One of the privileges of working in philanthropy is seeing people rise to the challenge when tragedy strikes.

Yesterday, this email came across an email list for those of us involved in AHP, the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy. Neil gave me permission to share it on my blog:

AHP Colleagues: Please remember those who lost lives and were injured in yesterday’s massacre at Fort Hood.

Most of the injured were brought here to Scott & White. The public has responded dramatically to give blood and in other ways. So many showed up at our blood bank yesterday afternoon that many were asked to go home and come back this morning. They did. There is a long line at the blood bank as I write this.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers……..Neil

I too ask that you remember all those involved in the tragedy in your thoughts and prayers, and those who aren’t on that base but are now equally traumatized.

If you’d like to make a donation to Scott & White, their website is http://www.sw.org.

(c) Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

Learn how you can set up a brand new fundraising program, or re-tool your existing fundraising, to raise serious money for your cause. Purchase this full-day fundraising seminar you can download right to your desk and start learning today!

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1. Are nonprofit’s helping postpone Alzheimer’s?

Last time, we looked at creating a year-end strategy for fundraising letters. But in today’s world, it’s wise to consider complementing these appeals with tools like Facebook and Twitter.

According to FundRaising Success Magazine:

Between 35 percent to 42 percent of online giving happens in November and December each year, and the average gift during the final quarter of the year is significantly higher — $84.51, compared to the average of $67.47 for the other three quarters. -Abny Santicola

It’s now November, time to get cracking.

Since you’ve already designed and implemented your year-end direct mail effort, here are some pointers for integrating it with social media:

• Use same theme as the letter
  You’ve already done the hard work of figuring out what is most compelling for driving donations. So repurpose that as much as you can in your digital efforts.

• Create a web page to drive traffic to
  Web links should be included in any fundraising letter, but few donors actually use them. People that respond to fundraising letters typically still write checks.

  To get even more sophisticated, you might want separate pages for each type of media you use: one you’ll promote on Facebook, one you’ll promote on Twitter, one you’ll promote with email, etc. This will help you track your results and see which audience was most responsive to your call to action.

  But all digital efforts, email, social media, or other tools, must have a web link that leads to a donation page. The page should be:

  1. Easy to include in an email (The URL shouldn’t be overly long or confusing.)
  2. Should be easily accessible from your website’s home page
     Some people will find it by surfing to your homepage. Make the link easy to find. Studies consistantly how that bigger buttons get more click throughs than smaller buttons or text links.

     I’d encourage you to even add a link in your website navigation, whether in the header, footer, or side navigation. That may every page will have a way for people to get to the donation page.

     Your home page is no longer the first place people go on your site. Thanks to search engines like Google, people will enter your site wherever the content seems most inline with their search terms. So it’s a good idea to have some sort of link to your online campaign available on every page.

Now are some ideas on how to integrate Facebook Causes, Facebook Pages, and Twitter with your year-end fundraising.

Facebook Ideas

Facebook Causes

Causes is an application within Facebook designed for fundraising. It’s of limited value but here are some things you can do with it:

1. You could try to get your fans competing on fundraising.
   The cause application allows you to see who’s the top recruiter, as well as who are the top givers and fundraisers.
2. You could also use a matching challenge to get more gifts.
   Studies regularly show that matching challenges do motivate us to give.
3. You might want to consider creating a specific goal for the cause itself.
   The cause app allows you to set a dollar goal. You may want to set up a specific amount for this group alone.

Facebook Pages

Facebook pages are superior to causes for a number of reasons. Most importantly, Facebook pages show up in the “search” results making them much easier to find. You can also learn alot from the built in analytics that FB pages offer.

You can even create widget to get people visiting your website to join the cause on Facebook. An example of that is available on my site http://inlandfoundation.org. It’s the box with the happy faces.

If you’re tying your Facebook Page in to a direct mail appeal:

1. You could update fans of your page with status updates.
   Set a reminder on your calendar so you remember to keep people informed with how the entire year-end appeal is going.

