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Amy Sample Ward: Social Change Anytime Everywhere, Part Deux
We pick up where we left off last week with Amy Sample Ward, discussing her book, “Social Change Anytime Everywhere.” We’re covering your fundraising plan: scheduling; testing; staffing; budgeting; and tips for your website campaign. Amy is our social media contributor and CEO of Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN). Her dad Tim joins in to share what it’s like to raise a social media scientist.
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Oppcoll no. 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. The three fiftieth show is coming up july twenty eighth, two more weeks, the three fiftieth and i’m glad you’re with me. I’d suffer with dexter okla nation if i saw that you missed today’s show social change anytime, everywhere parte do we pick up where we left off last week with amy? Sample wards book social change anytime everywhere covering your fund-raising plan scheduling, testing, staffing, budgeting and tips for your website. Campaign amy’s dad tim joins in to explain what it was like to raise a social media scientist, and this originally aired on april nineteenth twenty thirteen on tony take two thank you, responsive by pursuing full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com here’s amy sample ward with her book social change, anytime everywhere part do i’m always pleased to welcome amy sample ward to the studio she’s membership director at non-profit technology network and ten, as i said her most recent co authored book social change anytime everywhere about online multi-channel engagement the forward is by two time guest of this show, craig amar, the founder of craig’s listing craigconnects no, sorry work that in there that he’s been on the show twice her blogged is amy sample, ward dot or ge and she’s at amy r s ward on twitter. Welcome back, kayman sample work. Thank you for having me back. It’s. Always a pleasure. Um, i guess my one of my first my first question is on the cover of this book the word’s, any time and everywhere. I’m showing her the cover now to remind her of the are separated. But they are not hyphenated. Why? Why aren’t they hyphenated the way proper english would be any hyphen time? Because they’re in different lines and every hyphen. Where where is the copy editing on this? On this cover? Yep. I don’t think i’m gonna let you just go by with this job. It’s it’s apparently thie design aesthetic. Okay, which you had no control over, i guess. Okay. Okay. I think this should be hyphen. I mean, i think these things are important in in language. All right. But it helps you enunciate the title very well. Any time, every right. Trying to learn how to spell her. You would think that any time was two different words. And and it’s, not it’s, not everywhere is not two different words. It’s. True. Okay, um let’s. Ah, i like to reflect a little bit. Okay, we talk all the time about online engagement, teo. And with what’s been happening this week, if you are engaged online on your charity, does nothing at all related to anything around violence or maybe victim or family support or politics of guns. Your charity has nothing to do with any of that. How do you respond? What do you do online, too? Let people know that you’re you’re conscious of what happens in the world. That’s outside your own. Sure, i think i mean first i would say i understand the argument of, you know, we don’t work on the politics of gun issues. However, you probably work with people and ultimately in any crisis or disaster, people are involved, you know, and reminding your own staff that it’s not just about bombs or terrorism. This is still about people and treating whatever response, whatever communication you have next in that light that there are people involved in this, i think helps you just take the right tone regardless of where you go next, because you’re then being responsive to what if it was you, you know, you would want someone to treat you or your city or your issue like people were involved. Next it’s a great opportunity to go check any scheduled messages you have any tweets or facebook post that air maybe already scheduled about something else. Also, look at your content calendar. You know where we planning on sending out an email appeal this week? That was, you know, using the story of this great little kid, and now maybe we don’t want to do that story or maybe not that message it all this week, you know, not that you have to completely shut down every organization didn’t stop this week, but trying to be responsive, teo, the fact that, you know, even in your own goals, you’re probably not going to get the analytics or the metrics you wanted, you know, no one’s going to be clicking through that email anyway, if that’s not what’s on their mind so looking at not just scheduled tweets, but what’s on your what’s scheduled to go up on your block what’s scheduled to go out and email looking at all of that immediately so that you can either put things on hold, readjust change, maybe which story was going to be in a newsletter? You know, there’s things like print ads or direct mail that that that’s already out there, you know? But people also don’t look at the newspaper and think, i can’t believe that this ad ran like because in our minds, we know that that’s not like a real time media. We know that that’s program six weeks in it, right? Exactly, but when you see something go up on twitter, you know, when you everyone else is just watching twitter for news updates it it really does feel a little bit more careless because they know that you let it happen. You know, you could have changed that tweet. We talk a lot about engaging with people online not so dissimilar lee from the way we engage with people face to face, you know? And when when i saw you earlier today, we you know i told you that i was feeling raw and sensitive and you know, that was that was really basically after right after hello, yeah, so, you know, i’m doing that in it, and i’m sure i’ll do that with friends. I meet