Donordigital joins in celebrating with its client National Parkinson Foundation in reaching its 10,000th Facebook fan.

Donordigital worked with National Parkinson Foundation to run a Facebook Ad campaign with the goal of recruiting 10,000 new Facebook fans. Each new fan helps NPF give away an Aware in Care kit to people living with Parkinson’s. The kit features tools and information to share with hospital staff during a planned or emergency hospital stay.

Through a combination of organic and paid efforts on Facebook, National Parkinson Foundation reached a social media milestone – 10,000 Facebook supporters! To optimize the paid efforts, Donordigital tested ad creative and audiences to identify the strongest messages and most receptive audiences.

NPF is passionate about expanding their work on social media, and this celebratory picture proves it. Kudos to NPF for sharing this celebration picture with their 12,278 (and counting) Facebook fans. To support NPF’s great work and help them give away an Aware in Care kit, click here.

The term “Integrated Marketing” is a hot one these days, although the exact definition isn’t always clear. Let’s look at integrated marketing in terms of two overarching concepts:

1. Providing a multichannel platform and program that maximizes donor/supporter/advocate engagement and options.
2. Launching well-rounded campaigns that utilize the appropriate channel(s) to optimize conversion.

Successfully integrated campaigns have consistently proved their value — increasing donor value and loyalty, maximizing revenue, increasing retention, driving conversion throughout donor life cycles, increasing average gift amounts, and so on. But these successes can only be achieved through analysis and strategic planning based on which channels match each campaign.

Multichannel Platforms

What does a multichannel platform look like? Current integrated programs consist mainly of the following channels: Direct Mail, Web, Social Media, Mobile, Search and Telephone. I know, I know, this is starting to sound expensive and complicated (and these are only some of the channels!). Yes, it does require a fair amount of investment to develop multiple channels. A phased approach, based on goals and budgets, is the course of action for achieving multichannel success –- it will not happen overnight. Prioritize your approach, then plan on spending 24-36 months to fully fund and develop programs across all channels. Unless, of course, you are one of the lucky few with big budgets and lots of staff, and then things can move much quicker!

Well-Rounded Campaigns

Just because it might take between two and three years to build a multichannel program that is firing on all cylinders, you don’t want to stop campaigns until they are fully “integrated”.  When creating integrated marketing strategies, it is important to build upon your existing channels, budgets and resources as much as possible. Then, look to your goals to guide the development of additional channels, and prioritize the timelines for new and existing channels.

While messaging and brand consistency across channels is a baseline, different strategies may be optimized with varying levels of channel integration. For example, a “Match Grant” appeal offer going out to the current file in direct mail might be best optimized with a three-part email series synced with the mail drop, a Match call to action on the Homepage, custom donation pages with Match information, and a follow-up campaign about reaching the Match amount (thanks to your great donors). Unless mobile and social media channels already exist within the organization, they might not be worth investing in exclusively for this type of campaign.

On the other hand, when looking at a similar scenario for a new donor acquisition campaign, sending out integrated emails to the Direct Mail recipients is rarely impactful. However, a combination of social media, SEM and advocacy actions might work well here to drive immediate revenue and build a list of supporters to cultivate later.

Of, course, each case varies based on the channel and the campaign, so the key is to be on top of your metrics. Ongoing analysis is always important, even with the growing list of integrated marketing best practices to provide a starting point. Also, make sure to analyze behavior by universe (i.e., those that received the direct mail piece and email vs. those who received only the mail version), instead of just looking at the last touch point by channel analysis. Like I said, it can get complicated! But when properly executed, an integrated marketing program is well worth it. Good luck!

Eric Overman is the Vice President for Digital Strategy and Integrated Services at Donordigital, and is based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Matt Burghdoff

Michael: You have a background in multi-channel integration strategies for nonprofits.  What does multi-channel integration means for nonprofits in 2012?

Matt: Multi-channel integration boils down to one voice with multiple outlets and variations.  Multi-channel strategy is about making sure you have a presence wherever constituents might be, and that presence conveys the spirit or brand of the organization.  Regardless of whether I follow your efforts through email updates, print mail, or tweets, I should have the same sense of who you are as an organization, where you’re heading, and where I as a supporter or donor fit it.

