Dear board volunteers . . . A few observations and requests from a new member.

DonorDreams blog is honored to be hosting the May 2013 Nonprofit Blog Carnival. The theme this month is “Dear board volunteer . . .” and the idea is “If you could write an anonymous letter to a nonprofit board about something they do that drives you crazy, what would that letter look like and what suggested solutions would you include?” If you are a blogger and would like more information on how to participate and submit a post for consideration, please click here to learn more.

I wanted to expand the Nonprofit Blog Carnival concept in May. So, I reached out to real non-profit people and asked them to also write an anonymous letter to their board volunteers. These people are executive directors, fundraising professionals, board members, donors, community volunteers, consultants and front line staff. I promised everyone anonymity in exchange for their submissions.

We will celebrate May’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival on Wednesday, May 29, 2013. Up to that fun-filled day, I will publish real anonymous letters every day from real non-profit professionals right here at DonorDreams blog.

I hope you enjoy this real look at real issues that our community deals with on a daily basis.

Here is today’s letter:

Dear Board Members:

I’m absolutely thrilled and honored to be serving with each of you and to be of service to this fine organization. I consider my board service to be a privilege. I hope each of you feel the same way.

I do have some observations after serving on this board for the past seven months. They are as follows:

• Madame Board chair, respect your fellow board members. While you were a teacher during your professional days, you are no longer dealing with students. Your fellow board members, or at least this board member, is a professional. Treat me as you would like to be treated. If you are having a bad day, please keep that to yourself. Frankly, I couldn’t care less if you are crabby. Do you really want that fact recorded in our board minutes?
• Let’s try and have some fun with our board service. Our organization does not deal with life and death situations. It’s ok to interject some humor in or discussions.
• We need to hold our CEO accountable. Setting stretch goals, providing regular feedback on performance and completing a written performance evaluation is important to our work and central to us meeting our outcomes. Let’s not shy away from having the difficult and uncomfortable conversations with our CEO. We will be a better organization in the long run as a result.
• While fundraising is not central to our mission there is not one single reason why we cannot develop a culture of fund and friend raising in our organization.
• WE NEED A STRATEGIC PLAN. Let’s plan our work and work our plan.
• Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest are here to stay. Our clients use social media. We need to be optimized across multiple communication channels. A website is great, but it’s no longer enough. The sooner we understand social media, the sooner we will reap the many benefits it has to offer us.
• Just because an organization is 4X larger or 4X smaller than we are, does not mean that we can’t learn from them.
• Can we please try to recruit fellow board members strategically?
• Can we do something socially as a board so we can get to know one another?

That’s all for me. Just some random early observations from your newest board member. In spite of the above, each of you, in your own way, has energized me around our mission and the importance of our work.

All the best,
The new guy

If you have some advice for the author of our anonymous letter, please be respectful and share it in the comment box at the bottom of this post. If you are a blogger looking to participate in this month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival and want to learn more, then please click here.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com 
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Are you building your future base of Millennial donors?

Did you see it? Did you see the front page news in USA Today Monday on Monday, April 22, 2013? The article by Hadley Malcolm was headlined “Millennials show no e-fear“. In a nutshell, this entire article boils down to one simple idea. We are going through an economic paradigm shift, and we’re moving to something economists are calling “The Participation Economy“. I believe fundraising and non-profit professionals need to pay attention because this will likely have a HUGE impact on the future of philanthropy.

So, what is “The Participation Economy“? Jeff Fromm, who is a blogger at Millennial Marketing and co-author of Marketing to Millennials (ugh … how old fashion . . . a book . . . what is THAT?), really describes it well when he says  in USA Today:

“They’re (millennials) willing to accept advertising, but they want something out of it. The willingness to share where we are, who we’re with, what we like with the virtual world is part of ‘the participation economy’.”

The reporter dug up some interesting data from the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future:

• 25% of Millennials would trade personal info in exchange for more relevant advertising (for those of us 35+ years old only 19% agreed with this statement)
• 56% of Millennials would share their location to receive deals from nearby businesses (for those of us 35+ years old only 42% agreed with this statement)
• 51% of Millennials would share info with a company if they get something in return (for those of us 35+ years old only 40% agreed with this statement)

Consumers are willing to “participate” if they get something in return, and this especially applies to younger consumers (aka people who will have the money in the not-so-distant-future).