for dinner tonight. It’s not it’s, not unlike online when you can have a conversation about this, or at least share your feelings when it really oppcoll just doesn’t deal with your data your day to day world, right? It’s it’s never going toe i mean, i don’t want to say never as if any statement could ever be, you know, all all encompassing, but for the most part, it’s not going to hurt your organization to say something like our hearts are going out to the victims and here’s a link to resource is or hears, you know, the the google spreadsheet that was created to help, you know, people say i’ve found this person or this person is missing, you know, like that it doesn’t hurt your brand, it doesn’t hurt your cause even though you might work on a totally separate mission to say, hey, we know this is happening and we want to make sure that we’re one more post in your facebook stream. That’s pointing to resource is instead of to something else. Okay, excellent. Well, we’re going to pick up with where you and i left off last month. It was march fifteenth with the fund-raising plan. We have just met and a half or so before we go away for a couple of a couple minutes, why don’t you just tease a little bit? Share? What? What we might be talking about with respect to a fund-raising plan. Sure. I think last time we talked kind about the components of the plan and this time we can get and i think to the nitty gritty, a little bit more like what does a be testing really look like in a campaign? Especially in real time? How do you figure out what’s working and keep kind of iterating as you’re in the middle of the campaign? And then also, what does that look like for your organization? Who’s involved once the campaign is live, is it just that development director or other staff? You know, playing into that campaign on then? Even what does it look like on online? What is what? Is your website need to do to be responsive to the campaign? Okay, maybe testing? Yeah, i don’t i’m not sure that that really qualifies for jargon jail. I’m not really feeling like putting buy-in george in jail today, and it probably doesn’t even really qualified. But well, why don’t you just explain what a be testing is? Sure. So for the most part, you could test everything on your website just by saying, well, it’s, their people are clicking on it, they like it, but it’s a little bit more scientifically valid. If you say have two buttons and people when they came to your website, they’re being presented with one of two buttons, and then you can just leave it up for a few days and say, gosh, anyone that saw the blue button clicked three times more than anyone that saw the red button, for example, so it’s just changing one component at a time with two versions so that you can figure out which works better and then start changing the next thing. And you’re directing people to both of them? Yes, simultaneously. Yep, i guess. Randomly, exactly. Okay. And you? You have an excellent example. In the book about the the clinton bush haiti fund, and we’ll talk a little about that. Ok, we go away for a couple seconds. When we come back, amy and i will continue this conversation about about her book and and your fund-raising plan stay with us, 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. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent, not too many live listeners today, i’m suspecting that a lot of people are if they’re online, they’re looking at cnn or some other some other news source that they trust. But i will say, live listener love out too. Forest grove, oregon and new bern, north carolina also since you taiwan ni hao and for korea, we have listeners in seoul and young in korea on yo haserot glad that you’re very glad, very glad that you’re with us. Thank you. Um okay, kayman sample word let’s talk about some of these details of of a be testing. What does this look like? Well, you can do it. I mean, even though we used the example before of your website, you can do it on anything. You know, you could do it in an email. Newsletters on little micro sites, it’s. Just a page essentially, whatever. Wherever you’re trying to put content out, you could do a be testing. So it could mean different photos, different buttons that text it could also mean having a photo or no photo, you know? Ah lot of organizations will do. A b testing specifically around fund-raising with on that on that donation page, does it have a photo or does it just have the form? Or, you know, does it show maybe a image of some sort that shows, like how they’re using the funding, for example, or what the project looks like that they’re asking for money for or again, is it just the form, you know? So and that’s it it’s going to change it’s not going to be the same for every single organization? You know, you have to do that testing because if especially if you’re an organization that’s used a lot of images in your campaign in your appeals that’s, you know that it’s driving people to remember what, what this is all about maybe having that photo there again, we’ll just keep that emotional tie to the campaign. But if it’s your raising money for something that you haven’t been using, that kind of graphical support for, well, maybe people would get there and say, why do you have this random photo of a child up here? You know, so so you wanted to be consistent, but you also want a test to see. What’s going to get the most completion on that form. Ok. And so i just said quickly before the break. You are you are you randomly? Your technology is randomly assigning people two different a and b version that’s what they be testing it first to a and b version is that is that what happens? So there are all different levels of sophistication, so you may be using a tool google has? Uh uh, baby testing tool optimize. Lee is another pretty sophisticated tool to use for that, especially around your website. But with email marketing, you could just say we want to send you don’t have the list this message and half the list this message or say you have a thousand people on your email list, send the first one hundred