Great Opportunity to Discuss Non-Profit Visibility

Check out this great opportunity from M & R!

If you run a nonprofit, work for a nonprofit, consult to nonprofits, sit on the Board of Directors for a nonprofit, or give all of your money to nonprofits, you won‘t want to miss this one-hour webinar conversation! On June 22nd, NPQ Editor-in-Chief, Ruth McCambridge, will have a “private” lunchtime conversation with Clara Miller, President and CEO of the Nonprofit Finance Fund, and you’re invited to listen in and submit questions for Clara!

M+R’s New England office has the pleasure of working with the Nonprofit Quarterly (NPQ), the nation’s premier media source covering the nonprofit sector. NPQ has a reputation for tough, objective coverage of stories large and small. Its editorial voice informs and shapes the nonprofit sector from coast to coast.

Nearly 300 NPQ subscribers have already registered for this free nationwide webinar and we just know that you, your staff, Board members and partners won’t want to miss it!

Ruth will be talking to Clara about her recent article that was featured in NPQ titled, The Four Horsemen of the Nonprofit Financial Apocalypse, found in the Spring 2010 edition. The discussion promises to be lively, thought-provoking and memorable. And for any nonprofit that is destabilized because of the economy – there are timely and important lessons to be had.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EDTTo register, go to: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/489962402

Simplify Your Life with Social Media Aggregation Tools

This is a great article for all of us using a variety of social media tools! I'm familiar with TweetDeck- but netvibes, Yoono, Flock and profilactic- they're new to me and they look great. If you're a dedicated Mac user, Socialite might be right for you. And Hootsuite... now that looks amazing. I'll be checking it out today! You might want to do the same.

We live in a time of uber-speedy communication via social media networks. One of these aggregators could help you keep up, stay sane and save precious time. You'll need it so you can tweet about your great new aggregator.

Read the Article: 7 Social Media Aggregation Tools to Simplify Your Streams

Mobile Programs: What’s good? What’s bad? What’s the norm?

In the wake of the Haiti earthquake, we all saw the Red Cross show how mobile giving could change the face of fundraising, raising $32 million from $5 and $10 gifts through text messages.

Now, just a month after releasing benchmarks for social media, M+R Strategic Services teamed up with Mobile Active to release its first-ever mobile benchmarks study, taking a look at how nonprofits are using text messaging programs and establishing some metrics by which an organization can evaluate its own.

Some of the most interesting findings:
- Nearly 80% of subscribers to text programs signed up online.
- Mobile programs are a growth industry – the annual increase in list size this year was a whopping 49.5%! (But it’s important to note that list “churn” – the rate at which subscribers leave the list, mostly through their numbers becoming undeliverable – is also very high, 30.7%)
- One of the ways text programs have had the largest impact is on call-in efforts. Recipients of text messages participated in a call-in at a rate five times as high (4.7% ) as those who received the action via email (0.82%). That’s one of the benefits of having your advocates already on their phone – making a phone call is literally just a few clicks away.

This is just the first effort to try to quantify the norms in mobile programs, but it’s already clear that they have a lot to offer the world of nonprofit advocacy.

How to Deal with All the Negativity

By now, we all know that one of the prices you pay for opening up a real dialogue with your audience is that the feedback you get isn’t always going to be positive – or even nice. It’s everywhere you go in social media – from blog comments to Facebook Walls to Twitter.

How to – and even whether to – respond to the negative criticism can be tricky, if not frustrating. That’s why Mashable put together a “how to” specifically geared at responding the right way to the comments you need to respond to – and ignoring the ones you don’t. The key is staying positive, and it starts with separating the legitimate beefs from the trolling spammers. In other words, step 1: take a deep breath.

In the end, the open dialogue can be one of the most beneficial aspects of social media, empowering your audience to take control of the conversation.

Testing, testing...

Even when you think you know it all about what tactics perform the best in email marketing, it’s always good to take a step back from time to time and test it.

Pinpointe, an email marketing company, just released the results of its study Email Marketing 101, which tests a lot of the basics from subject line length to sender information to email personalization. The results, while not too shocking, help establish some key best practices in email communications:

1. Keep subject lines short.
2. Send messages from a real person, rather than sending from an organization.
3. Personalizing the messages increases response.

Take a look at the full results here – download the PDF or watch the webinar.

What's "normal" in social media?

