Online Giving. What will it look like a year from now? I jotted down an abbreviated timeline that captures some of the major developments in online giving, below:

Based on this graphic, I’ve put together my thoughts about online giving trends and technology for 2010. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, as well:

1. Project-based donation solutions.

Organizational online donations will continue, but project-specific donations will be where organizations will see the interest and growth. Nonprofits know that fundraising is personal, specific, and identifiable.  Even Causes has recently added the Donor Choices option which allows organizations to preselect donation levels that fund specific projects.  Generalized donation portals (Razoo, JustGive, Firstgiving) now highlight specific organizational projects, such as  “donate to a women’s self-defense project,” or “build an ice skating rink.” In the coming year, I see the rise of project-specific soliciting, and donation solutions to meet these needs.

2. The rise of niche donation networks.

In recent years, niche networks are also rising and thriving. JGooders (donations to Israeli and Jewish causes) and IsraelGives (donation to an Israeli charity) both launched in 2009. DonorsChoose launched in 2000 to connect donors with classrooms in need. I also view Jokona as a niche network as well – small projects, worldwide. Just as organizations are beginning to solicit donors for specific projects, niche networks will solicit specific types of donors and match them to their ideal projects. In 2010, I think that we will continue to see the rise of new niche donation portals and networks, and the eventual merging of others in the years thereafter.

3. The emergence of cross-platform donation and donation portability.

In the future I see the ability to be able to donate to a specific project or nonprofit organization across many platforms. Giving Impact is a great example of this. Giving Impact is an online website donation tool designed for specific project campaigns. It is similar to the “donate here” button, but with custom dashboard analysis, and integration allowing individuals to “share” donation impact to their Facebook profiles. Giving Impact just announced that they will be offering a Facebook application allowing integration of the Giving Impact tool with Facebook. It is also built with an API so developers can further design/extend this tool.

One other example of this, though not seamless, is the YouTube Nonprofit Program. Participants can create a “call to action” within the video, or a video overlay, to donate off of YouTube. This isn’t a seamless integration, but it allows portability of donations.

Nonprofits want one donation solution that they can port to wherever their stakeholders hang out online. They don’t want to create a zillion donation profiles and projects in order to get to everyone. I’m hoping that the technology and will develops to meet this need, and that we see the rise of cross-platform donation tools, and donation portability such as the tool developed by Giving Impact.

4. The rise of mobile giving.

Mobile charitable fundraising has been growing since 2008. Today, approximately 400 nonprofits are running mobile donation campaigns, the average donation is rising from $5 to $10, and US charities expect to receive a total of $2 million from mobile fundraising in 2009, according to Mobile Marketer. (Two examples of providers of mobile-based giving in the US are Mobile Commons and Mobile Giving.) Mobile giving is growing in acceptance in countries around the world as well. The rising adoption of smartphones, coupled with the mobile familiarity of the millennial generation, makes this is a trend worth watching. The challenge for nonprofits is to creatively think about integrating mobile giving and social media.

5. Cultural acceptance of social network-based giving.

One of the things that I’ve argued is that users on social network sites aren’t culturally used to donating while on a the network. That’s where they discuss life’s issues. However, that’s finally changing. Online donations via Causes on Facebook and twitter rallies have become more popular. In the coming year, I’m predicting the rise of more fundraising options that integrate with social networks. Along these lines, there’s an interesting post by Joe Solomon that considers what a Twitter fundraising tool would look like.

NOTE: I’m updating this blog post (as of December 9) to include a link to the wonderful slide presentation entitled: The Future of Online Revenue Generation for Charities, by Amy Sample Ward. She places it in a slightly different context than I do, focusing on future demand for better processes, relationships (and empowering supporters), leveraging social media, the gift economy, and authenticity. She also includes some great data about online giving trends.

What do you think? Do you agree with me, or disagree? Can you add to this list, or edit it? I’d also love feedback on the graphic above!

