Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%
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Megan Keane, Michael Wilson, and Joe Prosperi: Creating Communities
Starting an online community to engage supporters is a big investment. Learn how NTEN, Small World Labs and Relay Nation at American Cancer Society created communities that increase loyalty, fundraising, engagement and return on mission. Guests are Megan Keane, Michael Wilson and Joe Prosperi. We talked at NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
Amy Sample Ward: Questioning Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is popular, but don’t jump in just because lots of others have. How do you decide if it’s right for your organization? Amy Sample Ward is our social media contributor and CEO of NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with four uncles and carb uncle’s if i had to hair that you missed today’s show creating communities starting an online community to engage supporters is a big investment. Learn how in ten small world labs and relay nation at the american cancer society created communities that increased loyalty fund-raising engagement and return on mission guests are meghan keene, michael wilson and joe prosperi. We talked at ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference and questioning crowdfunding crowd funding is popular, but don’t jump in just because lots of others have. How do you decide if it’s right for your organization? Amy sample ward is our social media contributor and the ceo of n ten the non-profit technology network on tony’s take two non-profit radio on the road and third sector, responsive by opportunity collaboration that working meeting on poverty alleviation that will ruin you for every other conference here is creating communities from auntie si. Welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc fifteen non-profit technology conference it’s day two we are in we are in austin, texas, at the convention center. My guests now are meghan keene, membership director for inten michael wilson, ceo of small world labs, and joe prosperi, digital lead for relay for life at the american cancer society. Meghan michael, joe, welcome. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. Pleasure. Pleasure to have you your workshop topic. These online communities proinspire action and generate results. We’re going to get there in a second. First, i just want to point out that each interview today on day two, i’m highlighting on intense swag item. And i’ve got my zippered hoody. This is hi this’s, one of the high high end items, zipper pretty from from donorsearch. Welcome. Don’t drive, teo and ten peer-to-peer sec. Is that what they do? All right, it goes, it goes in our swag pile an outer growing pile. It is doing it all day today and i get that it’s eight eleven interviews yourself today. So good stash. Alright, let’s, build some online communities that inspire action and generate results. Um, where’s, the where’s the best place to start let’s, start down in the end there, joe, where should we start? With determining whether? It’s appropriate for us to build an online community, whether that’s really going to suit the needs of our organization, that is that a good place? Yeah, i think what’s really interesting to point out is that really for any of us that are non profit organizations, we already have community, you know, it’s already there we’ve got volunteers, we have staff, we have supporters, we have donors, those communities are already there, and how do we turn those digitally into online communities? And some of the most of organizations already have that whether it be a facebook community twitter community but the american cancer society, we decided a while a couple years ago that we really need to have a vault, a place where all of our top engaged volunteers are top supporters are kind of the big fish in terms of really, if her life had a place to gather in a place to share ideas, get inspiration from it mostly from a peer-to-peer fund-raising standpoint, but we also noticed throughout time that our community has grown too a peer-to-peer engagement place and a peer-to-peer inspiration place where we’re not relying on the american cancer society telling the story of what the american cancer society does. We’re relying on our supporters to do it for us within our community. Okay, michael let’s. Still stay at the overviews stage of community building? Yes. So when would you do it? So he’s really? Just an engagement platform. So i think similar to how email is a communication ty phone isn’t a communication like joe was saying. We have we have communities. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, just really late. You know, do do you want your communication to be isolated and one toe one like phone and e mails? Or do you want it to be many too many so in that regard, it can work and, you know, virtually any environment when you take the next step of okay, so is it going to work in this situation or for this program or for this constituency base? We generally try to look at the product of three things. So one is size so what’s the potential audience size two is what would they be able to do together? So the types of interactions that they could have at three what’s the affinity. So what is the relative similarity between each? Person that’s going to join because the hyre that affinity rate is the mohr relevant? Every thing is everybody there on and then yes, it’s floors for a fourth of that eyes the value. So how important is what they’re doing in the community to their daily lives? And so in that regard, you can have communities that are very small that are successful, that are very small in terms of potential audience, but high an affinity and high in value. Or you can have the flip side where you can have, you know, community of successful because they reach a large number of people, but they don’t have actually have that many that much in common. Facebook okay, okay, megan, about this threshold question whether we should be doing it. Yeah, well, when one thing that i think is always really important to look at is to look it like where people already are, you know, go do a little bit of hunting and kind of see, like, okay, who are the people you’re trying to reach? You know what? Platform? So they aren’t engaging on and that’s get indicated for you is like goto where they are already. Having those conversations are, you know, think about where you know where to reach him. So just doing a little bit of mapping and kind of seeing okay, are there conversations happening and kind of seeing what the landscape is and then