Since the heady days of Summer 2007 when we had virtual Wimbledon and The Guardian backed a whole virtual music festival, the virtual world Second Life seems generally to have slipped down the online hypecycle from the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ to the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’.

However, one charity that is still actively establishing its presence there is the American Cancer Society. Led by an incredibly dedicated Second Life community of volunteers, the ACS has grown its Second Life activities substantially since its first virtual Relay for Life fundraising event in 2005 – raising over $215,000 through its 2008 event and now hoping to surpass this with its 2009 event being held this Saturday, July 18th.

Apparently they’ve got over 125 teams and 2,000 participants already registered for the 24-hour virtual relay event – and from past years it should be a fun event to log-on to watch.

Alternately, if wandering a little 3d avatar of yourself amongst crowds of virtual fundraisers isn’t your idea of a fun day out – then you can get a good feel for the event, and other ACS activity in Second Life, from the video above.

There has been quite a bit of online discussion about the initiative launched earlier this month to help publicise the rebranding of the Christian Children’s Fund to ChildFund International, whereby they are aiming to acquire Twitter followers to @childfund by offering to send farming supplies to a family in Gambia, Zambia, Kenya or Ethiopia for every 200 followers gained.

I must admit, the first thing I wondered when I heard about the campaign was quite how the funding of the farming supplies was being provided. Presumably not just from the charity’s usual funds, as the incentive link then just wouldn’t make sense. Yet there was no mention of any matching grant from a major donor to incentivise the sign-up of followers – which would have made sense. It turns-out I wasn’t alone in being confused, as revealed by Geoff Livingstone from the PR agency behind the campaign in a blog post earlier today where he seeks to clarify the situation.

It turns-out that the charity did indeed apparently raise matching donations to fund the incentive campaign – not from a single major donor but from lots of individual donors who agreed to give an extra gift to fund it.  However, there is still no more information provided with regard to quite how these special donors were engaged with the campaign – which is a pity as it would have added some much needed authenticity to the whole initiative. A further authenticity gap comes when you take a look at the new ChildFund International website – where there is no mention of the initiative at all (so far as I could see).

So, it looks like there’s a key lesson to be learned here. Before launching any such social media initiative, do make absolutely sure that you’ve thought the whole thing through and are able to explain exactly what the deal is – in this case where the matching funds came from and just what else ChildFund has in store for those who sign-up, beyond the knowledge that they’ve contributed one-two-hundredth of a set of farming supplies for a family. That way you pre-empt any unnecessary suspicions and resulting tricky questions and you’re far more likely to generate a good-sized pool of genuinely interested followers. Indeed, this learning goes for any such prospect pool building initiative – online or offline – although you’re potentially dealing with a more savvy and challenging audience when you embark on Twitter-based initiative than when using more traditional channels (as poor Mr Livingstone has discovered).

As I finish this post, @childfund has got a total of 968 followers, which is four more than they had when I grabbed the screenshot above a few minutes ago – so there’s some life in the campaign yet. However, under the one donation per 200 followers incentive, that still only equates to approaching 5 families receiving the specially funded supplies – which just doesn’t seem right somehow.

The incentive initiative runs through to July 27th, and it’ll be interesting to see just how large a Twitter community they’ve managed to attract by then.

Great news from the folks behind ‘Causes’ last week, with the announcement that they just passed the $10m point in donations since launch back in May 2007.

Causes was without doubt a trend-setter from the outset, being one of the very first apps to be launched after the Facebook Platform toolkit was made available – enabling the development of 3rd party Applications (Apps) that integrate directly with Facebook user data. (Remember those far gone halcyon days of summer 2007 when you first had a whole range of apps to add to your profile – and ended-up playing with Zombies and Foodfight?).

However, I must admit that when I blogged about Causes on its first anniversary I wasn’t all that impressed with its fundraising success. Despite being one of the most popular Apps on Facebook, boasting some 12m registered users, over its first 12 months it had raised just $2.5m – equating to just $126 for each organisation being fundraised for.

