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Nonprofit Radio for December 20, 2013: Dan’s Donor Retention Ideas & Goodbye Google Alerts?

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Dan Blakemore: Dan’s Donor Retention Ideas
Interviewing Dan Blakemore at Fundraising Day New York

Dan Blakemore is assistant director of development for individual giving at International House. We talked at Fundraising Day in June about how to hold on to your donors, from phone to Facebook. (Archive show from 7/5/13)

 

 

 

Maria Semple: Goodbye Google Alerts?

Maria 057 Low Res Color_crMaria Semple, our prospect research contributor and The Prospect Finder, has free alternatives in case Google Alerts disappears. (Archive show from 7/12/13)

 

 

 

 

 


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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 final show of the year. Oh, i hope you’re with me last week for the penultimate show of the year, for i’d be thrown into functional dyspepsia if i came to learn that you had missed mastering millennials. Derek feldman, co author of the millennial impact report, shared the research on how twenty to thirty two year olds connect, get involved and and give two causes they’re passionate about and engaged by age. Amy sample ward, our social media contributor and ceo of intend the non-profit technology network nose which social platforms are best for which ages? And she revealed she also had tips to engage by age and, of course, her sixty second style stop, which was about sweaters this week. Dan’s donor retention ideas your end of your campaign got you lots of new donors, of course. How will you keep them? Damn blakemore is assistant director of development for individual giving at international house. We talked that fund-raising day back in june about howto hold onto your donors from phone to facebook this was an archive show from july fifteenth. Also goodbye google alerts will this happen in twenty fourteen? Maria simple, our prospect research contributor and the prospect finder, has free alternatives in case google alerts disappears, and this is an archive show from july twelfth between the guests on tony’s, take two to customer service reps got me thinking about solicitations and facebook ad grants campaign were brought to you by rally bound peer-to-peer fund-raising for runs, walks and rides, and by t b r c cost recovery. Getting your money back from phone bill errors and omissions here’s my interview with dan blakemore on donor retention welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of fund-raising day two thousand thirteen or at the marriott marquis hotel in midtown new york city, right in times square with me now is dan blakemore. We’re going to talk about donor-centric he is assistant director of development individual giving for international house. Dan blakemore, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for having me, tony, i’m really happy to be here. My pleasure. What? What is international houses work? International house were a residential community for international graduate students here in new york city, the residents can be studying pretty much anything at the graduate level assed mama’s. They’re doing it in new york city, and they’re eligible live at the house. We also house interns, trainees and visiting scholars from around the city. It sounds like a pretty dynamic place to visit you. You are you there? You’re sharing meals with them very often. Oh, yeah. There’s. A dime. I mean, there’s a dining room. I usually have lunch every day with other staff members and resident members. Gym facilities, study room’s, computer labs. I mean, we try to have as much in the house as possible for them. S so yes, they have to leave every now and again to go to class or something crazy like that. What? We really want them to stay in the community as much as possible learned as much from each other as possible. Our mission is really driven by leadership development in cross cultural understanding for the residents. Sounds like an incredible place to visit all over the world, studying all different kinds of things. Oh, yeah. Here in new york. All right. Your seminar topic is acquisition and retention of donors, but it’s a panel. And your expertise is the retention definite, so i’m not going to hold you the acquisition of art let’s, talk about donorsearch tensions. Well, what social media is a be part of that i don’t know. He’s, telemarketing, a part of that where you want to start with attention before international house, at least in my experience, the attention has been much more focused around. Kind of, really, i i call it really the basics of good fund-raising good stewardship. Everybody gets a phone call or an email before that, long before they get their acknowledgment from the president or the director of development. We’re really trying to focus a lot around showing impact to people so that they are really clear on where their money is going because when i started at our house, we were in the middle of a multi year, multimillion dollar challenge grant and i started i said, okay, well, what are we doing to show impact to the people that have given already? Because it’s not gonna be much easier to get them to give us an extra hundred dollars, an extra thousand dollars if they know we’re doing the right thing with their money and there’s really something good happening here? Then you have to be going out to other people saying, okay, you don’t know me, but international house is a great place. Give me some money. Yeah, widely recognized that it’s caused a lot more time and money to acquire a new donor than to keep one s i said, what are we really doing? And we weren’t doing as much. So i really one of the things i’ve been happy to do in my three and a half years there is really focuses on ah, sustainable stewardship program so that we really engaging people. Whether they are named room donors from twenty years ago to someone who set up a scholarship fund last year that they’re hearing from us that they know that the money they’ve given in the past is really having an impact, and, of course, encouraging them to continue giving. Because we, we got to keep the doors open, we’re gonna keep the residents exposed to. They’re all the programs were providing to encourage their leadership. You mentioned a telephone call who would make that telephone call toe donors to thank them. Ah, in the lion’s share of cases, it’s me, since i mean, i’m assistant director of development for individual giving, but there are some already, i said, your title once. Yes, you don’t need to drop names dropping yourself ridiculous, already rolling, not even five minutes into this time, i already heard tyler. Thank you. Gonna keep things, tapes up your mic off. Blood there are some that i usually will say for the director development or a president especially kind alone, long gone, generous loyalty donors, alumni that are much older and has been given to us