seeing how how do you want to kind of be? How do you want to sort of guide that guide that bill? You know, if you will, you know, in terms of whether that’s thinking about your having community on your own platform, or having some other kind of group channel, that would be appropriate. Okay, interesting. Yeah. So i feel like i kind of started the wrong the wrong place because you all three made different points. But one similarity running through is the community’s exist in one way or another. We’ve got them. How? How robust can they be? How can they be built out? What methods do you want to use for the communications? Okay. Well, that’s cool. I’m i’m happy to stand suddenly corrected. Nobody is what he said it explicitly. I’m happy to do it. Ok. Where should we go next? In this community building topic what’s. Ah, if we do wantto billed out and make something special beyond what we where we are, where do we where do we get started? Something that might be helpful is we have a few community experts here that maybe could talk a little bit about what they’re doing to do to build community in their specific organisation. Ten and a cs to relay for life. Yeah, good. Megan, you want to? Yeah, sure. So one thing that we do it in ten and ntcdinosaur part of this is we really try to combine a lot of opportunities for people to network and connect and do some community building activities and sort of finding a combination of the online and the offline. So auntie si is a perfect example of, like, you know, what happens when you get a bunch of people in the right place having conversations and having an in person kind of community building, and then we really try to kind of keep that moment i’m going through some of the, you know, the online kind of community building, and so we’ve done that in terms of groups and what we have in anti seizure years, we have birds of a feather lunch. Which are lunch is for anyone who wants to meet on about a certain topics. So it’s a great way to break the ice because you automatically have something in common with someone else. So we’ve had every birds of a feather start that were women in tech table at lunch, there was another one that was a bunch of people that work at food banks, and some of those have led teo becoming more formalised communities of practice that exist online. So, for example, a year ago, we had a bunch of people howto birds of a feather table that was on arts non-profit group, and it has since become a community, a practice that has that lives on intense community platform and they meet on a monthly basis online or sometimes they have twitter chats in between the anti c and then they’re meeting up again this year. I want to explain what the inten community of practices yeah, eso our community to practice our our affinity group so it’s very similar to like thinking of like a bird of a feather in person thing on lee, it exists online on these groups will have discussions that take place in forums and usually will have some method of kind of connecting, whether that’s on, you know, on a monthly basis, whether that’s via tweet shot sometimes that’s on and online, you know, some kind of conference call with folks of shared notes, documents of different groups do different things with that, but some have some kind of kind of personal connection but mostly exists online. In between are the communities of practice on ly open toe, and ten members know they’re open to the public. So anyone who wants to join you very good about that, you don’t have to be a member. Yeah, any of our community groups, all you need is a lot in evil address and a password on your good. Excellent. All right, so pretty open ended. Kapin yeah, definitely very, very welcoming. Yeah. Go ahead, please. Joe. Relay for life. Yeah, so our online community is called relay nation and it came about really a couple years ago when we realized we didn’t have a really great way of taking all of the resource is the inspiration that we felt as an organization. We need to get in the hands of our relay. For life volunteers nationwide, you know, really, if life is such a large event, there’s just so many volunteers and they’re in all corners of the country, so getting them together in an online community to connect them to other relay er’s with similar stories, similar ideas, similar struggles even has been very valuable to us, and we’ve realized over the last two years with really nation that it’s not just an opportunity for us to share those resource is with folks, but it’s turned into even more of them, sharing things back to us, and it’s turned into almost a goldmine force in terms of online content, social content stories, videos, all of the things that for a non profit organization really help you tell your story about where the money goes, how the mission impacts people that participate in the event, and we’ve been able to use the really nation to do that. So an example, just a couple months ago, we posted a very simple question in our forum on relay nation and asked what was your moment? What was the moment? It really for life that you’ve got? What this event was all about and within? A couple weeks, we had over two hundred eighty responses from re layers across the country, some, you know, very short stories, some, you know, litanies of pages long of who they really for life for, um and many of those things came with videos and pictures, and we were able to turn a lot of that content into social sharing graphic. So by us asking one simple question in our community, we got lots of responses and lots of stories, and we really put an emphasis back on our relay for life participants telling our story for us because they could tell it so much better than we can as an organization and that’s really been the biggest highlight of having that online community is putting the storytelling of our organization back in the hands of the people that are benefiting from our services that are inspired by the events that they go to and that are, in the end going to recruit and raise more money for the american cancer society. You’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights. Published once a month, tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. What were the things you were thinking when you decided there’s a need for a community among all these three layers that this sort of maybe some of the symptoms would be helpful for people to understand, but yeah, so we don’t have a variety of nationwide meetings with leadership volunteers, and they always really enjoyed when we got the post event surveys back from those saying we enjoyed visiting with bree layers from other parts of the