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mini-campaigns

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 12:35:00 +0000

There are few things that I consistently speak about and focus on internally and externally as often as mini-campaigns. I look upon these as discreet focused efforts to accomplish a discrete goal. In higher education, we often take these on to complete endowment of a scholarship or faculty chair. The current trend is to look at causes based on or connected to your campus that you can support this way.

This trend is something that I see as an overall positive - it moves us as an industry in the direction of making a case for support, moving away from the historical "because you owe us" loyalty argument. While that line of reasoning was successful for a number of years, to me it is now right up there with "to increase our US News ranking", old, played out and really, really, really weak for younger (defined as since the early 90s) alumni.

Most of the folks who graduated in the last 20 years did so with substantial loan debt, no matter how successful your fundraising efforts, they saw the out of pocket cost for their education increase rapidly, in some cases by 2 digit percentages each year they were in school. As we all know, for the most part, (there are exceptions to every rule) this is a portion of the alumni body that is no where near as consistent with financial support as our older alumni.

Try breaking them up into mini campaigns. Take a look at what they did as students, identify some of the causes that they may have been interested in and find the students currently associated with those causes - utilize those students to tell the story as to why the alums should support that area.

No data? Try a targeted PURL campaign - let your alumni identify that they are interested (by responding) which causes they were interested in as students and are interested in today (survey questions) and provide them with the opportunity to raise their hand as volunteers for that cause today (information or thank you page in the PURL.)

Easy, quick, simple and affordable - usually can be done for less than $1.50 per alum - money that you will more than make up over the next 24-36 months through funding appeals, often just from new donors!

What I learned today (or why I like to take advantage of speaking opportunities)

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:50:00 +0000

My webinar on PURLS this afternoon went really well - always worry in doing webinars about the ability to generate enough energy and interest in order to keep the webinar going with no audience response. Kind of makes me understand why radio talk show hosts usually either have a side-kick or go to the phones or both.

In any case, my presentation was on utilizing PURLS to engage and empower and I spent a couple of weeks putting information together and doing research on this topic. In doing so, I looked at for profit, non profit and higher education use of the tool and found one consistent thing that puzzles me.

Many places have paid good money to put a PURL based marketing campaign out. Many places have paid good money to a printer or other vendor to push the mail and email communications out to get folks the address. Yet nobody seems happy with the marketing effort.

Almost everything that I see has over-generalization, everyone seems to be trying either for a one size fits all PURL or for a limited marketing stream. Yet we are selling a "Personal" URL. It seems to make so much sense for this to utilize variable data printing to provide each individual with unique marketing materials customized to their record in the same way the PURL is.

It is a good first step to identify a PURL that may connect with folks. The next step is to identify imagery that would do the same. The example that I used on the webinar was related to my own Alma Mater, Allegheny College. Utilizing a PURL of scott.vandeusen.gatoralumni.com would connect to some extent. That on a postcard with a picture of campus might have some additional connection, but that PURL on a postcard with a picture of my fraternity brothers taken from one of the yearbooks when I was a student would have far greater connection and likelihood of me opening and interacting with it.

Fishing in your own pond

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:25:00 +0000

Most of us run several internal campaigns each year. These have mixed levels of success, often based upon institutional and program history. They include (but are not limited to) employee efforts, current students (seniors being the focus but not exclusive) and local community.

Efforts on each of these have the additional opportunity of adding in a personal element - while non of us, no matter how well resourced, can visit each of the thousands of alumni and parents, it is very viable to reach out to these internal constituencies and make personal communication reality. This can readily be expanded to utilization of a small group of volunteer solicitors who can carry the lion's share of the face to face contacts.

To that end however, these are often more challenging audiences to engage through marketing efforts. They already know the "basics" of who, what, where and when that you can use to update and inform external audiences. They often have much greater knowledge of specific areas, programs and departments than you possess.

Take advantage of these informed constituents by providing them with additional information - can you include them in press releases when they go to the media? can you provide them with annual access to the president or a networking reception? The most valuable items that you possess are informational - how can you at your institution provide constituents who support you with access to that information and how can you make sure that others identify and understand how to establish that connection for themselves?

Consider using an internally centered PURL campaign to collect updated information and allow them to opt into additional information flow. Utilize your volunteers to send it out to the folks that are connected to them and lay out a distinct list of unique (and free to you) opportunities that they will be able to take advantage of as a donor. If they make a gift, provide them with a free (this is not free to you) item that they can wear/carry/use to encourage others to give. Provide them with the information about why they should give, access to an easy way to do it and recognition and resource access for doing so.

Presidential presentations with PURLs

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:21:00 +0000

I am in the middle of two projects right now, a PURL mini campaign in which I am soliciting members of the president's society (St. John's students who are the most involved) and creating a web presentation on how to utilize PURLS to increase contacts and response.

In both cases, I am looking at how I can creatively get folks to open materials, whom to segment and what methodology to utilize - is best practice an email and then a postcard? I know that mail responses are 300% better than postcard and 500% better then email responses for me - maybe it should be in a letter format? But how?

I had the brainstorm last week for the mini campaign at STJ to utilize an envelope that is wedding invitation reply size - small, simple, cheap and just begs to be opened, if the USPS doesn't lose them on me, with the president's office as the return address. That should solve that.

What to tell folks for 75 minutes about how to implement and utilize a PURL then? I will start off with the simple suggestion that it is simply a new way to raise curiosity. Maybe we should start off with spelling folks who are not connected names wrong and tell them they can update it by logging in. Would engender open rates through the roof - of course they would all be upset but I bet a huge portion of them would correct their information before they quit. Maybe worth trying with hardcore nondonors... have to think about that one!

