This year for Content is King 2010 on Nov 16th we are doing a YouTube experiment whereby we will create a YouTube movie to promote an Irish charity.
With this project we have one objective; we want to make a movie that will be viewed thousands of times, that will be passed on from person to person, and that might even go viral.
The finished movie will feature as a centre piece of “Content is King 2010” and will be analysed by a panel of experts, in addition to receiving an individual media campaign in the run up to the conference.
For Content is King 2009 we produced “DJ Hip Op” to promote positive ageing for Age Action Ireland, which to date has received over 20,000 hits and was featured on Morning Ireland, and in the national press.
How to enter
If you are a registered charity and are interested in participating please email newmedia@mediacontact.ie and we will email you back an entry form. Entries will close on September 17th 2010.
The finished movie will be produced by TV producer and director Tom Johnson, and shot and edited by Niall Sheerin.
Fundraising Ireland has grown so much in its short three years, it has delivered some incredible seminars and conferences and it is on the verge of announcing its membership programme. Its success has come about largely due to a group of committed volunteers who take the shape of its Board of Directors and this year saw the arrival of Ed Hurrell as Business Development Manager. This is certainly an exciting time for Fundraising Ireland and they are now seeking nominations for new board members.
At present there are vacancies on the board for four additional elected members. This will bring the membership of the Board to a total of ten people. If you would like to give your skills and knowledge to assist Fundraising Ireland in achieving its important mission then we encourage you to submit a nomination form. Please read the Guidelines for Nominations and Elections Process before completing a nominations form.
I’ve just started following Dave Trott on twitter (here). On Monday he tweeted about his latest blog post about knowing the difference between being involved and being committed and I thought the first part of his post was relevant to our sector.
He wrote:
There’s a difference between involvement and commitment.
If we’re merely ‘involved’ in something then we don’t have to give it our all.
If it fails, it’s not the end of the world.
But if we’re ‘committed’ that’s a different matter.
Then it really is do or die.
We’ve got a lot more at stake.
It’s very important to know the difference.
I think it’s really important that we determine if our donors are involved or committed. We can probably ask a lot more of or expect more of those that are really committed. I know that I am really committed to one particular organisation, I’d pretty much do anything for them, I’d hate to ever see them fail. I don’t think I ever thought about the distinction before but wouldn’t it be great for them to know that I’m one of their committed supporters. They could probably guess this by looking at how long I’m involved and how I’m engaged, but they could always ask me, I’d be happy to let them know I’m one of their Raving Fans!
I’m reading Beth Kanter and Alison Fine‘s great book “The Networked Non Profit” at the minute. In it the authors talk about an organisations social capital. They make a great point that we sometimes over-estimate our social capital (connections within and between social networks).
They give an example of someone who asks their friends to donate to a cause because they are doing something, let’s say a run for the cause. The donation is actually being made by you to your friend, the organisation or cause really is secondary. If you identify with it perhaps you may donate a higher amount.
Organisations see this person as a donor, which they are, but they are only lightly connected to the cause. So to start communicating with them in the same way you do with the person who is actually doing the run for your cause isn’t appropriate, the donor and organisation have no social capital. This can be built up over time, so the first step should be to build the ties.
I currently receive communications from two organisations in this way and I wish that my relationships with them had been built up, as a result of how the relationship has been developed I rarely click on their emails. I think this highlights the importance of a great database, know who your donor is, how they came to you and what kind of relationship you really have with them.
The O2 ideas room is a great (free) resource from O2. They have lots of great posts from guest bloggers as well as O2 staff. A few weeks back Elaine Knowles posted a link to a great report from the agency Jump! where they look at how brands can learn from Comedians. Sounds odd I know, but its a great read. Click here to read
Does anyone buy books from Amazon? I do and its so easy, I find the book I want and within one click I have bought it. I don’t need to really think about it, I don’t have to find my credit card and re-enter all my details.
I have donated to a few charities more than once and just thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could make One Click Donations?
What an incredibly interesting read. Pallotta challenges the way the not for profit sector is set up and mostly he challenges the perception that ratios are a good indicator of organisational efficiency. I truly support his viewpoint (in fact I’m pretty sure I lost out in a job interview for suggesting this!).
I started out my fundraising career in an organisation where, when it came to advertising or doing any sort of promotion around our campaigns, the motto was “free first” and then we will see ! And this was in a time before social networks. So I began to think of this as the norm (which I suppose it is) and also became quite proud of the ability I had to get a message out there for little or no money and getting a return.
Recently I have begun to realise that perhaps thats not the way, perhaps its not something to be really proud of, perhaps spending money is what needs to happen. I have begun to realise it, but have had little or no success in bringing it about. It really came to the fore for me last year when I was given a budget of 5,000 pounds to advertise a national campaign in the UK, in January! Try make that work.
