If you really wanted to delve into money and politics, you joined Common Cause. Into human rights, you joined Amnesty. Civil liberties, the ACLU. Into the environment, a variety of choices.

These organizations provided inside, in-depth information to their trusting followers, and steered them into effective grassroots lobbying.

In retrospect, I’m not sure many of these groups fully appreciated the critical importance to their members and donors of their information-providing and interpretive role. The evidence of that is the separation in many — if not most — such groups between the “communications” and “fundraising” teams.

The internet smashed this information monopoly, and made citizens much less dependent upon cause groups as information providers. Perhaps this is part of the reason prospects now look for more “added value” from the groups they’re likely to support. Information is no longer sufficient … that’s ubiquitous. What counts far more now is performance and results … now — also thanks to the internet — more easily assessed and compared across organizations working in the same issue area.

Take the environment, for example. Why join the Sierra Club or EDF if you can get your “enviro fix” for free from Grist?

Grist today delivers nearly 1 million page views a month to 500,000 unique visitors and 290,000 email subscribers. Whether you’re into policy and lobbying on climate legislation or simply want to make prudent daily lifestyle choices, you can get the guidance you need from Grist.

And check out their demographics — 93% have college degrees, median incomes are $66K ( a third over $75K), and — hugely important for those enviro groups who would love to have Grist’s readers — their median age is only 41 years! And 89% have communicated with a politician in the past year. Talk about envy!

Of course, Grist itself doesn’t lobby … it doesn’t plant trees or take care of hiking trails … it doesn’t run conservation programs in developing countries or buy vulnerable land. It trades in information.

Do you have a “competitor” like Grist who trades in the information you once “owned” and held sacred in your area of focus or expertise? If so, how are you adding value for your members and donors?

Tom

My error. Still learning to cut & paste … which could explain why I’m so focused on the basics!

Tom

I suggested a simple first step, like including photos of the signers of your letters and emails. So far, no one has dumped on the idea.

Ray Mitchell commented a few days later, and I didn’t want his observation lost in Comment never-neverland. Says Ray:

"What you posited is a critical concern, and what you suggested is so very far from dumb!

My own view of organizational relationship management dynamics — and the one I try to pass on to all clients — is that it’s rather the same as in the personal relationships between people. The more important and valued a personal relationship is, the more personal one should try to make the communication and interaction with that individual.

It’s not complicated. We all do it — by instinct! A greeting card with a friendly note on a birthday or anniversary. A phone call of concern when someone is ill. A gift of flowers when a friend is grieving over the loss of a loved one. In all of those situations, we personalize the message and the “touch” as best we can.

So, too, should organizations in every “touch” with a constituent/donor. Put faces to signatures. Communicate with them as we do with friends, and they will be inclined to feel and respond as friends. It’s not rocket science. It should be just everyday instinct!"

Well said, Ray.

Tom Belford

Just like radio.

Forget this prediction. In fact, ignore all the "death" and "next big thing" predictions.

Focus instead on the direct response fundraising results of your own organization. Let the hard data drive your program … not anyone’s predictions (including The Agitator’s).

If you have a reasonably sophisticated direct response fundraising program, you are probably using direct mail, online solicitation, and telemarketing … each to varying degrees of success in different fundraising contexts. And if you’re really on top of your game, by now you’ve noticed how these approaches can reinforce and lift one another. And, beyond that, you’ve probably noticed some important patterns — like the irritating fact that first-time online givers don’t make as many repeat gifts as you expected, or that, lo and behold, they prefer to make repeat gifts via mail.

That’s plenty of hard data to absorb and use to optimize your fundraising program. Sure, watch for the trends and adapt your media mix accordingly. And lift your heads above the weeds from time to time to scan the horizon and consider changing demographic and media usage trends.

But until you see evidence of the various trends — or the next big thing — happening in your own returns, don’t panic … and especially … don’t throw away your postage meter!

Tom

P.S. In fact, we have a DonorTrends white paper that examines donor preferences across generations in terms of giving channels. It’s called Postage Still Dominates, But Mouse Gaining. You can get it here.

P.P.S. OK, I’ll make a prediction. If all your competitors spend 40% less on direct mail over the next five years (spending the "savings" however they like), and you continue spending on mail at your current rate, you’ll have the better returns. So spread the word … Direct mail is dead!

So my curiosity was peaked when this article by Karl Greenberg, Market Research Must Get Real, Not ideal, popped up. The article cites Nathan Berg, a professor of economics at the University of Texas, who asserts current market research frequently assumes an impossible degree of analysis by consumers, and that people who know less frequently make a better-informed choice. He says: "There is a faulty idea that more information is better. Most people don’t consider all options. In fact, being smart means making fast decisions before you consider everything." In effect, faced with complex choices, people eliminate options rather than select among them.