For a nonprofit, or even for-profit company, audiences are consuming knowledge about you and your community through TV, Facebook, emails, online news stories, etc.  It’s increasingly important to provide information in the medium they are most comfortable with.  If you’re not where they are, they’ll never become your supporter and brand evangelist.

That said, it’s also critical to keep in mind the Return on Investment of these various efforts. There are LOTS of different channels available to get information to your audience, but nonprofits have limited resources – money and labor. Don’t spend your time focusing on a mobile giving campaign with only 5 people signed up when you’ve got 20,000 email addresses that can perform better.  Put your resources into cultivating those 20,000 emails into a strong program, which will deliver a much better ROI, then use that ROI to cultivate the next most-important channel to your supporters.

Michael: For nonprofits that have both a Mail and an Online program, what are some key strategies for success?

Matt: Constituent tracking instead of channel tracking is more critical than ever.  That is the single biggest hurdle nonprofits need to overcome if they’re going to succeed.  Your audience doesn’t see themselves as “Mail Recipient” or “Digital Recipient,” and quite frankly they’re not going to stay pigeon-holed into those groups because you ask them.  People move across channels at will and sub-consciously, and nonprofits need to be able to track their behavior to get real measurements on their programs’ effectiveness.  Organizations which break out of the silo tracking will have a real edge in measuring – and improving – the true effectiveness of their programs.

Michael: What are a few standout highlights from Year-End fundraising 2011?

Matt: The real trend that I’ve seen, and you’re not going to like this, is a slight drop in response rates to traditional fundraising practices.  What this means is that getting an actual donation from a standard traditional direct response device – such as an Annual Fund message – is having less and less impact with a digital audience.

The bright spot is that less traditional “asks” are having greater and greater impact.  Donors seem to be responding better to programmatic success stories – in more of a conversational than marketing tone – which offer genuine proof of effective services.  It’s probably a symptom of the general market trends towards measurable results that we’ve been seeing for years, but its impact is accelerating greatly.  People don’t want to be marketed to, and donors are getting increasingly cynical, with the upcoming elections not helping the situation.

Michael: What does the coming year look like in terms of email programs for nonprofits?  Will that channel grow, shrink or remain the same in terms of impact?

Matt: Think about it this way: your existing supporters should be finding their way to your website through emails you provide them, to ensure that they actually find you and not a competitor.  Approximately 60-80% of direct mail donors will go to an organization’s website before being willing to cut a check, and that doesn’t factor in that email is – for most organizations – the single biggest online fundraising method.  Online giving is also growing exponentially year over year.  I’d consider a good email program pretty important.

Michael: With so many donors and supporters using their smartphones to read their email, what does that do to email messaging that is essentially designed for larger screens?

Matt: It’s more important than ever that we follow the general rules of email – short, sweet, and to the point.  We have to remember the 3 second rule: If I can’t figure out what this is, what you want me to do, and why I should do it in 3 seconds or less, you didn’t do your job.  We have a tendency to treat emails like a long, drawn out conversation when really an email is the doorway to a deeper conversation.  With emails, we want to give the audience something to react to – a touching story, a compelling ask, an urgent advocacy need – and then let them react by donating, posting the stories on their Facebook accounts, or coming to our website to learn more.  Long, drawn out emails not only are difficult for smart phones, but they slow the audience’s ability to react.

Anthony Blair-Borders

Michael: Describe your advertising background  working as an art director and creative.

Anthony: I began my career in print design, illustration, and storyboards. My evolution into the digital space began when I decided to make my own online portfolio and I subsequently taught myself HTML. I quickly realized that knowing how to code added a brand new, marketable skill set that was in high demand. And, as I expanded my developer’s toolkit, I began to recognize that design for the web is a completely different beast from print design. Print is largely about working with static graphics that interact with an audience in very specific ways, but design for the web is dynamic; it moves, grows, shrinks and flows based on ever-changing content and ever-evolving technology. The web is also about user experience and interactivity. Needless to say, this was all very exciting stuff to learn about. And it continues to evolve and present new challenges all the time, which for me is pretty exciting.