message a the next one hundred message be and then wait two hours, see which one had more opens and then say, great, we’re going to go with that message to the other eight hundred. Okay, so this could be that instantaneous. We’re just a couple of hours. Exactly. Okay. Okay. Now, an email, a popular thing to test is a subject line. Right? You could. Be having different versions of a subject line, right? Everything else would be the same. Exactly. The message inside is the same. But having, you know, a call to action versus you know anyone, regardless of which side you support anyone that’s on a political list. You’ve seen them testing those subject lines. You see messages coming almost every day during campaign season. Sometimes it just has one word. You know, sometimes it has your name in it sometimes it’s a really long call to action and that’s just those campaigns testing out what’s getting the most people to open this on the on the fund-raising landing page side, you have the example of the clinton bush haiti fund. They changed something so subtle, just the words within the button that you click right. The red, they have a red button and i have i’ve read that red is a very powerful color. Red is supposed to be very good button color for donate now for donation buttons or buy buttons. So they changed it from submit that the word in the button was submit to support haiti, and they got a fifteen percent increase in dollars per page view. Just something so subtle is that exactly and part of that, you know, some organizations think, well, we don’t want to write submit because normally, you know what we want them to do is donate or whatever their word choice, maybe, but if you have all throughout your website, if you keep using the word support, support us through your donations, support us by taking this action, and then someone gets to a page where there’s a button that says donate well, it feels really weird because you’ve already been consistently using this other word, so that consistency is important, you know? And again, if if you go look on your website now and you see that on your you’re donate paige it’s the only place you say there were donate but the rest of the time you really are talking about, support us financially. That’s an opportunity to do some testing because maybe donate works for your organization, and you should change those other places where it says sport or the other way around. Okay, excellent example, right of potential testing. Another thing they did there. There’s. This little geo trust verified icon i guess that it’s a trustworthy site right? Forgiving is that what that is, right? And there are all different kinds of those, you know, whether it’s charity navigator, geo trust like all those different things that say, basically, we’re not goingto take your money and do something else with it, i guess again, there’s different levels of what these other certification sites mean to, but some places have found, you know, some organizations found that by putting those kinds of seals of approval, i guess you would say on the donation for more on the button, they saw a big increase, but others have found like they did. You know, when you when you take it away, you actually haven’t they well, they decode, they had to do when they when they took that away, they lost five percent revenue right per page view. Exactly. There’s a trusted icon similar to papal, verified on the commercial side. Exactly. So people have gotten really used to, even if people don’t necessarily know what geo trust is or they don’t know what you know, charity navigator is they don’t know what they are, but the fact that it says it’s verified, you know, someone’s looked into these people give some amount of trust some of the things that you suggest it could be changed on dh tested form fields, how many form fields you have, the donation amounts that air suggested those little radio buttons that you click ten, twenty five, fifty hundred and that’s a really big thing to change, especially, you know, certain campaigns have found easy ways to mix that up because if they had a number involved in the campaign, you know, if if the campaign was around ah, holiday and it was on the thirteenth or it was a military campaign and they wanted to use the six as there number, and so then you just have increments of six, and you, maybe you say sixty is the default, right? Whenever organizations test that out, often they find people that the hyre number really does get donated because they’ve just mixed it up a little, you know, they didn’t defaulted to ten, you know, they put it up there a bit because people will still put it down if they want to have a smaller number, you know, but showing kind of the idea with where that preset radio button selection is. Is basically trying to say this is the average gift. This is the normal donation. So it’s not, you know, we’re expecting you to do this, but, hey, most people are doing this one thats why its preset on sixty. You know, eso it just encourages people. Tio not think oh, this is just a ten dollar or that’s, just the twenty five dollar normal donation, you know, so putting different numbers in there that are, like, thirty three and, you know, throws people a little. We have. We have tim sample on the line, tim samples called, and this is amy’s dad, he called in last month. Tim. Tim sample, how are you doing in oregon? I’m doing good doing good and plays it’s it’s already done, or or a gun? Oregon where there’s no evil or he’ll help you. Oregon. All right, there you go. You go. Oregon. Are it’s not gone? There’s no e at the end. Oh, thank you. Alright, oregon, but i’m a i’m right in the middle of work right now, but i’ve had an opportunity to come down on my desk and lock the doors. Nobody bought it. I’m at your disposal. Thank you, tim. You know, i wanted to ask you. I have here with me. You know, this little kind of sort of shrinking kind of wallflower, you know? Never not very engaged. Not very out there. What? What? What is she always like this when she was growing up? Oh, you’re talking about my