Michael Stein: Internet Strategy for the Nonprofit Sector

Sign TURN's petition on AT&T new "service agreement"

The good folks at The Utility Reform Network (TURN) are circulating an important petition that merits the attention of anyone that is an AT&T customer.  The "service agreement" recently mailed to AT&T customers is causing a lot of confusion, but its terms are simple: AT&T is saying it is our way or the highway.  Either give up your rights to legal remedies or give up your phone. AT&T can raise prices, charge you for calls you didn't make, and prevent you from suing them if you don't like it.  TURN believes the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) can and should stop this attempt by AT&T's to cut off customer complaints and limit customer rights. 

Please sign TURN's petition demanding that the CPUC change course today.

What is being done to improve advocacy communications with Congress?

My former colleague Bill Pease who is now the Chief Scientist for Convio has written a useful update on the state of advocacy communications with Congress:

Most nonprofits that conduct online advocacy campaigns are aware that Capitol Hill offices are overwhelmed by the volume of constituent communications. Offices have responded by turning off their public email addresses — at the federal level, only 20% of federal legislators currently accept email. Most offices have switched to Web form communications, which allow elected officials to deploy a number of tools that discourage communications, ranging from district matching to CAPTCHA tests and logic puzzles.

Read the full article

White House Rocks presents: "Super Delegates"

Fifteen nonprofits recognized by Convio for online success

Mea culpa, this is from an old Convio press release from back in October 2007, but Typepad is one of my most efficient knowledge management systems so I have to save this somewhere. Every year Convio gathers customers and partners for an annual convention (part business, part love-fest, part junket), and my favorite item is their annual awards for online success using the Convio product.  Since I'm always looking for good examples of nonprofits using the Web for fundraising, advocacy, and marketing, this list of fifteen winners and runners-up is a useful profile of organizations that are getting it done online. The categories are email communications, email list growth, website, online fundraising campaign, integrated fundraising campaign, advocacy campaign, use of Web 2.0/peer-to-peer marketing techniques outside of special events, and special events fundraising.

Ask Idealware: Simple Advocacy Tools

Eileen asks: "We are a small group of "progressives" in the tiny town of Westport MA (pop. 14400). The Good Old Boys are trying to sell off the beautiful environment to their developer friends. We would like to set up a SIMPLE website and constituent relations management system. We plan to keep a "scorecard" of local officials' votes. Periodically we plan to send action oriented emails containing links to newsarticles and offering sample letters to the editor or to your selectman. I have read the articles on your homepage--very helpful. However, we are neophytes. And of course we have virtually no budget. Where do we start?"  Read Ask Idealware's answer.

May 18 event: Engaging constituents and donors in an online and mobile world

I'll be moderating a panel discussion on Friday, May 18, 2007 at noon on the topic of Engaging Constituents & Donors in an Online and Mobile World. The event is offered by the Association of Fundraising Professionals Golden Gate Chapter (of which I'm a Board member) and will be held at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.  The panelists will be Kevin Donegan of the Breast Cancer Fund and independent consultant Rachel Allison. The panel will explore using social networks to promote a cause, using online and offline technology to track constituents, crafting online fundraising and marketing campaigns, integrating online and offline fundraising, and working with technology vendors. Cost is $25 for AFP members, and $35 for non-members. Register

Convio releases Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study

Convio has released an extremely useful study about key performance metrics for nonprofit organizations using the Internet.  It's planned as an annual study.  Convio compiled data from 30 clients of various sizes, missions, and levels of online maturity.  I've always been impressed by the studies and white papers that Convio publishes, and this one is no exception.  Here are the key findings of the report:

