Community IT Innovators. Established 1993. Serving social mission organizations with integrated technology services you can trust.

With Clay Shirky’s popular opening keynote on the power of online communities and social media organizing (summarized with key quotes here), and dozens of sessions on social media related topics, NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference was atwitter (with blog links and quotes in the twitterverse) with strategies and panels on integrating social media like Twitter and Facebook into effective online organizing and advocacy campaigns.

One session by John Kenyon, however, stood out by emphasizing the basics of successful online communications – the importance of eating your vegetables before you get to the dessert of playing with social media.  Based on a chapter from the NTEN book: Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission and featuring William Neuheisel of DC Central Kitchen and Jennie Anderson of AIDS.gov, this session was packed with useful tips and case studies on how to move your website and email from lackluster to inspiring.

A few takeaways:

• Use metrics (such as Google Analytics) to analyze what people are looking at on your website and what you can spend less time working on
• The 4 C’s of effective websites:
  • Credibility: You have less than 1 minute to establish your credibility as the public face of your organization.
  • Cultivation: Invite visitors to participate and join in your cause, rather than simply stating what you do. Build relationships.
  • Clickability: Clicks are interactions; how can you provide information in different ways and give people lots of opportunities to “interact?”
  • Content: Keep it real, current, and concise.
• Coordinate e-newsletter, fundraising, direct mail and website campaigns for maximum impact.
• Integrate stories and connect emotionally with your audience.

In a live-tweeted session on organizing online for positive change, Ben Rattray summed it up thus: “The killer app is the content.”  While having a sustained organizational presence on social networking sites can help build brand awareness, having an authentic, consistent message that makes a connection with potential supporters remains the key to successful non-profit campaigns.

Whether you need guidance on your website and email campaigns, or feel ready to dive into social media, CITI can help you develop an online strategy action plan to measure and increase the effectiveness of your organization’s online presence.

Check out How Much eMail Is Too Much? over at Frogloop, written by Steve Daigneault of Amnesty International USA. A lot of smaller organizations probably don’t threaten the kind of volume that Steve had to wrangle, but you should print out the latter part of the article about writing compelling copy and paste it over your desk*, regardless of how many email blasts you write.

*Or, uh, tape it on your iPhone?

According to a recent study, the majority of donors want to hear about an organization’s impact, its success stories and other organizations they may partner with. This can go a long way in gaining that all important donor trust and, most importantly, donor dollars.

The Social Media for Social Causes Study, co-authored by Qui Diaz, Beth Kanter, and Geoff Livingston, took a look at social media as an area of growth for donations. The statistics look promising but the demographic breakdown is not surprising.

Across the board, demographically, those who engage in social media fall into the same patterns as those who do not. Those 30 and under are less likely to give more than $1000 while chances for getting a high dollar donation increases after 50.

Don’t Give Up on Email

According to the survey, email is the the preferred method of contact from charitable organizations among those 30 and up. To a smaller degree, 45 percent of 30-49 year-olds prefer social networks and 31 percent of those over 50 also use social networks indicated a growing interest for getting information through social media.

When you are communicating with donors, whatever the medium, be it web site, email or social media, here are a few tips:

1. Show – A picture is worth a thousand words. Show your organization in action.
2. Tell - Share stories about your organization and how it is accomplishing its mission.
3. Remind - Remind them about your mission and what your a trying to accomplishing. Is your organization ending world hunger? Remind them of that.
4. Ask - Don’t forget to ask for their support. Give them the opportunity to help you to achieve your organization’s mission.

I just found this article on formatting html email for consistent results. I’ve spent some time wrestling with email templates, and it can be excruciating. Wish I’d seen this article then — it’s very specific about what works and what doesn’t.

Need help devising a strategy for managing your Web site? Heard about blogs and RSS feeds, but not sure how they apply to your nonprofit? Not sure how to add social media and Web 2.0 technology to your online strategy?

Join us on Tuesday, February 24th from 5:00 to 7:00 PM as we help your organization to turn your online strategy 180 degrees by learning to develop long term strategies for online technology and message delivery.

Bring your questions to this seminar and we will shed light on the sometimes confusing world of websites and online marketing. CITI Online Strategy Consultant Glennette Clark will explore engaging ways to meet your organizational goals for fundraising, communications, and advocacy.

We’ll cover:

• Aligning your offline mission with your online mission
• Connecting your email marketing to your web site
• Increasing your opportunities to get more online donors
• Setting benchmarks and measuring your success

Cost: FREE for current CITI Clients (clients only: please enter discount code CITICLIENTS)
Only $25 for everyone else!

Win a FREE Online Strategy Consultation!

If you attend, you will be entered into a drawing to receive a FREE Online Strategy consultation worth $750.

Happy Hour Afterwards!

After the workshop, mingle with your fellow nonprofit colleagues and CITI staff at Axis Bar and Grill, 1340 U St. NW. You are welcome to join us for the happy hour even if you cannot make the seminar!

In Seth Godin’s blog today  a post on a good email relationship – the casebook kind you are supposed to do, over time, developing value, with information relevant and interesting to subscribers – and it does seem that as the economic cart topples over, the emails I’m getting are verging from just desperate to absolutely panicked fundraising intrusions from out of the blue.  It feels like strangers shouting at me from my inbox. To be fair, when three colleagues just got laid off so you have their work on top of your own while you try to perform in a way to keep your own job, you can think any quick easy and cheap campaign, if it turns up even just one donor,  seems like something you should try.  But I think Seth’s point in this economic situation holds even truer – your constituents and clients are having a hard time too.  Everyone’s desperate.  When you are desperate, you turn to comfort food, you regroup, you consolidate, you go with what you know will work.  So your communication needs to convey the value you bring to your established relationships – how we will all get through this together.  People considering building a relationship with you need to be reassured that you will not waste their time, since they haven’t got enough time to meet the new challenges this fundraising environment brings.