daughter? Yeah, i know. I know. It’s. Hard to tell. Yeah. Yeah, alright, now, but without the sarcasm has always been a type a personality. Yeah, and always always engaged. Like, was she in? A lot of i could’ve asked her, but it’s more fun to ask you. Was she out there? Like, in activities in elementary school in high school? I mean, she’s, the online engagement, everything poster poster will be, could everything she could possibly get involved with. She was involved with her mother, and i tried to give her every opportunity to try every sport, every activity you wanted, you know, you know, as parents, we tried to do that for her. Can. My god, you know a good example of amy. I tell this story. He probably doesn’t remember it. But in the second grade, i said anything. You got your homework. Done well, yes. He had two next day’s homework done the whole weeks. Only john had read three chapters ahead. It was the last time we ever ask her if she had her homework done. Never had to worry about amy school or anything. Okay. And always self directed, always always getting right with it. And and i feel like he is right now. I know and engaged also. Always engaged with the public. Yes. Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. How did we know that she’d end up a consultant and someone that people look to for advice about online engagement? Did you see this coming? I thought he’d be president united states by now myself? No, no pressure. Thanks, dad, but i didn’t want to go into politics. I amy always had a sense of what was right and wrong, you know, always interacting with other children. You know, she always knew what was right or wrong. She never made bad decisions that i can see. And if she did so well, i hit way didn’t know about it. All right, well, we’re back, but she has a sphere of alligators. Is that is that you’re doing? Is that is that? You’re doing, she has a fear of alligators, is that you’re doing a fear of alligators. You’re not aware of this? Well, we don’t have many alligators over here where we live in oregon and oregon in oregon, oregon. Now i know i never knew he had any fears at all. Tony all right. It was an example after a trip to florida, and tony will let me live it down if it comes up to you. Okay. Yeah, i have a fear of snakes. Oh, i don’t think i pass that on to her. I don’t know if alligators are reptiles like snakes are alligators may or may not be reptiles. Maybe maybe look together. Alright. Alright. We’re gonna let you go back to work, tim. All right, perfect. Thank you very much for calling the opportunity. We’re going. You don’t have to your daughter by tim sample. Okay. Goodbye. All right. I wanted to have some fun. Do that that’s fair. Okay. This’s. Tony martignetti non-profit radio. You are in charge of the shop. Future president. I know i the bar’s pretty high now. Yeah, i in fact, when alison find was here last week, i asked her if she thought that a presidential candidate could emerge outside the two major parties from online on, and she felt that it could eventually, but that we would see local local races first. Mayor’s maybe governors or senators, you know, but more local than presidential right away. But i was i had you in mind. I had your president cha operations. I don’t. I want to. You know, there’s. Another election coming up it’s true only only only few years. It’s. Really? Not all that far away. So exactly. Okay, she felt it was possible. Do you think it’s possible for a for their previous president there emerges online. Yeah, especially. I think around someone from a grassroots campaigning background not political, necessarily, but someone that’s that’s already actively working online to bring people together for other social issues or other kinds of campaigns. So so someone who’s in it in that way, i think, could easily cross over to say great. Well, now i want to run for for an elected position versus i’m just going to be the organizer that keeps this. Keeps this movement going. Okay. You have anybody in mind? Apparently i need to put myself in the strike don’t talk about other candidate. Exactly. Were we stupid? All right, i will go on the record shows up today never mentioning another candidate. All right, um, let’s oh, there was one more thing. I want to point out that matching gif ts is another possible, maybe another another possible testing. So oh, exactly the existence of or how big a match might be, right? Especially, you know, something to think about with phrasing of matching gifts is there’s the version of, you know, if we get to this number, we get that same total matched or every ten dollars gets matched. So then people think, well, my ten dollars isn’t going to mean much to this really big pot. We have to get two of twenty thousand, but if instead you say the matches, you know, dollar for dollar, whatever you khun give, how does that affect your community? Because some communities may really get behind the idea of, like, having to get to that really big number together and other communities want to feel like they’re five dollars, was still matched and still meant ten dollars, for the organization. So think about the way you use the match in your campaign, and several weeks ago we had a university professor on from university of chicago john list talked about scientific research around matching gift does does a three to one match necessarily pulled more than a one to one match? Right and where and on dh? Also in the phraseology of the match, the way you’re describing and that will show was on february eighth of this year. If you want to hear discussion about the scientific research specifically around matching gift excellent, we’re going to take more of a break, another break, and when we come back, we’ll talk more about who gets involved in the campaign, some budgeting, maybe some calendar ring and things like that and also tony’s take too, of course, comes before all that. Stay with me more with amy coming up first pursuant, check them out for lots of free resource is week after week, um, urging you to browse the collection, as my library used to say in