Looking at this from a different angle, people are willing to ENGAGE if they get something in return.

If you want more proof, I suggest that you turn on your television set. The shows that people tune into most are participatory (e.g. American Idol, The Voice, etc).

What does any of this have to do with your non-profit and your resource development program? Well, here are just a few of my thoughts:

• Millennials live their lives in both the physical world as well as in the virtual world. Fundraising programs will need to set-up shop in both spaces in the future.
• Ten years ago, many of my fundraising colleagues warned against over-investing in ePhilanthropy strategies because Millennial donors were young and years away from participating in serious philanthropy. Well, the oldest Millennials are now 34-years-old. Uh-oh! I think “the future” is knocking on the door. It might be time to get serious about what ePhilanthropy looks like and what strategies and tactics are effective.
• The idea of PARTICIPATION holds the key to engagement for this up-and-coming generation of philanthropists. So, it stands to reason that if you want Millennials to take the place of their Baby Boomer parents over the next 10 years, then your resource development program can’t simply treat donors like Cash Station machines (ATM). We need to get beyond the “you ask and then you get” mentality. We need to shift our paradigm to “you involve, you ask, they give, and they stay involved“.

At first blush, we’re obviously talking about volunteerism being the key to engaging the next generation and developing your future base of donors. Here are a few interesting resources for those of you who understand that you have some work to do around strengthening your agency’s volunteer recruitment and management program:

• http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/rankings/States/Millennial-Volunteer-Rate/2011
  
• http://www.mavanetwork.org/Default.aspx?pageId=965113
• http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1448&context=etd

However, I think focusing on your volunteer recruitment, management and retention program and strategies is just the tip of the iceberg.

Here is a crazy thought out of left field. What if you and a handful of Millennial aged supporters sat down and asked the question: “How do we build great participation (both physical and virtual) strategies into our resource development program?”  Here are a few wacky questions and ideas to chew on:

• How can your agency partner with the business community to entice Millennial consumers (aka donors) to “check-in” on Facebook or Foursquare at a local business. What benefit will the business get out of it? What benefit will your agency get out of it? What benefit will the consumer (aka donor) get out of it? How can the business and your agency share that data? What will you do with it once you have it? For some reason, I am envisioning a scavenger hunt fundraiser. I am also envisioning passports with QR codes linked to YouTube videos containing clues, instructions and cultivation/stewardship info.
• How can you get your Millennial aged donors to participate in the act of allocating where their donation goes? Are we at the threshold of entering “The Restricted Gift” era? What can you do to involve donors as volunteers in programs that their contribution helps support?
• What tools will your fundraising volunteers need in their toolbox if they are going to evangelize you mission online and solicit people in the virtual world? Will those strategies need to look different than the current structured campaigns we’ve been running in the physical world? If so, what accountability and urgency strategies will fundraising professionals need to develop in order to drive productivity?

Does your head hurt? I know mine does. So, let’s focus on one simple question:  ”What two or three things can you and your agency do to start transitioning your resource development program into alignment with the new ‘Participation Economy’?” Please scroll down and share a few thoughts in the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com 
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Using a multi-channel approach for fundraising? Don’t forget ‘old school’ strategies!

Have you ever intended to do something, but “life happened” and you dropped the ball? Well, this is what happened to me last week when I intended to write a post for the March Nonprofit Blog Carnival weaving together social media, fundraising and a multi-channel approach. While I missed the submission deadline, I’m pressing forward with the post because I think we can all learn something from the Community Crisis Center and their 2009 “Crisis Overnight” campaign.

In my hometown of Elgin, Illinois, our domestic violence shelter was experiencing a crisis of its own in 2009 because the nearly bankrupt State of Illinois kept falling behind on its accounts payable to non-profit organizations that it had contracted with to provide services (e.g. running a domestic violence program). In 2009, it was so bad that Community Crisis Center was owed $400,000 and cash flow management was becoming a challenge.

Years earlier, a staff person had written an article for The Courier-News newspaper focused on providing readers with a 24 hour look at what happens at Community Crisis Center. Looking a mountain of red ink, the executive director, Gretchen Vapnar, decided that a similar approach was warranted in order to generate public awareness about the center’s situation.