I want to thank my twitter friends who helped me identify some key timelines for the graphic above: John Carnell, Katrin Verclas, Mobile Commons, and Chris Dougherty. Thanks for listening, y’all!

If you’re planning a social media campaign, how important is it to integrate bloggers before and during the campaign? I’m referring to social media campaigns launched on a platform(s) other than a blog platform.

People join causes because they know and trust either the organization itself, or someone associated with the cause. Translating this to our virtual lives, outside bloggers have the reach and trust to be that friend that recruits others to a cause or a campaign. I know this from my community organizing days: friends bring friends into a a cause or a campaign. The strongest advocates become the best recruiters.

Bloggers not only have reach within their community, but they amplify their reach through social bookmarking (Digg, StumpleUpon, etc), re-tweets, and of course leveraging their personal twitter networks. Also, bloggers tell compelling stories. From John Haydon: “Bloggers can have the biggest impact in online campaigns by telling a sincere, heartfelt story. They can also have a big impact by knowing who among their readers would also stand up and take action for particular causes.” During social media campaigns, bloggers are the grease that can push a campaign forward, help it gain momentum, and bring needed attention and value when it is faltering.

I believe that bloggers play an integral role in the success of the campaign, and I spent some time trying to find evidence of their contributions to online campaigns.

Opportunity International Australia: Micro Finance Trust Fund Camapaign

As an Australian ambassador for Opportunity International, Jasmin Tragas pledged to raise $10,000 to create a micro finance trust fund for female entrepreneurs in the Philippines. She created an online fundraising campaign, and blogger relations was integral to iy.  As part of the campaign, Jasmin created an eBook about female world shapers entitled “WorldShapers: Extraordinary Women Making a Difference.” Many of the women featured in the book wrote blog posts about the cause and championed the campaign. (Disclosure: I was one of the women featured in the eBook.) When I asked Jasmin to describe the role of bloggers in the campaign, she replied, “huge in terms of getting visibility. Not just bloggers writing about the campaign but also sharing in fun blog challenges. This raised the profile and brand. Blogging may not have helped right away but that it increased visibility over time. I was describing it to friends earlier today as a trickle effect.”

Visible Government: Beers for Canada

Beers for Canada was a social media campaign run by Visible Government to fund software to monitor government transparency. According to an interview with Alistair Croll on Beth’s Blog, the organizers pre-seeded the 3-day campaign by identifying and speaking with key bloggers and twitterers, who brought their voices to the campaign. Incredibly popular and respected bloggers (Tim O’Reily, Om Malik. Tara Hunt) also tweeted about the campaign.

Epic Change: Tweetsgiving 2008

Epic Change’s Tweetsgiving  2008 event was extremely successful in terms of the amount of tweets, publicity and funds raised to build a school in Tanzania. In Avi Kaplan’s Tweetgiving analysis, he writes that the campaign pre-seeded the event with a few bloggers, but not many. The blogger mentions began to roll in as the campaign gained momentum, resulting in over 100 press and blogger mentions. Deeper analysis revealed that 15% of the visits to the donation/Epic Change Tweetsgiving site came from blog posts and articles. Avi writes: “the press we received was so valuable to Epic Change and continues to benefit the organization, but in terms of raw traffic, it looks like word of mouth and twitter mentions were the main drivers.”

Epic Change: Tweetsgiving 2009

This year’s Tweetsgiving 2009 social media campaign (November 24 – 26) embraced and integrated bloggers. The Tweetsgiving website encourages participants to self-organize into groups; the “Blogger’s Group” is one of them. Organizers also pre-seeded the campaign by asking influencers within certain online communities to bring their own “flock of Turkeys” (my wording, not theirs) to the event, essentially turning these influencers into recruiters and campaign leaders. (Disclosure: I am a member of this group, called Wild Turkeys – their wording, not mine.) John Haydon (one of the campaign leaders) told me that “for Tweetsgiving, the main role bloggers have is encouraging their communities to participate.”

How important are bloggers to online campaigns? Very.