for decades that i think should at some point here from the president knew usually much more of a nice treat for them to kind of hear, share their experience of what they remember from when they lived in the house, but also then know that the president is saying, really, we appreciate your support, we value it, please keep giving and thank you. Okay, that’s important? I think the backdrop is closing in on us a little bit. So, you know, i don’t know if you have to move, but the backdrop is being encroached from from the other side. Oh, well, good. No, we’ll see what they’re trying to force. May they wanted eleven by ten ways. They were allocated a ten by ten. They wanted they wanted eleven by ten. Ah, all right. That doesn’t matter. Way continue. I mean, we’ve had earthquakes, we’ve had rappel going on. The lights have gone off today multiple times. I’m not surprised that are not our floodlights. Okay. Do boardmember sze, what have you ever engaged boardmember for these, thank you calls occasionally, i mean, i’m working one of my many goals, probably in the next year or two calls it because our learned, a long serving president is retiring in the next few months, so i really want to try to get especially starting with the members of our development committee, more involved with fund-raising just because some have been very concerned or worried about, oh, well, i don’t have nearly as many friends who are rich, they can come to the gallo or can make gift at five thousand dollars level every year, so i just can’t be helpful with fund-raising not true much more, so i’m working with them in-kind open their eyes do well, really, if you just make thank you calls and share your experience, why you share with the donors why you’re on the board asked them why they’re giving that’s easy way don’t you don’t need to write a check you don’t need to harass anybody else. That does not mean i don’t want you to get your wealthy friends to come to our special events or to come to speaker. Programs and meet residents. But it’s really about kind of opening up that fund-raising experience letting them see that there’s a lot more to the process, then just begging your friends to give you some money. Ok? All right, very much a personal touch. What? You’re trying to bring hope. Focus. Okay. Let’s, let’s go online, tio. Some social media. What? What do you what do you like to do on on facebook? Tio? Well, facebook keep donorsearch all social media for us is challenging, i would say, because by virtue of the kind of non-profit that we are, we are key audiences are always residents to currently live in the house. Alumni, donors trust these other people that know of our work. So it’s, we’re always kind of throwing different messages for different populations, all on the same channels because they’re all there falik it would be it would probably be nicer if we could say all the alumni are only on facebook or all the trustees are only on twitter that’s not realistic that unfortunately that is not going to go to them where they are exactly s o i think it’s been it’s been a lot of integration, to say the least, whether it’s the facebook groups like right now i know we have an alumni reunion coming up next weekend and kind of a lot of the mo mentum for it really started on facebook. Thehe lums, who are the co chairs of the reunion committee, released kind. They started their own subgroup within our group. Yeah, that was okay, everybody who’s coming to make sure you’re make sure you get your registrations in. Make sure you consider making a gift along with your registration, these air, all the events we have going on, we hope to see you there. Bring your kids if you if you get there, someone that you lost touch with, we’ll see if we can reconnect you with them. Is there someone you know who doesn’t hear from the house anymore? Make sure you two have them send us their new information. You’re happy to have them piggyback on. Oh yeah, international houses, facebook poll that makes not like, you know it’s a violation of policy or something. No, i mean there it’s much better for us to have them out there doing it, getting the message to their friends who? While i’m sure most the bulk of them live like our page generally know what we’re talking about. But there it’s all they’re always going to be much more responsive to someone that they know personally. Me or director development of the element i relations director putting something up saying hope we see you at the reunion there. Are they all the other aliens happening? Okay, but i think the point is that that degree of flexibility, yes, that’s, when someone wants to take the ball, including using your, you know, piggybacking on your organization fund-raising page, you allowed it. Oh, of course. I mean, you want that. I want them to feel comfortable putting those messages out because of those people who are pushing the message out are going to be much more effective in their outreach. Then we could be talking to their friends exactly as close as you get. You know, you won’t ever have the relationship that they have exactly with their friends, talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Do you need a business plan that can guide your company’s growth? Seven and seven will help bring the changes you need. Wear small business consultants and we pay attention to the details. You may miss our culture and consultant services are guaranteed to lead toe. Right groat. For your business, call us at nine. 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It will make you smarter. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com oppcoll have other other online strategies, but so well, we’re also wanted were dipping toes. I mean, we’re on twitter and a lot of the messaging there has been focused around current events happening at the house kind of as they’re happening, so there has been some live tweeting. I know we did some live tweeting of our gala that was on tuesday because we were honoring big named more more i could do more name dropping if you if you so desire, go ahead, drop one that’s not your no, my problem was you’re promoting yourself it’s a good thing you have written a book yet you would’ve heard that six times by now for ten minutes in i would have the title six times. I i’m a long way to go before i’m writing a book, but fareed zakaria is one of trust. Oh, how standing on end and yet fareed zakaria gps unit and sundays he was one of the people we’re honoring he’s going on our board for ten years. Eso he got our award for promoting international understanding. He was among the very impressive group that were there s o i know there was some of the trustees were live tweeting, but also we were live tweeting for constitutional account, okay, just so that people could see oh, this is really happening over its cars, getting his award and all paul volcker speaking and okay, and how do you feel this all relates back to donor retention? I think it really laid back latto things