I’m not suggesting that simply spending money will make your campaign work, you need to have a plan, but surely we should look at is as part of the plan. Some charities do and guess what, they are the big ones. People may suggest that they can do it because they are so large, but is the reality not they are large because they do it?
Of course the challenge we face is convincing the donating public that this is a good use of their funds. Pallotta suggests that we have sort of dug our own grave here as we pay homage to the organisations that rate us, simply on how little we spend (ratios). When we get questioned about it, we defend our ratios, and try and make them as small as possible. We see it every christmas where the media writes articles about how much a charity spends or how much per christmas card actually goes to the cause. We should quench these fires but not adding fuel to them (ie commenting in the defensive). We should take a stand, as an industry, and challenge the media to do a piece on the impact of our work. Ask them to consider the benefit of the money we are getting, rather than how much it is costing us to get it.
Again I am not advocating that we spend all our donors funds on marketing or that a charity with a high ratio is now all of a sudden better, because they are spending on this rather than programmes. What I am suggesting (well really what Dan Pallotta is suggesting, and Im agreeing) is we that we need to be able to operate in the marketplace and compete for peoples discretionary funds.
When I was reading the book I wondered if there was a way we could fund such spending. We are seeing more and more charities move towards donor centric fundraising. Fund a project that takes your fancy. Well what if we offered the donor the chance to fund our next marketing campaign, invest in bringing more good to the cause they are passionate about, by bringing more people into the net? This way there is total honesty and transparency…we are going to use your money to fund this campaign and we believe by doing this we can bring 10 times more money into the organisation (its almost like a matching campaign?)
There is so much to talk about around what Dan Pallotta has written. He makes such a great argument for paying people in the sector well, if we dont we will lose the best and the brightest, at their prime, to the for profit sector. If we do we can attract them to this sector and we can also keep the best and the brightest that we already have.
If you want to read a short overview of what Dan Pallotta is talking about check out his Harvard Business Review post here and take a look at the video below.
I really would love to hear your comments on this post
Here is the extended version of the article I wrote for Personal Branding Magazine earlier in the month:
The non profit sector is an incredibly competitive one, in the US alone there are 1.4million nonprofits registered and every year that number increases. A lot of charities are operating in a similar or “same space”. We often people say “There are too many charities” hear, but we seldom hear people say “there are too many coffee shops in this town”. The fact is these organisations exist because there is a need. So why does this question arise? Possibly because the sector is not for profit (although I rather like the Suddes Group term ‘For Impact’), or is it because non profits aren’t facing up to the challenges they face and aren’t doing a good enough job in communicating their reason for exisiting?
There are some very real challenges to non profits and one of the biggest ones they face is how to stand out from the crowd, especially when they only have limited resources to make noise. There are a number of strategies a non profit can employ to stand out.
Firstly charities need to understand their brand. This doesn’t mean understanding what people internal to the organization (staff, board) understand about the brand (although that would be an interesting exercise to see how diverse those are!). All too often non profits live in a bubble and are immersed in a world where they eat, drink and sleep the cause, but this isn’t the reality in the outside world. So what is crucial is understanding what donors, service users, and people who don’t fit into either category, say, think and feel about the brand. As Marty Neumer says, your brand isn’t just your logo, product or identity “It’s a gut feeling a person has about a product, service or organisation”.
Once this has been undertaken it is important to then discover what the organizations unique space is. By examining the organisations proposition and comparing it to the competition, a unique position will begin to emerge, a space that can be owned. This doesn’t mean moving away from the core mission, it just means starting to see where the mission fits. Once a charity has done this they need to weigh in behind it, commit to this position and begin exploring how to communicate it. Charities need to remember that they will raise money if people know who they are and what they stand for.
Dan and Chip Heath talk about the importance of stickness, they state that “A sticky message is one that people understand when they hear it, that they remember later on, and that changes something about the way they think or act”. This should be a mantra for every non profit. Organizations need to spend time thinking about how they can translate their position into a message that is clear, simple, concrete that resonates with donors in a way that makes them take action. This takes time, but, it is time well spent.
The donor is the lifeblood of the non profit organization. I encourage non profits to look at everything with “donor eyes”. The donor must become the centre of the non profits world; they should be listened to, consulted and even allowed to decide where some of their funds go. By engaging people at this level they will begin to feel ownership and even more passionate about the cause. They become, as Ken Blanchard and Shelodn Bowles put it, “Raving Fans”. I suggest that non profits need to create ‘sports fans’ for their work. When you listen to a sports fan they talk about “their” team and how “we won” that game. They wear their team colours with pride, they want everyone to know that they support the team. Imagine the potential if non profits can harness this powerful type of engagement.