In all reality, this simple offers a new opportunity to catch folks attention. It can be combined with VDP (variable data printing) to create an eye catching appeal that will generate responses but what I am really going to focus on is what is next - once they open that PURL what value are you providing - most likely only going to get this shot once for the less connected folks so you better make it good. I am connecting mine to microsites that offer a wiki or blog style interface and encourage alumni to interact. I am seeding that site with alumni who are already close to me - don't want folks to have the feeling of walking into an empty room. Maybe I will even be lucky enough to get the president to leave a message of thanks to the alums for their support as students. In any case, I am creating opportunities for engagement, adding value and web 2.0 style interaction to my solicitation. Ask me in June how it went.

Conference Preparation and Ideas

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:39:00 +0000

I like to present at conferences on a consistent basis because it leads to much greater thinking and review of what I am doing and why I do it that way. I am presenting at the Northeast Annual Giving Conference (NEAGC) on Thursday on direct mail and am finding that this holds true with my presentation this time. Of particular interest is the subject of PURLS. While I am talking about mail, the PURL is one of many points of integration that I am going to emphasize.

I would really strongly recommend to anyone who has not already done so to try at least a PURL. The campaign can be as simple as a year end email and postcard series that encourages folks to make a gift before the end of your fiscal year. You can get very complicated on the landing page and all of the online components here but that is not my focus this week - I am really looking at how do you leverage the electronic tools to maintain a steady "stream" of fiscal year end communications to encourage donations.

Utilizing the back end of the PURL campaign you can readily monitor who has interest in giving and then follow up with a combination of postcard and emails. Even better, utilizing variable data printing through an on-demand online printer (they are out there) you can provide unique imagery, and focus it on those who have opened the PURL with a "come back we still need you" style message as compared to those who have not done so and then within the groups, match the postcard imagery to that which has meaning to them. ie: athletic alumni get an image showing the athletics facilities full of students and verbiage saying imagine how much less appealing this picture would be without the students - your gift ensures that won't happen.

You can also use email imagery and verbiage to test this - using a/b testing on email identify the imagery that resonates best and then try using that same imagery on postcards. We know a great deal about our constituents and can learn a great about their behavior this way but inherently don't do so in the way that our for-profit colleagues do. The actions are simple and affordable - take advantage of it before another non-profit comes along that will.

Electronic Thank You Messaging

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:17:00 +0000

Thank you. Two simple words that can mean everything and the lack of them can make a world of difference in the other direction. As a parent of 3 small children, I spend my fair share of time sounding like my own parents. "What are the magic words?" comes out of my mouth before I even think about it.

How do we ensure that every action is appropriately acknowledged? Big gifts are usually covered, pretty sure nobody has every had a problem remembering to say thank you to donors when there are 5, 6 or more 0s associated with the gift. But what happens when that gift is follow by a dot and two 0s? How are you handling donors of $5 or even $1?

ABC news carried a story recently about an alumnae who left Lake Forest College $7 million in her will and she is typical of many planned gifts - they were unaware that it was on the way, she had little to no gift history and lived a frugal and modest lifestyle. The appreciated assets that provided the basis of this gift do not show up on any screening nor was there any indication that she would be capable of this level of support. We all need to treat every donor as though they are that "secret millionaire" because we just never know who really will be.

I provide donors under $20 with a unique postcard thank you every month. This is on top of what is provided by the stewardship office, coming out of the annual giving budget. I find that this group is in the short term the least likely to renew so the extra expense makes sense and that additional thank you carries more weight with that audience than with donors of larger amounts. It is not expected and that makes it all the more meaningful.

Budget an issue, do this via email - how many donors of less than $20 or even $50 do you have? Can you do a monthly email from you or a member of the annual giving staff to those donors? It can be as simple as a mail merge from outlook and take an hour a month to send but it is personal, direct and will engender responses, opening the dialogue to larger things, you never know who may be the seven figure donor you had no idea was out there.

Grandma was right - "thank you" are magic words!

Reunion e-appeals

sirasamny@mainspringmc.com (Stephanie Rasamny) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:24:00 +0000

Reunion is a great time to use electronic tools to their fullest capacity because you have a similar message to deliver to specific target audiences with only slight content differences. I recommend starting reunion planning with a "version" mindset. With variable data programming you can adjust one primary email template and/or one main Flash video appeal to work for all of your reunion classes. Depending on your reunion program, you may even be able to reuse the appeals for a few years in a row before you need to revamp the design and layout because your target audiences will change each year.

So use variable data programming to your advantage to tap into the alumni nostalgia that Scott mentioned. In your emails, address each alum by name, mention their class year and include a few specific memories from their time at the institution, and if you want to get really fancy, include photos from their time on campus as well. Customization like this will bring alumni back to their days on campus and get them excited about reconnecting with old friends and the institution. Emails could come from classmates leading the reunion efforts to bolster that feeling of community.
Use emails to drive alumni to e-solicitations or e-briefs© that take alums back in time to their college days. Use emails to drive alumni to Facebook pages and web pages with more detailed information. Finally, use emails as simple save-the-dates and reminders to book travel and register for events. In all of these appeals - the emails, e-solicitations, and e-briefs© - think personal and think customization through variable data programming.

Finally, consider a post-reunion follow-up to thank those who attended and to tell those who couldn't make it that they were missed. Photography from the events is critical in the follow-up and an email to a Facebook page or a Flash-based photo book with commenting capabilities is a great way to continue the excitement after reunions and build towards a solicitation to all those who didn't make their reunion gift.