Michael: Your bio says you’ve won some awards.  

Anthony: In 2007, I was working on a series of enterprise-level direct mail pieces for a telecommunications giant. These were really expensive, complex pieces that were going to CEOs and corporate heads and featured all kinds of strange materials like vinyl and metal and were often folded together with the complexity of Origami. The particular piece in question was for walkie-talkie service. While concepting, I was inspired by Eric Carle’s children’s books The Very Quiet Cricket and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. When opened, the piece chirped like a walkie-talkie (and consistently startled everyone in the agency it was so loud) and worked as a flip book with a call-and-response on the left-and-right flip panels. No matter what panel you flipped to, the result was the same: there was a problem, but our client’s service got the job done.

Michael: What interests you about working at Donordigital,?

Anthony: Traditional advertising always left me feeling a little flat. I loved the work and making gorgeous things, but I hated that huge amounts of my time were spent selling products and services that I very rarely cared about. But I love working with non-profits, because at the end of the day I feel like I’m using my skills and talents for something worthwhile. So far, I can truthfully say that I love working with all of our clients — though I have to admit that PETA comes up with some really interesting projects, especially during the holidays. Secret Santa and PETA Presents were both big fun and big challenges

Michael: You bio says you often donate artwork and illustrations for various local charities and events.

Anthony: Years ago I had an opportunity to provide illustrations for a Couture for the Cure fashion show and sketch art gallery sale. I was asked to work for a milliner who made all of her hats on the fly without working from sketches, so I was basically tasked to make sketches of her hats for the art sale. But I was inspired by the quirkiness of her hats and so I drew them being worn by whimsical, faerie-like creatures. The hat designer was pretty perturbed that I didn’t make straight-up fashion sketches, but they turned out to be very popular and I sold all of them. The best part of the experience was getting to take part in the fashion show and the whole process. It was also my first gallery show, so that was exciting as well.

I’ve also worked multiple times making posters and T-shirt graphics for benefit concerts for OneAtmosphere and SF Climate Challenge. I’m a bit of a music nerd, and I’ve always had a fondness (well, obsession, really) with concert posters and album cover art, so getting to make posters is great fun.

Climatepalooza 2010 with CAKE Concert Poster

Michael: What other passions and hobbies inspire you?

Anthony: I’m a fine artist in my spare time. As an artist, I draw inspiration from a wide array of sources, from traditional painters like Paul Klee and Max Ernst to lowbrow artists like Joel Sorren and Jeff Soto. I also grew up with a big collection of comics by Jean “Moebius” Giraud, who was a huge influence. I also find inspiration in nature, architecture, fashion, music, science fiction and fantasy literature, comic books, pop culture, video games, personal experience… just about everything. I soak it all up, purée it in my subconscious, and pour it back out. I guess I’m the artistic equivalent of Jamba Juice.

The Guitarist, acrylic on watercolor paper, 2007

Right now, my big focus is on my family. My wife and I have a 1-year-old and I spend almost all of my free time with them. Watching my child grow and develop has to be one of the highlights of my life. I love music. I’m one of those guys that used to work in a record store and has big opinions about bands, producers, and composers… and I used to be real snotty about it, too. I’ve mellowed out quite a bit in my old age, thankfully, and I’m less cranky about which Beatles album is best (the correct answer is Revolver). Finally, I’m really into science fiction and fantasy literature and comic books. I’m also big into video games, though since I have a toddler at home, I don’t get as much time for them as I used to.

The finding of the study is that even though there was a surge in mobile giving for Haiti earthquake relief, that surge did not translate into either ongoing growth in mobile giving or into further giving through other channels.

This is a very important finding, and it confirms a belief that we have long suspected at Donordigital, which is that mobile giving is not a reliable ongoing fundraising source, and it potentially weakens other fundraising opportunities when it is not deployed in a manner that includes strong ongoing cultivation activities.