2. You can communicate with your fans
   Your communication will show up on their news feeds and allow their friends to see your cause as well. Please, only add meaningful communication to people’s walls.

3. You can multi-task by updating Twitter from Facebook pages
   Facebook now offers a handy feature that lets you feed those updates to Twitter stream. This increases efficiency, allowing you to communicate over both platforms with only one status update.

4. Use “boxes” to encourage people to subscribe to your organization’s email list
   It’s best when you can interact with people on social media platforms and other platforms, like their inbox. So make sure to leverage the functionality of a page to help encourage people to explore your cause on other places on the web.

5. Use a special web URL to track responsiveness of Facebook users
   If you have a special Facebook fundraising goal, you could track this by creating a specific web page for people coming from Facebook. As mentioned above, this will help you try to figure out the ROI on your efforts.

Twitter ideas

Twitter can be a great way to generate buzz about a year end campaign. But it’s much more compelling if individual people are doing it rather than just the organization’s Twitter account.

1. Harness the enthusiasm of your followers
   Use tools like Klout to find out who your organization might be influencing. Then invite them to a special inner-circle group for this year-end project. You could even create a competition using a tool like TweetMeme to track who is doing the most retweets and who’s retweets are being retweeted the most.

2. Experiment with micro-donations
   It seems Twitter users respond well to micro-donation challenges of amounts like $2, $5, and $10 dollars. There are some services for this you might try, like Twollars and Tweet4Good. You could also use good ol’ PayPal!

3. Tweet your campaign’s progress
   At the very least, I’d encourage you to tweet your progress. If your Twitter response is particularly good, create a goal for Twitter related gifts and keep people up-to-date on that specific goal’s progress too. These could be directed to a specific page.

Year-end can be the perfect time to experiment with social media. People on these platforms tend to like “projects”–events with specific end dates.

Also, these platforms do cross-pollinate so be sure to use Facebook to remind people of your Twitter updates and vice-versa.

These are only two social media sites. You might want to create a video for YouTube. Or you might want to Qik or UStream a speech by your president.

There are so many social media platforms, it would be smart to ask your donors and donor evangelists what platforms they’re using. If they’re passionate about other platforms, ask them for their help. They may even volunteer to run the project on that platform for you.

The possibilities are pretty much endless! Let me know which ones you experiment with!

(c) Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

Learn how you can set up a brand new fundraising program, or re-tool your existing fundraising, to raise serious money for your cause. Purchase this full-day fundraising seminar you can download right to your desk and start learning today!

Other Possibly Related posts:

1. Start your year-end fundraising letter strategy today!
2. A case for Twitter, Facebook, & social media for healthcare fundraisers
3. Whining is not a fundraising strategy

I’ve been amazed at how afraid people can be of asking for money. Some even seem seem afraid of the very word “fundraising.”

So I’ve found myself saying “Fundraising is not the ‘f’ word!”

So, with the help of CafePress.com, I’ve created some t-shirts, mugs, stickers, tote bags, with that slogan on it. Even some Flip video cameras!

Check it out at http://cafepress.com/askwithoutfear.

Could be the perfect gift for that fundraiser you love that seems to have everything.

(c) Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

Learn how you can set up a brand new fundraising program, or re-tool your existing fundraising, to raise serious money for your cause. Purchase this full-day fundraising seminar you can download right to your desk and start learning today!

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Have you started your year-end fundraising letter yet?

Fiscal people can do funny things to the way we measure time. In our organization, our year-end was September 26 this year. Many schools and colleges work on a July-June calendar. Others end their year in February for a March start.

But for our donors, year-end will always be December 31. And statistically, people tend to be the most generous leading up to year end.

So now is the time to start crafting your year-end appeal.

I’ve been at this a long time, but I’m still surprised at how long the direct mail process takes. I’d love to be able to write one letter and have it sent to my donors the next day. But it doesn’t work like that.

