Our nonprofit constituents are empowered and we can’t control that

Consumers are absolutely empowered through technology now. That means our constituents are as well. It has happened and it is a fact. We can’t control that. Sorry to point that out but that is our starting reality.

Our constituents are empowered. They know it. Do we?

They know they have influence. Do we?

Our constituents know they have voice that is powerful. They know they have more power than ever before. Do we know that and act that way?

If you a member of the C-Suite or executive team, did you receive a report today alerting you to what your donors (members / volunteers, etc.) said about you on Facebook, your call center, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Blogs, Pinterest, etc. (the list is ever evolving). Do you receive it every day? Do you get weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual summaries? Have you engaged with any of them personally yourself? If not, it is a reasonable why isn’t that important to you?

Even if we aren’t seeing it, other constituents (or potential constituents) are seeing what is going on. They are forming an opinion of us based on those comments. We can’t control what is being said. We can control how we will react in real time about it. We can control changing the experience in the future.

Say a constituent has a bad experience on your web site and they tweet about it. Do we think others have had the same experience and haven’t said anything? You bet they have. Do we think others will find the same thing and either say something or not in the future? Yes they will find it and yes they will say something or not. There is no hiding. If there is one horrible review out there, they will find it and not the 100 positive things others have said about us.

Nonprofits are beginning to listen to what is being said on social media and respond to it if they can. It does require a commitment of resources but it is not going away. More and more constituents (or potential constituents) are going to share the good, the bad and the ugly about their experience with us.

Have you started to shift resources into engaging on social platforms? How does that compare to your investment in your call center? Is your call center and social media center integrated in the approach you want your constituents to have? We have to manage our online reputation.

What are our constituents going to align with if we don’t first define the experience up front? What do we want them to be a part of? Now is the time to invest more in the experience rather than improve how the donation transaction occurs. Our future as nonprofits is in creating programs that scream out in splendor. It is about experiences that kindle meaningful and sincere interactions at every turn. At the center of our evolution (or is it a revolution) is the experience. The experience is everything now.

Are our nonprofit constituent experiences intentional?

What does the future of your nonprofit look like? Is it focused on your mission AND design?

The premise of this manifesto is all about being intentional about the experiences our constituents are having.

How many programs, products and services do you have? How many channels (Web, Social, Mobile, Call Center, Direct Mail, etc.) are you focused on? Do they all have a unified design and experience?

Mission + Design = Intentional experiences.

We are clear about our mission. Are we clear about our design?

If not, we aren’t ready to be the digital nonprofit of the future. If we aren’t ready to be a digital nonprofit, we aren’t ready for the future. If we aren’t ready for the future, will we be in business 5 to 10 years from now? Tough questions I know but worth considering.

So here are a couple more of intriguing questions:

• How do we ensure that our constituents are having an amazing experience?


• Why make constituents cope with the ordinary?


• Why aren’t constituents more engaged with both our mission and revenue opportunities?

Our focus and day to day work should be about creating “constituent experiences” in this new age of consumerism. What is going on in the rest of the “for profit” world isn’t lost on our constituents. They are judging us based on those experiences. We can bury our head in the sand. That will only get us left behind.

Consumers expect more from business (and hence nonprofits) than ever before. So our mission programs, products and services have a level of expectation that our nonprofit may not be aware of. The support of our contributors, members and volunteers have is not necessarily drive by our mission. It is driven by their experience at any company, for profit or nonprofit. How do we compare to USAA for example? Do we know?

Here is the harsh reality. They not only expect better experiences, they believe they are absolutely entitled to them. Will we be intentional in delivering on those expectations? Are we ready to get left behind with stagnant growth if we don’t deliver those constituent experiences?

There is a unique opportunity to create amazing and positive experiences at our events, on the web, at our call center (if you have one), on smart phones and in our direct mail pieces. Are all of those unified? Is the experience amazing?

That amazing or ordinary (or perhaps even bad) experience will be how our nonprofit is measured in terms of satisfaction or even our fundraising success. Do we know how our constituents feel about the experience they are having with us? If not, why not? Are we being intentional about that experience they just had at our event? Is it consistent with the experience they want on our web site?

Is your nonprofit ready for the mobile web?