“The quixotic nature of text giving was further highlighted by the survey’s finding that 60 percent of the donors interviewed said they had paid little or no attention to the continuing recovery efforts in Haiti after making their contributions,” writes Stephanie Strom.

This highlights the need for strong and creative efforts to keep mobile donors informed about Haiti relief efforts, either through the mobile medium itself, or through email updates. The issue of converting mobile donors into email subscribers is a challenge in and of itself that requires experimentation and savvy to achieve.

The study also highlights that over 80 percent of those surveyed said they had not donated to Haiti in any other way and only one-third of them had made more than one contribution using their phones.

This highlights a growing concern among fundraising professionals that mobile giving may be reducing overall charitable giving. Average gifts via email and Web are usually north of $60. Average mobile giving is $10.

Clearly the challenge ahead is how to move mobile donors to become multi-channel donors. This is not an easy challenge to address. It starts with getting mobile donors to share their email and social media information, so that NGOs can conduct ongoing cultivation and ongoing fundraising that is not constricted by the mobile channel.

Read the full article Excitement Around Donations by Text Message Fades at The New York Times.

Michael Stein is a Senior Account Executive at Donordigital, the online fundraising, marketing, and advertising company. Contact: michael@donordigital.com or phone (510) 473-0364.

Convio is an enterprise-class, cloud-based platform that many of Donordigital’s clients use for email messaging, constituent management, peer-to-peer fundraising, and online gift processing.

Here are Vinay’s top five predictions for the nonprofit sector in 2012:

• Online and new media channels will continue to extend their influence
• Peer-to-peer marketing will continue to be more important
• Donor fatigue will get more pronounced
• Supporters want to control their experience
• Integrated marketing practices will mature

The way I read this is that email messaging will decline as an impactful way to raise money online, and other tools and channels will grow in influence. This is sure to add new challenges to nonprofits and the agencies that work for them to experiment with new techniques and tools to reach supporters and donors.

Vinay’s comment that donating decisions will be more guided by campaigns from friends, family and co-workers is an insightful prediction, as I observe a big desire by individuals of all walks of life to raise money online for the causes that are meaningful to them.

On that last point, I would challenge all software-as-a-service providers to evaluate the features and user experience of their own “friendraising” tools, and make a commitment to improve them in the year ahead. Having recently rolled them out for several clients, there is clearly some room for improvement.

Vinay’s other theme of consumers wanting to control their user experience is certainly a central challenge to nonprofits.  There is too much one-size-fits-all publishing going on across the nonprofit world, which is holdover from direct mail. The online world calls out for us to invent ways to diversify content by all means necessary.

Please take a moment to read Vinay Bhagat’s insightful article.

Amanda MacCullough

Michael: Tell us about your recent work at Breastcancer.org.

Amanda: Breastcancer.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing the most reliable, complete, and up-to-date information about breast cancer and breast health as well as an active and supportive online community.

I had various roles at Breastcancer.org but they all fell under development and fundraising.  Half of my time was spent managing traditional fundraising activities such as writing and editing grant applications and coordinating fundraising events.

The other half of my time was working on our online operations.  I managed content focused on fundraising, implemented various email programs, modified donation forms, and collaborated with supporters who wanted to create their own fundraising page.

Michael: It sounds like you’ve done a lot of work on email messaging.

Amanda: I managed the email calendar for the organization, helping to plan out the communication schedule with its growing audiences. I would write the copy for the development emails, and for all emails (development & otherwise) would update the monthly communications with all the new content and images to feature, then test and send them!  We used the Convio platform for our email messaging.

Michael: Other than email messaging, what Convio tools have you used?

Amanda: I’ve worked with several other components of Convio including TeamRaiser, PageBuilder, and donation forms.

I was the contact for anyone around the world who wanted to utilize the TeamRaiser tool for their event benefitting Breastcancer.org. I connected them to event planning resources, provided info about the organization, and helped them set up their own fundraising page in Convio.

TeamRaiser was also used for a large corporate-sponsored bowling event the organization benefitted from. I worked with a Convio contact to set up customized pages for this, and TeamRaiser was utilized to allow the various company teams to compete in fundraising for this bowling event.