First you need to know who you’re sending to

Our database folks can really slice and dice our constituents. When I say, “I dunno. I want everyone to get the year-end appeal,” they start asking questions.

• “Does everyone including people that have given this year?”
• “Even if they’ve given to a capital project, do you want them to get this annual fund appeal?”
• “Do you want employees to get the same letters as everyone else?”
• “Board members?”
• “Major donors?”

And you know, they’re right. These are questions you need to consider.

Then you need to write your letters

Depending on how many groups you ended up with (employee/non-employee, etc.), you’ll need to craft the letter. Here are some things to consider:

• What’s your theme?
  Bragging about past accomplishments? Listing future funding focueses? Answering questions people are asking?

• Who should sign it?
  Should this come from the director of development? The CEO? The board chair? A volunteer? Answering this will help you write in the right “voice.”

• How long will it be?
  Many try one-side of one page to help reduce costs. But studies more often show that 2-page out performs 1-page and 4-page letters out perform 2-page. Of course, you’ll need to test this for yourself.

• What will your P.S. be?
  This is the most important part of your letter, as it’s the most read part after the address. When do you want the gift by? How much are you asking? What is your call to action?

• What should the buckslip look like?
  Every direct mail piece needs a reply device. How will yours look? Will it be a tear off piece of paper? Will it be filled out with the donor’s address and name? Are you going to also customize the ask amounts based on the donor?

• What kind of return envelope will you use?
  Will you make them put a stamp on it? Or will you use a business reply indicia?

Third work out the details with your direct mail house

• Find out how long the mailing will take once they get the copy
  I continue to be amazed that they often need weeks of lead time. But they do have other clients to work in too…

• Be sure to mutually agree on addressing options.
  My vendor keeps wanting me to save money. Normally that would be nice. But it always seems to result in my donors’ addresses being surrounded by weird numbers, letters, and barcodes. Yuck. I want my fundraising letter to look like a real piece of mail, not something that would be stuffed into a junk mail file.

• And be sure to get printed proofs before they do the mass mailing.
  I also continue to be amazed at how many ways they can screw up a perfectly simple letter. (At least it seems simple to me!) Direct mail houses seem particularly challenged on font size and margins. They seem to want to make the fonts and margins really tiny, but people do better with 12 or 13 point font and lots of white space.

Hopefully these pointers will get you off to a great start for your year-end fundraising appeal. In a couple weeks, we’ll look at ways to tie your year-end appeal with social media tools like Facebook or Twitter.

Remember, there’s nothing compassionate about not asking!

(c) Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

Learn how you can set up a brand new fundraising program, or re-tool your existing fundraising, to raise serious money for your cause. Purchase this full-day fundraising seminar you can download right to your desk and start learning today!

Other Possibly Related posts:

1. Using Twitter and Facebook in your year-end fundraising letter strategy
2. Happy New Year! (Fiscally speaking…)
3. Whining is not a fundraising strategy

In the last three weeks, I’ve given five talks about social media and fundraising to various groups of development officers.

Today I was asked to sum up one of the sessions. Summing up social media without slides is challenging but here was my attempt:

• Social media is real
• Social media is “social”—be prepared to dialogue
• Social media is about people—completely fill out your profile and prepare to be personable
• It takes time
• It won’t replace traditional fundraising but it definitely enhances it
• You need to get familiar with at least one of the social media sites—I recommend Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn

What bullet points would you add?

You can see the slides from those presentations on my piece of SlideShare.net.

(c) Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

Learn how you can set up a brand new fundraising program, or re-tool your existing fundraising, to raise serious money for your cause. Purchase this full-day fundraising seminar you can download right to your desk and start learning today!