elementary school, browse the collection that was when we had those card catalogs looking that they weren’t literally index cards or little cards were that brass rod ran through the ran through the middle on the bottom of the cards. It was always shiny and slippery, and you could get their little those little cards. And they used the dewey decimal system. We don’t know. Uh, we still use the dewey decimal, so i don’t even know. Do it. Yeah, but browse the collection and pursuing its much easier than the brass rotted dahna card catalogs of yesteryear. And where do you go? So you click. You go to pursuing dot com and you click resources. And then as you start your browsing the maybe the blogged or webinars or content papers or infographics. It’s all right, there. No card catalog required pursuing dot com. We’ll be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. You need money for your good work? Yes. Throw a spelling bee. You know i hate the word. Let us. I got stuck on lettuce was or greenlee was all it was all iceberg at the time. I hate the word. Let us i love but thea tangible manifestation of the word i enjoy but not the word itself. I digress. Host a spelling bee make millennial money. These are ideal fundraisers for millennials with spelling bee. And live music, et cetera. Stand up. Comedy dancing check out the video at we b e spelling dot com and talkto alex career the ceo now time for tony’s take two. Thank you so glad that you are with us. Whether it is let’s, do it backwards. I hate to break with tradition. It’s it’s so risky, but we start with the affiliate affections. And i am so glad that our am and fm listeners are with us week after week wherever your station fits us into there. Line up. So glad to have you with us podcast pleasantries always going out two the two are precious podcast listeners precious podcast pleasantries. I’m not going to do that every week now. Two’s enough podcast pleasantries over twelve thousand listening in the time shift so glad that you are with us thank you. And alive listener love always goes out you know who you are you know where you are. I can’t shut you out by city and state this very day. Although i will be able to next week and the week after live listener love to you thank you for being with us and also, if you are a non-profit radio insider and i get into your inbox every thursday. Thank you for letting me in there. I’m grateful that is tony, take two. And here is amy sample ward continuing with her book, social change. Anytime everywhere you gotta get this book for god’s sake, just get it. Amy who’s, who should be involved in this work? And how are we going? Estimate the time that’s going to be involved in our online campaign? Sure, i think fund-raising campaigns just like any other campaigns organization, maybe running advocacy list building, you know, community engagement, etcetera can’t be thought of as something that’s completely contained within the fund-raising department, because ultimately there are e mails and there’s this a b testing on the website, and all of those other components require all different staff from different departments. So it’s an opportunity to create, i think, processes we suggest in the book, where you will have regular opportunities for staff across departments, not necessarily like on all staff meeting, but staff across departments that are ultimately all creating the success of that campaign to come together, whether that’s like every week or however your organization wants to do it. To have a meeting where you’re all in the room at the same time, or all on video chat or whatever you want to do so that everyone’s talking about it. So as soon as you break that campaign down into the people that are in charge of the email never talked to the people that were in charge of actually counting how many people are coming through the form, then you’ve already said, well, we’re not even going to have the best conversation we can have with this campaign staff aren’t talking to each other, so creative process first, so that everyone involved is coming together regularly to talk about kosh, we saw that this button language was the best. Well, the e mail better have that same button language. You know, any abie testing that you’re doing anything you’re learning about what’s working with the campaign should then be immediately reflected in all the other components. So how you either evaluate ahead of time, staff time or recognize all those different pieces are maybe serving the rest of the organization. So thinking of of people in communications is not just communications staff that all they do is communicate. But they also served fund-raising and they also serve advocacy, and they also served programs. So what does that mean as far as your staff plan? And what does that mean for your value evaluation of staff? You know, those communications staff in this example couldn’t just say, well, my job is to send e mail and i sent them, but how, you know, how was your function in this organization, reflective of our success in our fundraising campaign were reflective of the success in our advocacy campaign so that it’s showing that that person isn’t just responsible for hitting send on thousands of emails but showing them even in their own evaluation, that they’re part of the whole organization success, which i think is critical for having all of your staff buy-in toe working towards your mission, you know, as soon as you say, well, your job is just the website what their job is the web site, because it’s serving the mission of helping people understand you know what your your cause is all about and so did did they lead the baby testing that help figure out that that button actually could have, you know, in increased by fifteen percent the donations that’s huge that’s, not just the fund-raising team that’s also that person who’s managing the website. What about the smaller shop? Just a two or three person arts group? I mean, how are we going to build even? Ah, modest campaign into what we’re trying to. We’re struggling to keep get getting done day in, day