Michael: What’s the most interesting fundraising campaign you’ve worked on?       

Amanda: I’ve helped to organize a bra decorating contest. It was a friend-raiser/fundraiser with a local store. People decorated bras and paid $5 to have it “entered”. They were displayed in the store during the event and judges selected winners to receive gift certificates.  We used the bras for several events after that as unique decorations!

While most attention at year-end is typically centered on maximizing reach and visibility through email marketing, direct mail, paid search marketing, and social media, it’s imperative to also focus on your website donation landing pages.

All of your hard work driving supporters to your website can be squandered in an instant if they’re faced with wordy, dense, complicated, and time-consuming donation pages once they get there—which inevitably leads to donor abandonment and lost revenues.

To help you get the most out of your donation pages at year-end, we’ve prepared a list of ‘best practices’ based on our experience testing and optimizing such pages for a wide variety of clients over the past 5 years.

While we’ve found these areas most often have the biggest impact on giving—this list is NOT meant to be exhaustive or to serve as a substitute for testing.

Identifying what specifically works best with your audience requires direct testing on your own donation pages—and the fall season is an ideal time to experiment, as findings can be deployed immediately for the peak giving weeks between Thanksgiving and December 31st.

Best Practice #1: Feature a clear call to action headline

The first two questions any visitor to a web landing page has are:
Where am I? What can I do here?

The most effective way to answer both is with a clear and compelling page headline. The best headlines are succinct and to the point, but also tap into the reason your donors are motivated to make a gift in the first place.

In our experience, donation page headlines that connect giving to a positive impact, e.g. “Donate to save children’s lives” typically deliver stronger conversion rates than pages where the headline simply states the call to action, e.g. “Donate Now.”

From a strict usability standpoint, the page headline should use a font size and color that make it prominent, eye-catching, and easy to read. We prefer headlines in bold, black font on a white background.

Best Practice #2: Present a Strong Value Proposition

Once a visitor has figured out what they can do on your donation page, the next question they ask themselves is, why should I do it? After all, they most likely receive at least one email per day from a non-profit organization asking them for a donation (and at year-end this number explodes!)

Presenting a strong value proposition is essential to converting more donation page visitors into donors. Making an effective case for giving can be accomplished in a variety of ways, but some of the most effective tactics we’ve found include:

• Explaining in clear, simple language how donors’ money is spent (main body copy)
• Explaining how your approach is effective, and what you’ve been able to accomplish already (main body copy)
• Displaying trust seals, a testimonial from a prominent supporter, or mission statement to reduce anxiety on the part of first-time donors.We’ve found that trust seals such as Charity Navigator, Better Business Bureau Accredited Charity, or American Institute of Philanthropy have the most impact on donor conversion when displayed on donation pages above the fold. This is because most web users don’t scroll, so vastly more visitors will see them if they’re displayed on the top half of the page.The most important audience for trust seals is folks who don’t know your organization very well and have never given to you before. This group has the most anxiety about taking the plunge; consequently, they’re more likely to be favorably influenced by a recognized third-party rating, so it needs to be visible very early in the process, i.e. before a user starts to complete the form—not after.
• Illustrating your organizational efficiency with pie charts that break down expense and program allocations.  Your page should reinforce the message that donors’ money is spent wisely—and mainly on the mission.  This information helps to answer two important questions donors typically have—namely, where does my money go? How much of my gift gets spent on overhead?

Consider using a sidebar to display “supporting” content such as trust seals, a mission statement, and budget allocation charts. They’re not essential to completing the transaction, but can combine to tell a compelling story of who and what your organization is about—and how you get results.

Best Practice #3: One-Click to Donate

You risk losing donations on your site if you ask visitors to click through multiple pages to reach a donation form, or ask them to confirm their donation with another click after submitting the form.

If your organization uses a multi-page donation process, we recommend re-evaluating each step and deciding whether it could be incorporated into a single page. This may involve eliminating some non-essential questions or form fields that aren’t essential to completing a transaction, such as title, middle name, spouse name, phone number, program preferences, etc. and eliminating a “donation confirmation” page, which often resemble a receipt and confuse some donors.

