The Charity Place

Count Malaria Out on World Malaria Day

It's World Malaria Day on 25th April, and I was asked to show support by displaying a button on this blog, linking through to the campaign.  (You'll see it on the right, next to this post.)

Even though I haven't blogged here for some considerable time, I'm happy to oblige if it helps to raise awareness even in a very small way.

Half of the world's population are at risk of malaria and, according to the World Malaria Report, published by the World Health Organisation, there were 243 million cases during 2008, resulting in 863,000 deaths.

According to the charity Malaria No More, more than a million people die of malaria every year.  Most are young children under five years old.  In Africa, the disease currently kills one child every 30 seconds.

But virtually all of these deaths are avoidable.

In countries such as Ethiopia and Rwanda, where mosquito nets, medicine and insecticides have been distributed, deaths from malaria have already been reduced by over 50%.

So, what can you do?

• Pledge your support: 'Count yourself in to Count Malaria Out and join the global community in working to ensure that every man, woman and child in malaria-affected regions has access to essential prevention and treatment services by 2010.'
• Make a donation to a charity that works to save lives from malaria?  Malaria No More, as the name implies, focuses on putting an end to the suffering and death caused by malaria.
• Help to raise awareness by displaying the button on your blog and/ or website, by joining the Facebook page and sharing it on your profile, and following World Malaria Day 2010 on Twitter and retweeting to your followers.

It's a beautiful world

You might have noticed that it's gone a little bit quiet at this blog lately (quieter than usual even).

The reason?

I've recently launched an agency called Beautiful World.  We do fundraising, marketing and communications for charities and other organisations that want to do the world some good (no surprises there, I'm sure).

I've started Beautiful World with two beautiful business partners, Simon Frank and Adam Waller, both of whom I've done great work with with before at other charity specialist agencies.

Social media is one of our specialisms (naturally).  We've already helped a number of charities get started with Twitter, get better at Facebook, get buy-in across their organisation, develop integrated social media strategies, build communities of support, and begin to leverage them to fundraise, and engage with volunteers, campaigners and other stakeholders.

We're also helping charities integrate their online and offline activities - because giving stakeholders and supporters a genuine, joined-up experience of your brand, across all media channels, is more important than ever now everything (and almost everyone) is joined up online.

We also know a thing or two about how to measure and evaluate your fundraising, marketing and communications activities, and how to use data (the information charities hold on their databases, including how donors were recruited, how many times they've donated, how much they've given, when and how often, what other types of support they have engaged in) and web metrics to improve results and return on investment.

We've just helped one charity more than double their projected income AND halve their mailing costs - which has tripled their return on investment.  I can't tell you how happy and proud we are about that.

Anyway - and returning to my original point, finally - I'll be posting content over at the Beautiful World blog from time to time now, as well as from time to time here, although you'll still mostly find me on Twitter!

Serious fun from SXSW - the Social Media Nonprofit Poetry Slam

I've just been catching up with this session - run yesterday at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas - via the Twitterstream and the links to various blogs that people have shared in their tweets.

Conducted entirely in rhyme (yes, really), the session was moderated by Beth Kanter, with contributions from:

• Danielle Brigida - National Wildlife Federation
• Wendy Harman - American Red Cross - National Headquarters
• Carie Lewis - The Humane Society of the United States
• David Neff - American Cancer Society [Judge]
• Katie Paine - KDPaine & Partners [Judge]
• Holly Ross - NTEN [Judge]

Unsurprisingly, Twitter is mentioned heavily - along with a range of other social media - in the examples shared by the panel.

Beth has kindly shared a comprehensive range of content from it here, on her blog - including the slides, transcripts of the poems recited by each of the panelists, along with a variety of links to help you get a fuller picture of the nonprofit case studies, experiences and insights that the session pulled together and shared.

And here's a video (via the NTEN blog) of the panelists in action:

Looks like a lot of fun, whilst making a serious point about how charities - and brands in general - are re-evaluating their traditional views on metrics, measurement and ROI to account for a different style of engagement with supporters through social media. 

It's really quite clever to deliver a session on measurement and metrics in such a unusual and engaging way - reflecting how social media enable nonprofits to engage supporters in helping them meet their challenges in new and innovative ways.

Beth also shares some reflections from the session on her blog here.