OK, I’m interested. As a marketer, I’m fascinated by trying to figure out what’s going on in people’s heads when they make decisions … keeping in mind that the brain processes facts and emotions.

The article introduced me to the fascinating work of Dr. Robert Deutsch, a cognitive anthropologist. You can learn about Dr. Deutsch and his work here at Brain Sells.

His bio says: "Dr. Deutsch has created a unique approach to uncovering what he calls ‘the primal, macro-structures that people live in today.’ This approach … encompasses procedures for discovering the primal symbols, images, metaphors, and stories that reside in the public mind when imagining a particular product, person, or notion … Dr. Deutsch is one of the leading strategists on how the mind creates beliefs and how beliefs can be influenced. As he is known for saying, ‘Data or attributes are not the issue. The mind evolved to act, not to think.’"

This is my kind of guy!

Deutsch has applied this methodology for such varied clients as the Foreign Ministry of Japan, Dunkin’ Donuts, American Express, Apple and National Geographic.

As quoted in the Greenberg article, Deutsch says some, well, heady stuff (stay with me here):

"The primal mind makes patterns; branding predates marketing by 3.5 million years. What contemporary marketers call ‘brand’ is actually a primal and primary mechanism of the mind: it is attachment, a metaphoric merging between a person’s ‘self story’ and a person’s story of you, the product, the company … People have a sense — perhaps not fully formed — of who they are and what’s latent in them."

Deutsch says, in fact, that brand loyalty is self-loyalty. "There is no such thing as product loyalty; that’s commodity-based. Attachment leads to self-loyalty. It looks like product loyalty, but it’s not; it’s ‘through you I become more of me."

Doubt all this mumbo-jumbo? Consider: therein lies all the undeniable power of liquor and cigarette advertising … to say nothing of the Mac, iPod and iPhone!

In effect, a brand works — your cause will appeal — when the individual feels empowered and responds: "I can become more of myself."

In short, fundraisers, forget the facts. Well, don’t exactly forget them. Just remember they are mere props for creating a feeling state. Focus on helping your donor feel that he or she can realize their potential through you — through what your nonprofit means to and affirms about that individual.

If you have to try to change their mind about something, you lose!

Any arguments?

Tom

P.S. Perhaps this is all a glorified way of saying: "It’s the list, stupid!"

Agitator reader Dave Raley has a theory about this. I reproduce his comment below.

My own — perhaps too blunt — spin on Dave’s theory is: Direct mail fundraisers know how to raise money; online "fundraising" is left to techies who don’t.

Here’s Dave’s comment:

"I have a theory about this whole idea that donors are migrating from being acquired online to giving offline. Actually seems to echo Jill’s earlier comment.

Goes something like: Acquire a donor online + Poor/inconsistent/infrequent online cultivation + Good/frequent direct mail cultivation = Online donor migrates to direct mail

We saw this with a client of ours a couple years ago perfectly. We looked at donors acquired online and sure enough by the end of year one they had “migrated” to giving offline. BUT the client had a very young online communications stream at the time. So in my mind, no wonder those first gift online donors “migrated” to direct mail – that was the channel the ministry was best at asking in!

We have spent years and years fine-tuning the best direct mail campaigns, but relatively little time in figuring out the best new media campaigns – so of course donors are going to migrate to offline, if only because that is the channel they are being best cultivated in. Now, I’m willing to admit that perhaps online is really good at influencing gifts, and direct mail is really good at being the channel the donor actually responds in, but still, I think I’ve got a pretty good theory here."

I think you have a pretty good theory too, Dave.

Agitator readers … ask yourselves: Is your online fundraising in the right hands?

Tom

When I reported Millard’s death in The Agitator last month, I just wanted to get the word out the day his extraordinary life ended. The next day he was buried in a simple pine box at Koinonia, the Christian community in southwest Georgia where he and Linda Fuller dreamed up the idea that became Habitat for Humanity. More than 600 mourners showed up and I’m sure thousands more of us wished we could have been there.

Two days ago, on Saturday, I sat with Ellen Church, the CEO of Craver, Mathews, Smith where we worked as fundraisers with Millard for almost 20 years. We were among a group of nearly 1000 others packed into the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. once co-pastored with his father.

And what a celebration! A tribute to the man with the audacity to believe we can end poverty housing in this world.