The cumulative effect of extraneous form fields and questions on donation pages, and a confirmation page prior to transaction completion is to test visitors’ patience and deplete the reservoir of goodwill you have with prospective donors when they first land on your site. The net effect is that some visitors will jump ship before completing the transaction—needlessly depressing the conversion rate on your donation page.

Best Practice #4:  Keep the page focused on a single call to action

In many instances, we find the main web donation page on a site uses the same wrapper as the site’s homepage—featuring utility links, main navigation, secondary navigation and other calls to action on the periphery of the page (e.g. Sign up for email, Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, etc.)

This approach is most often used for the sake of consistency, but can sabotage the main call to action on a donation page, since it provides so many opportunities for visitors to detour to other parts of your site (or leave the site altogether) before making a gift.

One way to solve this problem is to create and test a streamlined page wrapper displaying nothing more than your brand logo and a link back to the homepage—while all other wrapper content reinforces the main call to action instead of competing with it.

Best Practice #5:  Images

Your organization’s work may be such that images are more powerful than words when it comes to communicating how a donor’s gift can help others. Groups that are especially blessed in this regard include those working in international development, emergency first responders, child welfare, animal welfare, and wildlife or habitat conservation.

Featuring an image that reinforces the core message in your marketing pitch and is well-integrated with the rest of your value proposition can significantly improve the page conversion rate.

When selecting photos, it’s critical that they be authentic and relevant—stock photography that looks fake, contrived or unrelated to your mission can actually work against you—serving to distract or alienate visitors rather than reinforce your message.

Of course, some photos have a greater impact than others, so it’s essential to test a variety of images to figure out which one resonates best with your audience.

Best Practice #6: Security Seals

It’s essential to display a recognized security seal on your donation page so prospective donors are confident that their personal information won’t be compromised.

We’ve found that the VeriSign security logo (the most widely recognized brand in online security) is most effective when it appears in the section of the page where donors enter the most sensitive information (such as their credit card or bank account numbers) and complete the transaction (click the donate button).

This is where donors are the most worried about page security—and fear can lead some folks to abandon the giving process altogether if it’s not adequately addressed on the page itself.

Best Practice #7: Offer options—don’t make donors go searching for them

There’s a wider range of donors on your website than ever before—young, middle-aged and older donors, first timers, and long-time members.

There’s no “one size fits all” approach to satisfying these folks. Your donors demand options; and they don’t want to waste time trying to find them.

Make sure your donation pages provide both flexibility and clarity to meet a broad range of donor preferences. With some clever coding, you can present a clean-looking donation page that provides donors with:

• Single gift or monthly gift-giving options (experiment with tabs, drop-downs or radio buttons)
• Different methods of payment (credit card, bank account debit, Paypal)
• A mailing address to print and mail the form in for those that are still reluctant to give online (more important if your donor base skews older)
• A telephone number to make a gift by phone (especially for pages that make a monthly giving ask the primary action, where a donor is more likely to have questions before making a high-level commitment)

Best Practice #8: A colorful, eye-catching donate button

Large and colorful donate buttons that look clickable and feature goal-oriented language often outperform donate buttons that are small, grey and feature generic language (e.g. a standard grey “submit” button).

Our testing work has found no single color works best on donate buttons—every audience is different. However, most audiences respond better to bright colors (e.g. blue, red, orange, green) than pale colors (e.g. grey, yellow) and button language that makes the action clear, e.g. Donate, Donate Now, versus language that is vague or unclear on what happens next, e.g. “Process” or “Submit.”

Like images, we’ve found that changes to button color often have a significant impact on the donation page conversion rate—but it can be positive or negative, so you’ll want to test a variety of options to see which one works best for you.

Best Practice #9: Font size and color that donors can easily read

While many of us rely on web developers and designers much younger than ourselves to create web content, it’s important to remember that most online donors are over 40—and a significant portion are over 50.

Small font sizes and pale text (grey is surprisingly common) can make reading your donation page a real challenge. Make sure that your page copy (both headline and body text) uses a dark font (preferably black) on white background and is of sufficient size to maximize readability.