Twitter - Advice from The Chronicle of Philanthropy

I wanted to share this article entitled, 'When Characters Count: Advice for Charities on Making the Most of Twitter', by Caroline Preston from The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

It contains a variety of examples of nonprofits using Twitter in various ways - which might be useful for those considering starting to use Twitter or wanting to understand more about how to get the most from it - and some useful advice from 'nonprofit social-media experts', including the following list:

Find out where your supporters are. Do some casual research to learn if people who care about your cause are talking about it on the site.

Listen to others. If you sign up for Twitter, don't just start blasting information about yourself and your organization. Find out what people are saying about your charity, and what information they're looking for.

Don't be a bore. Readers don't sign up to follow a group's Twitter account because they want a litany of links to press releases. That's what RSS feeds are for. So inject some personality into your messages.

Be professional. While for an animal-rights group blogging about vegan recipes may make sense, posting about how disappointed you were in last night's episode of Lost probably doesn't.

Engage with users. Twitter is a two-way dialogue: You send out messages, and readers and supporters will probably respond with questions and suggestions. Nonprofit officials who use Twitter say they try to respond to some, if not all, of the comments they get. Even Lance Armstrong, who has more than 130,000 followers on the site, sends out general responses to all of his followers if he has been asked the same question again and again, says Jeff Manning, online marketing manager at the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Monitor your account. In a recent tweet, Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, compared Twitter to owning a dog: "Among other things, you must walk it a few times a day or you are in trouble." Claire Sale, social-media specialist with the American Red Cross, agrees. She says that charities can risk losing readers and respect, at least among Twitterati, if they let their accounts idle for too long.

Tiptoe into fund raising. Twitter followers cannot replace loyal donors, and charity officials should not neglect the latter while experimenting with one-time campaigns on the networking site.

Develop guidelines. Not every staff member at your charity should be using Twitter in the organization's behalf. Choose one or two people to be in charge of the group's Twitter account.

Avoid taking offense. Because anyone can jot off a quick comment via Twitter, a charity is almost certain to receive a few negative, and even nasty, messages.

Read the full article here.

So, what's the big deal about Twitter?

You might have noticed that I quite like Twitter and, if you've been reading some of the posts on this blog or following me on Twitter, you'll probably know that I think it can be a powerful addition to a nonprofit's toolbox - with all manner of uses.

Because of this I'd meant to blog specifically just on Twitter for charities and nonprofits - including an easy 'how to get started' guide - since the spring, but I always ended up feeling like there was already so much information out there that there wasn't any need for more.  Conversely, I'd come across at least one interesting Twitter-related story or service, or gain a new insight, every day and find I almost had too many reasons to blog about Twitter that I got to the point where I didn't know where to start, or what level of detail would be relevant to most people. The result: I didn't write the posts.

So, why write about Twitter now?

I realised over the last few months, partly through organising NFPtweetup in November, that although I may be connected to a number of people in the nonprofit sector that use Twitter and who are pretty Twitter literate (twitterate?), there are still many more who have never heard of it, are not sure what it is, don't know how to use it, or understand how it might be relevant to them, to their professional role or their organisation.

At around the same time (the latter part of 2008), I also became aware that Twitter was about to become more important; that its reach was about to extend beyond the somewhat niche audience of techies, bloggers, entrepreneurs and media types that had been the early adopters of Twitter, and into the mainstream.

How is Twitter entering the mainstream?

Celebrities and politicians started to use Twitter, which sparked interest from outside the Twitter community and from the traditional media (not just tech journalists); from gossip columns, tabloid press and broadsheets - and, most recently, even international television news.

The US election really started to put Twitter on the map - both John McCain and Barack Obama had Twitter profiles hard at work as part of their campaigns, and Obama's use of social media, in particular, was dissected across the web, by bloggers, marketers, fundraisers and clued up journalists.  Not long after that, our national treasure, Stephen Fry, started tweeting, followed by various celebrities, including Britney Spears (you can't get much more mainstream than Britney Spears), John Cleese and, most recently, Jonathan Ross.

Ross (who tweets as 'wossy') has been getting a fair bit of media attention recently, too, in the wake of the 'Sachsgate' controversy, so the press have been very keen to report on how he has been filling his time during his enforced sabbatical, by following his Twitter stream. In fact, over the last month or so, barely a day has gone by without Metro running a Twitter-based story in their new column, 'The Ridiculant', Jonathan Ross or otherwise.