country in other divisions, other areas because they want to share the best practices as much as i hate that term best practice, it really does drive a lot of what really events dio, and they want to share their struggle. So there’s an event that’s having a tough time recruiting corporate sponsors or finding the right volunteer leadership, it not only allows them to share their concerns and get peer-to-peer feedback instead of staff at the american cancer society coaching these volunteers, volunteers air now coaching each other, and they were doing that in person, and we wanted to facilitate that online and give them a place tohave those shared meeting spaces for like minded volunteers, we have a number of featured groups in our community, so event leads kind of those key leadership volunteers have specific groups where they could just meet network, have forums, share resource is with other event leads all the way down. Two team captains and participants have their own forum specifically for their participation types on that really has been very helpful to one, you know, justified to those people that need assistance, that they’re not alone in the study, on the help that they need with their relay for life fund-raising in participation, and it makes a lot of advocates for us as well, because that peer-to-peer interaction, our volunteers air helping other volunteers which builds their confidence and their appreciation for the cause and their confidence in their leadership abilities, which grows more leaders for us. Michael, is that is that kind of segmentation in a community, and i don’t mean that pejoratively at all. But you know that kind of those kind of divisions where it’s a peer-to-peer is that eso lots of subsets? Is that important? And yeah, it is because when you think about how do you maximize going back to the, you know, the value of community affinity being one and then purpose. What can you do there and segmentation? So who’s the target audience for your community and what is going to be about when they get there helps increase that value. And so because of that, so we generally see it’s more lives, a few different community types and constituent groups that their focus on so one is event peer-to-peer fundraisers, which is where the american cancer society is doing. Another is members for more of like a association that’s what, like the american heart association is doing this with intent was doing another is for advocate. So the national wildlife federation has an online community called ico leaders targeted at student environmental activists, helping them create projects. Another is volunteers ahh par oh, very small organization in north carolina who’s here does all of their volunteer crew ting and matching through community on then the last is a kind of mission support, so for the people that the non-profit is trying to support. So the canadian cancer society is a good example of this. They’ve got a community in french for those in come back that is designed to bring together cancer survivors and those that are supporting them, you know, so that they can go through that challenge together, feel less isolated. So it’s kind of you generally do find in our experience, more success when you do kind of target who communities for and what the purpose is. All right, so you have the umbrella community, says the nation, but but lots of lots of affinity group well built build around different things. It could be geography. Yeah, language, but lots of lots of subsets. Yeah. And even really nation is that example that is targeted. Not for everybody who is on american cancer size email list. That is, for people who actually participate in the peer-to-peer or relay for life, and so that’s one segment and then below that joe is just mentioning they segment and even mohr. So carrion’s yeah, there you go. And that’s how you just helped make it, maura. And then the key there is to make it more relevant, invaluable to people so that they’re not just starting from, you know, the eternity of all space. And how do i find what i’m looking for exactly right now? And ten does a very good job of this. Andi. Carrying it well, geographically, but then carrying it to the meet ups, ted clubs all over the country. Yeah, in fact, internationally? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, similar this week, like we actually have one discussion group, which is, is kind of that sort of bigger group that’s kind of serving a bigger thing. That’s our general discussion list, which is kind of all things non-profit tech related. But then we have the individual, like, on the local level, people organizing the in person five oh, one tug clubs that will have monthly meetings, and then they’ll have an online space in which to connect in between meetings as well. And then the affinity groups i mentioned so it’s kind of similar to what you were. You know, you were saying, it’s, michael, about, you know, the kinds of things that people will connect about. And then how do you kind of narrow in that focus? So you have sort of niche is above sort of the larger what i find. Very interesting at intend those those local clubs is the names are not uniforms, right? Right. Right. Organise that the local organizations free to call itself me it. Could be tech for good maybe, and i see now on the spot, i can’t think of the group c tech friendraising cloudgood your butt you can call yourself whatever you want. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And so that’s really where so comes in. I think that you kind of are segmenting indo, like kind of a good point about community building is like, you can kind of think of your community is actually being the driver of your community and you might be the person in, like the driver’s side seat, like kind of taken the steering wheel here and there, you know, to steer in the direction you want to go a little course correction course correction, you know? So you’re still staying on your mission and what your strategies and goals are, but you’re letting it be really self directed and then that way you’re communities really feeling a sense of ownership over it. Joe, what about that self directed communities is now a c s is a big organization? Is it that willing to allow that kind of decentralization alcohol it? Yeah, and it’s interesting, because when we first launched relay nation, it was fairly decentralized where we had just wide open groups that people could create their own user groups based on geography based upon participation tie based upon type of cancer that they were reeling for just a variety of things, and we noticed that we got a lot of groups right off