out, right? I think for smaller organizations, but really, the same lesson applies to everyone. Ah lot of of the components of the campaign are actually developed way in advanced. If you’re collecting stories actively as you are working with your community year and you’re keeping those stories not just on a piece of paper in your desk, but, you know, kind of like a story bank you have, you have ah, bank. You could draw from of all these different stories then in that moment when you need to create a campaign, maybe it’s a response of campaign because some horrible event has happened. And you want to make sure people are aware of your services. You know, for example, you have that content. You don’t have to then spend a week developing. Okay, who’s who from our community do we want to talk to you know, where could we get a story about our services in action? You’ve already created that content in advance, so especially when you only have two people, the more you can do to just kind of be librarians, you know, tio, cart, chronicle and archive all that you have all the time so that you can really easily just say that’s, you know, the book i want that’s, the story i want off that shelf and let’s put it into this email and then again, a be testing is so, i think, critical for really small shops, because if you really can just say, we’re going to send this e mail to one hundred people each and then know that the one that got more opens is what we’re going to send even though it took you maybe an extra five minutes to go back and say, okay, now send this list that was a really great five minutes, because it means you’re getting that many more people opening that message. Let’s look, a tte budgeting our campaign may involve some adwords facebook, facebook yeah, how are we going toe? How do? We figure out what what we should be too spending money on is beyond the time that also is an indirect, indirect cost, right? First, obviously, you know, you have to have the caveat of it all depends what’s your campaign about where is your community? Ah lot of people have have realized that you’re not necessarily just going to make all of your money from your fund-raising campaign on facebook, but a lot of those people that are participating as donors, maybe on your facebook page. So thinking about how you budget for promotion of the campaign versus budget, for the call to action, you know, you may want to just invest in having ads showing the efficacy of your work so that when people are then emailed a call to donate, they’re like, oh, yeah, you guys do really great stuff. I do want to donate via email because that’s my, you know, i’ll just click don’t and go to your website, but maybe it’s different for your forget it community, maybe your community doesn’t really know, and they just need to be told, like there was a disaster and donate, you know, it depends a lot in the circumstances, i think it’s also, especially with things like facebook, where they’re changing the algorithm like every five hours you have to do so may be testing, you have to invest in that a be testing. So you know which of these ads are working better? Do we do promoted posts, or do we do ads? So some of it is just having a reserve of that advertising budget to test with, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money now, like facebook ads are not expensive, right? For-profit lee fifty dollars or so you could oh, exactly, you attest? Oh, for sure, yeah, and the problem or the great opportunity that could become a new obstacle for organizations, is that when you get in there to do a facebook at our, you know, promoted post, you’re you’re presented with the opportunity to pick like which gender location, background so many details, but it can either be overwhelming and you just say, well, i just wanted to go to everyone, and then you’re going to run out of that fifty dollars budget instantly, you know, or you get so narrow and who you want this ad to? Go, too, but it never really goes to anyone. So i think there’s a little bit of opportunity, teo play even just with that, that scale of who do you really want to promote this to? Who is your donor? And what do you know about them? Which goes back to what we talked about months ago, about how, you know, investing and knowing who your community is first, so that you can say the right things on the right channels, and i appreciate that your advice always is. What are the goals of the campaign right now, and not only to raise the money that that? Well, actually, the campaign may not be about even about money, but may not only be the explicit purpose of the campaign, but also to grow engagement in the long term, bring some new people to the cause may not even fremery respond to your call to action, but now they’ve joined your community exactly, exactly. And for them this you know, your campaign that maybe their friend donated teo was the first time they had heard aboutyou, but they’re now hearing about you in a really trusted way because they heard that. A friend not only supported your work but gave money to your work, and now they just want to follow along, and eventually you can, you know, encourage them up that ladder of engagement to become a donor as well. And in that respect, not everything in your campaign has to be about the call to action, right? I mean, i know i guess you want the called action to be frequent, but there can be things that are informative beyond the call to action. Exact. I think a lot of organizations will shook about a fundraising campaign, i think. Okay, first and foremost, they’re donating to this campaign. They’re going to donate to this campaign. They really get that out there, and then people donate and then there’s nothing else, you know. So people feel like, well, i did the thing, but there has to be more aiken dio so recognizing that there is always more they khun dio having that thank you, paige, push them to the very next step. What’s the next step for you is that great. Thanks for donating here’s the button to share on facebook that you just donated, you know, or is the email confirmation