The only difference this time around was that it was a different world. Newspaper readership was down. Internet usage was exploding. It was a brave new world, and social media experts like Ruth Munson and Sarah Evans advised the center to take their concept online. Here is what this campaign end up looking like:

• Sarah Evans spent an evening at the center. She witnessed the impact that the center makes in the lives of everyday people, and she blogged and tweeted about her experience. (e.g. #crisisovernight)
• In addition to bearing witness, she communicated a powerful case for support using a number of different online and social media platforms (e.g. Twitter, blog, Facebook, and YouTube).
• Other non-tech channels were used by the center. For example, volunteers set-up camp outside the center and donors were invited to “drive by” and drop off donations. Staff also attempted to integrate a pre-existing direct mail campaign into the “crisis overnight” campaign.
• The initial goal was to raise $150,000 in three weeks. Unfortunately, they didn’t achieve this goal, but they kept plugging away to get the campaign to go viral.
• While they didn’t achieve their original goal, they did raise $161,000 in six weeks.
• In the end, there were 756 online donors and the average size gift was less than $100/donor. There also was one sizable $40,000 gift from a local foundation.

If you want to learn more about this campaign, you can do a Google search on “crisis overnight.” You can also click here to view a SlideShare presentation by Sarah Evans.

The most interesting thing to me about this entire campaign was what the executive director had to say more than three years later when looking back on the entire experience.

First, Gretchen marveled at how “everything always comes down to the same things.”  What she is referring to is how the keys to success for this online campaign are many of the same best practices that work for traditional fundraising activities. She gave the following three examples to illustrate her point:

1. Donors need to connected. (e.g. your agency needs to be visible to the donor or your mission needs to touch/connect with them).
2. The “who” is still key. The person asking for the donation correlates greatly to your campaign’s success.
3. There is a “trust factor.” Donors need to trust the organization will follow through and do what they said they’d do with the donor’s investment. If they don’t know the agency well, then the volunteer solicitor is leveraging their relationship with the donor to create that level of trust.

Old fashion fundraising strategies and best practices

Online tactics (e.g. website, email, social media, etc)

Success

There was also one other interesting lesson that Gretchen shared with me. She said that sustained success requires that non-profit organizations put someone in charge of their ePhilanthropy strategy (e.g. hire an online community manager).

Has your agency tied to undertake similar online fundraising campaigns? If so, what were the results? What did you learn? Please share your experiences in the comment box below because we can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com 
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

How does your community compare to others in fundraising?

My side of town is doing better than people expect! Hip Hip Hooray!”  In my opinion, this is cause for celebration because I live on the east side of Elgin, Illinois, which can come with a stigma or two according to some people (mostly those who live west of the Fox River). This morning I discovered an amazing online benchmarking tool from our friends at The Chronicle of Philanthropy that allows me to explore philanthropy in my state, city, and neighborhood.

So, all of my celebration this morning stems from the fact that I discovered my zip code (60120) is doing better than average in total charitable contributions compared all zip codes in the State of Illinois. We rank 3,976 out of 28,725. Woo Hoo!  Of course, we’re still behind our west side neighbors who rank 2,347, but frankly I don’t care. I am thrilled to be doing this well!

I am also intrigued by all of the data that The Chronicle of Philanthropy is able to put at my fingertips with regards to philanthropy and demographics data.  Here is some of what I learned about my side of town this morning:

• Last year we contributed a total of $10.2 million.
• The median level of contributions was $1,666 per household.
• Median household discretionary income is $41,310.
• Households in my zip code donate 4% of their income.
• 55.6% of households identify as Hispanic.
• 33.1% of people are under the age of 20 (which compares to 27% for the average zip code in the country).
• 32.8% of people don’t possess a high school diploma (which compares to 14.4% for the average zip code in the country).

I could go on and on with amazing little factoids about my little corner of the world, but I will stop here because I don’t want to take some of the fun out of you exploring this online tool.

Now some of you might be scratching your head and asking the age-old question “Who cares?”

Simply put, this online tool puts a powerful benchmarking tool in the hands of every non-profit organization in America. Powerful!!!

Again, some of you still might be scratching your head and asking the age-old question “Who cares?”

The following are just a few reasons why every non-profit organization regardless of their size or skill level should be looking at benchmarking exercises for their fundraising program:

• Benchmarking allows you to see where you stand in comparison to others.
• When your organization is faced with making a difficult choice between a number of different options, then benchmarking can help you make tough decisions.
• Benchmarking allows you to clearly see what you’re doing well and where you might need to improve.