And when Britney Spears started tweeting, it was covered by all the usual celebrity columns and magazines, which meant that readers of 'Now' magazine heard about Britney's house move via Twitter.

According to a recent report from The Telegraph, even the Church of England's Bishop of Buckingham, The Rt Rev Alan Wilson has become a fan of Twitter and has been enjoying following @wossy's tweets.

I'm betting that Jonathan Ross and Stephen Fry will mention Twitter on @wossy's show, when he returns to our screens this Friday (perhaps they'll even tweet live?).  If they do, it's bound to mean that Twitter becomes even more widely adopted.

Regardless of whether they do or do not, Twitter hit the International headlines, including a spot on BBC News, last week when the pilot of US Air, Flight 1549 had to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River. You would have had to have been living in a cave to have missed the story of how 'citizen journalist' Janis Krums, took the first picture of the remarkable scene with his iPhone, posting it to Twitter, from where it spread across the world before the traditional news networks had even picked the story up (not the first time Twitter has been credited with this power).

Why is all of this important and relevant to charities and nonprofit organisations?

Twitter has 'come of age'.  It has enough users now that it's become an established part of the landscape, it adds so much value to so many people and organisations, it is permeating the offline world more and more now and it has already outlived one of it's competitors.  It feels to me that it has either reached, or is fast approaching, a tipping point - and a point at which those that have dismissed it up until now as a fad or a 'niche network for geeks' should consider being more open-minded about its potential.

So, my advice is, if your organisation hasn't genned up about Twitter yet, or you have just tinkered around the edges with it, 2009 is the year to reconsider it seriously as part of your strategy. At the very least, you should be starting to explore and learn about how it might be able to help you achieve your objectives, so you are closer to being able to leverage what it has to offer you in the future.

According to data from Nielson Online, Twitter was the fastest growing social networking site in the US between September 2007 and September 2008, achieving a 343% growth rate (Facebook came in at the number six spot, growing 116% over the same time period).  Although, Twitter has only a tiny percentage of the users that Facebook has globally, the Nielsen data shows the potential for that to change, which means it's conceiveable that Twitter might prove to be a much more important and valuable channel through which to engage with supporters and stakeholders in the not too distant future.

Don't get left behind!

Whether you are already using Twitter, or thinking about trying it, there is a whole range of things you could be doing in this first quarter of 2009 to move your organisation forward.

To help you do that, I'm going to write a series of Twitter posts, specifically for nonprofits, that cover everything from getting started with setting up a Twitter profile, to building a community, and leveraging your networks to produce value for your organisation.

Much of this will be informed by real questions that charities and nonprofits have asked me, or posted on Twitter or at The Charity Place, over the last few months, including the feedback received from the first NFPtweetup.

I won't be reinventing the wheel, as there are already plenty of great resources about how to use Twitter all over the place online and it would be daft to duplicate them where they already exist. Rather, I will pull as many of them as possible together in one place for easy reference, and attempt to do so in as logical a progression as possible - adding insights and stories from my experiences, and the experiences of other nonprofit professionals, along the way to keep it as fresh, accessible and useful as possible.

How you can help

As I post, it would be great if you could add your thoughts, experiences and anything you think I've missed, in the comments on each post.  That should mean we end up with a really thorough set of crowd-sourced resources for the sector.

Look out for the first post, tomorrow, on getting started with Twitter...  If there are any burning questions you have on this, do post them now so I can build them in.

NFPtweetup - sponsored by The Charity Place and Just Giving

This is primarily a heads up for anyone reading this blog who may not have heard about NFPtweetup yet.

This event is taking place between 4.30-8.30pm (GMT) on Monday, 24 November and is open to anyone working in the not-for-profit space who either uses Twitter or has an interest in the applications of Twitter, and other social media, for charities and nonprofit organisations.

There are more details here on the wiki, and you can participate in the event either by attending it physically at the Coach & Horses, Greek Street, Soho, London, or by participating online (if you attend in person, you'll be able to enjoy a drink or two with the compliments of those nice people at Just Giving, who are kindly supporting this event).

All details and information are on the wiki so, if you are interested, please have a look.