the bat that people signed up and started those groups to try and network and that’s been great. But we realized about a year that we needed a kind of shift focus and provide some feature group some pieces that we’re setting out organizationally to put some resource, is behind moderate a little bit more cleanly and help push our resource is and our strategies out that way because, you know, after a while we noticed that for, you know, relay for life online volunteers that run our websites, there were four or five different groups that were all user generated, that we’re all competing for the same audience. So we picked out those ones that we knew had very large audiences that really applied to everybody across the country added them in a more prominent place on relay nation to make sure that the baseline strategies were out there the baseline. That’s like that’s, like one of the course corrections were just talking about you, and we’ve done a couple of those along the way. We used to have a very close community where you had toe, you know, log in to view all the stuff that’s there, and we realized, you know, again about a year ago that by unlocking that and long people to least read the information that’s there, see the stories, follow the threads, load the videos that we’re getting a lot more traffic that way, and a lot more use of john of the site and had a really great girl are alive because of that, okay? And i’m excellent at what you just said our ally and i was thinking, you know, let’s, let’s, turn the discussion to evaluation and and how do we know if these communities are successful? God, michael, you want to kick us off? Yeah, i mean, this is the this is an area where a lot of communities fall short and it’s not because they’re not achieving it. I think it’s, because of the mix of skillsets background and resource is that community managers have in that if you’re going to g o we’re going to go determine hey, what’s the r a y or if its mission related what’s the rom return on in mission from my community. Jerry lee skillsets of the community manager are to be able to kind of, you know, execute, build engagement, all of those types of things, and that’s a little different from alright, great. Now i’m to do data polls from our fund-raising database on going toe port them together with community data. And then i’m gonna run, you know, ve look ups if it’s an excel or queries, you know, if it’s a date what’s with the look up, we have george in jail on tony. Just you just seriously transgressed. All right? So, look, so we’ll look up is a function in microsoft excel that exactly that allows you to look at one cell and then say, go look in this other range over here and give me the value that corresponds to that it’s kind of a way to do a data base in my ear like myself. Okay. All right. Thank you. Probation probations allowed. So however, the the ability t get that data is there and being able to do so makes a big difference between the resource is that that community your community manager, gets and doesn’t, because, you know, after you started community and a year from now or two years from now, the cfo or whoever is in charge of finance he’s going to come around like, you know, like they should do on any project and go, you know, what’s this doing for the organization and so that’s one area where we, you know from from our perspective, so we’re kind of like a partner we don’t have, like, you know, we’re not a non-profit community provides metoo and that’s where we find that it’s really key to have not only the technology and then the strategy of the community, but also the support model for it so you can do things like, make sure your building engagement, but also run those end of the year r a y announce analyses and so joe, american cancer society, they got some great statistics that all of him share. But when you poll data together, here’s some examples of what you know it has been achieved. The american heart association has a professional online network. For their members, cardiologists, mts, nurses, it joined to be a part of us, they pay dues pre imposed, joining their online community thie upgrade rate from one paid level to another pay level went up seventy three percent, the rate at which people attend their revenue generating events, which are like conferences and sessions when a fifty percent the overall retention rate of members. So i’m a paid member one year. Do i continue to be a paid member of the next year? Ten percent and there are, you know, innumerable other quantitative, quantifiable examples like that, where volunteer hours have been increased two hundred twenty eight percent. I’m an annual giving. Yeah, i’m going to go to the folks who actually here. You don’t have a couple minutes left. Sure. So, joe let’s talk about your your comments on our oh, i do it not not just what you’ve achieved, but your advice for small and midsize non-profits teo to measure it. Yeah. So when we built out what our r o i looked like for real a nation, it was helpful to work with someone like small world labs who on their platform the users are are generated based upon their blackbaud id team, razor and blackbaud is the product we use for online fund-raising platform it relay for life, so we were able to easily export the data from the small world labs platt form where really nation is built and merge it using that constituent i’d with the fund-raising data of our users for relay for life, which makes it really easy for us to see what people that participate in really nation do fund-raising wise registration wise versus people that don’t, and we pulled that data about six months ago, and we’re just i geeked out for hours about it because it was just stunning to see that for people that participate in relay nation have had just one interaction, they’ve shared a one photo. They’ve commented on one forum those folks register on average eighty seven days earlier in the year than people that do not participate in really nation. You know, when you think about that in terms of a non-profit event, you know that’s almost three months that they register earlier there, getting your auto responders going called three months what’s three days, you know, it’s, mind blowing that what the amount of dahna the amounts that helps and to get those people in and fund-raising sooner and recruiting center was amazing. I mean, it wasn’t just their registration, it was they set goals that we’re one hundred twenty, one hundred twenty seven percent hyre i think then people that did not participate in relay nation and they achieve that goal seventy three percent of the time or all right, we gotta go turn to