Nonprofit Online News

Playing it Safe is a Trap: Five Syndromes in Online Marketing

As part of preparing for an upcoming seminar, I've been giving a lot of thought recently to patterns of failure in online marketing efforts. I had a very big list for a while and then suddenly it hit me: Most of these patterns reflected a desire on the part of the organization to play it safe. I share some of these with you in today's feature article, entitled Playing it Safe is a Trap: Five Syndromes in Online Marketing. Briefly, the five syndromes relate to "best practices", the wrong metrics, self-promotion, cautious language, and control. These really helped me see online marketing programs in more strategic terms and I hope you find them similarly useful.

Doing Well by Doing Good? Print Copies Now Available

Print copies of 'Doing Well by Doing Good?' - our report on work satisfaction in civil society - are now available. The cost is $14.99 (plus $5.00 S/H). If you prefer to read such things on paper, circulate it or have it available for more casual browsing, want a copy for your library, or need the impact that comes with hard copy, then this version is for you.

Meaningful Acts of Appreciation for Boards and Staff

The nonprofit web magazine Blue Avocado is off to a great start. It's got small tidbits in a blog format, with a weekly mailing - so what's not to like? I recommend you just go ahead and subscribe, but in the meantime I'll get you started with a link to a very useful little piece. I'm a big believer in the power of authenticity, as you probably know, so I found the article on Meaningful Acts of Appreciation for Boards and Staff to be very worthwhile. If you have ever sent or received one of those robotic, generic messages that substitute for mindful gratitude these days, then I think you'll enjoy this piece.

What We Don't Know about Open Access: Research Questions in Need of Researchers

Over the course of the last year, I've repeatedly found myself stuck in regard to my own progress in thinking through the logic and business models of open access in regard to the two journals we've launched recently. Of course I want to implement it. I also want it to be sustainable. I know all of the quick and dirty answers to the obvious questions, but there is a decided absence of deeper research. Turns out I'm not alone. In the recent issue of the Open Access Newsletter, Peter Suber, the foremost advocate of open access, has written a detailed piece entitled What We Don't Know about Open Access: Research Questions in Need of Researchers. I would love to see nonprofit tech folk who are advocates of open access take on some of these. The most obvious one would be an up to date comparison of the software platforms available for open access deployment.

2008 eNonprofits Benchmarks Study

The 2008 eNonprofits Benchmarks Study is out, covering the 2006 to 2007 time frame. I worry a bit about how benchmarks are used, but people really want to know how they are doing in the tactical mechanics of communication, in comparison to other organizations. The authors define their key 2008 findings as: (1) Email open rates, click-through rates and response rates have fallen from 2006 to 2007. (2) The average nonprofit in the study sent an average of just over 4 emails per subscriber per month. (3) The annual churn rate dropped from 21 percent to 19 percent. (4) The total amount raised online increased by 19 percent. (5) The average advocacy email response rate was 7.5 percent. (6) The average fundraising email response rate was .13 percent. (7) Although less than 1% in numbers, $1,000+ gifts made up 20 percent of the amount raised online. (8) Almost 60 percent of subscribers did not take any online advocacy actions over the course of the year. (9) Subscribers taking 6 or more online actions in a year, made up just 5 percent of list size but accounted for 42 percent of organizations' total actions.

The South African Civil Society Information Service

I'm incredibly excited to see the launch of The South African Civil Society Information Service. I remember conversations with the SANGONeT leaders a couple of years ago in which the notion of such a service was clearly starting to come together. The implementation looks top notch and they couldn't have a better leader than Fazila Farouk. I'm looking forward to following it closely - I believe this project will be broadly influential and eminently replicable.

May Day! May Day!

I have seen dozens of people come to wide-eyed amazement when they learn a bit about the political history of May Day. Myself, I'm fond of both its nature based history and its connection with labor and democratic values. In May Day! May Day! Zephyr Teachout writes that "May Day is to Labor Day as Martin Luther King, Jr. is to President Lyndon Johnson". I like that.

