Community Mobilization

Quantifying Video

I had an interesting request form one of the readers the other day about the roi of video and its impact on increasing donations. It is an absolutely valid question, and also a very difficult one to answer. Unlike direct mail and phone solicitation Video is not a self contained fund raising technology, it is a component and part of a strategy. Here is my response to her in hopes it may answer some questions out there about the value of video.

Here is what I am going to say about video and actual measurable impact; it is exceedingly hard to prove that video generates MORE donations. The thing with videos is that it creates a more sticky user experience and therefore should increase donations by virtue of increasing traffic. We are in the middle of a Prototype sharinghope.tv I  am not sure if we are remeasuring donation patterns but more importantly I am not sure that you can dollar quantify affinity.

One of the most interesting things I have ever heard about donation patters came from Sheraz Haji former CEO of Get Active. He said that the more touch points that you have with constituents the longer their donor life span is AND the greater their overall giving. They may give less to specific donation opportunities but they give more often and more overall.

Unlike direct mail that has a specific solicitation to an specific audience video is a living component on the net and may or may not attract. I would say with good tracking and analytics you can see the number of visitors and the donation activity. How many visitors and how many donations ad how large. You can compare them to your other channels. The winning combination should, in theory, always be a cross channel multi layered approach to attracting donors, and giving them value for their donation.

As a closing note SHaring Hope. TV earned a bit more media coverage recently on local Austin News.

Text messages and Philanthropy

The first time I saw txt messaging and fund raising it was back in 2005 around the Tsunami relief efforts. I do not remember the amount of money raised or the methodology through which they raised it (direct billing or carrier collected). Recently I have been reading information on the Chronicle of Philanthropy site regarding the advances by Mobile Giving Foundation and how they worked with the United Way on their Super Bowl campaign, which raised about $10,000.

The statistics are pretty clear that the mobile device is going to be the 1st piece of computing technology for an overwhelming percentage of the population of this planet. Our friend Katrin Verclas from Mobile Active.org has really embraced this idea with their efforts to turn the mobile phone into a change agent through awareness, education and activism.

David Neff on using social media tools in Non Profits

Our friend and social media maven Beth Kanter has posted a insightful interview with our other friend and frequent co-presenter David Neff. David using the Sharinghope.tv platform to provide 3 key tips to non profits when entering the social medial space.

The tips are 1. Experiment, 2. Buys a video Camera, and 3. Research what other companies and organizations are doing in the field and learn from their success and mistakes. These suggestions are not only valid for nonprofits but they ring true to any organization or company. Part of being successful is understanding the space you are entering. Any for profit company will invest money and research into understanding new markets before getting into them. With social media all you really need is a few adventurous staff members to try things on with an eye always focusing on the organization's goal.

Social Networks and Fundraising

Non Profit organizations are being drawn towards large social networking sites at a rapid pace, due in large part to the density of potential volunteers. One of the organizations looking to recruit new donors is the International Humanitarian Foundation. The group recently launched the $10/1000 campaign focusing on attracting 1000 new donors at $10. "Social networking has the power to effect change in our world. We can reach the people we know will be interested in our work in a viral manner," said IHF President Amish Parashar.

Part of the allure continues to be massive scope and size of these spaces, but no one has really tried to quantify the quality for specific actions. There have been no research studies that I have seen that help fund raisers better understand conversion rates in social networks, and ROI for each fund raised dollar. IHF suspects tha the overwhelming majority of new donors will be 1 to 3 degrees away from existing IHF volunteer, which speaks to the assumption that the web technology allows for stronger reach across weaker ties but we still do not know how strong or how far that reach can go.

Social Multitaskers and Social Value

Forester just released a report linking social value to social multitasking. The report poses an interesting idea and I am going to take a stab at concocting my own argument to support it, and then propose why it is all rubbish.

Social multitaskers I would define as people involved in a number of social spaces, either in real life or on virtual and electronic communities. I'll even add in that the social spaces need not be mutually exclusive.The fact that they are involved in unique named and purposed groups is good enough for me.

So the argument that Social Multitaskers have higher social value is true in a broad sense. Involved in numerous circles they have the a potentially greater reach than the average person. They touch entirely separate groups giving them a high potential to motive and mobilize a greater volume of people for a cause or action. In terms of resources they also hold an advantage in that they posses a larger pool to poll when seeking assistance.

But reach in of its self is simply a lousy metric. I think reach tells nothing about impact. Regardless of the number of folks you can reach if you have no relationships to leverage individuals to action. This is where I have a hard time with this theory. There are a number of people who are dedicated to a single community. They are involved and have strong ties to leverage people into action. I would be curious which set up has the most actual power, not potential power.

Video and Non Profits - Get a Grant and Make it Happen

In recent months we in the non profit field have begun to really embrace the power of video. The personal story is taking center stage as we showcase hour our mission activities make real differences in real people's lives. The American Cancer Society continues to build on its Sharing Hope video platform and the March of Dimes is using video in their Every baby has a Story project.