Let’s go back to my hometown of Elgin, Illinois for a moment . . .

Elgin, Illinois is made up of four zip codes (e.g. 60120, 60121, 60123, and 60124), and the total charitable giving reported on tax returns filed from these four zip codes adds up to $39,582,326. If I operated a non-profit organization with $1 million per year in private sector fundraising revenue, then I would know that I am capturing 2.53% of the reported philanthropy in the area. With this knowledge, I can do a better job of measuring success and progress.

There are countless other ways to slice and dice this benchmarking data, and there are many ways it can be used. We’ve already made the case for how this information can be used to evaluate and assess your fundraising program. It could also be used to make decisions on who and where to target your fundraising efforts.

Does your non-profit organization do any benchmarking? If so, please share your success stories in the comment box below. If not, please weigh-in on some of the obstacles you encounter. If you took a moment to click around The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s online tool, please also share your comments or thoughts. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com 
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Too much PowerPoint in your non-profit boardroom?

A few weeks ago I was sitting down with a client putting the final touches on their Board Retreat agenda, and I received what I thought was an odd request from the board president. He emphatically asked me to please spare him and the board from using PowerPoint presentations during the course of the retreat. He explained that in his line of work he sees far too many PowerPoint presentations, and his eyes glaze over whenever someone starts clicking through their slides and droning on about something obviously important.

Well, I thought it was an odd request, but the customer is always right. Right?

However, out of curiosity I went to Google to see if there are other people who feel the same way. Here is what I found:

• strategicsense blog: “Too much PowerPoint can kill you“
• Fast Company: “Death To PowerPoint!“
• Wendy Russell at about.com: “PowerPoint — The Ugly“
• Harvard Business Review: “PowerPoint is Evil, Redux“

Well, alrighty then!

I never realized how many people are tired of PowerPoint presentations (especially bad ones).  So, I was left wondering what I should do because I am apparently one of those consultants who over uses PowerPoint.

Luckily, the board president saved the day and told me about a presentation service he found online — Prezi.com. This online service as a software (SaaS) is a dynamic virtual whiteboard that brings a 3-D quality to your presentation. Click here for a better explanation. You can also watch this YouTube video to see a demonstration.

I’ve now used Prezi a few different times, and I can honestly say that I like it (and I’m not getting paid to say any of this).

Just yesterday I transformed one of my PowerPoint presentations on the “12 Steps to Making a Face-to-Face Solicitation” into a Prezi. After the training, I had a few different volunteer solicitors thank me for using a different format. You can check-out that presentation by clicking here or the graphic below.

Let me end this post with a dose of skepticism.

I personally don’t believe that people are tired of PowerPoint presentations and I don’t think Prezi is the solution to all of our problems.

In fact, I suspect that what non-profit volunteers are actually trying to tell us is:

Enough of the presentations! Can we have a discussion?

Perhaps, we’re talking too much at our board volunteers, and we need to figure out how to incorporate more discussions into our board meetings and board retreats.

Have you been struggling with this question recently? If so, please scroll down and share your thoughts in the comment box about the following questions:

• Who should facilitate these engaging discussions in the boardroom, especially when no one on the board is a highly skilled facilitator?
• Are there trainings available that a board president can easily access to improve his/her facilitation skills?
• What role should staff play in framing and staging these conversations before, during and after the board meeting?
• When information is vital to framing an important discussion, what is the best way to present it to board members without lulling them to sleep?

Please don’t misread me. I’m not suggesting that you throw all of your PowerPoint slides away. I’m not suggesting that Prezi is manna from heaven. I’m not telling you to only have robust discussions in the boardroom or board retreat. However, I am suggesting there is a delicate balance and we need to figure out if we want our non-profit boards to get better at governance.

We can all learn from each other. Please weigh-in with your thoughts using the comment box below.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com 
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Setting attainable social media goals for your non-profit

If there is one thing non-profits know about, it is goals. There are goals within the mission. There are fundraising goals. There are membership goals. Today, we are going to talk about setting goals for social media. If you want your organizations social media campaigns to be a success, setting attainable social media goals is key.

Start with a Baseline

Just like anything, you have to see where you are before setting goals for where you want to go.