Don’t make donors strain to read what’s on the page—and that includes form field descriptions. If they can’t read it, they most likely aren’t going to make a gift!

Best Practice #10: TEST EVERYTHING

Don’t take shortcuts, assuming that what worked on organization x, y or z’s website will automatically work on yours, too.

Too often, we’re hired for a testing project and find that our clients have adopted changes to their donation pages without testing them first, only to find out later through testing that the change was negative for donor conversion—not positive!

Don’t make these costly, avoidable mistakes. Always test new ideas before adopting them wholesale.

These ideas should get you started down the path to unlocking greater value on your web donation pages!

Dawn Stoner is Donordigital’s Director of Analytics & Testing and works with clients to help them increase online revenues with web usability best practices and landing page testing. Dawn speaks regularly about testing and optimization at industry conferences and publishes papers highlighting what’s working and not working with our testing clients.

David asserts correctly with good examples such as Lance Armstrong Foundation that social media platforms have become fundamental for cultivating brand awareness and audience engagement. This has undoubtedly been the biggest learning for the past few years of the growth of social media. Facebook and Twitter have been steadily rising as traffic sources to nonprofit websites, and nonprofits have gotten the message that every staff hour spent on social media content and recruitment returns some value to the organization, even if that value can be hard to quantify.

This question of what is the value of a Facebook fan keeps rolling on. Having a new fan on Facebook is not necessarily the same as having a new donor or volunteer. Nonprofits are betting that a new Facebook fan may (one day) be worth as much as a new email subscriber. Time will tell.

With email open rates, click through rates and engagement completion rates at the lowest historical level they’ve ever been, nonprofits are understandably scrambling for new online platforms and territories to explore.  Especially now that it’s pretty conclusive that young people under 20 are favoring Facebook, Twitter and text messaging over email.

Email as a fundraising channel is limited by the fact that open rates and response rates are now so low, and the homogenization of email fundraising is running the risk of numbing prospective donors into a stupor.  Like email spam and mail fundraising appeals, recipients are scanning their in-boxes for clutter to delete.  As a result, email fundraising has become a pure numbers game, like its direct mail predecessor.  Getting good value from an email fundraising strategy relies on an increasingly growing email acquisition strategy. In other words, you have to relentlessly grow your email list to raise money through email. Many nonprofits are clinging to the hope that social media can help strengthen donor engagement online — let’s hope it does.

Read David Matthew’s article What is the Real Value of Social Media for Nonprofits?

Michael Stein is a Senior Account Executive at Donordigital, the online fundraising, marketing, and advertising company. Contact: michael@donordigital.com or phone (510) 473-0364.

My colleague Mwosi Swenson and I presented examples of robust monthly giving programs in July 2011 at the Direct Marketing Association of Washington-Association of Fundraising Professionals Bridge Conference at a session entitled “Anatomy of Hot Monthly Giving Programs,” as we were joined by colleagues from PETA and the Human Rights Campaign.

These two dynamic monthly donor programs incorporate some of the following techniques to keep growing their file:

• Rolling online campaigns inviting recent donors and non-donor action takers to become sustainers.  The messages highlight the urgency of why sustainers are needed “for the long haul,” and why monthly giving is the best way to support a cause

• Create month-long “campaigns” to recruit and upgrade

• Monthly giving opt-in option on donation pages (especially renewal campaigns) and links from offline campaigns Monthly giving option on every donation page

• Feature monthly giving button on the homepage (in addition to Donate Now button)

• Use email to capture declined credit cards … making it easy for the donor to update information and fulfill the gift … using a Netflix-like declined credit card message.  Make it easy!

• Use a hot premium to secure the upgrade from current sustainers

With year-end planning happening now, it’s important to not forget how monthly giving strategy plays in with these plans.  Even subtle opportunities to offer the monthly giving option can go far in building a robust program for long-term growth.

Dave Dogan is Vice President of Client Services at Mal Warwick Associates, Donordigital’s sister company.  Dave has two decades of experience directing the membership and fundraising programs of progressive nonprofit organizations from both the agency and the client side.