Is your nonprofit ready for the mobile web? The reality is we are running out of time. If you don't have initiatives planned to move your infrastructure ahead in 2014, now is the time to start the planning. Here are some good reasons:

1. The mobile web will rule by 2014
2. Mobile email is on the rise
3. Social networks have gone mobile
4. Texting is a tool still not mastered
5. Ready or not, mobile giving is the future, but must be planned for now

The Mobile Web is often discussed as a future trend that nonprofits have time to prepare for, but the reality is that by the end of 2014, the majority of your supporters and donors will be viewing your website, email communications, blogs, and social media content on smartphones and tablets. In truth, the Mobile Web is already here. Going mobile will not be free and for many small nonprofits a costly upgrade, but to successfully communicate your mission and programs and fund-raise online in coming years, it is a necessary investment. Source: Five Reasons Why Your Nonprofit Must Prioritize the Mobile Web in 2014

Are you creating a culture of philanthropy? Are you focused on the donor?

Pamela Grow was at a major nonprofit helping them out. This compelling story tells what it is like to lose focus on the donor. The experience made her cry. She cried for the donor and she cried for the nonprofit. It is an amazing story. Will you cry?

Every week, I receive calls and emails from readers – many who are in-the-trenches fundraisers, trying to do right by their donors.  They know the statistics on donor

attrition and they work hard at their profession.   But creating the lasting change, the culture of philanthropy necessary for exemplary donor service, cannot be done alone.  It starts from the top down.

Where does your organization stand? Remember, as the development director (or executive director), you are primarily responsible for building a culture of philanthropy. Don’t ask for permission to lead. Take the reins, and be prepared to lead your organization’s staff, board and, yes, even your executive director.

I cried for the donor | Creating your organization’s culture of philanthropy | GuideStar Blog

What are some ways she suggests you can begin to lead?

1. Ask a program staff member his or her advice on your appeal letter or email campaign. People love it when you ask for their advice, and it’s a lesson in the importance of story gathering. (Please note that I didn’t advise you to necessarily take their advice).
2. When you receive special “thank-yous” from clients, copy them and send them on to board members.
3. Keep a desk drawer full of cards — birthday, anniversary or “just because” — to send to your board members.
4. Schedule thank-a-thons, where your board members make thank you calls or pen thank-you notes to donors. Make it a fun experience by scheduling 20 to 30 minutes within the course of a board meeting, serving refreshments.
5. Spend one-on-one time with board members getting to know them individually.
6. At every staff and board meeting, share your latest “story,” whether it’s about one of your agency’s clients, a donor or even a recent visitor to your organization. Encourage staff members to share their stories as well.
7. Shadow a member of your program staff for several hours or even a day.
8. Think outside of the proverbial box. I recently attended a United Way branding workshop on behalf of a client. Among the participants, I was delighted to see that one organization had sent program staff in lieu of marketing or development staff. I spent some time chatting with the program staffers, and it was clearly an eye-opening experience for them in terms of how they could better share their own work with their development department.
9. This tip came via my friend Andrea Kihlstedt, principal of nonprofit consulting firm The Kihlstedt Group. Create a habit of celebrating every little success. When you reach 100 percent board participation, celebrate it — perhaps with a pizza party at your next board meeting or by breaking out a bottle of champagne! Has a board member brought in three new donors? Send a thank-you gift or present a token of your gratitude publicly at your next board meeting. Celebrate what you want to see more of!

Is your nonprofit website content readable?

We all want our content read. That is the objective. Here are some great ideas on how to improve the readability of our nonprofit sites.

When your content is highly readable, your audience is able to quickly digest the information you share with them — a worthy goal to have for your website, whether you run a blog, an e-store or your company’s domain.

7 Best Practices for Improving Your Website's Usability

How do you combine technologies to innovate?

This makes so much sense. It is the combination of technology that becomes so powerful in this model.

Well worth reading and thinking through as an enabler of innovation. Adam Richardson really nails this one.

These technologies can be combined in numerous ways, and we are just starting to see companies really taking advantage of the possibilities. These four technologies will have a disruptive impact on your business, almost regardless of which industry you're in. The question is whether you will choose to adopt them before a competitor does.