meghan, give her a chance on yeah, so i went again, not just not just what intends achieved, but how to yeah, one thing i would say on r o i is, you know, we’ve talked a lot about numbers, but it’s really good to keep in mind the qualitative parts of roo and so to be in continued discussion with your community and be really taking in that feedback. So we survey our community every year in an annual survey and it’s that kind of, you know? So while there’s some quantitative feedback that we get from that, we also get a lot of qualitative feedback as well, and that really informs our work in our direction for our programs and are content for the year okay. Excellent. Latto surveys, just simple surveys. All right, so now we still have a couple minutes. You were so quick. Anything anything more you want to say? Yeah. I mean, i think i on on that particular thing, i think it’s important to be, you know, when i said with constant, you know, talk, constantly talking to your community, i think it’s also good to not just have it be an annual in annual thing that you’re looking stats like ceo wants to know it’s like to be on a continuing basis, looking at those numbers and be able to course correct along the way and just being really nimble about being willing to change and be flexible with that. Okay, we got we got about another minute or so left. Anybody closing comments on community could be, yeah, i’ll jump in real quick because i think one of the takeaways i always like to share is when we share. These are aligned numbers from the american cancer society with the fellow our fellow staff, we had a ground long conversation about well, do you think that really nation is really driving hyre fund-raising or do you think? That your hyre fundraisers just naturally are migrating to really nation because that’s, what they’re doing, and after a good twenty minute debate, i kind of said, you know what? I really don’t care, you know, if they’re both really great things that we want, we want to provide a space for our highly engaged volunteers to meet and mingle, and we also want to take our less engaged volunteers and drive them to more fund-raising mohr engagement with us more recruiting and be more well rounded volunteers for relay for life. So, you know, i think it’s a good, solid mix of both, so you know, don’t think that necessarily you’re driving eight hundred percent hyre in something you are going to pull in some of those key people that are going to skew that number up a little bit, but it’s also a good thing to provide them. The resource is that they’re obviously seeking excellent. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. They are right. They are meghan keene, membership director for inten michael wilson, ceo of small world labs. And joe prosperi digital lied on relay for life at the american cancer society again thank you and thank you for being with tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of ntc fifteen the non-profit technology conference time for live listener love. We got marquette, michigan, st, louis, missouri, new bern, north carolina, new york, new york, multiple san francisco, austin, texas. And langhorne, pennsylvania. That’s s o far part of our domestic live listener love also on twitter madeline nino’s software advice, jean takagi, thank you very much for doing a little live tweeting and, uh and your shout outs to the show and we’ll do a little bit of a broad, but we have ah, lots of listeners abroad would do just a little bit la paz in bolivia, italy, portugal and israel. Sorry, we cannot see your cities but live listener love to you and also in ah in taiwan. Ni hao, podcast pleasantries people in the time shift ten thousands of you listening wherever you are, whatever device, whatever time geever activity you’re engaged in as you’re listening, pleasant trees to the podcast listeners and, of course, those very important affiliate affections were gonna have a new affiliate starting in june. But we love can’t announce it yet. You don’t know exactly what day they’re going to start, but in california so i can, so i’m at liberty to say at this time, but for the everybody ate listening on the affiliates affections out to you, tony, stay two and ah, questioning crowdfunding coming up first, i gotta shout out the opportunity collaboration, our sponsor, the weeklong unconference in x top of mexico around poverty alleviation, it’s for non-profits impact investors, social entrepreneurs, grantmaker sze researchers, academics, corporations all of those entities will be represented there. I’ve seen it firsthand because i was there last year and i’m going this year. Any sample ward is going this year? It’s seventy eight percent sold out last week was only seventy six now. It’s seventy eight i stopped stuff to get my registration it’s selling out. Don’t be slow like me if your work is at all related to poverty reduction alleviation anywhere in the world, check out opportunity collaboration dot net non-profit radio is hitting the road, i’m going to phoenix, los angeles, then i’m going to drive from los angeles to san francisco spent a few days there, and then i’ll be in portland, so if you are close to any of those places, please. Let’s, meet up my itinerary and the video are at tony martignetti dot com third sector today at third sector today. Dot com amy davita runs it and she has lots of contributors. In fact, i met her live at ntc just what, two months ago they block tips, insights, best practices for the community. They have a podcast. Maria semple has been on the podcast stealing my guests just like guidestar did guidestar this past week had a newsletter i got the email newsletter three past guests on the guide star newsletter copying blatant copying non-profit radio it’s gross, but we love it because it’s it’s a flattering to be copied in any case, we’re not we’re talking the third sector today. That’s right, third sector today dot com valuable resource written and curated by very smart folks there run by amy de vida and that is tony’s take two for friday, fifteenth of may twentieth show of the year speaking of n ten and ntcdinosaur portland amy sample ward is the ceo of and ten the non-profit technology network. Our most recent co authored book is social change anytime everywhere about online multi-channel engagement her blog’s amy sample, ward dot or ge? And on twitter she’s at amy rs ward welcome back, amy sample ward hey, how’s it going. Thanks for having me back on. Oh, month after month. It’s a pleasure. You’re very well, thank you. Thank you for doing it all this time. Yeah, it was it was fun. And also strange at the same time to be, you know, listening