Reunion

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:17:00 +0000

For many of us the single largest annual party that we are responsible for is the university reunion event. I am right there with you in that and have seen dramatic changes over the past decade in how we communicate about these programs. Let me start by saying that it is and will always be my firm opinion that folks attend reunions and make reunion gifts because of their relationships with classmates and the memory of what once was. Thus, it is our job to help rekindle those memories and reconnect those classmates such that the opportunities to create access to substantial resources for the organization exist.

I have seen any number of approaches and will say that there is no "right" approach but certain elements dramatically increase the potential for positive results. Those are: imagery - faces of "when", Names - who do you recall and the opportunity to connect. Social networking tools provide us with the opportunities to do all of these things. In fact, for those of us in the "facebook" generation, we do these on a daily basis.

I advocate starting with a 10th reunion program and building out how you plan to utilize the tools - blogging, photoblogs, facebook, and twitter can be connected into a structure that provides the connections and the opportunities that we need. Once you have that basic structure in place, start to expand it to the older classes - don't assume that because folks are older that they can't or won't learn to use these tools. Much like email in the 90s, we found that many retirees were highly fluent - it was how they stayed connected to grandchildren. As those grandchildren have moved into social media, we can and should expect the grandparents to follow.

I would advocate a mailing strategy that encourages the creation of a committee that you host and teach how to use these tools. Then using a postcard driven reunion mailing effort, once a month for 6 months or so the year prior to the reunion, start to push the existence of the tools by highlighting conversations and communications that are going on (you may need to jump start this with committee members talking to each other) and then offer a monthly "setup" conference call where you talk alumni through how to create a facebook account and connect it to your reunion page.

While time consumptive at the front, this approach provides alumni access to the information that you want to share through one another - exactly what and why we are using the reunion opportunity to gather them. That additional effort and connection, will pay off down the line with larger and more participatory reunion gifts.

Education can be cause based

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:11:00 +0000

In many of the recent posts on here we have touched on cause based opportunities to demonstrate successes in online fundraising. In reading through several other boards recently, it was clear from some of the conversations, that folks were not entirely clear on what that "cause based" meant. In my references to cause based efforts, I am referring to campaigns that surround a specific, typically urgent and finite effort - Katrina was one of the first really successful cause based online fundraising campaigns in the modern era (defined by me as since the rise of the social media tools.)

As the vast majority of the audience of this blog is in higher education, cause based efforts are often competition to what we are working to raise dollars for. I am sure that many of you can relate to reading or listening to comments from your phone program over the last month and hearing the repeated objection of: "I just gave to Haitian relief so this is not a good time."

Between the media coverage and the sense of urgency to provide aid, this can be a difficult if not insurmountable objection to overcome. The strength of cause based fundraising is rooted in the combination of urgency, publicity and accountability. There is usually a very immediate need, and results can usually be seen and documented in real and quick time, especially online. Nothing like a youtube video of aid workers wearing the logo of the charity doing what you promised the donation was going to be used for to ensure that donors feel that their gift was important and meaningful.

So how to compete? In the higher education world, most of us work with and within systems that provide ongoing cause based efforts - most of us have a strong, impactful and impressive community service effort, often not only providing services but adding in a powerful integration of education as well. We can clearly and directly state that not only are we contributing to helping with the disaster of today but helping to educate the leaders who will help to prevent recurrence of the tragedy tomorrow. Use those students, get them to share the youtube videos that they are creating and posting for friends and family, share their stories and proudly talk about the impact that your institution has. Cause based fundraising should be a strength not a weakness but it is up to us to make it so.

Thoughts from a direct mail presentation

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:25:00 +0000

I just completed presenting a webinar on direct mail and had a really interesting question asked at the end: "If the PS is such an important and effect part of the direct mail appeal, how do you carry that over into email fundraising."

My immediate and, I still think correct, answer is it is not the use of a PS. That got me to thinking about why the PS works so well in mail but clearly does not have the same impact on email and my first thought was that a PS on an email would be absurd - by it's very nature, the entire email IS a PS - simple direct and to the point. The PS works because it calls attention to a message within the message. By grabbing the readers eye it ensures that the call to action (please make a gift, please attend an event, etc...) is acted upon even if they don't read the balance of the piece.

Electronic communications are by their very nature different. Whether text based email or html, messages are short and direct with opportunities for action to be taken based upon links that provide additional content, forms or images. That said, many of us use templates that have links along the side or bottom and a simple direct statement or message contained in the text. It is my experience that those are wasted links - they rarely generate clicks. Keep in mind that an email is and is within a much busier environment than a letter - distractions are all over the screen and we are rarely getting the readers complete attention.

So how do we grab readers eyeballs and focus them on the action items in email? Maybe we need to look at taking a page from the Red Cross and Haiti - their solicitations didn't seek to inform, just ask. They let other streams provide the information and the email serve the sole purpose of asking them for the gift. In higher education we have the same opportunities using our electronic magazine/newsletters, university magazines and even local papers. Segment, target and mail based upon other interactions and established interests.

Dare to try something new

sirasamny@mainspringmc.com (Stephanie Rasamny) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:02:00 +0000

Mobile giving to Haiti through the Red Cross alone hit $29 million according to the Chronicle for Philanthropy. Nearly $30 million collected in $10 gifts via text message to just one non-profit! I think this speaks volumes to the philanthropic nature of the American public but also is indicative of our collective willingness to make a small donation via cell phone. Certainly there is an opportunity here for higher education to add to its bank of fundraising tools. I don't think we've yet maximized the potential for online giving but, yes, I am recommending that we consider yet another tool - text message giving. This doesn't necessarily mean we implement it tomorrow, but we prepare today so that we can be in a better position to execute on a mobile giving campaign down the road - and that timeframe will likely be a little different for every institution.