Other Possibly Related posts:

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2. Join the conversation in Twitter – get social with “social media”
3. A case for Twitter, Facebook, & social media for healthcare fundraisers

This past week, I’ve been privileged to be on a couple panels introducing nonprofit organizations to social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Linked in. While I love these tools, I was quick to express that:

• They don’t replace all the good fundraising practices we’ve learned over the decades.
• “Social” media is just that, social. These facilitate and require dialogue, not merely broadcasting announcements.
• These tools take time: both to get familiar with and to keep going.

It’s been an intriguing experience. The attendees seem to get really excited about the potential of these tools. But I could see the shine fading as they remembered all the work already piling up on their desks.

I could easily see local nonprofits easily these tools off. After all, what good is it for our local homeless shelter if it garnered fans from Australia? How will they help me serve the people in my community?

Here are three reasons it might still be worth your while, even if your mission and donor base are very localized:

1. People have a tendency to equate large social media numbers with credibility.

   Though incredibly inaccurate, most people still think bigger is better. So building up a large base of Twitter followers or Facebook fans may make your nonprofit may seem even more credible in the eyes of your local donors.

2. We live in a highly mobile society.

   Here in Maine, we sometimes seem obsessed with the number of people moving away, especially young people. But often, people that move away, hold their old community near to their heart. And, in the case of Maine, people that move out of state probably have more disposable income to donate to causes they favor. Social media tools can help you cultivate new donors without expanding your travel budget.

3. Most importantly: people in your community are already on these tools!

   So what if people in Timbuktu are joining your fan page? Your board members are already on Facebook. And the lady you’ve been trying to get interested in your cause, the one that owns the business on the corner of Wabash & Lake is on Twitter. Why wouldn’t you seek people out where they already are?

Twitter, Facebook, Qik, and all the other websites with funky names aren’t the “silver bullet” to fix all your fundraising woes. But they are great tools helping us do what we’re supposed to be doing any way: building relationships!

If you’re haven’t chosen a tool, why not pick one today? If you choose Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, let me know. I’m at:
http://twitter.com/marcapitman
http://facebook.com/marcapitman
http://linkedin.com/in/marcapitman

And the FB fan pages are at
http://www.facebook.com/AskWithoutFear
http://www.facebook.com/FundraisingCoach.com

(c) Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

Learn how you can set up a brand new fundraising program, or re-tool your existing fundraising, to raise serious money for your cause. Purchase this full-day fundraising seminar you can download right to your desk and start learning today!

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Do you remember Jean Preston, the unassuming librarian who’d amassed an $8 million estate?

Or Helene Whitlock Alley, the $100 donor that bequethed $7.3 million to a diabetes group.

Well here’s another entry in the never underestimate anyone category: Richard Walters.

Perhaps you’ve heard his name on NPR:

“Support for NPR comes from the estate of Richard Leroy Walters, whose life was enriched by NPR, and whose bequest seeks to encourage others to discover public radio.”

To most of the people that knew him at the end of his life, Richard was just a nice homeless man. He didn’t even own a car. But when he died, he’d amassed an estate of about $4 million and gave NPR and many other nonprofits $400,000 each.

You see, this homeless man had retired from a successful career. And, according to the article on the NPR site, he was making stock trades from a telephone at a senior center.

Back in Fundraising Secret #17, I encouraged you to ask everyone for planned gifts.

I’ll bet there are possible Jeans, Helenes, and Richards in your organization’s universe. What will you do this week to help get to know the next one a little better?

(c) Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

Learn how you can set up a brand new fundraising program, or re-tool your existing fundraising, to raise serious money for your cause. Purchase this full-day fundraising seminar you can download right to your desk and start learning today!

Other Possibly Related posts:

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In Fundraising Secret #41, I encouraged you to go rounding on your donors.

Since then, I’ve been reminded how much time this takes!

It’s not just the visit time, that time is wonderful. But it’s time to set up the visits and then, more importantly, the time to record the visit in a database and to write follow-up thank yous.