in on the line muted, of course, and hearing hearing megan and then ten staff person talking, i just kept thinking, oh, i’m talking to megan. Oh, no, i’m not right. And that was all from auntie si, which you and i talk there too. I haven’t played that interview, but we will now intent has as a big announcement coming up next week. What can you share at this moment? Wait, do we have kind of two things going on, one that i can share more spoiler information about? We’ve been working for the last over a year on our new website and sharing that kind of publicly as we go along case studies of ourselves about things that we’re working on. Our things that we need to do is part of ah, website redesign. So we have nine working days until the site should be should be going live. So that’s taking up lots of energy and brain power over here. But then we also have announcement next week that will be on a new program area both kind of online content and educational programs as well as some offline pieces. Okay, okay. Eyes going, toby, is there another annual event coming up like leading change summit and and tc? Yes, the leading change summit is coming up from it. We’re really exciting. You know, last year was the first year that we did it. So we learned a lot about, you know, it’s it’s, a very different process. A ce faras an event, you know, it’s, not a conference. Where there’s lots of sessions happening. There’s no exhibit hall, things like thing, you know, the main kind of components of the non-profit technology conference or other big conferences. But this is more of a facilitated process. So everybody that comes it is kind of, you know, suspending disbelief and and going through this experience together to come out on the other side with more more kind of fully formed ideas. Concepts, new programs, whatever it may be, tio take back to their organization. So we learned a lot last year and have shifted some things around and made it just a lot more hands on. So this year it’ll be in september thirteenth through sixteen in washington d c so registration is open for that. And yeah, we got all kinds of things going on. Okay. That’s leading change summit info is, of course, that in ten dot or ge but that’s not what i was asking you. What i was asking you was, is as part of this new announcement, is there going to be on additional annual event? Is that is that now i’m not doing that, okay? No, but it will be. It will include a program and a delusional opportunities. So, you know, new areas of online programs, but then also ah, deep investment in offline capacity building. All right, all right. We look forward to that next week. And then, of course, on the website side, you and i talked about that just a few weeks ago, we were talking about mobile mobile accessibility and mobile friendliness. I’m pleased to say durney martignetti dot com is now mobile friendly. Look atyou between moving quick. We tweaked it. We did some work. Yes, it is now mobile friendly and i know you’re new and ten site will be also right. Ok? Yes, exactly. All right, let’s, move! Teo. What? We want to talk about our main topic. We lots of topics, but the main one eyes some questions about crowdfunding you were very prominently quoted in on npr blogged, along with other guests, gen shang, professor gen shang she’s been a guest. And sandra miniutti, a charity navigator? Of course. Ken berger, former ceo there was a guest multiple times on the show. So everybody’s stealing the non-profit radio guests remarkable god’s, pure steel. You’re just putting people on the map, tony, we’re i’m a pioneer in the pioneer in transit, so i better watch out for the arrows in my back. Because that’s, what happens to pioneers and the subject of this was the nape all crowdfunding. And you had some thoughts about. Well, i guess we could start with, like, organizational versus individual crowdfunding. Yeah, it’s. Interesting. I just thought that it was potentially an interesting conversation for you and i to have obviously you talk a lot about fund-raising on dh, you know, talking about crowdfunding isn’t necessarily something new to folks that listen to the show. Neither is kind of the rial surge of donations that most people are participating in after a natural disaster, whether you know, whatever country that’s in so that’s not new either. But there there does seem to be some interesting shift happening with the latest natural disaster, the earthquakes in the paul and i think, that’s why there’s been some of these, you know npr articles and others trying to figure out, you know, it’s, not it’s, not the most prominent thing this time to see, you know, text to donate to the red cross like that’s what everybody remembers from a lot of the most recent natural disasters the last few years, right? You know, as soon as something happens, we’re getting the text to donate to the red cross when there was the oil spill, you know, texted, donate teo national wildlife federation, you know, kind of big household organizational names, right? And this time, that’s, of course, happening like there are still those channels to donate to a very large international organizations, but there’s really big surge in in crowd funding efforts that are either totally personal, you know, just individuals setting up a page and some of those individuals they’re setting up fund-raising campaigns, you know, online funding pages that are not benefiting organizations they’re saying, you know, please donate and i will make sure that my parents, who are missionaries in the paul, get all the money and distribute it to villagers or, you know, donate to me, and i will fly over and help myself. So there’s, this kind of individual as the end, has the end relief effort there’s also individuals setting up pages that are directly connected to an organization so much more similar to what organizations are probably used to it they’re doing, you know, a walkathon, and everybody sets up their own fund-raising page, but the page itself is already connected to their organizational account, right? So that all the money is automatically going to them just through the system and then their organization setting that pages, you know, for themselves in the relief efforts that they’re working on. So it’s it’s interesting to see the shift where it isn’t just the red cross or use a i d or unicef, you know, very large international names, but, you know, people are just setting that pages for themselves or i know a friend that lives there, and i will send the money to them and they’ll decide what to do with, you know, and i think that, hey, it’s interesting to think about now, because this may be what it looks