Measuring success in social media can be a tricky thing. There are many tools to help you define metrics that can be good indicators of interaction. For example, Facebook gives you Insights, which can tell you which posts were successful and which ones were not based on how many people saw them, shared them or liked them. Google Analytics can tell you about how many people visit your website and how long they stay engaged on your site. This type of data is helpful when you’re setting a baseline.

I would also encourage you to look at things outside of traditional metrics to help you define success. For example, how many posts were made in a specific platform can help you form a more complete picture of where your organization currently stands.

Keep in mind, there may not be an easy way to get data for all of the social media networks you use and that’s okay. However, gathering a baseline of data can help you measure success as your organization’s social media plan grows.

Look at Your Data

Take a look and see if you can spot any patterns. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:

• Are there posts that are super successful?
• Are there posts that just seem to tank?
• Do photos do better than text updates?
• Do posts made at the beginning of the day tend to do better than those posted later in the day or vice versa?
• Which social media networks are the most active?
• Which social media networks are the most dormant?
• Are posts containing a call to action more successful than those without?
• Do posts with links tend to get users more engaged than those without?

The list could go on and on, but the point is to take a look and see what’s working and what’s not.

Looking at your data is important in the beginning stages of goal setting, during measuring a goal and once the goal timeline has passed. Getting in the habit of collecting and looking at data early, will help you out along the way.

Talk to Your Staff

Social media is a powerful tool for nonprofits. Due to its very low cost, it gives organizations a much louder voice to reach new members of the community and keep up-to-date with those who have been there since the beginning.

While there may be just one person in charge of posting things on social media networks, it is important to get the whole agency together when forming social media goals. Take the time to meet with your staff and talk about how social media can help them reach their own departmental goals. For example, the membership team might like to use social media to run a membership drive during the month of October.

Talking with staff early can help you plan out a specific campaign. Because you’ve taken the time to look at where your organization stands now, you’ll be better able to shape these conversations into what will be most successful for your agency.

Set Goals

After establishing a baseline and taking the time to look at what works and what doesn’t, you are ready to take on social media goal setting. The following are a few tips for writing and monitoring goals:

• When writing goals, make sure they are SMART (e.g. specific, measurable, action oriented, realistic/relevant, and time bound).
• Make sure you have ways to capture data throughout the goal’s timeline.
• Discuss and adjust your posts with your team along the way.
• If a goal isn’t met, it doesn’t mean that it failed completely. Take the time to examine what barriers kept it from succeeding. Maybe the goal wasn’t a great goal in the first place. This can be a lesson to learn in and of itself.

What type of social media goals does your organization set? How to you keep track of your data? What challenges do you face when it comes to setting and meeting social media goals? Let us know in the comment section!

State of the Nonprofit Sector: Remainder of 2013

Good morning, DonorDreams blog subscribers. I thought I’d give you a day off from my random non-profit and fundraising thoughts by offering you an awesome guest post by Ashley Halligan. She is a managing editor at Austin-based Software Advice and a very talented freelance features writer. Check out her book project on Facebook: facebook.com/contemporarypilgrim  Enjoy!

State of the Nonprofit Sector: Remainder of 2013
By: Ashley Halligan

Six weeks into the new year and last year’s reports are coming to surface helping shape the expectations for the remainder of this year in the nonprofit sector.

With the beginning of President Obama’s second term, a recovering economy, and a fiscal cliff, nonprofits have – well – a lot to discuss and anticipate in 2013.

Several reports have been released in the past month that indicate 2012′s performance and trends, offering insight as to what to expect this year. Among those things are hiring trends, succession planning, adoption of mobile technology, social giving campaigns, and, most predictably, differing opinions on the impact of tax reform and proposals on the missions of nonprofits.

More Hiring & Succession Strategizing

The Improve Group and Nonprofit HR Solutions released a report that showed 44 percent of the nation’s nonprofits planned to create new positions this year. Positions in direct services in fundraising were at the forefront of organizations’ plans to hire.

According to the same study, 70 percent of nonprofits lacked a formal succession plan, though those who had implemented a strategy reported that it brought their organization peace of mind, developed talent, and retained staff. Experts expect focus in this area to become a primary area of focus this year.

Deploying More Technology & Social Giving Campaigns

Another main area experts and reports agree on is the increase of technology deployment in the nonprofit sector. In particular, a Blackbaud report shows that mobile technology will be significant this year with more than two-thirds of surveyed NPOs planning to utilize more mobile tech this year.