A trusted blogger is the Walter Cronkite of his/her community.

Walter Cronkite was “the most trusted man in America” for decades. If he would have told my parents to donate money to your cause, I’m sure they would have opened up their checkbook and written one right then. Use trusted bloggers to be your campaign’s Walter Cronkite.

Have any of you been involved in campaigns that use bloggers? How was the blogger element integral to the campaign’s success? Did you learn any great lessons or best practices you’d like to share here? I hope that this is the beginning of a list of campaigns that have used bloggers, and anecdotes about the effect of blogging on the outcomes. I’ll keep the list as a reference guide for others planning their next social media campaigns.  Look forward to the hearing about the campaigns!

image courtesy of j_a_n

How can organizations best utilize the social bookmarking site Delicious? Though not the largest of the social bookmarking sites (it is 7th of the top 20), it is one of the easiest sites to mine for information. It is deliciously simple (pun intended!) to use, and there are over 180 tools, add-ons, and related resources to help you to take advantage of this platform. I can think of three broad ways organizations can use Delicious: for public/private information-gathering, intra company collaboration, and sharing news with stakeholders. I’m sure there are more! How do you use Delicious?

Information Gathering (public or private)

Use Delicious to gather relevant information: stay on top of the latest industry developments, competitor news, research new possibilities, and monitor tags of your own organization’s name. Use Delicious to search for these items or articles of interest to your organization. Remember, you can determine whether or not each bookmark will be seen publicly, and you decide if you want others to know what you are researching!

1. Follow Users:

Find and follow fellow industry professionals that upload bookmarks.  Select the “add a user to network” option in order to collect all of your favorite users’ bookmarks in one place.  Here is a screen shot of how to add a user to your network:

2. Follow Tags:

You can  “subscribe” to specific tags of interest in Delicious. This action sends all your subscriptions directly to your Delicious home page. Alternatively, you can also create an RSS (really simple syndication) feed to automatically update whenever new articles with the subscribed tag are bookmarked. You can also create an RSS feed of any user’s bookmarks.

As an example, I searched Delicious for all tagged information about the electric car, and subscribe to the RSS feed for all future articles tagged “electric car.”

Intra company Collaboration

Why not use Delicious for sharing information within the company? Create a custom organizational intranet for sharing bookmarks! No copying and sending the URLs by email, no re-posting to your company’s intranet. When everyone in the company is encouraged to share articles, the volume of intra company news sharing increases.

Two options for intra company news sharing:

1. Encourage employees to bookmark and share tags using one company password and user ID, but mark each bookmark as the “do not share!” All employees can log in to see the newest bookmarks, or subscribe to the company’s bookmarks.  Here is a sample screen shot:

2. Create individual employee accounts, and employees tag bookmarks with a set of agreed-upon tag names. To share the information, employees in the company subscribe to each other’s networks, bookmarks, and specifically-named identifying tags (e.g. conversationprogram221).

Sharing News with Stakeholders

Create a news feed on the website of bookmarked news about your organization. This displays a vibrant, crowdsourced “News” section of the website, or a scrolling news widget out of your Delicious bookmarks.  Here are two variations on this idea:

1. Whenever your organization is mentioned in the news, bookmark it to Delicious and tag it with your company’s name. Create an RSS feed for all Delicious tags with your company’s name. Place the RSS feed on the front page of the website or the sidebar of your blog. You could put the RSS feed in the “News” section of your website, but that’s not as fun!

2. Create a public RSS feed to your website of all tags relevant to stakeholders. For example, if your organization’s mission is advocacy for the electric car,  create RSS feeds for the tags “electric car,” “alternative energy automobile,” “automobile efficiency,” and other related tags.

Of course, don’t forget that bookmarks are public by default. This means that you are already sharing information with your stakeholders. Ask them to subscribe to your bookmarks! Tell them that this is the way your organization offers news to other Delicious users. And…don’t forget to mention your Delicious account on the website!

