There’s an underlying phenomenon here that’s highly relevant, I think, to nonprofit fundraising.

Pew reports that more than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store to seek help with their purchase decision:

• 38% of cell owners used their phone to call a friend while they were in a store for advice about a purchase they were considering making;
• 24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store; and,
• 25% of adult cell owners used their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else.

What’s really going on here? Consumers are looking for reassurance … and they’re looking for it from the source they trust most — other consumers who are friends or who have written reviews based on their own experience. And they’re looking for comparison information, specifically with respect to price … seeking value for money.

In short, they’re realizing … “I don’t need to be on my own making this decision. Advice is just  a few taps away.” They are being trained to consult with others because it’s so easy and immediate.

So, now they’re home, having purchased a new iPhone or iPad, and your prospect mailing shows up. What might they do?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that they’ll pick up the phone and ask a friend … “Should I give to Worldvision or Save the Children?” Although indeed some might inquire of a friend if they support either. Or they might recall reassuringly that a friend has ‘liked’ one of the organizations on their Facebook page.

What I do think many (most even?) will do is go online for some form of validation. They’ll go to the organization’s website and poke around.

And, given the consumer shopping experience described above, where peer referrals are hugely important, what should they readily find?

I would suggest — above all — TESTIMONIALS!

Testimonials both from very satisfied beneficiaries of the organization’s work and from real donors who appreciate the organization’s accomplishments. Testimonials in a variety of formats, from short quotes to short videos.

Secondarily, but definitely not with the same weight as the testimonials, strong ratings from the charity raters (or some other straightforward reassurance/evidence about financial accountability and transparency). Price comparison isn’t really a relevant concept in the fundraising setting. But reassurance about money being properly managed and delivering big bang for the buck clearly is.

Few offers (or solicitations) are considered in isolation anymore. The best thing you can do to address that reality is make sure your online presence is your prospect’s reassuring friend.

Tom

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

What struck me was that 76% of the Haiti text givers said their text contributions are “usually a spur-of-the-moment decision”, whereas 45% say that about their online contributions. The surprise is not that text giving is quintessentially impulse giving … to me it’s that such a large percentage, 50%, say that they “usually do  lot of research before donating” online. I would have expected online donations to also be more spontaneous.

This report has tons of valuable information …

• Haiti was the door-opener to text giving for fully 74% of donors who gave via that channel.
• However, nearly all of the 73% of Haiti text donors in this survey who belong to a group or organization, have made a monetary contribution to their group(s) in the past. In other words, most are established donors trying a new channel.
• Many of the Haiti text donors have given again via texting (56% to one of three specified disasters, and 29% to other causes).
• Mobile givers are more racially and ethnically diverse than the overall population of charitable givers. Whites comprise three-quarters (75%) of all charitable givers, but make up two-thirds (63%) of this sample of Haiti donors and just half (51%) of all text donors.
• 43% of text donors encouraged others to give, but 75% who did so encouraged others by talking face-to-face.
• After making their Haiti contribution, six in ten say they haven’t followed the ongoing reconstruction efforts (43% “not too closely” and 15% “not at all”). Here today, gone tomorrow.

There’s just too much in this ‘must read’ report to summarize here, including an interesting profile of text givers versus other givers, and a look at how text givers prefer to communicate with groups in which they are involved (surprises here).

Well done, Pew!

Tom

Seriously though, I’m not the Luddite I appear to be … hey, I sent two text messages today.

However, that does mean I’m dragging down the curve, according to the latest figures released by Pew Research.

According to Pew, for the American adult texting population as a whole (83% of US adults own cell phones and 73% of those text), the average user sends or receives an average of 41.5 messages on a typical day, with the median user sending or receiving 10 texts daily. This level of usage is the same as reported in 2010.

But hold on to your shorts, the median cell owner age 18-24 sends or receives 50 messages a day … and the average for this tap, tapping cohort is 109.5 messages per day.

Keep in mind that where smartphones are involved, texting is on top of all other uses , including checking email, taking photos, web/social net browsing, using various apps … and even talking. As for talking, 53% of cell owners still prefer to be reached that way if someone needs to reach them.