The steps to preparing are fairly obvious:
- Collecting mobile phone numbers
- Collecting permission to text constituents
- Evaluating a provider (I'd love to hear from readers who have positive feedback on any of the providers.)

There's no reason not to start preparing now.

As seniors graduate, they will move from location to location and will not likely have a landline - but they will keep their mobile number. Same goes for young alumni who are likely changing jobs along their career path. So while we're collecting that number for the phone program, let's start collecting text message permission also.

As you plan an "update contact information" campaign with giveaways, make the prize dependent on the ability to text the winner so that you can ensure the entries will have correct mobile numbers.

I was in Atlanta last week visiting with a few institutions and discussed text message fundraising quite a bit. There are some valid concerns - 1) the provider costs, 2) that we'll move a $100 donor to a $10 gift level, 3) it'll be difficult to tie text donations into participation totals if the donors don't self-identify. These are valid concerns, but I believe that we can work through them - if we don't try and risk failing, we're never going to hit one out of the park, as Scott said in his last post. And doesn't every institution have a group of non-donors who aren't responding to what is currently being done? Mobile giving could be the way to get them on board. Through creative mini-campaigns and integration of mobile giving into your other fundraising efforts, you could chip away at that chunk of non-donors in $5 or $10 increments.

As fundraisers competiting in a growing pool of non-profits, we need to be more aggressive and consider how to use tools in a different way and how to incorporate new tools into our plans.

iPad the next big thing?

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:22:00 +0000

I am sure that many of the "techies" out there spent the last month scrambling, checking out each of the IT sites that claim to provide insight into upcoming technology releases to learn what Apple was going to announce today. Without getting into a longer debate over different technology platforms, one thing is clear - we are watching a race to integrate our household entertainment devices with our mobile entertainment devices and the social communication tools that we have all become accustomed to.

My phone now serves as my primary facebook interface and based upon the tool introduced today, I am not alone. So this raises the question for me, how are those of us in the fundraising profession working to build the communication channels that will allow us to be literally in our donors pocket?

According to http://twitter.com/mgive/status/7911649657 the red cross has raised more than $21 million $10 a text at a time this month. I am sure that number is low already as it is several days old and that tragedy has caught the imagination of the american people. How do those of us in higher education learn from that effort?

I see several opportunities - the red cross got their name and opportunity to help out quickly and in many venues. Each time I log onto any mobile platform that is in front of me and they are not limiting the effort based upon who they think will help, rather opening it up to much larger audiences and letting folks who care about that issue self identify. That is something that we do very poorly in higher ed - we spend so much of our focus and effort on predefined constituent groups (alumni, parents, employees) that we often miss that there are many other folks who value what we do - often to a much greater level than our "defined" populations.

Much as Apple released the iPad with the expectation that folks would see that as the next step in social communication, we need to get out there and try some new things - not everything is the next iPhone - anyone remember appleTV? but if you don't try and risk failing, you are never going to hit it out of the park either.

Don't ask till they tell

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:42:00 +0000

Stephanie spoke quite eloquently about the need to communicate with constituents on a consistent basis in her last post. I too have found that the more communication that occurs, the more effective the fundraising associated with it is. To those of us who are long time Annual Giving folks this is not exactly rocket science but it is amazing how often we find institutions putting the cart in front of the horse and soliciting gifts in the first or second email a constituent gets from them.

I would take this a step farther and suggest that there should be a established rule within your communications efforts regarding when solicitation via electronic communications should be initiated. To that end, I suggest at least the following structure - most of the following are best practice electronic address maintenance anyhow but are good steps:

Only allow opt-in communications - folks who choose to be part of your lists are looking to hear from you and are offering you the chance to continue to communicate with them.
If you have addresses that have not chosen to opt-in yet continue to provide them with communications providing them with the opportunity to do so but be mindful that these need to be creative and engaging - you are selling your communication stream to them and if you are seen as harassing rather than communicating, you will only sink the chances of getting what you want - their permission.
Introduce yourself to new and renewed contacts via a welcome/welcome back stream of communications. In these messages lay out what you expect to tell them, when you expect to tell it to them and what is in it for them to allow you that access.
Ask their opinion and provide opportunities for feedback - the 2.0 portion of the web has dramatically increased expectations that they will be asked rather than told. Use of survey tools is highly effective when mixed with outbound communications and text driven communication opportunities - provide them with the chance to email a person and share their opinions.
Just like with a personal visit, asking for support should be a portion of the conversation but you probably don't want to lead with it. If someone is going to visit with you in your office to sell or ask you for something, they are probably not going to shake your hand and introduce them self and in the next breath ask for your gift - don't send a welcome message and a solicitation in the same manner.
There is no magic time but I have found that three months of online engagement seems to be a comfortable period for folks. After hearing from you for three months a solicitation as a standalone message is acceptable form. That said, you may want to establish a schedule of some sort that works for your constituents to have a solicitation "in the can" for that purpose - just like the welcome message.

Success in online fundraising is like many of the other portions of engagement - it takes time, care and consideration to gain the trust of our constituents and donors and how you treat them will pay you back many fold down the line.

Staying in the loop

sirasamny@mainspringmc.com (Stephanie Rasamny) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:17:00 +0000

Happy New Year and thank you for continuing to follow our blog in 2010! I hope all of you had a relaxing and happy holiday.