The celebrants came to Atlanta from all over, from every continent. They included President Jimmy Carter, former First Lady Rosalyn Carter and a sampling of other volunteer builders and donors, and most importantly the “homeowners”– the folks who now live in a simple decent home thanks to Habitat for Humanity and The Fuller Center for Housing. For those who couldn’t come to Atlanta the service was streamed live on the Fuller Center’s website and will be repeated soon.

We sang, laughed, cried, rejoiced and ‘amened’ to the rafters. ‘Joy’, ‘admiration’, ‘love’ and ‘loyalty’ were the key descriptors in this remarkable tribute to Millard. Never have I been part of anything like it.

Linda Fuller, Co-Founder of Habitat and Millard’s wife and partner for nearly 50 years, organized the memorial event around a “Million for Millard” campaign aimed at providing one million people with decent homes – a monumental goal to honor a man incapable of thinking small.

Each of us was given a carpenter’s nail apron containing the bulletin for the memorial celebration, the mission statement of the Fuller Center and a pledge envelope for the “Million for Millard” campaign, On the way out everyone lovingly placed their envelopes in wheelbarrows located at the rear of the church. Millard would have loved it.

Roger

Here are two examples …

M+R Strategic Services (look for "Ups & Downs of Online Giving") talks about theirs … with interesting results from Oxfam America.

And Nick Allen of Donordigital makes some observations about number of gifts remaining steady, while average gifts decline. His point … donors hang in there, they just give less. Here’s what he says in his e-newsletter …

"Average gifts were down 20% to 35% in December 2008 compared to December 2007, but the number of donations was about the same. That’s what we’ve seen for several clients. The good news is that most donors continue to believe in the organizations they support. They continue to give, but — no surprise — they’re not giving as much as they did last year, especially at higher giving levels.

At the Target Analysis Internet Benchmarking meeting last week in New York, some organizations reported the same trend, while others reported year-end 2008 hit projections. Many groups were seeing a drop in $500+ gifts, which can have a big impact on average gift!"

Anyone else want to share?

Tom

No one knows for sure what makes for great viral marketing. And those who claim to know are usually wrong.

One thing’s for sure, the message and the technique not only have to shock or surprise they have to glide along on top of the current wave and capture the moment just like any great surfboard champion.

Well, with the wave of concern over the soap opera that’s become the U.S. presidential race –dramatized in extemis by the Vice Presidental choice of John McCain– the climate is ripe for the “concerned”, the “interventionists” and the plain “off the wall.”

I’ll leave it to you to decide what category the following falls in to. Whatever your choice, please be aware that my mailbox alone this weekend received more than 120 copies of this –about 5 times the normal traffic on this sort of thing.

All the emails arrived in my box with the same Subject line: “Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands.” Followed by a short and simple message: “Check this out, new movement to elect a different kind of president.”

That brief text is followed by this link:

http://www.tsgnet.com/pres.php?id=46832&altf=Upn&altl=Cfmgpse

Regardless of your own view of the presidential and vice-presidential races, I can guarantee you that tens of thousands, or maybe even hundreds of thousands of folks are shooting this off to friends and family even as I write this.

I only regret that this ingenious piece doesn’t lead to some action like voter registration or even an offer of asylum to all of us from the Canadian government. But then, we do know that if you “tell them what to do” that probably won’t work.

Roger

P.S. The truth is if he weren’t so old and could also shed his unfortunate habit of undiplomatic candor and speaking the truth, Tom would make a great candidate.

P.P.S. Don’t be modest. Click on the link and enter yourself –or even your dog or cat – into the race. Ain’t democracy fun? More importantly engage in some analogies and think how you could use this in campaigns and other special donor involvement events.

1. Video is Bigger Than Search: 12 billion videos are watched per month vs. 10.5 billion searches conducted.
2. Video Consumption is Quickly Moving Online: 19% of total video consumption is now online, versus 11% a year ago.
3. Most Users Consume Video: 80% of Internet users watch video, moving to 88% by 2012.
4. Consumption is High Across All Demos: 76% of children and 44% of seniors watched online video.
5. Video Is Fastest Growing Ad Category: Video advertising will growth 45% this year vs. 37% for social media.
6. TV Scale is Accessible Online: Many vendors now represent unique and volume numbers that are larger than prime-time TV.
7. Video is Highest Performing Unit Online: Pre-roll video outperforms all traditional display units on brand lift, brand recall and lift in purchase intent.

Not a disinterested party, to be sure. But still … Bottomline: the scale and usage is there … whatever reach and demographic you might want to target.

BrightRoll’s CEO, Tod Sacerdoti, has a blog you might want to check out. Clients like National Geographic and Liberty Mutual. Naturally, lots of BrightRoll pitching on Tod’s blog, but informative nonetheless … especially if you want to get into the weeds a bit.

Tom