Fortunately, things have clearly improved since then to take them through the $10m mark just 14 months later, and what is especially interesting is the fact that $5m of this has apparently been raised in just the six months since the start of 2009.

This set me to thinking what might have changed since the first 12 months to have generated such a boost in donations and what others might be able to learn from this success. It seems to me that there are three key contributing factors to take note of:

1. Provision of quality support and fundraising ideas for Causes users

As Causes has developed, more and more support has been provided to its users – with a key step being the creation of Causes Exchange, where users could read and share ideas about how best to use the app. A great example of providing new ideas for fundraising approaches came with the launch of the ‘Birthday Wish’, where users were encouraged to ask their friends to support a specific Cause rather then get them a birthday present. This seems such a simple and obvious idea, yet ‘Birthday Wishes’ alone have apparently generated over $1m since this was first added to the Causes app just three months ago.

Over time, advice provided by the Causes team has been supplemented by advice shared by others – which in many cases has been spotted and also passed-on through the Causes Exchange blog.

2. Generation of awareness and engagement through a challenge/matching grant initiative

Key to the success of fundraising through social networks like Facebook and Myspace is clearly the peer-to-peer advocacy effect, as individuals share their enthusiasm for a particular cause with others in their network and encourage them to add their support too. However, you can give this type of peer-to-peer fundraising significant extra momentum if you support it through a high profile initiative which raises awareness and gets more people talking about the fundraising activity.

Causes did just this with their ‘Causes Giving Challenge’ held for 50 days to the end of January 2008. With matching grants offered by The Case Foundation for those causes raising the most over this time, the Causes Giving Challenge on Facebook led to over $500,000 being raised by over 25,000 donors for nearly 4,000 different causes. While this was great performance in itself, the challenge also generated a significant amount of online and offline coverage and thereby introduced thousands more Facebook users to the Causes app. You can read a full report of the challenge here.

3. The changing profile of the Facebook audience

The third factor is nothing directly to do with Causes, but I have no doubt it will have contributed to their accelerated fundraising success – this is the changing profile of the Facebook audience.

Clearly, the growth in Facebook user numbers has been incredible since Causes launched back in May 2007. However, what is perhaps more important from the fundraising point of view is how the profile of Facebook users has changed over this time – shifting from the young early adopters to their parents. I’ve mentioned this shift before, when posting updates on demographic profiling tools that can be used to assess which donor groups are using Facebook. However, the latest data on the maturing of the Facebook user base comes from the iStrategyLabs 2009 Facebook Demographics report, and reveals over 500% growth in US Facebook users aged 55+. This is good news for online community fundraisers, as it introduces an older generation of online charity supporter likely to have greater disposable income and a greater inclination towards supporting nonprofits financially.

Last week saw the launch of The List of Change, a new ranking of the top English-language change and cause-related blogs – providing a very handy way to find some new sources of news and information of interest to nonprofit marketers and fundraisers.

The ranking is based on each blog’s Technorati Rank, Technorati In-Links, Bloglines Subscribers, Alexa Points, Google PageRank, and Yahoo In-Links, which are combined to give a score out of 100.

Currently the top score of 95 goes to Beths Blog, while at the opposite end of the 127 blog list is The Changebase. Right now this blog – Giving in a Digital World – is hovering mid-table at 66, but things change daily as the various components of the ranking change.

Take a look at the latest full ranking here – and you’re sure to find something of interest amongst the diverse range of blogs listed.

One of the regular topics that comes-up when I’m discussing the potential of online social networks with fundraisers from outside the UK is just which social networks are dominant in their particular country. Because, contrary to how it might feel from the UK or US perspective, when you go further afield the Social Network world doesn’t start and end with Facebook.

So, I’m always on the look-out for data which helps shed some light on the relative strengths of different sites across different countries – and two such sources cropped-up over the last couple of days that I thought you might find useful, wherever you happen to be based.

The first is from TechCrunch.com, who have just updated their global valuation of social networks. While this is certainly interesting from the overall valuation standpoint, it’s also great that they have provided a link to all of the Comscore base data underpinning their model – which gives a handy snapshot of unique visitor numbers for 26 social networking sites across 17 countries.