With the start of 2010, MainSpring celebrated its 5th birthday, and so I sat down to reflect on what we have learned. If I can pick only one thing from all of our work, it would be this: frequent touches, reaching out to constituents frequently, leads to success. I think Scott mentioned it in a previous post, but it warrants a little more discussion in my opinion. As I look at all the results we've generated for clients, the best results are linked to clients with whom we've worked for many years building an online strategy based on constituent behavior data and adapted to new technologies. While the combination of tools and messaging may change, one thing stays the same - the frequency of communication. In all of these cases, I can see that we reach out to constituents - donors and non-donors - monthly and in some cases twice a month throughout the year with news and event information, solicitations, and pure stewardship messages. How or why are frequent touches important? I think one reason is that people want to be in the "know," they want to feel like they are a part of something. And when people feel connected, they are more likely to participate by sharing their thoughts, their time and their dollars. Of course the message needs to be relevant and engaging too...

So as you consider your plan for the rest of the fiscal year and look to the new fiscal year, I think it would be worth your time to consider how you are keeping constituents in the loop. A consistent stream of online communications through email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and your website will help bring constituents in the door and will keep them connected.

Happy New Year and all that

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 01:32:00 +0000

Happy New Year to all! With two days left in the calendar year - for many of you likely only 1 (or for the really lucky, 0) working days left, you have probably completed what you are going to do for solicitations in the 2009 calendar year. If not completely sent (I have 1 last segment that goes out on the morning of the 31st to donors who have given on the 31st before) they are at least completed and ready to be sent.

I would suggest that after you enjoy a couple of days off (and I really do suggest enjoying them!) that you should start the new year by adding a task to your calendar - review your electronic communication.

There are two components to this task; what do people receive and what do people open? Click throughs are the third component to the "stool" of email analysis but trail the first two in importance in the nonprofit world as compared to the commercial sales world.

What do people receive is important as we tend to cluster our communications around points of interest to us - fiscal year end, calendar year end, graduation, matriculation and events. Are those what we want to read about as recipients though? Maybe, more likely not as often as they are.

What do your people open? I am looking at and talking about all electronic communications here. Which messages are getting through and what is viewed as priority by your constituents?That this is important can be demonstrated very simply by going back to your own email from the last week - you may need to open the deleted file to find the messages we are looking for - and see how many of them are from places that you have a legitimate relationship with but just did not resonate with you at this time.

Is there a connection between the two? Do folks who get more messages open more? Is there a point of saturation when folks stop paying attention to your messages? Starting to identify who opens and reads your online communications is the first step in expanding your online community.

Calendar Year end and family obligations

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:54:00 +0000

I must start with an apology to those of you who consistently read this - or as has been the case for the last three weeks, wait to read this. My wife and I added our third child early in December and as a result, I have been away from work helping to get everything accomplished at home that needs to be done to both welcome our daughter and ensure that both of my sons (who are 5 and 3) have everything that they need for it to be a magical Christmas.

In the time away from work, I have spent a fair amount of time looking at the holiday communications, the calendar year end appeals and the sales pitches that are all competing for attention in my inbox. I have noticed several trends:

Flash is everywhere and not one piece of it was worth the time it took to write it.

Even the best emails (Allegheny College sent me a great piece) have horrible lead emails.Subject lines do matter - not that anyone sending me anything seems to have noticed.

We seem to have a really hard time connecting people to people.

In the last three weeks, I have gotten a total of 17 pitches for me to buy or give based upon the end of the calendar year (or christmas.) Out of those pieces I did not get one complete piece that would have attracted my attention if I was not in this line of work and working on this blog. I am going to focus on the trends above as the starting points for us but they are by no means comprehensive.

Several pieces had terrific looking flash presentations, once I got to them. The problem I find with flash is the lack of personalization - I am getting a wonderful presentation about a non-profit but it is essentially a television commercial. Those places that I give to, attended or have interacted with may or do know a fair amount more about me than other folks in their data yet we rarely create multiple presentations and segment. I got a really nice e-greeting card from one school wishing me "Happy Holiday's", I am not sensitive to the use of the specific holiday or not but this was a religiously affiliated school and the card came from a member of the clergy - wouldn't "Merry Christmas" have resonated better?

Lead emails - like direct mail, electronic mail has multiple points of contact - carrier in mail is to the combination of sender name and subject line on email, body of message is the same in both, if it isn't compelling and relevant, it isn't getting read, links to multimedia presentations can also be in both but the immediacy of email is that the links are clicked the day they are sent and delivery is near simultaneous for the population. Even assuming the best connected community with a strong sense of interconnectedness, only a portion of your messages are going to be read and opened.

The vast majority of the messages were from an entity - "office of xxxx" or Customer Service or just the largest entity - YYY College or University. If, you, like I, get a decent number of requests and sales pitches, this is the first giveaway that this is servicing the sender not the recipient. Primary contacts from an entity are nearly always sales pitches; be it from Amazon or St. Judes, both are asking me to do something for them. Email offers a terrific opportunity for 1 to 1 communication, messages from individuals. These can be from a volunteer - set up a free webmail account to use for it under their name, or from a high level employee - create a mirror account with a middle initial in it to use as a fundraising account from a dean or president.

Try a text message from a named account against the flash or html piece, include variable data and write it like an email, not a mail piece. Keeping your mind and eye on just these three items in your electronic communication stream is crucial to long term success and is a significant part of a donor focused fundraising program.

The social networking trap - or why we are afraid

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:45:00 +0000

As I reflected in my pre-turkey post, I was contemplating Stephanie's post regarding use of Social Networking in the fundraising environment. After a couple of days with family, I have collected my thoughts on the matter.