Additionally, more and more nonprofit technology companies are emerging giving organizations in this sector far more options, ranging from fully integrated suites to specialized programs for basic needs like fundraising or donor management.

This year a bigger emphasis is expected to be seen on social giving campaigns as well. The 2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report says to expect three things:

1. The monetization of Facebook
2. More usage of Google+
3. Increased fundraising efforts through Twitter

Some are Weary of Tax Uncertainties, Others See Promise

Tax promises and concerns, however, are still at the top of mind in the nonprofit sector. Till months pass and charitable giving trends can be analyzed, long-term impacts of the American Taxpayer Relief Act can’t be certain. Some think the act could positively impact giving by $3.3 billion, while others still fear proposed tax ceilings fearing a negative impact of the same amount.

This is a big year for nonprofits. A lot is yet to be determined. What is your take on the state of nonprofits for the remainder of 2013? Feel free to leave your comments below or reach out to us directly.

How Storify can help non-profits raise awareness

If there is one thing Social Media is about, it’s sharing — sharing information, photos, videos, statistics. If it can be displayed on a screen, it can be shared. Sometimes, it can be hard to keep track of all of the items being shared on a single topic. That’s where Storify comes in. Today, we are going to look at how your non-profit agency can use Storify to share social media updates with the world.

What Is It?

Storify defines itself as:

“Storify helps making sense of what people post on social media. Our users curate the most important voices and turn them into stories.”

I like to think of Storify as a personalized social media newspaper. Every now and again, I’ll see a Storify link in my twitter feed. I will click it to find a collection of status updates, tweets, photos, and articles on a topic that was important to the user. As the recipient of the Storify story, I find it brings attention to articles or updates that I may have missed on a specific subject.

Why Use It?

Storify can be a great way to share with your social media followers updates on a certain topic. For example, let’s say your mission has to do with cancer research. Once a week, it might be nice to collect stories about the advancements in cancer research, put them all together in an easy to read format, and share it with others.

What I like is that Storify gives you a way to provide context to the articles to which you are linking. Many times the hardest job a non-profit organization has is educating the public about their mission. Storify provides an easy format to do just that.

Additionally, Storify is a great search engine for finding content on different subjects. Even if you don’t use Storify to share articles and updates with others, it can be used as a powerful search engine to find what people are saying about your organization and its work.

Furthermore, once you publish a story on Storify, the service will notify the people quoted in your story to let them know they are being featured in your story. This can help you raise awareness about your issue faster and facilitate networking connections through social media.

Finally, Storify offers complete flexibility when it comes to how you share your curated stories with others. You can share it as a link to various social media networks or embed it right onto you website. Storify provides you with the code to do it, which makes it as simple as copy and paste.

How to Use It

Signing up for an account is simple. Just go to Storify.com to get started.

The whole interface is drag and drop so it makes deciding where things go very simple. Use Storify to share news about upcoming events, issues important to your mission, or collect when your organization is mentioned elsewhere on the web to share with members of your team.

See how The Weather Channel used Storify to collect stories about the latest winter storm.

I would just like to note that I was not compensated in way to write this post. I just think that Storify is a powerful tool that non-profits could use to raise awareness.

What do you think? Is Storify a tool for your non-profit? Do you already use Storify? If so, what do you believe to be most impactful when using the service? Share answers to any of these questions below in the comments section. I’d love to hear from you!

Facebook Graph Search will impact your non-profit social media strategy

Last week, Mark Zuckerburg and friends held a press conference announcing a new feature for Facebook. No one had any real idea of what it was going to be. Were they changing privacy setting again? Did they buy another social media network? Was Facebook finally going to make a Facebook phone? It turns out that none of those questions were the topic for the press conference and what they announced was a change in “Facebook Search” with something called Graph Search. Today, we are going to take a look at what Graph Search is and how it will impact the social media strategy of your nonprofit.

What is Graph Search?

Facebook has tons of information on every user. Just think about it. Not only does Facebook have your name, but it knows where you live, what school you attended, what music you listen to and even in some cases what toothpaste you prefer. What is Facebook going to do with all of this information? Make it searchable.

Graph Search will change how people use Facebook for searching for information. It has been said that Mark Zuckerburg wants people to use Facebook as their internet and never leave the page. Instituting Graph Search will make that possible.