Everyone wants to know how they should be using Facebook, Twitter and other social media to best promote their cause. Should we be tweeting more? Should I set up a Facebook Page or a Facebook Cause?

Two studies released this month dove in to try to establish some social media benchmarks among nonprofits and marketers.

A “mega-report” by MarketingProfs consulted with a panel of social media experts and surveyed its readers and concluded: Facebook is better than Twitter, at least in the marketing world. There’s a lot more content and helpful information than just that conclusion, though, and you can read a lot more about the report on Social Media Examiner.

In another report, this time looking at growth and social engagement metrics among nonprofits, M+R Strategic Services aimed to shed a little light on the social media habit of nonprofits, who up until now have been forced to “make it up as they go along.” With this study, M+R hopes nonprofits – no matter their size – will be able to develop meaningful metrics by which they can develop their social media engagement.

Social Media Lessons to Learn from Haiti

With the tragedy in Haiti just now starting to come into focus, the work that so many organizations – and individuals – have done to help save lives and bring relief to the hundreds of thousands of victims is inspiring. And it’s no surprise that social media played a pivotal role in so much of that good work. Geoff Livingston of Zoetica decided to take a look at the lessons nonprofit organizations can draw from social media’s impact on the relief effort.

"While terrible in scope and nature, catastrophes like the Haiti earthquake bring out the best in people. In the age of social media, we get to witness this firsthand.

"With the widespread adoption of social media in the non-profit sector, people’s ability to act and support communities in need like Haiti has only been increased. There’s no greater example of this than the incredible fundraising job the American Red Cross did with social and mobile channels. With its texting campaign, the American Red Cross raised more than $20 million."

You can read the whole article – with all five lessons for social media – at Mashable.com.

2nd Annual Grassroots Innovator Awards- the finalists

It's officially awards season in Hollywood- and we're following suit at the American Heart Association! We're just days away from announcing the winner of our 2nd Annual AHA Grassroots Innovator Award. But first, you'll need to hear from the finalists. Then- be sure to cast your vote for the winner right here on the Let's Talk Grassroots blog.

If you missed the finalists' presentations- you can access a recording by calling (866) 609-5877. Conference ID: 3774314, Participant Passcode: 8876228

The finalists are...

Melissa Brown (GRA): Faced with declining email open rates and little indication of why, Melissa and her advocacy colleagues in the Great Rivers Affiliate developed a survey to gather more information from their advocates. They used two sets of questions- a more detailed questionnaire for their most active advocates and a shorter survey for their mid-level advocates. They intend to use the survey results to shape future grassroots messaging.

Allyson Frazier (FDA): As a prominent advocate prepared to receive an award at the Boston Heart Ball, Allyson and her colleagues seized the opportunity to raise the profile of advocacy with the Heart Ball audience. In addition to heightened exposure to advocacy messaging, attendees were invited to record video messages that were later delivered to state legislative offices in support of AED legislation.

Julie Archila (GSA): In need of a way to visually represent the wide support for an increase in Florida's tobacco tax, Julie worked with Florida Advocacy Director James Mosteller and coalition partners to collect pictures from supportive volunteers. The photos were posted to a Google Map, and the link to that map was shared with lawmakers- putting a face on the support for this bill.

It starts with listening

How can a really big, diverse organization “turn the ship” toward a meaningful and intentional social media strategy? The American Red Cross started by simply listening.

“Perhaps the biggest benefit and unexpected outcome of engaging in social media through listening first is that the Red Cross drove internal adoption of social media. Wendy says people are no longer afraid of negative comments or posts. “The opposite of hate is indifference, if someone bothers to post a negative comment it means they care.” Negative comments are now viewed by the organization as an opportunity to educate and improve what they are doing.”

You can learn more about the Red Cross philosophy for social media outreach here.

Twitter for the little guy

Beth Kantor has another great post about how even modest organizations that don’t have pots of gold can make social media work to accomplish for their own missions. Plus, she wants to hear about any good ideas out there form nonprofits using social media in new and exciting ways:

“And, if you are a small organization and have succeeded, I want to hear about it.

Leave a comment sharing how you're using social media to support your organization's work in a local community or regional effort and using a shoe string budget to do it. And, if you could win a copy of "Twitter for Dummies" that the good folks from Wiley just sent me.”

Doing something cool with Twitter? Facebook? Ning? Drop Beth a line.