How does your organization use Delicious? Please share your stories with us in the comments section below!

image by KhE

I’m at NTEN’s 2009 National Technology Conference. I’ll be live blogging this session on Mobile Advocacy and Fundraising. I’m starting now.

Session presenter: Matt Wilson from Mobile Commons.

Now 250 million active phones in US (in context of a little over 300 million people in US now!)

Technology is changing voice advocacy.
Example: AFSCME Union

1. Builds an email list.

2. Asks them to make a phone call through an email ask.

3. Submit mobile phone number, email and zip code on a form, and an automated phone call is sent to a legislator. How does this happen: An API code snipped sends a call to an automated voice through mCommons – redirects the call to their legislator.

Example 2: Human Rights Campaign

1. HRC sends a text action alert.

2. Asks them to dial a number. Hear a recording with audio talking points and

3. Auto-routes to legislator.

Participation industry standards:

1. Email requests return 8 to 20% online advocacy action.

2. But with mobile SMS, we see 20% response rate within 20 minutes, and 40 – 50% response rate within 24 hours.

Example 3: Planned Parenthood

1. Asked people to input a mobile cell number as soon as the Global Gag Rule was overtuned.

2.People received text messages that it was overturned. Individuals were asked to text back thank-you messages to Obama. 500 people replied back with a thank you within 20 minutes. Averaged out to 20% reply rate.

Takeaways:

- got people used to acting differently: use mobile text for the organization

-captured mobile cell numbers for the organization

Question: what should be the length of broadcast text message to individuals?

Limit is 160 characters. The simpler, shorter and quicker the call to action the better.
Question: What is basic set up cost for Mobile Advocacy?

Some vendors will price per text – about $.10 per text message plus setup fee. Other will offer ongoing monthly fees plus setup fee. Rule is about $.10 per outgoing message for simple solutions.

Question: Are campaigns targeted differently for those people with smartphones or iPhones?

Haven’t really seen this yet. Not sure what we would learn yet from this type of segmentation, and don’t have enough info yet.

Question about worldwide customers.

mCommons only works with US customers at this time.

image courtesy of mGiving

State of Mobile Fundraising

1. Mobile Giving Foundation: ability to bill $5 increments to constiuents’ wireless bills.

2. Email acquisition. Acquire emails at live events.

3. Integrated campaigns.

Can we increase lift on online and direct mail campaign with text to reinforce donation is a big questions.

Ask people to text to pledge or fulfill plecges online. Send them to online pages is an idea.

Mobile Giving Foundation

Any 501(c)3 can apply to be a provider. One approved, can ask constituents to send $5 donations to their wireless bills on behalf of the organization. Mobile Giving Fdn distributes funds within 60 to 90 days. Wireless carriers pass thorugh entire donation. Vendors have different pricing models.

Question: Do nonprofits get all the giving info from the constituents at the end of the transaction with add-on requests at end of text giving? No. Problem is that nonprofits can’t get that info. The one exception is that once you get a list of email  ????

Case Study: by Watershed Strategic Consultants. Jenn Smith, presenter.

Think back to last fall and the economy taking a dive. Tried partnering with the Humane Society of the US to try something different. At the time HSUS had a 12,000 phone list. Urged 12,000 to give via phone on December 30th as last-chance push for year-end giving. A “hey, give now, tax deductible, do it now” type message.

Send “Last chance email” December 26. Sent last chance email again Dec. 29. Send text to give December 30th. Everyone got anothe last chance email on the 31st.

The Plan:

1. Partnered with a telemarketing firm to set up an inbound call center to accept donations.

2. Set up an internal donation form telemarketing reps could complete donations while taking calls.

3. Suppress donors on mobile list. If gave in December, didn’t use their numbers for the mobile campaign.

4. Created a control group of people who did not receive text message.

Text message they’d received: “HUMANE: 24 hrs to make your tax-deductibel gift for animals. Call 800-680-8313 from 11-8 EST or reply “CALL” now to give to the Humane Society.”