You don't need to register for the event, although it would be nice if we knew to expect you - either in person or online - so we can do our best to include everyone in the conversation; and signing up to the wiki is probably the best way to make sure that happens.

If you're reading this, don't be a lurker - join the flock!

A disclaimer

I've been trying to turn more charities onto the possibilities of social media for a while, because of the enormous power they have to enable organisations to meet their objectives - if used strategically.

I'm saying that again, because it's key and it concerns me that it's a point that many people keep missing.

I'm not advocating using Twitter, or any other social media, for the sake of it (or because it is cutting edge, 'cool', new or exciting).  I am keen to develop a deeper understanding that social media are a powerful set of tools that can help charities and nonprofits achieve important objectives that contribute towards their corporate/ organisational plans, and their missions.  This means activities like building awareness of their work, raising funds, delivering support, scoping and understanding need, communicating important messages to supporters and stakeholders, recruiting donors, campaigners, volunteers, staff, advocates, growing a greater voice to influence policy and provision of local and national services, developing better solutions and so on.

I'm also very aware that there are some very practical barriers for a lot of organisations - whether they are rooted in resources (time, money, people power, structure), knowledge, understanding, experience or a combination of these - factors can make it very difficult to put together a business case, or create a culture, for testing these tools.

So, where was I? Oh yes, that's right:

NFPtweetup is all about coming together with others to explore these (and any other) burning issues, share thoughts and ideas, meet new people and maybe even collaborate.  I hope that it turns out to be a great forum for people not using Twitter or any other social media yet in their organisations to consider what might work for them.

The Obama effect

While browsing on Kiva earlier on, I couldn't believe my eyes at first when I noticed that someone created a 'Team Obama' in the communities section.

Not only that, the Team Obama community - set up on 4 September - has already loaned a total of $107,625 to date, to a variety of entrepreneurs all over the world (before you reach for your calculator, that's an average of $73.71 per person).

I was even more interested to note that this community of 1,460 individuals has made 3,806 loans.  That means, the average member has given 2.6 times - in just over two months.

There are a lot of charities that would be extremely happy to have donors as committed, and giving as frequently, as that.  Of course, these are not strictly donations, but loans, and the lenders will get their money back in time (although many will then loan it to another entrepreneur).  I would doubt, however, that the motivation is any different between the two.

From what I can tell, this community was set up not by the Obama campaign, but by an individual supporter, or supporters - just normal people who have been inspired and motivated by Obama's vision for change and have bought into the shared responsibility of achieving it.  It's all summed up in their statement:

'Everyone, everywhere who understands that Barack Obama combined with our individual efforts through Kiva will help make this world a much better place!'

I found myself reflecting on how often charities succeed in creating the kind of passion and conviction that Barack Obama manages to stir up in people, and how much more they could achieve if they followed his example and made people feel excited, empowered and united in the way that he has done.  It's even more remarkable when you consider that he has motivated people to do good to the point that they are proactively seeking out ways to do that - right across the world.

Why charities need to use social media

Here's a link to an article I wrote for CharityComms on this subject, to accompany the presentation I made at their event on 22 October.

(For some reason I can't fathom, clicking the link to the article brings up 'Page not found' and you have to refresh or reload the page to bring the article up. If you still have trouble, here's the URL: http://www.charitycomms.org.uk/articles/insider_secrets/why_charities_need_to_use_social_media)

And here are the slides that I used for the presentation:

Social Media for Change - prepared for Charitycomms, 22 Oct 08

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: communications fundraising)

It feels like it might be somewhat lacking without the narrative I gave on the day (one of the side-effects of abandoning boring bullet points in favour of something slightly less tedious is that the Powerpoint doesn't stand up quite so well on its own afterwards).  The article should go some way towards plugging the gap though.

I'd seen several great presentations that focus more on social media as a concept - and talk more hypothetically about how they can be used - and had also spoken to quite a number people who work at charities who had even attended social media presentations and were still a bit bewildered about what they should actually do.

Because of this, I wanted to illustrate, as simply and clearly as possible, using real examples, what some of the platforms do, what some charities are actually using them for, and what they are achieving, with some clear take outs at the end on next steps.

I had some very positive feedback afterwards, and a couple of people even told me they had joined up to Twitter as a result (if you're on Twitter, you can follow them here and here), so I think it worked.