encouraging them to share their story about why they donated so that now you have one more story and your story bag, you know, so think about what people can do to still feel like they’re contributing to this forward motion because they already donated, which is huge, so don’t take someone who’s willing to take a really big action and then just dropped them off, keep them, you know, sustained that engagement and keep them engaged so that you can ask them to donate again, you know, if they haven’t heard from you, and now you’re asking again for them to donate well, they feel like don’t you remember that i already donated? But if you’ve said, you know, hey, share this on facebook? Hey, give us your story, etcetera, and then you say thank you for donating. Please help some more. They feel like yes, of course we are trying to get there together. What is ah, home page hijack? Uh, it’s called many things, but basically i’m sure most people have experiences when you go to a website and you just, you know, landed on the website haven’t clicked on anything, and then something pops. Up, even the new york times does this you think you’re going to go read an article from the new york times that your friend just tweeted that and there’s a thing that pops up that says, don’t you want to pay for new york times content? Why don’t you subscribe? That’s that’s ah, home page hijacked, for example, it’s basically a light box that pops up and says, whatever you thought you were here to read. This is what we want you to read and it’s great for people that if they really are just hitting your home page because maybe they were, you know, searching online for something and came to your website, they don’t know or you’re directed people back to your website, and it can pop up and say, this is what’s happening here is the called action here’s, that big red button that says support haiti or whatever, and obviously they could close out of the box or lorts like off it, etcetera, but the fact that it makes it super front and center lit literally front and center on the website helps direct that traffic into the call to action where you could maybe. Instead of them seeing your home page that’s, you know, normally fairly generic has lots of navigation, et cetera and drives them to a page that’s just about the campaign, you know, really focus. They can see the donate form they khun see whatever helps funnel people just to the campaign instead of accidentally clicking unlike, oh, what is this organization about? And what do you do and what’s? This other thing? I see a photo of, you know, it just helps funnel people in where you want them to go. You have advice about how frequently someone may see that home page hijack, so maybe it shouldn’t be more than once a week person and the technology will support that our exam twice a week per person or whatever you think exactly, yeah, i mean, it’ll where people out if every time they go to any page of your website, they’re getting this pop up essentially, you know, but if you can say yeah, once a week or the first time someone comes to the website because maybe outside of a fundraising campaign, you could use that for many things you could have it say, join our email list. You know, subscribe to our news, whatever you want that pop up to be. So if you see that every time, well, gosh, i signed up a week ago, and i’m seeing it every day, you know, so just may be the first time that i p address hits the web site, you know? We’re going to take a break in about a minute. We want to have some print possibly to be in support of our campaign. I want to just open that topical bit. We’ll talk more about it shortly. Sure, i think print is actually a great medium, especially for fund-raising still one of the main drivers of fund-raising effort so looking again at that piece as a way to frame all of the content that’s going to come later because you’re going to be ableto change up at the very last minute, what you tweet and what you put in an e mail, etcetera. But if that print piece supports that overall call to action, the overall message and maybe has just won fairly general story that you can then really dig into that story of what that person’s you know, experience was or what those services mean to the community it’s a great way to frame things as a oh, yeah, i remember this. You know, every time they then get an email from you. All right, we’ll talk more about this and the and the fund-raising plan in general, when we return with amy, sample ward, stay with us. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from a standup 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. 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Uh, anything more that you want to say about print in support of this, i would i would add that prince should certainly be needs to be in this fund-raising calendar with a campaign calendar that we talked about last month and it’s something that we’ve talked about in the past, i forget what episode number, but we talked about competition and how teo, you know, if if you were doing a phone bank, for example, of donations and you and you mentioned the research shows, at least if you were to mention, you know, the previous collar don’t thisyou know people are more inclined to say, well, i’m going to do that if someone else did print is a really easy way to do that as well, because you clearly know where they live, you are mailing something to them. So say, on average, people in your neighborhood donated this last year to our campaign. Oh, my gosh, now they like now i’m going to look in on my neighbor’s like which ones of you donated one hundred dollars? Now i feel guilty, i’m going to donate a hundred dollars, you know? So so keep those same principles that you use online with making it be a riel story, having it connected to something directly when your mission have a very clear call to action. But then take advantage of that local competition that peer pressure of this is this is really, really in your neighborhood. But also this is how people are actually helping us. So you should too. We