In sum, I see a couple of significant hurdles:

1) Internal Perception - the view of social networking within most of the higher education community is that of trepidation. We proceed carefully in a world that is moving at internet speed to innovate and change. This is a result of the higher education approach to the world that is only now coming out of the dark ages of monks and scribes. This approach creates a huge gap between where our constituents are and where we think they are.

2) Investment in media - we all have a web presence that we pay/paid a significant sum of money for. For most of us that is likely an aggregate effort between some consultant help and full time employees. That investment has been further enhanced through the development and implementation of an online community that was often more successful in concept than in actuality. This has lead to a sense of investment already made and often the results from a funding standpoint have not met the expectations.

3) "Our folks on not on there." - VPs, presidents and major gift officers - in sum those who bring in the large dollars, are not familiar with these tools and even when they are, realize that the vast majority of our dollars are not going to result from the folks who are on the sites. While this is true today, those of us in Annual Giving realize that the next generation of major donors will most likely come from younger graduates who are making their decisions today about which charities they are going to support. This is true, for now. While we need to "fish where the fish are" from a major gift/dollars standpoint, this holds true for communications with younger alumni as well.

4) Lack of understanding about how to utilize these to further the advancement process. - these are specialized tools that have no cost to implement and much like email a decade ago, the view persists that making this a portion of someone already on staff's job is the way to approach it. While a small select group of institutions have been able to make significant headway in email fundraising without adding additional resources, tools and staffing, they tend to be places that have extraordinary success and investment in other aspects of fundraising. This is the largest gap in higher education implementation of fundraising tools through social networking.

The solution is simple, the process to do so is complicated. Success will come to those places that invest in creation, implementation, and execution in the social networking arena. That can come in the form of hiring staff, outsourcing implementation or even finding some volunteers from your alumni body to manage your efforts. We all know they are out there. The folks who are interested in us will find us and the communication stream is as close to 1 to 1 as possible, allowing two way communication and providing considerable connection. We remain afraid.

the other side of the fence

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:05:00 +0000

I have been working on a response to Stephanie building on her comments about social networking and how we can use some of the readily available tools as part of the efforts to build a community that supports each of our causes. In doing so, I spent some time working on creating and maintaining a group on LinkedIn, Online Fundraising Exchange (if you are on LinkedIn, find me and join the group) to learn more about how parts of that environment work.

I sat down tonight to put the ideas together and checked my email as is my habit in the early part of the evening. I had three messages (a clear sign that many of the folks that I work with are already relaxing for the holiday), 1 confirming the shipment of a Christmas present for my wife, 1 from LinkedIn telling me that a colleague had accepted my invitation to connect and 1 from my Alma Mater, Allegheny College.

I have given to Allegheny every year since I graduated - more than a decade of annual gifts. The total dollar value of those gifts is modest to say the least but I am a consistent and easy donor to work with. I give the same way every year, as the result of a fiscal year end mailing that I cross over into an online gift. The piece that they sent was the first non-online community piece that I had seen from them this fall. I get a monthly email from their online community telling me about the classnotes that have been submitted from folks the year ahead and year behind me so am accustomed to seeing email from the college.

What struck me as unique about this email right away was the look - a picture - more like a postcard than an email. While it was picture of the campus, it was not an area that I would have chosen as a signature location on campus and it used a merge area looking kind of like a name plate for a donor recognition plaque to personalize it. While I appreciate the effort to personalize the piece, I was a bit dismayed that it looked more like a mailing label stuck to the picture than a smooth digital merge field.

The flash portion of the piece that it linked me to played smoothly with nice controls (watch it here: Allegheny College - post your thoughts on the piece please!) and was relevant to me - the images all have meaning and it clearly comes from folks at the school that have a good grasp on what makes the College unique. That said, I was disappointed in how it left me feeling - distant. I felt like I was watching an admissions video more than an appeal for my support. It did not connect me to folks in a personal fashion, did not provide me with any opportunity to connect to other alumni or communicate with the College, it simply ended with a completed form including my name and address along with a suggested gift of $50. Since I just spoke with the phonathon caller who asked me for $100, I thought that was an interesting amount - have an email in to the annual giving folks there to ask what the thought was behind that.

Reflecting on what was wrong about the piece, I come up with the following thought; I expect more from online communications that telling me what is happening. I have become accustomed to the interaction of the social networking tools - I want to be able to post and hear back from friends and connections right now, I want to be given the opportunity to read those classnotes and comment back to the note writer, I want control of the content of what I see and when I see it. I was disappointed that rather than playing on the communication they are already providing, I was sent a one way communication that reads as "old" media - no matter how well done, it missed the target completely.

Stephanie and I were talking this afternoon prior to this email and the subject of continuity came up - how many years of working with a client does it take to provide consistent results, her response: 3 or more. I thought that was striking comment and even more so in light of my reaction to this solicitation piece. Striking but not surprising - my expectations were set by the monthly communication that I am already getting. If the email had linked me to a microsite and asked me for my unique experience that would be shared with others, I would probably have ended with a gift - give me the chance to share and be shared with - continue the work that is going on rather than changing directions when you want to solicit me and success will follow.

I will get back to work on my social networking post and get that up for our return to work on Monday the 30th - Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Why are we afraid?

sirasamny@mainspringmc.com (Stephanie Rasamny) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:12:00 +0000

I had great conversations with two clients this week about leveraging Facebook to increase engagement and giving. During both discussions, I mentioned using Causes in Facebook as a possible way to increase exposure and giving. Both clients expressed reservations about using Facebook to promote a giving message, yet both were interested in using Facebook to increase engagement. After doing a quick search for a cause for my alma mater and others, it looks like many institutions share the same reservations.