• Online donations continue to grow at a fast pace. In the span of just a few years, the amount raised online by many nonprofit organizations has grown from virtually nothing to a median annual amount of $362,485, with some organizations raising considerably more. The median rate of growth in funds raised online was 27%.
• Email addresses are valuable. The more people in your email file, the more money you can expect to raise online. Organizations with large email files (more than 100,000 email addresses) raised two to three times more online than those with smaller files.
• Small email files are gaining ground. While the median rate of growth in email files was 47% for the period of 2005 to 2006, organizations with email files composed of fewer than 50,000 records grew the fastest — at nearly twice the rate of the overall index.
• Web traffic matters. Organizations with the most monthly unique Website visitors have built the largest email files and promoted giving opportunities to the largest pool of new constituents. This relationship between Web traffic and file growth highlights the importance of driving traffic to your Website as a file-building tactic.
• The median unique Website visitors over the year studied was 26,481 per month, growing 30% since last year. 
• Site visitor registration is key. Driving constituents to your Website does not, by itself, grow your email file. Converting Website visitors into registered users — who can then be cultivated and converted into donors — requires compelling content and incentives to register. The median registration rate was 2.8%.
• Size matters, but it is not everything. While it is not surprising that organizations with large operating budgets raised the most money online, mid-sized organizations (those with annual budgets between $5 and $20 million dollars) are growing online donations the fastest.

Empower the end user

I enjoyed reading this recent essay by GetActive CEO Sheeraz Haji in Personal Democracy Forum on his impressions of their 2006 User Conference held earlier this Fall in Washington, DC. I've been to many of these types of events over the years, and think that GetActive does a better-than-average job organizing them. (I'm a former GetActive employee and consultant, and also have several current clients that use GetActive's online services.) As Sheeraz alludes to in his excellent essay, the key is letting go of control, and getting your users (nonprofit customers) to willingly contribute knowledge and best practices to share with others. In this case, the "users" that Sheeraz is referring to are GetActive's nonprofit clients (as opposed to individual "end users.")

My complaint about these types of user conferences is that half the sessions are so "vendor-centric" that the best practices make no sense outside of that specific vendor's framework. This has sometimes been called "vendor lock-in," whereby organizations are making huge leaps in learning about online fundraising or email messaging, but they can't take it with them to another vendor because all the learning is based on a specific user interface, or specific tool features. My other complaint about user conferences is the feeling that "end users" (email list subscribers, online donors, real-world activists) are treated as nothing more than metrics. In fact, "end users" aren't invited to user conferences at all, and have become statistical abstractions at best.

Having said that, I think the "end user" is making a comeback in the emergence of the social Web (MySpace, blogs, etc.). If you want to see an example of letting go of control, try launching your content into the blogsphere or MySpace.  The average blogger will reshape your campaign message into something you barely recognize (but hopefully include the all-important hypertext link). One hundred MySpace friends will link to your campaign landing page, but watch your logo get morphed into bizarre contortions by late night Photoshoppers. 

The social Web trend speaks to the need for more focus not just on the "vendor's user" (the nonprofit), but on the "end user" (the individual donor and activist).  The end user (that's you and me) could (and should) care less about whether a nonprofit's website or email is powered by GetActive or Kintera. The end user enjoys receiving emails that are easy to read, easy to forward, easy to donate with, easy to send messages to decisionmakers with, easy to link to from their blog or Facebook page, easy to cut and paste.

This shift requires the vendors to think differently about who the end user really is. To their credit, both GetActive and Convio announced in October and November respectively that they're deploying new tools that allow their customers to interface more seamlessly with users on social networks. ChipIn has an online fundraising widget that can easily be added by anyone to their blog or their social network page. Greenpeace International's new "open source" whale campaign invites everyone around the world to participate in planning their upcoming campaign to end the south sea sanctuary whale hunt in the waters off Antarctica. You can read through several hundred submitted ideas, submit your own, and vote for the ones you think are best.

Expanding the Options for Integrated Online Software

I have written a new article entitled, Retooling the eNonprofit: Expanding the Options for Integrated Online Software.  It has been published by Idealware, where I am a Board member.  The article describes what integrated online software tools are available today, and offers some considerations when choosing tools for emailing, online donations, advocacy online, and more.  Idealware provides candid Consumer-Reports-style reviews and articles about software of interest to nonprofits, centralized into a website. Through product comparisons, recommendations, case studies, and software news, Idealware allows nonprofits to make the software decisions that will help them be more effective.