Personalization of donations

One of things that I have noticed recently in fundraising is that donations have become more and more personalized, and donors are able to have more control over where the funds are going. Heifer International was one of the first organizations that did this. Donors are able to choose which animal they are going to donate and learn about how that particular animal helps its recipients.

Now, more and more organizations are doing this--including Habitat for Humanity and others. I think that this is really an amazing idea, and more nonprofits should get on board with it. it seems like every product that we purchase can be personalized or made to order, and as society moves towards this, nonprofits need to be able to follow suit with donations.

The other day, I was in the grocery store where they were having another fundraiser for a local food pantry. The greatest part about this was that they had brown bags of food all over the store with the contents stapled to it. A customer could choose the amount of the donation and the contents of the bag for the food pantry. I thought that this was particularly great as some people remember how great macaroni and cheese tasted when they were hungry, or only wanted to donate $6 worth of great food.

On a personal note, my siblings and I made a donation in honor of our aunt and her family to Heifer International. We had decided the amount of the donation, and then looked at the animals that we could get for that amount. After studying the catalog, my sister decided that she REALLY wanted to give a bee hive. This was a bit more than the amount that we had decided on, so we each pitched in a little more because the bee hive was the donation that we wanted to get.
Although we are probably the exception and not the rule in this case, we did donate more because we knew what we were getting for the donation. Nonprofits may be able to capitalize on this and get even more donations!

The most useful one of these I have seen yet!

In my research on ways your nonprofit can use social media, I have come across a bunch of "10 ways your nonprofit can best use social media". However, this one is the best one that I have found yet. I think that the tips mentioned are incredibly useful and relevant for nonprofits. One of the tips that resonated the most with me is the one about making social media social. Most people enjoy seeing pictures of themselves and their friends online. Add in the fact that they are doing something good, and they get some bonus points!

However, nonprofits do need to get permissions before tagging people in pictures. Some people don't want to be tagged (even if they are doing something positive), so make sure that the registration form/sign in sheet has an opt-in for this.

This can also get a nonprofit more followers to your Facebook, Twitter, etc. because people will want to see when the pics are posted, details of the event, etc.

8 Steps to Designing a Reactivation Campaign - ClickZ

8 Steps to Designing a Reactivation Campaign - ClickZ

I thought that this article was really interesting. It's geared towards for-profit companies, but I think that there are some great things that can be taken from this. One thing that is overlooked all the time is the 2nd tip--make sure that you identify a goal. This is so important! Is the organization just looking to get people volunteering again?, to reactivate a donor? or to get them to become advocates? Identifying these goals BEFORE you start designing and implementing an email campaign is crucial to its success.

Another thing that I thought was a really great point was figuring out why these people have left/stopped donating/etc. Were they receiving too many emails? Were the emails that they were receiving not interesting to them? This could be a reason to implement a "communications preferences" portion to the website so that you can hear from the constituent how often and on what topics they want to hear from the nonprofit. This information is important for designing future email campaigns!!!

A cool new iPhone app

When I met with James yesterday, we geeked out a little bit over our matching iPhones. We talked about different iPhone apps and potential ways that nonprofits could utilize the iPhone to increase donations, awareness and advocacy. One of the best apps that he mentioned is called "CauseWorld".

It's free to download, and it uses geotagging to tell where you are. The app finds businesses around you, and you select where you are and receive "karma points" for it. When you get enough karma points, you can choose where to donate the funds---to preventing child abuse, help fight cancer, to help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti, or a few other causes. The sponsors of this free app, Kraft and Citi, donate the equivalent to these causes.

How cool is this?! Kraft and Citi have some sort of relationship with the businesses listed (not every local business is listed), and it may drive business or at least awareness of these local businesses utilizing the sponsors' services as well as an interesting and fun way to donate to nonprofits.

I haven't used it too much yet, but you do get merit badges for things like staying up late and there's a feed to see who has donated to which cause.

Definitely worth checking out!

I donated to diabetes foundation and all I got was a...WHAT??!!?!?

I love going to the grocery store. There's something about the order of the aisles, the way that everything has its place and is in an order. It's one of my happy places. I love it. I also am really interested in the ways that nonprofits can work with grocery stores because the grocery stores are so willing to support local causes and because everyone in the community has to go to the store.

Last year, I was in the store, and at the check out, the cashier asked me if I would like to donate $1, $5 or $10 to a diabetes foundation (I'm not sure of which one). She then told me that if I donated I could choose a bottle of water or a...wait for it....

wait for it....

a cupcake. A beautifully decorated cupcake. Frosting 1/2 inch high, yellow CUPCAKE. For donating to a diabetes foundation. WHAT?!!?!

Granted, the colors of everything all matched well. The cupcakes looked delicious, but who made this decision? I am sure that the diabetes foundation is grateful for having such a prominence in the grocery store and for all of the donations from the customers, but someone is probably banging their heads against their keyboard for giving such an incongruous gift for the donations.

Somewhere, someone wasn't communicating. Perhaps the diabetes foundation didn't have support for this type of donation, or the grocery store just assumed that the cupcakes had worked before, for other causes, so it would assuredly work for this one.

I know that this was an oversight, and this type of thing can happen to any of us, but it's something that we should all be aware of. Asking a co-worker to check over our work, treating each situation individually, and looking at it from an outsider's perspective may help to avoid something like this.

Nonprofits and why they need email campaigns NOW

I had a really interesting conversation this morning with James, who works at a local (and great!) CRM company. We were discussing how some nonprofits are resistant to investing time and money into email campaigns and social media campaigns when they still receive a major portion of their donations via direct mail campaigns. These direct mail campaigns are targeted towards the demographics with the most money, those who are older (about 50+). In the next few years, people who are more familiar with email and online transactions (donating, shopping, etc.) will become this coveted age group. There will be a drastic shift from receiving direct mail donations to receiving email donations. Ensuring that nonprofits have established effective email campaigns will ensure that the infrastructure is in place for this shift. Nonprofits will be able to tell what works and what doesn't work for email campaigns and will be able to process donations online.

So many nonprofits have a short-term view. They have to--they can't be sure of where their funding will be coming from or if it will continue for the long term. Convincing these nonprofits that they need to invest in these email campaigns NOW because it will have such an impact on the future is a challenge that the companies (like James') face daily.

The shift from direct mail donations to online donations may be drastic, so those nonprofits that aren't on the ball may miss out on a lot of this money!

I would love to do more research to really crunch the numbers on this (sorry, it's a lot of ball park-ish), because I think that many executives would have to see the evidence in black and white to really jump on board with the email campaigns.

Boy am I on a roll today: The Albert Einstein Guide to Social Media

Albert Einstein is amazing! When I came across this article, I thought that it put social media into a really unique perspective. One aspect of this article that really struck me was the line "Information is not knowledge. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."

There are so many different blogs, articles, books, webinars, etc. on social media. Everyday I can hardly keep up with the amount of resources that are updated daily. Sure, someone can spend the day reading all these articles, but to actually put them into place and to figure out what role social media has within their organization. Putting all of this information into practice is imperative to the health of the organization's social media strategy.

The Albert Einstein Guide to Social Media

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***My thoughts and prayers are with the people who have been affected by the plane crash just a few miles down the road here in Austin***