I'm not sure that we should throw out the idea altogether - I think it's worth exploring why we are afraid and how we can temper those fears. With over 300 million users and more than 10 million becoming fans of pages daily, Facebook is a powerful tool for fundraisers. Your constituents - young and older - are using Facebook, and by maintaining a presence on the site for your institution with updated content, event info, and other links, your institution will build engagement. So why not include a way for "fans" to support the institution? Are we afraid of invading a social tool with a giving message? Or that asking for support will lead to decreased engagement? Don't misunderstand my questions - I believe these are valid concerns and that further discussion will resolve them and pave the way for more effective fundraising through this medium.

The first concern - that Facebook is a private social space that should remain separate from the fundraising arena and that mixing the two will be seen as an invasion of privacy - is a valid fear. But let's do a quick reality check - this is already happening. Causes has already signed up 11,000 non-profit partners and Facebook cites over 35M monthly active users of Causes. That means it's highly likely that your constituents have received a petition to support a cause and are petitioning friends to support causes already. Causes can be initiated by individuals as well as non-profits themselves, and they range from well-known non-profits like Habitat for Humanity to small, community causes around a community library or a local school drive. Facebook members are participating in Causes every day – why shouldn't they have an opportunity to join your cause?

The second concern - that asking for support on Facebook will turn people off - is also a valid fear that I believe can be resolved with a better understanding of the way Causes works. The premise behind the application is to help individuals start a campaign for collective action through social networks. Through Facebook, individuals can set up a cause and designate a 501(c)3 beneficiary. Individuals can then petition friends to support their cause. Charitable organizations can also start a cause to benefit your organization. When you do this you will be best served if you become an official non-profit partner with Causes so that you have access to a personal dashboard that tracks donation activity to your causes. Through your dashboard, you can send petitions for support as well. (We can get into the ins and outs of petitioning in the next post.) Before you jump into petitioning, add the cause to your fan page. Don't worry, there's no blinking arrow pointing to a donate now button on your page - it's simply another item on your wall. If you're afraid of turning people off with a giving message, just leave the petitioning to your fans for now.

What next? Test it out! Start slowly by establishing your cause and linking it to your Facebook page so that fans can support your institution through Facebook. As you become more comfortable, consider approaching alumni leaders to join the cause and send petitions to friends. Once you have some experience under your belt, you can begin to develop more complex strategies that include things like setting up multiple causes for specific initiatives (i.e. senior class giving), fundraising invitations, donor matches and birthday wishes that will further enable fans to support your institution.

I welcome your feedback – comments and questions – and I hope that you will consider how your institution can use Facebook and Causes to grow engagement and dollars.

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:54:00 +0000

After spending a couple of weeks working on integration between Twitter and LinkedIn, I am amazed at how much can be done with a little knowledge, a lot of curiosity and some willingness to try different options and ways to integrate social networking tools. I realize that many of you reading this may not have either the time or the comfort level required to do some of this on your own but that is not an obstacle. Simply find a student or tech savvy employee on your or the advancement staff and enlist their help if you wish to improve what you are doing and how you are generating conversation and activity on your social networking sites. In any case, take a look at what you are doing and how you can amplify that conversation.

What is really important here in any case is what value are you able to derive from your presence on the sites. I know that my supervisors pay a tremendous amount of attention to the number of fans of our facebook page, how many members we have in LinkedIn and how many people are following us on Twitter. In the light of the traditional focus on numbers that we track in advancement that is the logic thought process. Unfortunately it is the wrong metric to be using.

While each of the major Social Networking platforms also provides measuring stick opportunities, those are limited to a single platform and don't really provide much in terms of meaning to you as an advancement professional. I strongly suggest that we all need to work on ways to identify what value there is for providing resources to our employer. The best of the sites for this process is Meetup.com. Meetup exists purely for the point of connecting each person to one another online with an endgame goal of meeting in real life. I realize that this is still a couple of steps short of providing resources for you to apply to your mission but it is a good transition measure - from talking online to meeting in person.

I am working on running a report that compares folks who are self identified to me as being on one or more Social Networking site and includes real time interaction and giving. At this point, the most obvious (and predicatable) outcome is that the more active the user online, the more valuable they are.

In my small sample, that has not proven to be true. In fact, the more active they are online, the less likely they are to have offline interaction with us. Does this hold true for other schools? Please feel welcome to reach out to me if you need help to identify what your results are.

Social networks and fundraising

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:50:00 +0000

I spent the end of last week in Washington DC for a St. John's alumni event. While I was in DC (where I worked for almost 4 years at American University) I set up a visit with a colleague from Catholic University who work in Annual Giving. Catholic is a companion School to St. John's and we had been following them on facebook for some time. As a result I asked him to coordinate a meeting with the alumni office folks who run their facebook page.

This is step one of the social networking - using the folks that you have relationships with to increase the knowledge base that you possess. Using that resource was invaluable in this case as it gave me the background to approach the internal constraints that I have on getting this done and present them with a plan and an approach that has already been tested and that I am able to show potential results from.

That approach is as follows:
Use Twitter as the base for all posts. By setting up the RSS feeds between twitter and facebook you are able to pull the status updates from twitter into facebook. Using http://hootsuite.com/ as the upload client, you can schedule the tweets and thus schedule your facebook status updates. The RSS feeds create a cascade effect with a delay between the tweet and the status update. This can be done using a facebook ap that uses the #fb tag to carry those items through into status updates.