What happened?

NOTHING.

However, a few people made some test donations who were already on the team.

Silver lining: control group who didn’t get text message.

BUT the people who got text message AND then last chance to give Dec. 31st email to give donated .55%, which is higher than average for email solicitations.

People who did not get text but only email asks donated .31%

Increase in fundraising was .77%.

Takeaways:

Year end using text messages to boost email response is good. Control groups can save the day. Keep testing. Must build mobile strategies inot campaigns.

What went wrong with original campaign?

Not sure but thoughts are:

1. Mobile is a a cultivated file. Takes time for people to get used to it.

2. Mobile file had not been asked to enage that frequently.

3. Perhaps issue with timing, people on vacation then.

What has changed for Watershed’s clients?

1. Creating unique strategies per channel, not just replicating them onto each channel. So, if you want to grow a mobile program you have to build a list same as how you built your email list, and think about it as a new channel that need new strategies.

2. Off mobile promotions are still important for mobile complementaries.(Flyers, signs, other platforms, etc.)

Question: how about opt-out?
Answer: every text message has a click to opt out message, within the 160-character limit.

Question: how do people know the number really does lead to a credible organization, or is the Humane Society that texted them?

Answer: technically, with a mobile short code people couldn’t do that. But, there are issues with people’s comfort with mobile that this speaks to. Always have the same handle for text message starts such as HUMANE and all broadcast messages come from the organization with the same short code telephone number. Frequency is also important – if people sign up for a text message then send them one soon enough so that they don’t forget.

Another example: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force hate crimes advocacy campaign.

1. Ask people to take action.

2. Send them to a Mobile Commons page to enter cell, zip, click “connect me” and they get to talk to a legislator. Primary goal was to get people to call in.

3. Then ask them to opt in to mobile list.

4. Facebook app to enter mobile phone number to act now against hate crimes. (integration)

The future:

Increase partnerships with Mobile Commons. Think beyond email. More testing with clients. More work with Mobile Giving Foundation.

Next presenter: Grace Markarian, from The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS)

Mobile Program:

Launched in 2007. Grew list slowly. Initally for Canadian anti-seal slaughter campaign.

Use Mobile Commons now. Their program lives within their Online Communications team. About 17,500 subscribers on list.

Use mobile channel to complement other channels. Try not to bother people unless it is urgent or fun. Also “get out the vote” actions.

In-house: daily 9-minute meetings with entire External Affairs team for updates on integrated campaigns.

How we offer signups:

part of every campaign.

send welcome email after people sign up for HSUS to ask for mobile cell number.

Facebook signup and donation app.

Future mobile plans:

Twiter bundling, aggressive recruitment through email, incorporate with print media, billboards, etc.

Real campaign: Save the Canadian Seals from HSUS

1. while people are watching and documenting the seal slaughter, they text to people about what they are watching.

2. People on list are affected by these texts and reply to Grace about it, so it works to raise awareness

3. Ask people to reply back and begin conversations.

4. If peole respond to text, then they get anautomated reply to act on anothe platform (website page). This was a lesson learned from being innundated by reply texts.

Question: how really engage with mobile text and reply to them? (my question)

Answer: I have a mobile commons inbox where it is aggregated and I can reply to their quesitons. Also, people can go to a site or a page where they can begin discussion on a non-mobile site.

Other thoughts from Grace at HSUS: people do seem to notice paper flyers and information and act mobilely.

HSUS Learning Curve:

State of the art tools change quickly.

Developing niche content can be challenging.

Database integration is hard.

Could be a full-time job!”This is email and web all over again!”

Before you start a mobile program:

1. Research audience, peers, database integration

2. Figure out goals: reach existing members on a new channel? Reach new members? Send content? Etc.

3. Sketch a plan for mobile recruitment and your first campaign.

4. Get “buy in” from the top of the organization.

5. Think about how you will integrate with all your online communications.

6. Identify core staff who will be responsible, and time they will allocate to this.