Most interesting to me is the education factor — against a mean for all users of 41.5 texts per day, the numbers are: for less than high school, 69.4 (I get that … kids); for HS diploma, 45.4; some college, rises to 53.0; College+, drops to 23.8. Most of the professionals I see seem to be texting more than that.

All in all … as a fundraiser, I’d still rather have your email address than your cell number. Any disagreement on that?

Tom

Drawing from a study by Jen Schradie reviewing Pew Internet Research data, he notes that education level is by far the most significant predictor of participation with the ‘social Web’ versus age or any other factor. The study tracked the relationship between socio-economic status and 10 online activities (using Facebook, blogging, video sharing etc) most likely to influence the public, opinion shapers and policy makers.

In an article titled Is the Internet for elites?, he concludes:

“The most vocal and active segments of the Internet are disproportionately debating, discussing and promoting the most elite-focused and elite-themed content. The logical result is that the ‘social Web’ seems less like a desperately needed haven of dissidence, envelope pushing and new thinking, and more like just a bigger but equally poorly produced version of ‘Hardball’ — a place dominated by talking points, gossip, status-quo worship and general politician star-f***ing, not by what rank-and-file America is generally interested in or worried about.”

What do you think? Is the ‘social Web’ just another Hardball or is it a venue for ‘envelope pushing and new thinking’.

If you’re only looking at political and issue debate, perhaps Sirota is right.

But many nonprofits and their fundraisers are not focused on that debate. Instead they are focused on a mission that is far removed from politics, be it digging wells in Africa or generating support for the arts in Boston. For them, social media are simply another channel to develop and engage with an interested community of believers. To say nothing of the individual empowerment social media enable … as demonstrated in our post earlier this week … If This Doesn’t Inspire You …

Tom

P.S. Sirota’s latest book is “Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now.”

Smartphone Adoption and Usage

• 35% of all US adults have a smartphone.
• The biggest users — those with income of $75K or more, college degree, under age 45, African-American or Latino.
• Some 87% of smartphone owners access the internet or email on their handheld; 25% of smartphone owners say that they mostly go online using their phone, rather than with a computer.

As we’ve asked before, what does your website look like on a smartphone screen?

E-reader & Tablet Ownership

• E-reader ownership has doubled in last six months, to 12% of US adults.
• Tablet ownership, now at 8%, appears to be leveling off; 17% of those with $75K+ income own one, and 13% of college grads.
• Confirming the overall trend toward adoption of mobile devices, laptop computers are for the first time as popular as desktop computers among U.S. adults.

Social Networking Sites and Our Lives

• 47% of US adults use at least one social network site (SNS), close to double the number in 2008.
• Half these users are now over the age of 35.
• 92% are using Facebook, 18% LinkedIn, 13% Twitter.

But the big news was political (the underlying survey was taken over the November 2010 elections). Says Pew:

“At that time, 10% of Americans reported that they had attended a political rally, 23% reported that they had tried to convince someone to vote for a specific candidate, and 66% reported that they had or intended to vote. Internet users in general were over twice as likely to attend a political meeting, 78% more likely to try and influence someone’s vote, and 53% more likely to have voted or intended to vote.  Compared with other internet users, and users of other SNS platforms, a Facebook user who uses the site multiple times per day was an additional two and half times more likely to attend a political rally or meeting, 57% more likely to persuade someone on their vote, and an additional 43% more likely to have said they would vote.”

I’ll wager that a question about involvement in issue advocacy would have yielded similar results.

Tom

We all know the growth is strong — 43% over the past decade. America’s 50.5 million Hispanics now account for 16.3% of the US population.

Five states — New Mexico, Texas, California, Arizona and Nevada — have populations that exceed one-in-four Hispanic. And nine states account for 76% of the total Hispanic population — Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York and Texas.

However, what I find most striking is the ‘diffusion’ of the Hispanic population throughout the country. 81% of Hispanics lived in those nine states in 2000, and 86% in 1990.

Moreover, the states with the largest percent growth in their Hispanic populations include nine where the Latino population more than doubled, including a swath in the southeast United States — Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and South Carolina. The Hispanic population also more than doubled in Maryland and South Dakota.

Do you think of any of those states when you think “Hispanic”?!

Bottomline … are you communicating with this population?