Post questions on a daily basis - generate traffic through a consistent contest and Q&A basis - think morning drive radio show. Same question category every day, keep it light and fun with real time announcement of prizes. Plan this out - have a weekly meeting to establish how you are going to do this and then use that scheduling process to ensure that you follow through.

Use a blog page as a way to establish an externally viewable listing of your communication history. Post each of your email digests and general messages to the blog - simple, free and easy as a way to ensure that the monthly newsletter and electronic communications that you send to your alumni who have provided you with an email can also be viewed by those who simply visit your page or are fans on a social network without you needing to post them again and again and again to accomplish that. Again, leverage the technology - use RSS feeds and the blog tools to make that happen automatically whenever the messages are sent.

Create a home page that cleanly integrates these pieces and youtube channels or other networks that you are using. The vast majority of your content can be generated and refreshed through the posts, updates and emails that you are already sending - rather than adding to the content needs, the social networking sites can be used to increase value and engagement while expanding your reach, at the same time limiting the work needed to do so.

budget cuts? what to do...

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:13:00 +0000

If my day to day workplace is anything like most of yours, this month has been a bit of a downer. At St. John's we freeze our student data in the middle of October, providing advancement with the listing of new student names and current parent records and more importantly providing a snapshot of the current fiscal health of the university. While last fall was disastrous from a fundraising standpoint for our industry, this fall has greater potential for long term impact. Budget cuts are either here or coming and with the employment picture what it is, likely here for a couple of years.

Those of us on the front lines of fundraising realize that our most important step is to invest in programs, practice and people. We need to keep ourselves relevant to our donors and provide a concrete, responsible, grounded case for support to all prospects regardless of gift history. In addition to that, you need to make your organization relevant to your alumni today. Career Services, accurate and detailed reporting on the use and value of support and networking opportunities are three simple and controllable items that can provide ongoing relevance.

Unfortunately, budget cuts often target those items that provide this relevance because they are difficult to directly tie back to quantifiable benefits. It is easy to justify the cost of the phone program or a mailer or even a new online effort as they all end with direct and clear results - dollars and donors that you can balance against the cost of the effort. It is much more difficult to make a strong case for investing in stewardship, donor relations and communications efforts.

So what to do?

I advocate for a comprehensive approach - collaborate with your internal partners to create pieces that serve multiple functions. Identify several other offices that are looking to communicate with similar constituent bases. Think globally - we all work with the other aspects of advancement at our institutions but who else wants to communicate with external constituents? I would suggest the following offices may be worth a conversation: institutional research, academic deans, admissions/enrollment, career services, communications/marketing.

I am sure that there are others that are unique to your institution but you may notice a trend in the offices that I listed - almost all of them have a stake in the items that you are looking to provide - accountability, current services and networking opportunities. Use that common ground and shared efforts to maximize budgets and return on investment for you. This may require some sacrifice in direct control of the pieces but typically we are all better served to get something in our constituent's hands than not to. You will achieve benefits in increased communication and relationships that will carry value long after the current budget issue has passed and may just make a couple of new friends as well!

Wanted: Your E-Opinions

sirasamny@mainspringmc.com (Stephanie Rasamny) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 01:16:00 +0000

Let me first apologize for my prolonged absence from MainSpringBoard. It has been a busy September at MainSpring and like the saying goes here - time sure does fly when you're on the road! As we turn the corner from planning to executing on year-end e-appeals, I'd like to take a minute to ask some questions of our readers to get your opinions on e-campaigns - after all we fundraisers do share information. So take a look at these questions and tell us what you think. We've developed quite a following for this blog - perhaps it's the brilliant commentary or that Scott just has a lot of friends - in either case, other fundraisers reading this will benefit from your answers. So comment away!

Is email the best communication tool for online engagement? How does generational data impact that opinion?
How many electronic solicitations do you send a year?
Do you prefer html or Flash solicitations? Or a combination?
If a combination - what's your ratio of email to Flash?

Alumni Relations Communications

svandeusen@mainspringmc.com (Scott VanDeusen) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:47:00 +0000

For so much of what we do in the online world we tend to focus on the fundraising aspect of the communications. I would like to suggest that inclusion in a linked, comprehensive campaign of pieces and communications that are strictly Alumni centric rather than part of an engagement effort driven by the annual giving program is a critical portion of creating the online community that we are all seeking to aquire.

As someone who has programmatic responsibility for both areas, I am a huge believer in tying them together and combining the communications into an "institutional stream" rather than trying to build up two distinct individual branches on the same tree. I do this in the phone and mail programs through integration of event information and invitations into the phone calls (every record loaded in the phone program has the unique set of events that individual will be invited to over the next 3 months loaded with it) and in the mail program through what we have come to call solicitivations - invitations that include a clear, direct ask and a reply slip for making a gift.

Online, we should begin to take that same approach - use of microsites that provide engagement with the institution but just as importantly with other alumni can play a huge role in providing the connections that help to build and sustain a successful alumni program. The use of email and crossing the platforms into social networking as a way to get folks to pay attention allows for communications to reach folks who are already engaged with you. Just as important though is inclusion of these efforts in print materials - provide links and stories in the magazine, include buckslips in your mailings pushing folks toward these communication channels.

At the end of the day, our alumni are becoming increasingly savvy to our efforts to engage and drive them into making a gift. The best and most effective way to work with that is to coordinate our programs and tools such that we are providing them with a single stream of communication that contains multiple opportunities and options for engagement at many levels and in many ways. Please keep in mind that for most of us, the stated goal of the advancement shop is to provide and maximize the resources available to our students from external audiences, doing so does not always mean cash in the door.