Nonprofit Land

While researching my presentation for the upcoming SpringBoard panel, I ran across these Twitter statistics released last week.

As of February, Twitter has 10 million people. This is an astonishing adoption rate since the platform was only launched in late 2006. It shows how social media adoption is growing exponentially and internationally.

The most surprising result is that Twitter is more popular with those in the 45-54 category. There could be numerous reasons why:
a. There is no “it’s just for college kids” stigma that is attached to Facebook.
b. Twitter has more value for adults 45-54 who don’t care about looking at pictures of sharing Flare.
c. Younger demographics haven’t added a second outlet to the mix yet. Many Boomers probably bypassed Facebook and went straight to Twitter.

While it’s likely a combination of the reasons above, Twitter has caught on in certain niche groups more than others. While computer nerds/IT/social media fanatics will always be the early adopters (I proudly joined Twitter in the spring of 2007 before anyone had heard of it), it’s caught on like wildfire with right-of-center political circles.

Not surprisingly, Facebook has taken off with women ages 55+ because it’s the best way to keep up with family members of all generations according to CNN.

There are now about 1.5 million female users older than 55 on the site, the group says — roughly a 550 percent increase over six months ago. By comparison, membership among people younger than 25 grew by less than 20 percent over the same period, Inside Facebook says.

Boomers are joining to keep up with their adult children or track the online activities of their younger kids. However, they’re having to overcome a few obstacles:

“We’ve reached critical mass where there’s been enough talk about Facebook and people have gotten so many invitations from their friends, they’re going, ‘OK, what is this Facebook thing? I’ve got to get onboard or I’m going to be left in the dust,’ ” Fogg said.

Parents who are interested in their kids’ online activities contribute to the sharp increase in older users on Facebook, said Linda Fogg-Phillips, a 49-year-old who, with her brother, co-taught a six-week class at Stanford called “Facebook for Parents.”

“Parents are finally at the point where they realize this is not going away. They better figure out how to get on it and they’d better figure out how to use it,” said Fogg-Phillips, who is a mother of eight in Las Vegas, Nevada. “It’s a snowball effect. It’s viral in a good sense.”

Older people often must overcome fears about privacy issues before they will join Facebook, Fogg-Phillips said. Once they do, they often find unexpected uses for the network, she said.

With older generations flocking to social networks (Read the Pew Report for more details), how can your organization benefit? Last week, the Nonprofit Times released an article on a recent book, The She Spot. Women are not a niche audience. They are the audience. That is the premise offered by Lisa Witter and Lisa Chen in their book The She Spot.

Witter and Chen point out the following considerations regarding women as a fundraising target market and agents for change:

Given these two articles, are Facebook moms and grandmas the new holy grail of fundraising? A couple of years ago, everyone was targeting mommybloggers. Could this be the new “it” group?

This Thursday night at 6:30 p.m., I’ll be participating on a panel discussion for CreateHere’s SpringBoard series on “Social Networkign: Taking Your Business Online.” I’ll join John Hawbaker from Chattarati and Josiah Roe from Medium (formerly Coptix) on the panel. I’ve learned a lot from both John and Josiah, so this should be a great discussion.

On April 16 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, SpringBoard will host the next installment of the Small Business Panel Discussion series. With advice from expert speakers, “Social Networking: Taking Your Business Online” will provide entrepreneurs with resources to get their services noticed across the web.

Social Networking: Taking Your Business Online” will feature three expert speakers. John Hawbaker, founder and editor of Chattarati, a Chattanooga news and culture blog, will discuss the interplay of business and the blogosphere. Josiah Roe, president of Medium, will discuss marketing strategies on the web. Adrienne Royer, Director of Development and Communications at Girls Inc., will introduce entrepreneurs to recent social networking tools, including Twitter and Facebook.