Currently, if you try to use Facebook Search to find a name of a company or a person, it isn’t very helpful to you. It is easier to go use a search engine like Google to find the information you need.

With Graph Search you can search for topics such as – people who give to charity – and it will bring up a list of your friends or people who live in your area that give to charity. The search results will be based on who you know and where you are located. Because of this, it is important to note that two people could search for the same topic and get different results.

How Will Graph Search Impact Your Nonprofit’s Social Media Strategy?

Before answering that question, let’s think about how Facebook has changed in the past few months. At the end of 2012, Facebook began to limit the amount of times a post from your brand page (not your personal page) would show up in your supporters News Feed. To get around this, they introduced Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts causing people to pay money to get their message across.

With the launch of Graph Search, the number of “likes” on your page and the amount of engagement will be more important than ever. These two metrics will determine where you show up in Graph Search search results. Because Facebook has shortened the visibility of a post by a page, your non-profit might want to start thinking about allocating some money for a promoted post every now and then. This can help expand the reach of your message outside of your current supporter base and help you in both the short-term and long-term.

What Can Nonprofits Do Now to Prepare for Graph Search?

Graph Search is still currently in beta, but there a few things that you can do to your Facebook page to make sure it is ready to go when Graph Search launches.

• Create Engaging Content – Post frequently and use photos to create a community on Facebook where supporters want to comment on or like what is being posted.
• Fill Out Your About Section – Make sure you have all of the information filled out in your Facebook profile. Don’t forget to include a location as this is one of the main data points for Graph Search.
• Plan Ahead – Take some time to think about what this change in search will mean for your organization. How will you grow support with more “likes”? What content are you publishing and when? What posts are most successful? For more help on what posts people are responding to, check out your page’s Insights data.

It will be interesting to see how Graph Search pans out and what impact it will have in the land of search engines. I am interested to see how Facebook plans to monetize their search. People take what their friends have to say seriously.  So, a more personal search might be what non-profits need to gain more support.

Hopefully this post helped clear up what Graph Search is and helped you to start thinking about how it will impact your non-profit organization.

What do you think? Will Graph Search make an impact? How are you going to change your organization’s page to prepare for Graph Search Launch? Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

Setting your non-profit agency’s 2013 social media goals

Happy 2013 DonorDreams readers! I hope the year has started off well for you. The beginning of new years are always a time of reflection for me. I like to look at what I did last year and see what I want to accomplish this year. This usually results in me making a number of lists that either get fully or partially completed by the end of the year. I thought, that in the first Mondays with Marissa post for 2013, we could sit down and look at how to do the same for your nonprofit agency’s social media strategy.

Whenever I take the time to look back on the year, I start by asking myself a bunch of questions about the year that just ended. When looking at social media, the same process can be helpful. Here’s a list of questions to ask about the social media success of your organization.

• On which social networks did you have an account?
• How many posts did you make on each network?
• Which networks warranted the most engagement? This includes: likes, retweets, replies, comments, reblogs, ect.
• What type of posts resulted in the most engagement? Were photos more successful than text? Did you experiment with videos? How did those work?
• Which days were the most successful for encouraging engagement on each social media site? Are Tuesdays and Fridays your best Facebook days while Wednesdays and Thursdays are your best Twitter days? If you blog regularly, don’t forget to look back and see which days resulted in the most views and comments. Was there a pattern with the posts on those days?

Based on asking these questions, you can use the answers to help form your plan for 2013. These additional questions can help flush out the details.

• Which social networks were least successful? Are they worth your attention this year?
• Which social networks were were you not involved in last year? Would you like to try a new one?
• Have you started a blog for your organization? If not, why? If so, do you have an email subscription service set up?
• Based on your numbers from last year, what are your goals for 2013?

You may be wondering where you can get all of that data. Well,  Facebook Insights is a great place to start for Facebook. If you were using the application Think Up, you should have an archive of all of your numbers from last year. Twitter just made your history downloadable so that’s a place to start. Even if you aren’t able to get specific numbers as to which posts were the most successful thinking about your social media involvement in this way can help you set up some healthy goals for 2013.

I’d love to hear some of your social media goals in the comments below. Please take a moment to share what you’re most looking forward to accomplishing in the social media space in 2013?