If you're interested, here's a podcast from the event created by those nice people at Sound Delivery (this features interviews with speakers and attendees, as opposed to recordings of the presentations themselves).

As soon as I post this, it should get tweeted automatically via Friendfeed.  How about that for having your presence on several channels covered?  There's a tip in there somewhere.

What non-profits can learn from the Obama campaign

I couldn't let the day end without commenting on the excellent, strategic mobilisation of social media tools as used by the Obama campaign.

Fundraising by politicians and political parties isn't something that would usually inspire or interest me, but what Obama's team achieved is so relevant to charities who may still be wondering whether there's anything in this social media thing, aside from a load of buzzwords - by which I mean, can it be used to generate income, and will they get a worthwhile return on investment for time and money directed towards this still somewhat unproven area?

Well, the Google Alerts I have for 'fundraising' have produced pages of listings for the Obama campaign to the point that it's virtually eclipsed any other fundraising news for the past year, so that was the first heads up. There was story after story about the online activity, in particular, that the campaign was deploying to engage with groups that had not previously voted, or had previously voted Republican, to create what they called a 'national coalition of voters' - a movement, if you will.

The campaign got Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, on board, made a lot of noise using a dedicated Barack Obama channel on YouTube and even utilised the noisy and increasingly less niche platform, Twitter.  All of this helped to ensure that Obama was right at the cutting edge, being seen and heard in all the right places, and was considered relevant by younger voters (who played a huge part in providing the extra votes he needed to win the election).

It transpires that the Obama campaign raised over $600 million to fund the media activity that would create the swell of public opinion he needed to win.  The real suprise here is that this impressive total was achieved, in large part, by the campaign's effectiveness in engaging individuals and cultivating their support to generate millions of small donations (well, small by traditional political fundraising standards, anyway).  According to this article in the New York Times, the average donation was less than $100 - which equates to just over £63.

I read an interesting article from Marketing Direct on Brand Republic, which provides some insights into the approach the campaign took, some of which chime very much with my own views on how charities should use social media to cultivate support - essentially that engagement needs to come first, the ask, and the donation, later.

Specifically, the article refers to the experience of George Nimeh, joint MD of Iris, who registered on an Obama campaign website. Nimeh is quoted as saying, "The first emails I received were about engagement ... The emails asking for cash were the last step in a well thought-out eCRM process." Quite right too.

Marketing Direct points out that there are 'lessons for UK politicians' to be taken from the example of the Obama campaign.  I would say there are also powerful lessons for charities.

Social media are a great leveller, as Barack Obama and his team have proven.  You don't have to be a heavy-weight, establishment brand to get results using them.  Small, nimble charities are already proving that having a presence on social platforms gives them a voice, a credibility and opportunities to generate support that they could only have dreamt of without these tools.  In his victory speech, Obama was honest and humble enough to point out that he didn't start out as the front-runner - quite the contrary - and that he had only been able to achieve what he did with the help of millions of Americans, who supported him through word of mouth and donations.  Who's to say whether he would have been making quite the same rousing speech if it hadn't been for the role that social media had played in his campaign?

Experience the problem and be part of the solution

Thanks to this article in the Independent today, I was introduced today to Save the Children's Kroo Bay project, and the fantastically engaging content on their website that puts supporters and potential supporters in touch with their work there -- including these webinars.

I can't remember having seen a better illustration of a charity bringing people closer to it's work at grass roots level, whilst also educating them about the bigger picture, by including everything from individual profiles (where supporters can leave messages for workers and residents in Kroo Bay) to an overview of the Save the Children's 'big plan'.  It makes the work the charity does highly tangible, without artificially simplifying the issues -- and has a refreshing honesty and integrity about it.

You only need to take a look at some of the comments supporters have posted to see what they have achieved here in terms of engagement.  I was really struck by this one, from Sarah in Kent (which is full of insights):

‘I could see myself signing up to a 'save a Kroo Bay child' action plan which lists the key areas where money is needed to give that child his or her maximum chances of reaching adulthood in health and safety. I and others could put money into the pot until collectively we had brought it to completion. It would be like an individual child fund, albeit one of the thousands of other child funds that Kroo Bay needs support for.. but we may move one obstacle at a time. There could and should, of course, be a general pot as well as not eveyone would want to donat in the same way, and you STC would want some unrestricted funds (just remember to tell us why you want them?).