The second is a little less robust, but still provides some useful insight into the different sites prevalent in different countries. This comes from Vincenzo Cosenza’s blog, where he has used Alexa and Google Trends for Websites data to develop his own visual mapping of the Social Networking world.

While I’m pointing-out free research relating to Social Networks, you might also want to take a look at the Nonprofit Social Network Survey Report released a little earlier this year. This is US-based, but provides some interesting insights into where and how US nonprofits are active on Social Network sites, which should also be of interest to anyone interested in this area of nonprofit communications and fundraising.

There has been a lot of discussion this year about the potential value of microblogging service Twitter to nonprofits, so I’d imagine there will also be a lot of interest in the latest version of the Twitter-based virtual currency – the Twollar.

Described as “a currency of appreciation” for Twitter, the idea is that every Twitter user is given 50 Twollars and can then use these to thank or reward other people who use Twitter – perhaps in thanks for a particularly useful Tweet or as a reward for engaging on a website.

But the interesting thing is that you can also give your Twollars to a charity which uses Twitter – by sending a Tweet as shown in the screengrab above. The receiving charity can then convert them into real money (at an exchange rate of 10 Twollars to 1 $US) by selling them back to Twitterers who have used-up their 50 allocation, or companies who want to make use of Twollars as part of a reward or loyalty programme. And, all money goes directly to the charity with no cut going to the folks behind the Twollar site.

I really like this initiative, and guess it could have some real fundraising potential if companies start to use Twollars and thus need to purchase them in large volumes from charities – and charities can engage with enough Twitter users to keep them stocked-up.

However, one thing struck me as I checked my own Twollars page (which you can do here) and found that I had indeed been credited with 50 Twollars. What is there to stop me spending the rest of the afternoon opening new Twitter accounts so as to snag a big pile of Twollars for myself? Perhaps not a bad thing if I then donate them all to good causes – but it does seem like an easy way to subvert the Twollar economy?

This aside (and perhaps there is a way to stop such Twollar-piling that I haven’t picked-up on?) there are already over 50 charities from all over the world signed-up to ‘trade’ Twollars, and any interested in giving the scheme a go can register here.

I just spotted this fun video from the American Red Cross encouraging people to vote for them in the “Bullseye Gives” campaign being run on Facebook by US retail chain Target, and it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to mention the campaign since it launched earlier this month.

From May 10th to May 25th, US Facebook users can go to the Target Facebook Page and vote (once daily) for which of the ten charities listed they would like to receive a share of a $3 million donation from the retailer. The charities in the list being the American Red Cross, the National Park Foundation, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Operation Gratitude, Feeding America, the Parent Teacher Association, HandsOn Network/Points of Light Institute, the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Kids In Need Foundation and the Salvation Army. After May 25th the final voting results will be announced and the $3million split between the charities accordingly.

It’s classic viral marketing stuff – authentic, very simple and highly ’share-able’.

And, of course, the power of it being on a social network like Facebook is that each time someone votes they can also publish that vote on their Facebook feed so all their friends see it – and so the reach of the campaign grows and grows, without the need for lots of forwarding of intrusive emails to your friends.

Apparently Target has been giving 5% of its income to charities since 1946 – which now adds-up to $3 million a week. But this campaign clearly represents an excellent new way to spread the positive brand impact of this long standing philanthropy and attract massive new numbers of fans to the brand’s Facebook Page – currently standing at 322,916.

It’s also a far cry from the Facebook promotional tactics that Target got accused of back in 2007. When it was criticised for encouraging members of its ‘Target Rounders’ word of mouth marketing programme for students not to mention their association with the brand when posting positive comments on the newly launched Facebook page.

Looking down the comments on the Target page today, the vast majority are highly positive – presumably without any form of encouragement other than the great opportunity being offered to help raise funds for a preferred charity. So, the shift to an authentic and honest reason to enthuse about the brand looks like a good lesson learned by Target’s marketing people – and it’ll be interesting to see if they roll-out the campaign beyond May as an ongoing part of their CSR programme.