The power of layering

According to this great post from Frogloop, the key to a successful campaign builds momentum both offline and online:

“The cardinal rule of offline campaigns is layering: multiple contacts on the doorstep and on the phone build on each other to create momentum. Neighborhoods that have had multiple passes of canvassing tend to deliver higher ROI on each successive pass - the second, third, and fourth contacts aren't "cold calls", they're follow-ups. Adding contacts through online advertising and content, social networks, email, text, mail, etc. can build momentum, too. The more times a voter, donor, or advocate sees, hears, reads, or experiences a message and call to action the more likely it is to penetrate the noise of every day life…”

Face Time

For nonprofits, engaging supporters online is becoming the norm. Emails fly and movements are building on social networks. But nothing will ever replace the power of real, live, human beings standing together for a cause. How do you get online activists not only to show up at real events – but to make those events truly awesome and effective?

Check out One Day, One Planet: A How-To Guide to Orchestrating a Global Day of Action on techpresident.com.

What does the future hold for democracy? For organizing around a cause? 350.org's Global Day of Action might give us a clue.

Recruitment: Turning Media Spikes Into Leads

Getting on the nightly news or in the local paper is one thing – turning that exposure into recruits is another. And your window of opportunity is short – 3-4 days at most to make the most of the exposure.

The blog over at Seachange Strategies is a great one to follow all the time, but this oldie-but-goodie post is a great read if you’re looking to grow your email list:

Seachange Strategies Blog

Are You Ready for the New Consumer?

Over at Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog, Katya is asking: What are supporters expecting of your organization? Three things to consider:

1. Personal relevance
2. Social benefits
3. Tribal benefits

Are you ready for the new consumer?

Publish Post

Flash Mobs for Fitness

Looking for a novel way to get communities fired up about tackling obesity? Consider a flash mob. What’s a ‘flash mob’? Well, for LiveWell Colorado it’s a creative way to draw much needed attention to the problem:

… the campaign kicked off with a flash mob in three cities across the state (see above). In Denver, Greeley and Grand Junction, more than 100 people stripped down to retro, 1980’s-inspired work out gear and performed aerobics, leaving passersby engaged and amused.

You can see video proof of the impromptu workouts here.

Tweet Congress

Are members of Congress hip to Twitter? You bet! The folks over at tweetcongress.org built their site to open up a direct line between twitterers and their elected officials in Washington. Their mantra:

We the Tweeple of the United States, in order to form a more perfect government, establish communication, and promote transparency do hereby tweet the Congress of the United States of America.

See how democracy is functioning in 140 characters or less (with nifty stats and charts, too).

How does your Facebook page compare?

How does your Facebook presence stack up to other nonprofits? How much staff time do other nonprofits dedicate to social network upkeep? Now many nonprofits are using Twitter?

Our friends at NTEN surveyed over 900 nonprofit professionals about how they’re using social networks and then compiled the results into an easy-to-read report. (Note that you have to provide some basic contact information to download the report, but it also signs you up for NTEN’s free newsletter, which is full of helpful tools and info. And don’t forget – you’re an NTEN member!)

Building Relationships with Lawmakers

"In reality, successful influencers are... methodical. They are humble. They are patient."

Check out this exerpt from Amy Showalter's book about how underdogs (us) can build relationships with the Big Dogs (lawmakers) they hope to influence. Interesting reading...

http://www.innovatetomotivate. com/reports/ASAEUnderdog809. pdf


This abridged excerpt was published by The American Society of Association Executives Associations Now magazine.

Twitter 101 for business

Despite all the talk and hype about Twitter, do you still feel like you missed the first day of class?

This link will take you to a great guide- provided by Twitter- about how businesses are using the tool and maximizing their relationships with customers. There are sections on getting started, learning the lingo and even best practices. Plenty of relevant information as we think about how we can effectively use Twitter to engage with advocates.

http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/

Getting the most out of your NTEN membership

First- did you realize you have an NTEN membership? You do! We have an AHA membership that extends to all our grassroots staff. You should have received a welcome message way back at the end of 2008. You'll need your email address as your log-in name, and you'll click 'forgot password' to get started. Contact Danielle Grooms if you need assistance getting up and running on the website.

If you do know about your membership... Do you take advantage of the many free or low-cost webinars and conference calls hosted for members? They're a great way to get and stay connected with others in the advocacy field- and to learn how they're using various technologies in their work. I love their 'Ask the Expert' series!

Visit http://www.nten.org/ right away to get acquainted with the Nonprofit Technology Network. You'll be glad you did!