What are they?
1.  Microprocessors
2.  Sensors
3.  Wireless connectivity
4.  Databases

The Four Technologies You Need to Be Working With - Adam Richardson - Harvard Business Review

The Real Cost of Giving Days / Crowdfunding: Giving Away Your Best Donors — and Paying Someone to Take Them

If someone asked to use your organization’s donor list for their own marketing purposes, would you give it away for free? Nope. Would you pay that third party to take your donor info? Absolutely not. Yet that’s what’s happening with some fundraising platforms, and many nonprofits don’t even realize it.

Over the past several years, a number of social fundraising or crowdfunding platforms have been developed and launched. Community foundations and other nonprofit organizations use these for online giving events based on a low-cost, all-in-one pricing strategy that focuses on the platform’s ease of use. But there is a much greater cost that is being “hidden in plain sight.” The real cost is the donor list of every organization in your community that participates in the event you sponsor.

A fundamental part of the business strategy of social fundraising platforms is to build a large database of donor contacts and leverage that data for their own benefit. A community giving event is a great opportunity for these social fundraising or crowdfunding platforms to build their own donor list and to do it with your donors!

In these “sponsored” events, community foundations are encouraged to put up matching funds, sign up nonprofits and then market the event. Once the event begins, donors select a nonprofit and make a donation. But who receives the donation and the donor information? The social fundraising platform and their affiliated foundation, and as the recipient of the donation, these organizations own and control the donor data — not the nonprofit and not the community foundation. As a result, participating nonprofits who are pursuing matching funds and encouraging their best donors to give are actually being encouraged to turn over their entire donor list. And they are paying them 4.9% to take it.

Organizations that have participated in these community fundraising events are often surprised to find that many of their donors are being hit with multiple emails shortly after the event. These emails market other nonprofit giving opportunities to the event donors, and to make matters worse, the opportunities are often for nonprofits outside of your community.  Moreover, community foundations are often surprised to find that they are not entitled to receive full donor information because they only sponsor the event.  Instead, data is retained by the third-party social fundraising platform’s affiliated foundation.

Today, nonprofits and community foundations that want to retain control of their donor data have only two choices: build a high-volume, multi-organization site at a cost of up to $2 million or use a platform like Kimbia, an Austin-based company that has partnered with the Council on Foundations to produce next year’s Give Local America event. If you’re not familiar with Kimbia, it is not a social fundraising site, but rather offers a set of tools used to construct a custom, extremely high-capacity website for each community foundation. And unlike the $200,000 to $2 million spent by some community foundations on custom-built sites, Kimbia typically delivers the site for $2,500 to $15,000.

Donor days provide a tremendous opportunity to build momentum for philanthropy in your community if you choose the right partner.  However, it can be a mistake to select a social fundraising or crowdfunding platform that requires nonprofits give up the list of their best supporters and pay the platform company to take it. It’s the hidden cost of social fundraising platforms that is much higher than the 4.9% transaction fee marketed to you and your community’s nonprofits.  Truthful marketing would be: “The cost of our platform is 4.9%, plus the donor list of every nonprofits that participates because after the event, we will own it.” 

The Digital Nonprofit Report for July 31

The Digital Nonprofit Report

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

In the age of communities, how important is our nonprofit brand? What does your nonprofit stand for? What (and who) does it represent? Now, more than ever before, our brand is vitally important. More time needs to be spent making sure it is clear. Our constituents are connected when our brand is clear. The values we share, the personal believes that we hold in common, the life experiences that are combined with personal and professional objectives are creating a need for personal engagement with our mission. More …

Online Giving – Getting more online donations: Giving USA, an annual publication that reports the sources and uses of charitable gifts in the United States, released some good news this year: Overall, charitable giving in 2012 was up 3.5% over 2011. This is especially good news for nonprofits that have a well-rounded plan to raise funds through multiple channels. But keep in mind that donations from individuals make up the largest piece of the giving pie: 72%. More …

The Overhead Myth: There is a lot of chatter going on about what nonprofits shouldn’t focus on – overhead – and there is certainly an attempt to describe what they should focus on instead. The entire Money for Good II initiative was designed to inform nonprofits about how to better collect and communicate their impact data. However, it’s time that we dig deeper into some concrete things nonprofits should do today to move past overhead once and for all. More …

Do you know you are a global nonprofit? You are a global nonprofit. Do you act like it? Your audience is 2.4 billion potential constituents. You have international reach. Are you designing experiences with that audience in mind? The top 15 countries saw year to year growth of about 15% new users in 2012. Much of that is in emerging markets. The U.S has the highest penetration with 78% of the population connected. China added 264 million new users last year with only 42% penetration. More …