like more commonly as we go forward. No, crowdfunding is becoming crowded funding. Exactly. What about these? This is interesting individuals using the organization name. I mean, now you suggested an organ individual might be doing it, and then it goes just through the through the platt for the crowdfunding platform, whatever it might be on then to the organization. But what if it’s an individual using an organization’s name, but they’re not necessarily the infrastructure set up for the decoration to go directly, and they claim i will give it to whatever you know, whatever relief agency it is or something, you know? Yeah, that’s, that’s really a great point, teo, to provide some clarity on, i think it’s organizations or as individuals looking to donate if someone says, you know, i’m don’t worry send send me your money, and i will make sure you know that the red cross gets it. It is it is not. I mean, there’s no accountability and that, right? And if you if you really want to donate, you know, say, tony, you had a page set up and you are my friend and i wanted to support you, so i wanted to donate, you know, to your page because of that, you know, that feels good too. That’s, why we do individual based fundrasing right, like, i want to donate to relief efforts, but i want to do it through, you know, we’re together in this there’s there’s no reason why you couldn’t set that page up in a way that is connected to the red cross, right? So, you know, using most of these vetted, established fund-raising platforms that are are meant for organizations to receive donations. You can, as you’re setting up your page, it’s still in your name? You know, tony, this is my fund-raising page, but using one of these platforms, you can say, i want this to go to the red cross, and the money won’t go to you personally, you know? It really will connect to the red cross is account that they’ve set up in that system on dh if you are looking at a friend, our colleague page, and it says that it’s going to an organization but it’s not connected, you know, i would i would questions their own process to be able to make sure it goes, they’re not that they’re necessarily trying to be malicious, but that, you know, they’re they’re crowdfunding platform setup to facilitate that right? So why wouldn’t you take advantage of it? Yeah, it makes it a little yeah, it raises the suspicion, you know, exactly, it’s interesting. I mean, i’ve even seen, you know, there there are lots of there are so many platforms like you said it’s, a crowded crowdfunding space, and there are lots of platforms set up, you know, for organizations or entities to receive those funds, but then there are platforms that aren’t aren’t set up, you know, their intention is really individuals to receive money like, go fund me and you see people using go fund me to set up a campaign that like a you know example, you before, please donate money and i’ll give it to my parents, who are missionaries in nepal, and they’ll make sure this goes somewhere, but i’ve even seen people saying, hey, my friend, is there on the ground and, you know, they’re not really online because they’re there in the kind of aftermath and continued aftershocks of these earthquakes send me the money and also, and i’ll wire it to them without even using the platform literally just posting on facebook, you know, here is, you know, send a wire transfer to my hsbc account and i will send that money on which i think you know, of course, you want to believe your friends that you can send them some money, but i think even if you weren’t trying to be malicious, have you really weren’t trying to manage that it’s very difficult, right? You get a hundred ten dollars transfers. How are you even tracking that? So, yeah, okay, it like we said, reasonable suspicion and why not make it easier on yourself and and help the organization with accountability so that they don’t have to be concerned who’s using their name. Okay, we got to go away for a break for a couple of minutes. When we come back, of course, amy, you and i’ll keep talking about nepal. And some options is for organizations who might consider crowdfunding as a part of ah fund-raising campaign or not. Stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philantech tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests were there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guests directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation. Top trends, sound advice, that’s. Tony martignetti, yeah, that’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. And i’m travis frazier from united way of new york city, and i’m michelle walls from the us fund for unicef. More live listener love abroad, seoul, south korea always always loyal listeners soul multiple anya haserot in japan, lots of people in japan soca, tokyo, fu chiu, saitama, konichiwa. And in china we have beijing and chung ching and ebay ni hao. I wish it was somebody from czech republic because i felt like saying dobre den, but there’s nobody nobody would understand that. So i won’t say dope breeding again. There’s nobody out there who will get that. And columbia is with us. Columbia. I don’t see your city, columbia, but live listener love to you also, amy, the the the unfortunate part of just slightly, you know, i don’t mean to be difficult or anything, but well, you are. You are. Ah, when you recorded it by npr, they referred to you as ceo of a non-profit technology organization called n ten, but here on tony money now provoc radio your intent. Everybody knows everybody knows what intern is. They need that leader all that worthy leading a technology non-profit forgone ization called and ah, i felt about oh, really, npr doesn’t know intend well as well as a cz non-profit radio does and your home here you’re home you exactly. I’m not. I’m not on every month at m p r i know you will be no, this is a stepping stone, but you’ll never forget it. You know you won’t forget us exactly what else? What? Anything else you want to say in the in the part of the, you know, organizational versus individual on crowd funding sites. Well, i just thought i could offer up during the break. I just pulled up a couple lynx to have some sort of data. Teo kind of illustrate the point we were talking about there. I thought it might be helpful. And of course, you know the caveat when i’m about to share the data, i’m about to share it, you know, on ly one to two specific examples, right? But so global giving is ah, online crowdfunding platform right, used by organisations that wanna, you know, crowdfund are raised money online and that exists and they right after the earthquakes and appall