribution to alleviating the water problem.

I guess someone needs to fill the vacuum and get done the practical work of drilling water wells.

But the other need is for well-financed policy advocacy designed to force development institutions to either get the job done, or shut down and stop pretending. Unfortunately, as cause fundraisers know, it’s a lot tougher to raise the funds for advocacy than it is to raise money for ‘on-the-ground’ projects.

Is there some group out there as smart about raising advocacy money as Charity: Water is about raising funds for drilling rigs? Nominations, please!

Tom

Also some cause examples — from Hunger Action Month to volunteerism to gay marriage foes.

ClickZ’ Politics & Advocacy is a good news feed if you want to follow political use — often at the cutting edge — of the digital realm.

Tom