Free PDF of the 'Doing Well by Doing Good?' Report

A couple of weeks ago we announced the publication of the 'Doing Well by Doing Good?' report as a web site. Today, I'm pleased to announce that it's available also in PDF format (for free). There are two important things about this eBook: First, unlike other publications in which we have made a similar investment of resources, we are offering this one free of charge, for the benefit of both practitioners and researchers. Second, we are offering the report under a Creative Commons license, so that grantmakers, consultants, associations, and assistance agencies may offer it to their constituencies directly. This is an interesting step for us and we hope you find it to be useful!

Nonprofit Blogging Strategies Seminar, June 18th & 25th, 2008

As more and more organizations realize the power of "social media", at the center of their efforts is the exciting and challenging notion of blogging and similar forms of communication. I'm going to be teaching Nonprofit Blogging Strategies in a new time slot in June: Wednesdays, June 18th & 25th, 2008. How do you balance the free for all of blogging with the rigors of organizational messaging? How does blogging and its relatives (social bookmarking, social networking, etc) fit into the mix of content development, organizing, and outreach tactics? We'll address these questions and more in a two part seminar designed to help you work hands on with your organization's needs and opportunities.

The Machinery of Hope: Inside the Grass-roots Field Operation of Barack Obama

I did a lot of traditional community organizing when I was younger and nowadays I do a lot of teaching about the promise of online communication for large scale revitalization of the practice. Tim Dickinson in the Rolling Stone has written a great article entitled The Machinery of Hope: Inside the Grass-roots Field Operation of Barack Obama. Although it definitely reflects their endorsement of Obama, it's nevertheless a very solid look at how that campaign is synthesizing the best face to face organizing techniques with the best online communication practices. I would have been interested in more numbers and fewer stories, but this is journalism, not research. Given the way the Howard Dean campaign got dissected after the last presidential race, we'll see the detailed numbers soon enough. Of course, if we're lucky, the staff responsible for these practices will be in government, not starting new civil society consulting firms.

Mission Over Membership in Online Advocacy

I recall, very early in my career, being shocked by the newsletter of another organization in which they claimed to have been working on a legislative issue on which I had been a lead consumer lobbyist. I had never once seen them in the legislature. As it turns out, they had been canvassing on the subject, which they considered to be a form of advocacy work. It didn't help that they had asked me for reprint permission on our own article about this campaign and then created the piece I was reading by substituting their organization's name for ours. So, it's probably obvious why I was delighted to read Charles Lenchner's piece on Mission Over Membership in Online Advocacy in the NTEN blog. He offers a solid criticism of the lack of integrity of list building efforts masquerading as real advocacy work. It's a real problem online these days and I hope this encourages organizations to find a way to be more honest. If not, maybe we should consider some sort of Hall of Shame.

Six Signs of Nonprofit Decline

Many ailing nonprofits hang on for far too long, tying up passion and resources and generating burnout and resentment. Although there is no magic formula for how long to wait for a turnaround, the Fieldstone Alliance's list of the Six Signs of Nonprofit Decline is a good place to start: (1) Loss of all or a significant portion of support from a key funding source. (2) “Chasing dollars” syndrome. (3) Sudden and dramatic expansion of services. (4) Falling behind on financial obligations. (5) Consistently unable to meet service and financial projections. (6) Departure of key board and staff.

NTC 2008 Session Material

One of the best things about a good conference is the way in which participants return to their work as teachers of the material they just learned. Access to session materials can help with that. NTEN is hosting the materials from the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference and they are worth a good thirty minutes of browsing to see what may be of use to you. I find the fifteen tags they've used to flag different session topics to be the most useful interface: Advocacy, Analysis, Budget, Collaboration, Community, Email, Infrastructure, Integration/APIs, International, Open Source, Planning, Policy, Tools, Web2.0, and Webmasters.

Create Personas to Bridge the Gap with Target Audiences

Nancy Schwartz has a nice write up of how to Create Personas to Bridge the Gap with Target Audiences. I teach this concept in several of our seminars and I like how accessible she makes the idea. It's a great way to learn how to put ourselves in the shoes of our stakeholders when we're figuring out how to communicate in a way that is centered on their experiences, rather than our own processes.