set up a relief fund and what i think interesting there is that this is global giving setting up the page, bir says, you know, say, and ten, like an actual individual organization and it was set up, i’m saying, you know, of course, here’s the situation, they just have this natural disaster and, you know, fund, add your donations to this pool, and we will work on both right away, immediate relief efforts as well as longer term rebuilding in africa, and we will put your funds in tow, locally vetted organizations, so they didn’t even necessarily say great global giving is going to raise money in this pool for these two organizations. It just said, we’re going to put this into other organizations and then over on go fund me what i was referring to a four platform that’s normally used by people who are having, you know, maybe a medical emergency, and they put up a page saying, oh, my gosh, my, you know, sibling is in the hospital, can you help us with our medical expenses? You know, things that are much more personal, personally, well, in the immediate zone, so they also have a number of people who have set up these fund-raising pages on go fund me, you know, saying, please donate and i’ll send this to my parents over there, you know, send me money, and i will you know, make sure it gets over so two different examples, right? One of organizations, but exclusively focused on organizations in one focused on individuals. So on global giving, they have received as of this moment ten fifty one a m pacific time, heimans thirty three thousand nine hundred sixty one donations totaling two million, six hundred and sixty one thousand dollars. Over on go fund me. They have fifty seven thousand one hundred and seventy two donors. So good. Twenty five thousand more and have raised four million. Five hundred forty two thousand double. Yeah, basically, two. Very interesting. Right? And i think there’s a lot to try and take a part there that we could of course, formulate our theories about, you know, the global giving sight didn’t even say specifically which organization so there wasn’t that recognition of oh, i know them, but it was focused on organizations doing this short term in this long term efforts where these individuals were able to just go out and campaign for themselves. Right? Like here’s, my page. Donate to it. You all know me and trust me, please donate and we’ll make sure that money gets over there to folks who need it and that has, you know, at least using these two platforms are two examples that go fund me is like you say, almost twice, yep, yep. Okay, wait, we have to move. I want to move to the organizations who might be thinking about crowd funding as a part of a fundraising campaign. There are different ways you could do this. Let’s, let’s, explore that like e-giving days might be one, for instance. Yeah, so i think we talked a little bit about giving daze awhile ago back after giving tuesday. So can a national international now day of giving after the u s thanksgiving holiday and there was there was also just give local, which was able to america just make was just may fifth. Yeah, exactly that i think it’s uninterested in idea when it comes to crowdfunding because, you know, you sure the nepal earthquake is happening in lots of organizations and lots of individuals or fund-raising so you’re part of you’re you’re part of that fund-raising effort, right? People could come across your fund-raising page just by looking to give to nepal, right? They don’t know who you are, but they found you by, you know, doing internet search are looking on global giving for a campaign on and that’s really, i think how to think about it when you’re thinking about giving days, it isn’t necessarily i mean, e-giving days are going to have the same kind of total donations as a natural disaster, right where you’re bringing people together all around the world, but you do benefit from the fact that you can engage your community members, and it feels like, hey, of course, we’re asking you to donate, but it’s this big organized thing, so you get a little more leeway and forgiveness and, you know, the asks of, please donate, and here we are really asking you to participate because it’s a larger event and you benefit from people participating in that event, sharing the link and others in their network coming in and seeing you there. Oh, i didn’t know about this organization, but, you know, my friend just donated to them because it’s, you know, give local america and i want to participate, and i want to donate, too, so you get a little bit of that exposure benefit by participating in a larger yeah get that bump weii just have we have actually less than a minute left. It could also you could consider crowdfunding as a part of an event. Why don’t you talk about that quick? Sure, i think that’s a real missed opportunity if you’re goingto have i mean, you even did this right? Tony, you could do a case study in yourself, you know that you’re putting on an event is an organization and you have community members who want to show their support for you encourage them to set up fund-raising pages in advance of the event, even if they’re competing with each other and have the live event in person be kind of a deadline for those donations. So people see what that timeline is, and they all come together offline and see who raised the most. Yes, i did that when i was honored by hermandad couple of weeks ago. Thank you. Yeah, we have to leave it there. Amy sample ward she’s at amy rs ward on twitter. Her blogged amy sample ward dot org’s. Thank you very much, amy. And we’ll be seeing you very shortly when i’m in portland. Thanks, tony. Looking forward to it. Thank you. Next week, maria semple and jean takagi return, so we’re hitting all the regular contributors in just two weeks. If you missed any part of today’s show, find it on tony martignetti dot com. Think of opportunity. Collaboration with world convenes for poverty alleviation, i warn you, it’s, excellent, and it will ruin you for every other conference opportunity. Collaboration. Dot net. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam lieber what’s on the board, as the line producer shows social media, is by susan chavez, susan chavez. Dot com on our music is by scott’s dying. I love that, yeah, you with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or p m so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing. So you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Amador is the founder of idealised took two or three years for foundation staff sort of dane toe add an email. Address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five per se.