One the one hand, we the community would be able to see the chances of one child's life being safeguarded as within our reach, and we would know clearly what it takes to achieve that within an area such as Kroo Bay, or any other. On the other, we would be acting together, pooling our money but also connecting our thoughts, feelings and perhaps our dialogue in unity and collaboration.

The STC challenge is 'we save the children, will you?' and my answer is oh yes please let me save just one child, and then another, and then another. Please make it seem real to me that my donations have the chance of safeguarding one young human life to the point of adulthood.’

It's interesting to note that, given a social media element in the site, supporters are quick to engage not only with the charity and it's work, but also with each other -- seeing the oppportunity to collaborate and achieve more together as a result.

The Independent article finishes by saying:

'NGOs are throwing themselves with gusto behind the many tools Web 2.0 has brought, but it is difficult to ascertain which ones are having a direct impact on donations ... clever elements of multimedia can do much to draw in potential supporters and educate them about the relevant issues and individual campaigns. How and when that might translate into an actual donation, however, is more difficult to track.'

Of course, tracking itself is not really the issue here, since web analytics are sophisticated enough to enable this.  However, the question of whether and/ or when investment in creating this kind of rich, online experience will result in more financial support, is the one on most charities' minds, and is far more difficult to answer.

Just remember that, once, not so long ago, many people probably asked the same question about direct mail.  In fact, come to think of it, some of them still do...

Integration, integration, integration

I can't tell you how much it warms my heart to see that the Instiute of Fundraising is hosting a one-day conference about integrating fundraising and campaigning.

It says, 'By recognising the supporter as a central part of your campaign and fundraising initiatives you can develop an integrated approach which will benefit your whole organisation in the long term.'

I don't understand why more charities haven't been open to this in the past, but attitutes really seem to be changing now -- with phrases like 'the 360 degree supporter' becoming increasingly commonplace (although I tend to be sceptical when buzzwords are bandied around, if they help to create behavioural change, it can only be a good thing for charities and their supporters).

Whenever I have worked on campaigns or communications that combined campaigning and fundraising around a particular issue, the results have been nothing but positive.  It just seems so obvious to expose your supporters to the range of your work and provide them with opportunities to engage with, and support, it in a number of ways.  Why would you not ask them to get involved in a campaign if they already support financially or vice versa?  What fantastic added value for supporters that they can do even more to help the charity they support achieve its mission, by adding weight to its campaigning voice too -- and they can often do this by taking only the smallest action, like adding their name to a petition.

It seems to me that, just as we recognise that charities need to take a 360 degree view of supporters, that it would seem only logical for supporters to expect the charities they support to be equallly multi-faceted -- and that they will be utilising a sophisticated mix of skills and expertise to affect change.  So why don't we treat them as intelligent human beings and share more with them?

Turning the issue on it's head for a moment, I wonder what supporters would think if they realised that there was campaigning work going on that they were not being actively informed about, petitions they could be signing, or that they could have joined the 'campaign network' with other supporters if they only knew it existed?  It would probably strike them as at least a little bit odd.

Oxfam is doing a fantastic job of joining up the dots. Sign up here if you want to experience their approach to offering an integrated supporter experience...

Another social media and sharing 'how to'

There are some interesting insights into how UNICEF have been using a host of social media and sharing platforms to engage with supporters and prospective supporters here, on Joanne Fritz's blog.

It's a shame there's no measurement of the financial impact of the activity - or information on how they might be considering tracking and analysing this.

Regardless, it will undoubtedly have a positive influence on fundraising, because it's:

• Getting messages out to new audiences, and creating a pool of interested, engaged people - who'll be more likely to become financial supporters as a result
• Offering new ways for existing supporters to engage with UNICEF and providing them with a richer, more meaningful experience.

As time goes on, we'll see more in depth analysis and evidence that this kind of activity is paying off; it is direct, highly personal and trackable, so it's also highly measurable.

For now, just know that your organisation needs to be part of the conversation so you can experiment, find out and learn about how it will work for you - just like UNICEF are doing.

Connecting your supporters directly with your work has never been easier

Yesterday, I posted about how charities need to make the most direct connections possible between their supporters and the work they do.