New Seminar on Delivering Online Seminars, June 4, 2008

For a couple of years now, colleagues have approached me at conferences and suggested that I teach people how to do online seminars. Now that I have done a couple of hundred hours of them and helped The Gilbert Center's seminar program evolve into its fourth year, I feel like I have some valuable lessons to share. I'm therefore pleased to announce a ninety minute online workshop entitled Delivering Online Seminars: A Sustainable Model for Engagement of Staff, Volunteers, and Donors. The workshop will be delivered live online: June 4, 2008. My goal is to clear the way for you to develop and deliver your own seminars, by providing you with a low-risk strategic framework and takeaways you can apply immediately.

Be Good: Why Business Startups Succeed By Being More Like Nonprofits

There is something quite powerful about an outsider seeing one's strengths, just as there is something annoying about them pointing out weaknesses. Although I get frustrated when people in the nonprofit sector put themselves down and talk about how they need to be more like business, I do feel that they have the right to make such comparisons. However, when business people start telling nonprofits the same thing, even when I agree with the specifics, I find my hackles rising. Making millions doesn't mean you know anything about social change. Conversely, when someone like the insightful Paul Light, immersed as he is in civil society, explores the strengths of the nonprofit sector, I discount his ideas just a little, even though they are spot on. So imagine my utter delight when, finally, the tables turn and I read a smart, successful business entrepreneur point out the innate strengths of the nonprofit model, for any kind of enterprise. Paul Graham runs Y-Combinator, a wonderful small-scale commercial incubator that I would love to replicate in the nonprofit world. He is also an excellent writer. In his most recent piece, entitled Be Good, he comes upon an insight that he sees as truly radical and likely to be radically true: The key to a successful business startup is to run it like a charity. He writes: "The thought of betting against benevolence is alarming in the same way as saying that something is technically impossible. You're just asking to be made a fool of, because these are such powerful forces." He describes four basic sources of strengths of the nonprofit model, all of which derive from its innate authenticity: (1) Morale: If you feel like you are helping people and making a difference in the world, you will keep working under horrible odds and conditions. (2) Help: Being good makes other people want to help you. (3) Compass: If you are clear that you need to do what's best for your cause and the people you're helping, lots of very hard decisions will be a lot easier to make.

Building a Collaborative Workplace

Anecdote is a "business narrative" consulting firm, meaning they specialize in the role of stories and story telling in organizational success. Their recent paper on Building a Collaborative Workplace (cover page for 11 page PDF), by Shawn Callahan, Mark Schenk and the wonderfully ubiquitous Nancy White helps put our obsession with tools into a larger context of four good practices: Foster collaboration leadership and support. Communicate the fruits of collaboration. Implement collaboration tools. Start communities of practice.

The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It

If you've been paying attention to the influence of civil society in the last decade, you would know that things would be much, much worse, were it not for the Internet. Whether it's grassroots response to globalization, or political mobilization in the U.S. and other countries, or new volunteer and fundraising frameworks, or rural empowerment in developing countries, more and more of us know that the level playing field of the Internet is playing a role in our success or at least, in preventing our causes from being utterly crushed. Any leader who is thinking farther ahead than the coming quarter, must read The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It. I also recommend that every leadership group that has the ability to encourage peer conversations get this on their agenda soon.

The Rockridge Institute Closes Due to the Very Challenges They Were Addressing

I have been a fan of the Rockridge Institute, in large part because of their strategic vision: to help mitigate the stranglehold that the Right has had on the frame of public political discourse in the United States. So I am sad to read that The Rockridge Era Ends on April 30, meaning they are folding as an organization, primarily due to funding challenges. I was particularly dismayed, but not surprised, that progressive foundations continue to underfund good thinking and long term infrastructure development. I recommend their reflections on how they succeeded and how they fell short to anyone who is concerned about American politics and citizenship.

Donation Dashboard 1.0: Collaborative Recommendations for Donors

The Berkeley Center for New Media Project has launched version 1.0 of their Donation Dashboard, a tool for collaborative filtering of donation recommendations. So far, it's definitely living up to the label of "experimental", since it basically recommended back to me the organizations I had rated highly myself. But I have high hopes for such things, if they are kept open and used through an API to help donation portal sites cooperate on building donor value.