For nonprofits who have not traditionally addressed the Hispanic community, you have two alternatives:

Focus on making your existing program relevant to the Hispanic audience, and communicate that relevance in culturally appropriate manner. That is, address Hispanics as “Americans” with the same underlying hopes, fears and aspirations as any other Americans.

Or, identify areas/issues of unique interest and priority to Hispanics — but within your general sphere of concern and competence — and develop new programs addressing those areas. That is address Hispanics as having special concerns that your organization might not have focused on in the past.

For your organization, is it a communications challenge or a programmatic one? Or both?

Tom

Here are some findings. Among online adults:

• 16% sent email related to the campaign or the elections to friends, family members or others;
• 12% revealed online which candidates they voted for in the November elections;
• 7% used the internet to organize or get information about in-person meetings to discuss political issues in the campaign;
• 22% used Twitter or a social networking site for political purposes;
• 6% took part in an online discussion, listserv or other online group forum such as a blog, related to political issues or the campaign;
• 5% used the internet to participate in volunteer activities related to the campaign—such getting lists of voters to call or getting people to the polls;
• One-third (35%) went online to look for information about candidates’ voting records or positions on issues;
• 8% of online adults signed up online to have updates about the campaign or the election delivered to them directly;
• 31% viewed campaign-related videos online (jumped from 19% in 2006 Congressional elections);
• fully 20% went online to follow an interesting election campaign in another part of the country.

And for you fundraisers, 5% of Republican voters and 6% of Democratic voters donated money online in 2010.

The study includes plenty of demographic and political affiliation breakdowns of the stats. Naturally, on a trend line basis, virtually all of these numbers are up over the 2008 election, even though that election was a — presumably — higher interest Presidential year.

Tom

Here’s their latest report, Generations Online 2010, comparing the online behavior and internet use of Americans across generations.

In what they term the “biggest online trend” Pew reports that certain key internet activities — including donating — are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups …

• Email
• Search engine use
• Seeking health information
• Getting news
• Buying products
• Making travel reservations or purchases
• Doing online banking
• Looking for religious information
• Rating products, services, or people
• Making online charitable donations (Pew reports that 22% of adult Americans make online donations)
  
• Downloading podcasts

You can download the full report here.

Tom

Is it just a speed bump?

Or is it the beginning of the end for this historic cadre that has driven the planet’s cultural, social and consumer trends since we climbed off our tricycles?

The Boomer Project’s keen analyst of all things Boomer, Matt Thornhill, offered some observations on the milestone. He notes that two recent major studies — one by the Pew Research Center, the other by AARP — arrive at opposite conclusions.

Pew telegraphs its findings in the headline of its report: “Boomers Approach 65 … Glumly.” As the study says: “Perched on the front stoop of old age, Baby Boomers are more downbeat than other age groups about the trajectory of their own lives and about the direction of the nation as a whole.” And: “Fully 80% say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today” … well beyond the dissatisfaction expressed by other generations. Here’s the Pew study.

Fundraisers, I leave it to you … good news or bad?! Donors want to change things, right?

[Parenthetically, this recent Harris Interactive survey reports that all Americans are gloomy ... at least over the economy and their personal financial situations.]

AARP on the other hand only surveyed individuals who will turn age 65 during 2011. AARP finds this group generally satisfied and optimistic. Seventy-eight percent say they are satisfied with the way things are going in their lives today. And 7 in 10 say they have achieved all or most of what they wanted out of life. Here’s the AARP report.

What does Thornhill make of the contradiction?

“…with a generation some 76 million large, there are countless variations. You can’t sum up generational attitudes in a word or a phrase. There are tens of millions of very happy and satisfied Boomers of all ages, and there are some soon-to-be-65 Boomers who are depressed and, well, glum. The only thing we can tell you with certainty is that Boomers are not old. Follow the logic: the median age is 56 and, according to Pew, the typical Boomer feels nine years younger (so age 47) and thinks “old age” starts at age 72 — some 25 years in the future!”

Methinks Boomer glumness will only get worse, unless they all read Erik Erikson on aging! Because Boomers are yet to begin processing psychologically that — despite the hype that 70 is the new 50 — certain things, not all good, are inevitable!

Fundraisers: Given contradictory survey data, to be on the safe side, you better raise that Boomer money while you can!

Tom