It’s May again, which means that the latest update of the annual M+R and NTEN eNonprofit Benchmarks Study has just been released.

The study, which provides cause-specific benchmarks across a range of email metrics is based on data from 32 US nonprofit organisations, but I’ve always found the results to be a good steer for European nonprofits too.

The headline take-out is that despite the recession most of the organisations taking part in the study saw their online fundraising up overall from 2007 to 2008, driven by more donors giving online but at lower average values than seen previously.

Beneath this overall trend is a wealth of data across both fundraising and advocacy activities that anyone involved in email communications is bound to find useful.

You can download a free copy of the 2009 report here.

The eNonprofit Benchmarks Study was first released in 2006, so it offers the potential to examine the latest data in the context of previous years to illustrate some multi-year trends. Unfortunately the latest report doesn’t provide much insight beyond the 2007 to 2008 comparisons, but you can still download the 2008 Report and also the 2006 Report (there wasn’t one in 2007) to look at the trends yourself.

There was quite a bit of talk of Crowdfunding in some of the sessions at this week’s IFC Online eConference and that reminded me of an article I was asked to write a while back for Professional Fundraising, the Monthly trade magazine for the sector in the UK, specifically about how online fundraisers might learn from commercial crowdfunding initiatives.

It was a timely reminder, because the article has just been published online as well as in this month’s printed edition – so you can read the whole thing here (for free;-).

There are a fast growing number of examples of great nonprofit crowdfunding sites coming from the US (e.g. Kiva, DonorsChoose, SocialActions), UK (e.g. TheBigGive, SeeTheDifference) and other parts of Europe (PifWorld, JimmyTheManTours).

But I’d be really interested to hear from anyone who knows of any from further afield – especially Latin America or Asia Pacific regions? If you spot any examples, let me know.

It’s been an interesting three days this week, with the first ever IFC Online eConference taking place – bringing together an estimated 500+ attendees from 42 countries world-wide, through an entirely online conference.

Unlike traditional ‘real world’ conferences, it’s tricky to be sure just how many people are ‘attending’ an online conference. The IFC Online organisers at The Resource Alliance tell me that 387 ’sites’ signed-up for the event, but the number of individuals at each ’site’ who watch the sessions can vary massively – from one individual to, in this case, a group of more than 70 people who gathered together in Jerusalem to attend. So, I’m not sure exactly how many people attended the two sessions I presented, but I did spot around 160 ’sites’ logged-on in places ranging from the US and Latin America, right across Europe, to Singapore, Korea, and Australia – which made for a good crowd.

If you’ve never attended a big web-based conference like this, and it was my first time – both as an attendee and a speaker, then the screengrab above will give you a bit of a feel for how it works. Presenters speak over VoIP and use Powerpoint presentations just as if they were in a convention centre with people infront of them, and throughout the session people can ask questions and make comments by typing into the Chat/Q&A box. Must admit, when I kicked-off my session it felt a bit odd sitting all alone talking to my Mac – but once the questions started coming-in onscreen the whole thing came to life and it was great fun.

Some really interesting speakers too, including Scott Goodstein, External Online Director for Obama for America, and Premal Shah, President of Kiva. And what was particularly handy is that all sessions are recorded, so attendees can catch-up on any they missed or re-watch any session they found especially useful. (Except for Scott Goodstein’s session, apparently – which is a pain, as I missed that one myself).

So, all-in all, a very interesting and, by the looks of it, successful event – and a great extension to the Resource Alliance’s annual ‘real world’ International Fundraising Congress held each October in Holland.

One other thing that struck me was just how much more Twitter activity was going-on amongst the attendees at this event than at the main IFC just last October – when there were a lone two folks Tweeting for all they were worth. This time, there was a pretty constant stream of Twitter commentary coming through under #ifconline – and even a degree of consternation when Twitter went down for maintenance right in the middle of a session yesterday evening (London time).