In a previous position, my job description included 50% travel. I was impressed that the organization “got” the importance of me making connections. When I shared this with a more seasoned fundraising veteran, they said it was a nice goal but would be impossible to hit. Slightly taken aback, I asked why. Very matter-of-factly, he said, “For every hour of a visit, it takes one hour of preparation and at least an hour of follow up.”

2 hours of adminstration for every 1 hour of visit! That math is more or less what I’ve experienced in over a decade of donor visits. Even if you’re more efficient, I bet you’d agree on the principle: the visit is always more than just the time spent face-to-face with a donor or prospect.

The preparation is important, knowing where you’ll meet and knowing why you’re making the visit. Don’t waste their time or yours. Have a specific objective.

The follow up is vital. Notes are refreshingly novel because so few send them. Even more importantly, record the visit in some form of database. This helps improve donor relations because you (and your organization) will remember what they told you. Face it, for most of us, the database will be there a lot longer than we will. Do your organization a favor and record the information.

Probably not the most uplifting fundraising secret of the series, but don’t neglect it. Change your schedule to fit your visiting focus. It could be as simple as blocking an hour or two every Monday or Friday to record the interactions you had.

(c) Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

Learn how you can set up a brand new fundraising program, or re-tool your existing fundraising, to raise serious money for your cause. Purchase this full-day fundraising seminar you can download right to your desk and start learning today!

Other Possibly Related posts:

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All week, I’ve been sharing the answers I’ve been giving to questions I’ve been getting on how to effectively use Twitter. The first two were on what I use to tweet and how to find interesting people to follow.

Today is the final installment: What are hashtags? (And why should I care?)

What are “hashtags”?

“Hashtags” are labels created with the # symbol. For example, #redsox or #pysch. You see, hashtags were developed by early Twitter users to simply organize related tweets.

Hashtags draw attention to a tweeted conversation. Conferences and seminars use them to both help organize tweets that happen during the event and to market their event to people who aren’t even there. For example, Blackbaud uses #bbcon for all their conferences.

This is invaluable. Apps like HootSuite’s search on a hashtag or word and make a continuously updated column of tweets. You can learn alot from these conferences without ever leaving your desk.

That’s why I love Tweetgrid. This is a wonderful, simple, clean website you can use to follow multiple hashtags at the same time. If you choose a 1×2 grid, you can follow learn from the #bbcon and the #redsox game at the same time!

Some of the more common hashtags are #followfriday and #charitytuesday. But there are many more.

In truth, hashtags aren’t really needed anymore. Twitter Search and other tools make it really easy to find words and topics without needing the #. Now when I search, I search on the term and the hashtag, like “#redsox OR Red Sox.”

Listen in on conversations in real-time

And this is one of the most powerful uses of Twitter. It allows you to listen in on what other people are saying about things important to you. Check out the official Skittles website. The “chatter” button goes directly to the page that shows all the Tweets about Skittles.

Nonprofits and businesses can use this to find out what people are really saying about them, their products, or the problems their products solve. They can see the real frustrations and the real joys. One very creative Comcast employee, Frank Eliason, seized on this and created @comcastcares. Now a team of people, this Twitter account monitors comments about Comcast and tries to help sort out problems as quickly as possible.

How could your organization use this? Today?

There, you have the answers to all three Twitter questions I’ve been getting most recently. I hope they prove helpful for you!

(c) Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

Learn how you can set up a brand new fundraising program, or re-tool your existing fundraising, to raise serious money for your cause. Purchase this full-day fundraising seminar you can download right to your desk and start learning today!

Other Possibly Related posts:

1. Twitter 101: Basic tips and advanced techniques for using Twitter
2. Twitter 101: Finding Interesting People to Follow
3. 3 Twitter habits that irritate me

On Monday, I started the first of three posts I’m calling Twitter 101. That post focuses on programs I use to tweet. Today, I’ll answer the second question I’ve been getting: How do I find people to follow on Twitter?

How do I find people to follow on Twitter?