can also have competition in telemarketing right in our telephone call once just remind i think this may have been last month, but in the way that callers are greeted, andi encouraged or thanked for their past giving there could be some competitiveness. Exactly. Exactly. So i’m not just saying like, oh, thanks you want to donate, but also, you know oh, you have reviews caller. Exactly. The previous collar donated this. And if you can, if you can hear sometimes, you know it’s it’s hard to just make a judgment. But if you could hear that it was a male calling and you could say, oh, well, the man before you donated this, if you if you have that opportunity to be gender specific, the results or even hyre from studies that say, you know, once i’m told the previous collar was a woman and she don’t even more than me well, man, i want to donate as much as her, so all right, let’s, let’s wrap up our campaign with the thank you’s yes, thank you’s are critical and thank you don’t have to be at the end of the campaign. Thank you should be every time someone’s done something, so when they sign up for that email lists, you know, thank them if they donated, thank them, but also do that thinking in public when you can, you know, you’ll see people in the campaign putting on facebook that they, you know, because they got to the thank you page, the confirmation page, and they tweeted, or they posted to facebook that they just donated, well, that’s a great place if the organization is then liking that post, if you you know, privacy settings are such that you can see their post or on twitter, the organization is retweeting them to them that’s huge validation the organization noticed that i just tweeted out, you know, that i donated and i’m i got retweeted or i got thanked publicly and that certainly doesn’t take, you know, a lot of effort, you’re not creating any new content you’re just saying thank you very much, but it can mean a lot publicly for the community to see those individual voices being thanked. How do you feel about the mailing of small, maybe small tokens? Oh, yeah, of gratitude o i think i think a hand written note, even if all it says is, you know, tony, thanks so much for your donation. Amy. It was a hand written note. It had to go through the mail, you know? It means a lot exactly could be something online, maybe maybe a little gift certificate or a discount to a site or something. Exactly how else can we say the small ways of saying thank you, right? And i there are lots of ways where, you know, and and ten we can say thank you by saying, you know, to thank you for what you’ve done here is a free webinar, for example, you know, web in our past, but for other organizations, it can also be an opportunity to say, because you donated, you’re now invited to this event that’s only for our donors, you know, so you’re also providing access to something that is otherwise exclusive, and you can use that as a way to say, hey, all of our donors are going to be joining us at this, you know, a local place that everyone knows is really fun or, you know, historic or whatever come join us in this, and it doesn’t have to be, you know, because he’ll be a national campaign, but you could say, if you’re a donor, you’ll get the link to the live stream and you get to be there for this interview with our founder or whatever, and even if people don’t want to go it’s still saying, we know tony, you donated, and we want you as part of this conversation, just the act of inviting exact is very, very it is very gracious exactly in heimans larger organizations that i that i work with will often invite people on the other side of the country to a luncheon that we’re hosting in new york city to to say thank you right way don’t expect them to come. We know the observers are tiny that they will, but the act of the invitation what if they were going to be in town for other business where they were going to be in town, meeting with someone? And now they can say, oh, while i’m there, i’m also going to go to this luncheon because i donated and that’s really cool, you know, i’ve never asked you this. You’ve been on many times. What is it that you love about the work that you do, this whole body of work that you that you’re involved with? What is it you love? I i love the people like i love that we are in a position to get to support not just one person that we’ve met, you know, and, like, help them do whatever, but we can help hold communities that’s really exciting, you know, or that you can help all of those people in the community know that they’re in a community i mean, i think that’s the really exciting power of the internet is that people thought i’m the only person that has x y and z here and the only person it’s experienced this, and now they go online like, oh my gosh, i’m not special at all there’s a million. People who’ve had this and so part of it is that that feeling of like, i’m not special, but i’m not special because there are so many of these other special people you know, and getting to find them and create community with each other, even when you can’t all be physically in the same room. Her latest book is social change anytime everywhere you’ll find amy’s blawg at amy, sample ward, dot or ge once again a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Be sure and thank him for calling it. I will. That’s, dad, dad to you? Yes, next week i know it won’t be fermentation if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling super cool spelling bee fundraisers. Wee bey e spelling dot com a creative, producers clad meyerhoff sam liebowitz is the line producer. Betty mcardle is our am and fm outreach director shows social media is by susan chavez and this music is by scott stein he 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 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 eight pm 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 do if they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist 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 dh and no 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 percent.