ImpactRising: ImpactRising.org helps to make standards of practice explicit, so that social sector organizations like nonprofits, NGOs and foundations don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Designed to support social sector organizations and consultants with tools and resources to get ready for engagement in capacity-building projects, ImpactRising.org aims to help make the consulting sector stronger. Ultimately, ImpactRising.org presses for greater transparency and accountability and aims to raise the level of consulting quality in the social sector. The project partners include Shiree Teng,  Groupaya, and Compasspoint.   The project is funded by the Packard Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, and The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund. More …

Do you have a talented user experience team at your nonprofit?

There is a revolution going on with constituents. The relationship they may have had with your mission and brand in the past has probably already changed. New technology (from a constituent point of view) promises a new era of engagement, two way conversations, shared experiences and community. The relationship you want to have with your constituents through these new devices and platforms and the true state are not one and the same. In fact, it may be one sided and skewed towards you and not your constituents.

Are you just showing up? Recently I went to my son’s 7^th grade awards program. Most of the awards were for some sort of academic accomplishment. One was for “just showing up” (perfect attendance). There didn’t seem to be a correlation between “just showing up” and accomplishments. We must examine the role that new technology can actually play in improving relationships, engagement and experiences. Our strategy can’t be to “just show up” on the trendy channels. We need to invest in outcomes and amazing experiences. We need to properly estimate the extent to which even the briefest of exchanges can improve the relationship.

How we interact with each other and nonprofits is changing through big changes brought on by mobile, geo-location, social, real time, etc. We discover information differently, share it like never before, and connect in ways we never could have imaged even five years ago. Our constituents are driving rapid adoption because of the radically different nature of the experience itself. Yes, it is a device that unlocks that experience but their expectation of the experience they want to have with us is changing as well. Think of how your constituents have discovered self-expression, validation, communication, connections, knowledge and collaboration. Are they having those experiences with you?

All of this is moving away from a luxury to an expectation. As far as you know, that is exactly how constituents are measuring their experience with you today. Those that are “winning” understand that and are actively creating those experiences. That level of community experience is a lure for attention. It takes more than “just showing up” on the right channel and right device. Experience is much more than that. Experience is about being a part of a movement.

Here is a critical question. Do you have a user (constituent) experience team? To a great extent, the user experience (from a digital point of view) is King. This is not just about website design. It is about the art and science of shaping how your constituents feel about your programs, products and services they engage with. Unless the design is intentional, the constituent will have a sub-optimal experience with your mission. User experience is the critical enabler of meaningful and shareable experiences. The team’s role in your future can’t be underestimated. An empowered user experience team offers you a powerful competitive advantage. So I will ask it again, “Do you have a talented user experience team?”

User experience, and the professionals that staff it, go way beyond design and development. Among senior executives and the C-Suite, user experience is probably either misunderstood, undervalued or perhaps not acknowledged at all. The user experience team should be the most invested in and powerful team you have. They should be the most informed and most capable at improving the constituent experiences, relationships, loyalty and overall income.

To the connected constituent, the experience is everything. They don’t just donate. They don’t just surf your sites. They don’t just randomly engage in social networks. They want experiences. They want to connect with a community. They will invest in the experience and embrace your community if you provide it. They will share that experience with others who will want to connect with your mission as well.

Without powerful user experience professionals, you don’t have a competitive advantage. It is how you will gain and retain mission loyalty now and in the future. Without thoughtful and intentional user experiences, connected constituents will meander without direction. Their attention will wane and their loyalty along with it.

How the remote workforce is changing for nonprofits

We all know it is true. We see it happening every day. The remote workforce is growing, it is mainstream, it is maturing and it is learning new skills. And, it won't go back to the way it was. We have an anytime, anywhere revolution going on. Is your nonprofit taking advantage of it?

As advances in technology have made it a practical possibility for millions, remote working has increased dramatically over the last decade.

While once working from home was considered a bit of a novelty, we argue that it is now so mainstream it’s more interesting to consider how the remote workforce is changing.

Mashable spoke to human resources professionals and other experts to get some interesting insight on this subject.

How the Remote Workforce Is Changing