SpringBoard is a resource hub for Chattanooga’s entrepreneurs, helping businesses and non-profits move forward with confidence, for the good of their owners and the community as a whole. Programs like the Small Business Panel Discussion support the CreateHere mission to empower innovative entrepreneurs.

RSVP to this event by emailing sheldon@createhere.org, or by calling 423.648.2195.

I couldn’t have said this better from the Nonprofit Times:

Online …
Big, Bad Blogs

It seems as if the Web 2.0 era has a whole other language – like Digg, Blogger, Facebook and Twitter. But, these technologies are shaped by a fundraising cornerstone – personal relationships.

Organizations are “far more likely to build trust if you are connecting to your donors as people,” said James Collier, from Paprika Studios in Fresno, Calif., at the recent Association of Fundraising Professionals international fundraising conference in New Orleans. Here’s what you need to remember to become fluent in Web 2.0:

• Know the technologies. Organizations can post larger stories with blogs that allow readers to comment. Microblogging, like Twitter, send out shorter messages in 140 characters or less to followers. There are thousands of different ways to connect to your followers. Figure out what would work best for you.
• Don’t always leave it up to the young’uns. Just because your college intern or young staff member is a digital native doesn’t mean they completely understand cultivating donor relationships.
• It’s about relationships. You wouldn’t talk at your friends – you create a dialogue. Online relationships are the same. People want to interact with you and your organization.
• Let go a little. Allow for followers to comment on your site or wherever you have an online presence. Don’t expect everything will be positive. Collier recommended creating a conversation about those negative comments and remedying the situation in the public, online space for everyone to read. Moderate but don’t police.
• It’s all about people. Organizations are usually large and cumbersome – social networking is about people. Try to have a person represent your organization – such as a CEO blog or program manager on Twitter. That’s far more personal than sending messages from your organization.**

**I debate this one, especially on services like Twitter. You want communication to have a face but not driven by an individual. In the nonprofit world job turnover is tremendously high. If the person who created your network leaves, there goes your community. Unless you’re in a big community, I think it’s ok to tweet from an organizational handle. After all, there has to be a person behind those tweets.

Today, I gave a presentation before YPAC on developing a personal brand. I enjoyed putting this together and certainly learned a lot! There’s a tremendous amount of information about developing yourself as a brand and your personal community.

Personal branding is a popular topic. Will you be the next Gary Vaynerchuck? Probably not. However, it’s worthwhile to spend time developing your personal brand to push your career forward or turn that passion into a paycheck. Blogging and tweeting don’t pay the bills, but they can lead to opportunities that will.

Other resources include:
Personal Branding Blog
Brian Solis’ Socialization of your personal brand

For years, I’ve heard fundraising professionals and experts urging nonprofits to stop depending on corporate sponsors. According to Giving USA, only 5% of total contributions came from corporations, yet this is the piece of the pie that all nonprofit fundraisers spend time fighting over and worrying about.

This year, we’re discovering what happens when that 5% of the pie dries up: fundraising events are hurt. According to the Nonprofit Times:

The historic economic downturn of the past several months has altered the business decisions of individuals, corporations, and nonprofits. One question that some organizations might be asking is whether it’s worth it to put together a gala when corporate support is expected to dwindle and there’s plenty of anxiety about individual giving.

I made this point about a month ago to my boss. I’ve noted that if a corporation or business is even willing to sponsor a nonprofit, they’re much more program-driven that event. In an era when corporate social responsibility is key, it’s important for corporations to tell their stakeholders that they support helping kids learn to read or feeding homeless people rather than spending $2,000 to sponsor a table at a gala or a team for a golf tournament. The Nonprofit Times notes:

(more…)

Pro Bono worked tagged at $120 an hour
Nonprofit Times 3/30/09

Earlier this week, I noticed the news that Congressman Zach Wamp had selected his team for his gubenatorial run break on Post Politics’s blog and within 15 minutes the link was re-tweeted several times on Twitter and posted on other local blogs. Two hours later, I noticed an official email from Wamp’s campaign land in my inbox. Later that day, I noticed online news services pick up the story.