Flip Video wants to help your non profit harness the power of video. They have a mission to deliver ONE MILLION flip video recorders to qualifying non profits over the next 5 years. The mission is ambitious but it could help change the world by educating through personal and engaging videos.

One Man Non Profits - V Getting the Momentum

Any good sports fan or coach will tell you that the key to any game is getting and keeping the momentum. Same is true in business, and social causes. One of the reasons large philanthropies are large is that they have found ways and programs to build and maintain momentum. Nothing is perpetual and maintaining forward progress should be part of any organizations mission.

In terms of one man non profits how much momentum can one person generate. Throughout history individuals indeed have changed the world. Web based tools in this day and age are allowing entrepreneurial philanthropists to gather potential energy and release it once a critical mas  has been reached. The Point is one such system. The Point is a new way of thinking about collective action. People need a way to know where their participation adds the most value. That’s what The Point offers—an environment where people are only asked to participate when their action can be combined with others to create a solution.

Utilizing online systems to gauge the potential energy for any social cause could be a valuable tool for emerging philanthropic activities. More precisely systems like the point can help identify if there is a gap with sufficient interest to create an entity to serve it. Established organizations should use this kind of a systematic approach to fill those gaps. In both cases it reduces cost as an entry barrier as well as helps set potential expectations before a program even gets underway.

One Man Non Profits IV - Direct Restricted Resources

Restricted gifts are a unique topic in our business. Imagine buying a tank of gasoline and saying that you want your profits only to go towards green energy research, or buying a T-shirt and insisting that your portion of profits only go towards subsidized medical coverage for the employees. In non profits restricted gifts work just like that and they can be very effective.

In the realm of the one man philanthropy there is an opportunity to direct donations  towards a single cause or program. A very recent example of this is MalariaEngage.org that requests $10 donations and then affords donors the option to fund  seven projects  recommended by Tanzania's National Institute for Medical Research. Once those have been funded, MalariaEngage.org will look to support new projects across developing countries.

In creating an inexpensive platform MalariaEngage.org can send the sum of its donations to support research. Other organizations are not so lucky, in that they have developed numerous patient support, advocacy, education, and outreach programs that really do help people but require staff to organize and run.  It is not unfathomable that organizations could build micro campaigns around restricted donations to mission critical services. Matching donors to what they are passionate about almost always results in better connection and affinity with the organization, and really makes donors feel like they can see their impact on specific programs. This innate need to feel like you are making a difference is what drove the entrepreneurial philanthropists to create their own activities in the first place.

One Man Non Profits Part III - The Power of Compounding Effort

Albert Einstein said 'The most powerful force in the Universe is compound interest'. To that I say 'the most powerful force in philanthropy is compound interests.' The ability to bring people together based on a common interest and to make an impact is, in my opinion, the most important skill for a philanthropy to develop and hone. Superficially this flies in the face of the idea of the one man non profit. If real ultimate power comes from compounding the interests across as wide an area as possible then how effective can a hyper local one man non profit be?

The short answer is not very. HOWEVER it is my opinion that the large  nationwide organizations should pay attention to this micro trend and formulate a strategy to attract and support these  entrepreneurial philanthropists to further large scale medical and epidemiological research.

Nationwide organizations can leverage their fund raising vendors (Convio, E-Tapestry)for a system to enable one-off events. Beyond the fund raising appropriations there are legal concerns as well. Branding, trademarks, and a host of other technical concerns may stymie entrepreneurial philanthropists from engaging large organizations, and so they create their own.

As much as we would like to dismiss this trend it is building in momentum and volume. The next iteration of philanthropy will be to empower volunteers and donors to create something that they could intrinsically call their own. The association or agency that can make that process as user friendly for the constituent will continue to grow in importance and ability to move mission.

One Man Non Profits Part II - The Down Side

On of the questions I get asked all the time is 'How do I start my own Non Profit'. I often shudder and then ask what they want to benefit, what their passion is and if their is an organization that fills that need already. The balance that we are striving for is personal connection vs. economy of scale. I'll discuss a few ways to bridge this gap in section III of this series of posts.

FUND RAISING IS NOT A ZERO SUM GAME! Each time a new organization arises to benefit a cause where another organization already exists we loose a bit in the economy of scale.  We are not taking dollars away from each other, we are just spending them unnecessarily and repetitively on things that do not help our end goal. Each new organization needs a host of things to stand alone and differentiate itself from the other organizations serving the same community.

Maybe there are so many more one man philanthropies out there to day because setting one up is so much easier. We technology lets us have a virtual office on our cell phone if we want. Or maybe There are more causes that are important to more people. The bottom line is how is the money we raise actually helping move our mission?

In social service and community engagement organizations it can be as straight forward as providing food for the hungry, or shelter, or clothing or even job training. In the medical field things are not that simple.Organizations like the American Cancer Society spend substantial portions of their budget on epidemiological and scientific research. Some of the research demands significant funding to be done correctly. Small local charities may not be able to raise the money needed to fund a 30 year longitudinal study, or full scientific research project.

There has to be a better way to give people that personal I-make-a-difference feeling that all philanthropist AND concentrate the positive results of their hard work into real tangible mission moving results.