One way to acheieve this is by creating a movement. A movement is something that people can get behind, it has momemntum. It has a clear direction and it is not fully controlled by any one person but by a group of people all acting in similar way, led by their goal and a shared belief that leads them to act. Members of a movement are excited by it, they are passionate about it, they are Raving Fans. I think a great example of a movement at the moment is Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, Jamie Oliver gets movements, I think he always has. He has an incredible capacity to understand and capture the essence of peoples passions and package it in a movement, and as a result his Food Revolution has huge support with almost 600,000 people signing his online petition.
A typical way to end this article would be to state that “this is a very challenging time for non profits”. But it’s always a challenging time. Non Profits that want to sustain their operations deep into the next decade and beyond need to ensure that they are clear about what they stand for and that they are communicating this in a clear, consice, ‘sticky’ way. They need to stand out for what they believe in. Is it simple? No, it takes time and effort. Is there more to it than this? Yes there is a book’s worth. Is it possible? Absolutely.
A few weeks ago Fundraising Ireland put on another fantastic “Communicating your Cause in Challenging Times” . One of the speakers was Nikki Lannen from Facebook. After the event was over I asked Nikki if she would be able to share her thoughts for readers of this blog. So today I am delighted to be able to share her Facebook Tips for NGO’s
For NGO’s in Ireland, Facebook could prove to be an invaluable communication platform to reach out to greater numbers of people and engage them with their organisations. With over 500 million active users and over 100,000 not-for-profit pages it is not hard to see why joining the community could be beneficial. Every time a user interacts with your page, ‘liking’, posting or commenting, their actions are shared on their own news feed, spreading the conversation virally amongst their own friends. The power of recommendation will increase engagement with your brand and drive users to your page. For more information see: Facebook pages tool and Non Profits on Facebook
Here are some hints and tips that Facebook would recommend:
1. Be personal, educational and think about your audience – speak directly to your users, supply them with the information they require in a format that is easy to understand and suitable for your target audience
2. Create content worth sharing – by providing engaging, quality content you will ensure users return to your page and are more likely to engage with you in return
3. Join the conversation – if users are commenting on a post you made on your page, join them. This will give your brand a tangible voice and persona
4. Make the best use of relevant tools – There are more than 550,000 active applications available on the Facebook platform. Use them innovatively to make your page unique
5. Continue to grow your connections and promote your page – build relations with similar organisations where you are likely to find users interested in your organization by ‘liking’ their page and engaging with them through posting links and comments
6. Promote your page – provide links in advertising material and your company email signature
7. Make your website ‘social’ – Install our social plugins, allowing Facebook users to ‘like’ content, create recommendations and see an activity feed, amongst other features. This activity links back to the user’s personal profile page and spreads your brand further
8. Use your partners – Encourage links to your Facebook page on any supporters’ websites
9. Drive customer awareness – Utilise the Facebook ads tool to further increase your page membership. Ads can be targeted specifically by gender, age, location, language and interests meaning that your organisation can reach the right audience.
I think it is so important that organisations have a clear focus about what it is they are doing, how they want to get there, and how they are going to get people to join them in that journey. I believe Focus is crucial to what we do. I heard a great quote at the Fundraising Ireland event last week (cant recall who made it) that summed up my thinking on it nicely
“Money Flows Where Focus Goes”.
As an example of what Focus means, I often show this video, and then ask people “What is your Water”
If you are a fundraiser or fundraising manager in Ireland take 2 minutes to complete the first Fundraising Ireland survey. We all know the need for more information about the sector so please don’t just hope others will do it.
Of course if I had a definitive answer I would be very rich! So there are many many ways to do this, Im bringing it up because a few weeks ago on Twitter Jamie Strachan asked if anyone had any ideas of how to get individuals to support the work his organisation was doing. What I said to Jamie, and its one way I have seen success with is to try and piggy back on something that they are doing already.
We so often try and create events and occassions for people to attend or take part in, when really people are busy enough with life to find the time. So finding linking in to their busy lifestyle is a great way to break down (one) of the barriers to fundraising. Think about what your organisation does, how can that relate to your target markets daily life, then try link the two together.
Not easy I know, but the ideas are there. And the bonus could be that if you link to daily life, you link to a company that sells that product…Sponsor on board!
This is brilliant. We are all used to online fundraising now, we choose an event we are doing and then ask our friends to sponsor us. Well My Dunk Tankkind of turns that on its head.
You decide you want to raise money for a charity and then you suggest things you are willing to do to raise that money, and then your friends vote with their money. The dare that gets the most money (votes) is the one you have to do.
. Jason provided a really useful summary of the 11 questions in the book:
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