This caused me to pause and wonder, “who should break the news?” With a shrinking traditional media and all age groups actively involved on the web, where do you break it? There are so many options. Who should get the news first? When everything is instantaneous and interconnected (i.e. Twitter updates my Facebook status), what’s first?

a. Traditional media
b. Bloggers
c. Your own blog
d. E-mail List
e. Twitter, Facebook or another social network

In the olden days, a PR person would look through his/her media list and contemplate offering a reporter an exclusive and then follow up with the rest of the list. Now who should get that exclusive? When some bloggers get more traffic than the local newspaper, where should you spend time building relationships? If news will get shared more quickly on Twitter, or if you want your supporters to feel appreciated, do you tweet it or email it first?

Typically, I send off a press release to my media list, update our blog, send out an e-mail blast and then update Facebook and Twitter. It’s generally all complete within two hours. However, this is not necessarily always the best way. It’s rare that a nonprofit organization will have something as breaking as a political campaign would when it does matter who gets the news first. However, how do you break news in your organization?

In a related story, Ragan’s PR Daily ran a story today on how media lists are changing due to social media. Since I’m no longer in the advocacy world and no longer working on a national scale, I don’t spend as much time on blogger relations. However, it should be a part of your media relations mix.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably wondered if it’s still worth the time, money and agony that it takes to produce a print newsletter. After all, e-newsletters are so much easier to put together and cheaper.

After a lot of time and consideration, I decided to tweak the Girls Inc. print newsletter rather than eliminate it. It’s now published three times a year and features feature-like stories and explores issues facing girls today. Our monthly e-newsletter covers upcoming events and breaking news.

This system has worked out well for us. 2008 individual donations were up over 2007. A recent case study highlighted into today’s PRSA’s Issues and Trends mirrors this reasoning (although much more successful!).

Right now social media is a buzz word. While communications overall are dramatically changing, we shouldn’t eliminate old tactics just because they’re old. Print newsletters are a pain. I hate putting mine together. It takes a tremendous amount of time and to write it, design it and then get the mailing out the door. However, I think it’s worth the payoff.

1. Older donors aren’t necessarily on e-mail.
Some of our largest donors aren’t email people. They like getting mail.

2. Print newsletters can’t be deleted.
I generally open most e-newsletters and alerts (probably because I used to primarily do that for a living so I’m sensitive to it). However, I scan through and give each email about 5 seconds. That’s 2 seconds longer than most people.

Over the weekend, the newsletter from the Chattanooga Zoo came in the mail. As a Zoo member, I was excited to read it. Since printing has been cut back so much, print newsletters are almost a treat now. If I don’t have time to read it when it comes in the mail, I put it in a stack to read over breakfast throughout the week. It might not be read instantly, but print newsletters have a much longer shelf-life than e-newsletters.

While I just put Girls Inc. spring newsletter to bed, I’m going to sit down and think through ways to improve the design and layout of the next issue.

My apologies for the month-long absence. After I went on vacation in February, I came down with the terrible bronchitis going around Chattanooga. I’m just getting back in to the swing of blogging and tweeting again. If you’re not following me on Twitter, sign up now and join the fun (@AdrienneRoyer).

Since I’ve been gone for so long, here are some articles that I found interesting on social media and philanthropy.

Chronicle of Philanthropy: 52% of Donors Plan No Decrease in Giving in 2009 Finally, some good news!

Chronicle of Philanthropy: Getting Repeat Gifts from First-Time Donors Proves Challenging

Ad Age: P&G Gives Its Marketers a Crash Course on Social Media Interesting case study on a P&G experiment.

The Independant (UK): Corporate Social Responsiblity Is Vital for Business Survival

AFP: Obama Administration May Abandon Plan to Reduce Charitable Deductions for Wealthy

Adweek: Who Owns Social Media?

Many more to come as I catch up on the internets.