Following interesting people is the key to a satisfying experience with Twitter. The only tweets you see on Twitter are those of the people you follow.

First, you follow the folks most seem to follow in the beginning, for me those were @chrisbrogan, @robhatch, @jnswanson, and @newmediajim.

Then you find new people by looking at who the people you follow, follow. As the people you follow reply to a Twitter user, you can click through on their name to see if their bio and tweets are interesting enough for you to follow. (This is one reason to make sure you have an interesting bio.)

But that will only get you so far.

Searches

To really find cool people to follow, try some of these tools:

• Twitter Search is a great way to find people. Just type words that interest you, topics, locations, anything.
• My favorite directory of Twitter users is Twellow. I find this even more helpful than Twitter search.

  I’ve used it to do searches on things like “fundraising” and “nonprofit.” But I also do fun searches on things like “homebrewing.” Can you see why it’s important to fill in your bio with keywords? I also recommend getting a picture on your profile too. You don’t really look serious without one.

  People even use it before moving to a new city. They search for Twitter users in the area they’re interested in. They look for people that can help them find a job and help them have a social network when they get there.

• Another tool is Mr.Tweet. This site promises to suggest “identify relevant followers” and it comes up with interesting people. It also provides interesting stats on your tweeting habits.
• I’m also liking NearbyTweets. This site shows you who’s tweeting in your community. Living in a rural area, I’m amazed to see how many people here are tweeting!

These will go a long way in helping you find fun people to follow. Mashable has some great articles with more ideas including:

• 10 Ways to Find People on Twitter
• 9 Ways to Find People in Your Own Town

Autofollowing

Another way to “find” good people to follow is to “autofollow.” After all, those that are following you must have good taste, right?

Services like SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater) allow you to “autofollow” people that have followed you. If you do a Google search on autofollowing, you’ll find some pretty heated blog posts for and against the practice.

I autofollowed for over a year and found it helpful. I don’t have time to constantly look over the new people following me to see who’s interesting. But as time went on, I was finding myself “autofollowing” lots of spammers and others that had less than desirable content. If you follow only people that promise ways to get more followers or make money at home or only tweet quotes, you’ll quickly get bored.

The good news is that if you unfollow them, you don’t see their spam anymore!

Grouping Followers

When I started out, I followed people in my career: fundraisers. (And people that would hopefully buy my fundraising book!) Then I started following media folks (so I could learn how to promote my book). But as I got into it, I started following others: people that homebrewed beer like I do, people that cheer for the Red Sox, people that live in Maine.

Pretty soon, my twitter stream was a swirling with lots of unrelated content.

Fortunately, services like HootSuite allow you to create “groups.” This allows you to group people in any way you see fit. So recently I’ve been experimenting with:

• a group of nonprofit folks (my “professional” group),
• a Maine group (my “local” group),
• a group of family members (my “saving face” group–it’s really embarassing to miss your wife’s tweets!)
• a group of “first follows” (in many ways my “favorites” group–thanks to @robhatch for giving me this suggestion)

The great thing is that none of these people need to know they’re in a group. Their tweets still show up in the regular tweet stream, but they also show up in a group column so you’re far less likely to miss them.

As I said before, I’ve been tweeting since mid-2007 and have typed over 11,000 tweets, but I still feel like a relative beginner. What tools have you found useful in finding new people to follow?

[This is the second in a series of 3 Twitter 101 blog posts. The next is about what hashtags are and why they're important.]

(c) Marc A. Pitman, FundraisingCoach.com

Learn how you can set up a brand new fundraising program, or re-tool your existing fundraising, to raise serious money for your cause. Purchase this full-day fundraising seminar you can download right to your desk and start learning today!

Other Possibly Related posts:

1. Twitter 101: Basic tips and advanced techniques for using Twitter
2. 3 Twitter habits that irritate me
3. Join the conversation in Twitter – get social with “social media”