There just really isn’t any good excuse not to be doing this anymore because there are so many accessible, inexpensive tools at our disposal now.

For a lesson in using social media to do connect people and causes, you couldn’t get a much better example than Mara Triangle, who have integrated content on Facebook, Flickr, and Vimeo, and are microblogging updates reguarly using Twitter.

It’s just about as close as you can get to the Masai Mara, looking at the wildlife yourself, without actually being there in person (although, when you watch some of the video, you sometimes almost forget you’re still just sitting in front of your PC).

Male Lions Fighting from Joseph Kimojino on Vimeo.

News, photos and footage appear in real time, and the team there engage one-to-one on a daily basis with donors and potential donors all over the world in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

I’m totally hooked.

If you’ve spent five or ten minutes looking at what they do, and the amazing wildlife they’re so bravely protecting – against all the odds – I reckon there’s a good chance you’ll have already signed up to a regular gift.  If you haven’t, take a look at their urgent appeal here and consider giving something.

And, before you go, just think – if Mara Triangle can do this with the scant resources they have, what excuse is there really for your organisation not to be doing something similar?

Not how, but what

The fundraising campaigns and propositions that are the most successful, and the charities that have the most positive, beneficial relationships with their supporters, are those that make the most direct connections between their supporters and their work.

That's why I usually try to cut out as much of the other stuff in between - because I know that what really interests donors is the difference their support makes, not all the steps that the charity is going to take along the way to make that happen.  (If you've ever gone to sleep halfway through a letter about 'capacity building', you'll know what I mean.)

So, when you're working on the direction for your next campaign, or the next time you're looking at some fundraising copy, do what I do and adopt this mantra: Not how, but what.

It helps focus my mind on keeping the right balance between how you're going to use the donor's money to make a difference and what that is going to achieve; what positive difference it will make.  (This can also be re-phrased as, 'what's the net effect?', or 'skip to the end'.)

Try it, and teach it to others.  It will make your fundraising more successful.

And remember, every rule has its exceptions.  There are times when a little more of the detail about how you're going to do it actually makes for a really engaging, inspiring, motivating story.  Just always make sure the what doesn't get lost in the detail.

Social networks take word of mouth to a global level

I’m still totally captivated by the enormous possibilities of social media to share ideas and information, and am inspired to post (yet again) on the subject of how people are using them to come together and do good – because I’ve been motivated to give in the last few days via Twitter.

Just look at what Jeremiah Owyang has started through his blog and his Twitter feed, which Oliver Ding then turned into this presentation on Slideshare...

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Through the content that Jeremiah and Oliver have generated, people have been driven to charity sites and give a donation, and/ or to pages like this one.

So far, Oliver Ding’s 24 ways to give presentation has received 1,065 views, and has been nominated ‘slideshow of the day’, which has to make a difference to the amount of money raised.  (I don't need to tell you how to make a donation, because everything you need to know is in the slideshow)...

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The Pledgebank campaign has 264 people signed up, and  counting (you can sign up by clicking here).

There are at least 30 people who have indicated they’ve given through Jeremiah’s updates on Twitter, and more – no doubt – who have given privately.

I'm sorry to say that I had previously received an approach from two charities - one via Facebook and the other by email - but hadn't yet made a donation.  However, Jeremiah's Twitter message changed that.

Charities, take note...

Is it worth building your own online networks?

You probably had a look at MyActionAid when it was launched by ActionAid last February – perhaps you've even used it?

It’s a brilliant platform for events and community fundraising – a bit like an own-branded version of Just Giving – and you can see how it has the potential to be so much more; a social networking platform for ActionAid to engage with its supporters, for them to engage with each other, to take ActionAid’s messages to their social networks and bring their friends into the fold.

Adding different ways for people to engage aside from fundraising – I'm thinking campaigning in particular – and further integration with other platforms would add value to the experience and make this site a really rich way to engage with ActionAid, its work and its community of supporters.

It’s great to get some insights from their experiences and to find out a little about their future plans, including making widgets available to integrate with supporters on Facebook.

I always want to hear about how this kind of initiative is working, and I’m impressed that they're citing ‘double the giving rate compared to presence on other sites’. That's got to make doing something like this well worth the effort, surely?