like live tweeting, let people see things are actually happening let them see that we brought a group of residents there to make sure that the special event donors really get a really a clear understanding of the house and what it is are really mission is all about because if you it’s one thing to have a special event, raise all this money and then everybody goes home and feels fine. But it’s it’s always been a priority for us to make sure that the residents were there so they can sew the donors can meet them because a lot of a lot of special event donors, by virtue of not being annual fund owners per se are not necessarily being alums do not come to a lot of our events, so we’re trying to capitalize on the opportunity of having them all in one space to say here, meet some of our impressive scholarship recipients here metoo of the residents have done really impressive things, and i have plenty more to do in their careers so that they can really start to see the value that they’re providing to our community. And for those who can’t come, you’re able to engage them. They think they can see it on twitter. They can book a cz more photos air coming in from the photographer were trying to push those right back out through links on our website on dh through facebook and twitter so people will, then they say all way or if you were there, you know, someone who was there, you could go through the photos and say, oh, oh, oh so until i got to talk to frieda cardio that’s impressive. So it’s i think it meets a lot of different purposes without nearly as much effort as it could take. What is the international house doing? That’s ah, you think really exemplary in donor retention slideshare em flurry dahna retention that’s a very good question. Well, that’s, that could be another opportunity for me to pat. Myself on the back, so i’m going to seize on this because you did a perfectly tony, i would think thee one on one reporting we’re doing now for a scholarship recipients, because there are a lot of scholarship funds that have been created probably in the last forty years, some through capital campaigns, some kind of muchmore independently as someone gets to that point in the major gift cultivation process that they decide they want to create a scholarship fund. Um, that stewardship is also has really been really important for us because a lot of those donors again are not in new york city don’t get to come to our events or meet residents at all, and the residents are everything whenever i in the spring is usually when i get to do all my interviews with scholarship recipients, and i really enjoy it for one just because in the development office there’s so few opportunities to just engage with residents and just kind of here about what are they studying? What do they want to do in their careers? But this is a great opportunity to come in, talk to them, get there, kind of get their story figure out what it is they’re really focused on, and then be able to share that information with a donor who can say, oh, i made a gift five years ago, fifteen thousand dollars and its supporting great people like this so especially, i think, it’s i think it’s even more important for people who are not in the new york area than for those who usually do come to events and kind of have a feel for the people that live at the house because i think we’ve gotten some really positive feedback from people about, uh oh, i had forgotten about this there. Oh, this has been so interesting and engaging, i feel like i’m really a part of what’s going on at the house, even if i live in another country and for us that’s that’s the heart of it because we have alumni spread out literally around the world and it’s hard to keep them engaged, keep them feeling connected to the work that’s happening in new york while they’re also alumni that’s going on all over the world, but they don’t always get to meet the residents. This reporting lets you know it’s broaden. It for non-profits that may not have alumni and followship maybe in something different. I mean, you’re essentially talking about outcomes reporting yes, little really see okay, you’re your fund of fifteen thousand dollars produced let’s say two thousand dollars in the last year that two thousand dollars supported two or three to three residents, and they’re thieves, they’re they’re what they’re going for in their careers. This is what they’re studying, and this is what they’ve done in the last two years while they lived at the house that has really changed, expose them, open their eyes to different cultures, expanded their horizons and let them see a lot more potential in the areas they wantto work. Yeah, those are all valuable outcomes impacts that donors air now, you know, within the past four, five years, much more interested in that’s, right? Of course, other other methods of sharing impact at a place like international house, where we’ve been experimenting with some video, i’d like to do mohr video right now, of course. Well, but this is not that i’m not going teo sametz out any donorsearch they’re not going to be interesting. Yeah, it will hurt your i don’t want to hurt your e-giving thank you very much. Ah, but no it’s really more in the last two years ago, some residents actually created their own video just kind of encapsulate there i house experience that we’ve been able to use from youtube, okay, but i really like to do something probably every year, every two years that maybe some scholarship president’s talking about their experience way have a whole lot of some of the different participants in the leadership programs just so that people can people outside of new york and don’t get to be there really just get to see and even for use at special events where people don’t know what it is we do it’s an easy way to say watch this for two minutes at least you’ll have a flavor for what it is we do. They the caliber of people that lived there and the really impressive people that also have participated in our programs. How many residents are there in a given calendar year? It’s usually between seven hundred and a thousand oh, my gosh is much bigger than i thought, and seventy percent of the resident population is always international. We usually try to keep it to seventy percent international, thirty percent domestic on and they can stay for a short is thirty days and as long as three years. And is there just one location, or do you have multiple residences where i mean, there are there are multiple international houses were the only one in new york we’ve been open it’ll we will be ninety next year. Excellent. Where where is it? In new york, we are on riverside drive, almost diagonal from grant’s tomb and next across the park from riverside church. Oh, man. View of the hudson. We have great. Some of some of the residents have amazing views across the river. Some have great views through secure a park and onto riverside church or grants tomb s oh, there are it’s a nice views considering where you are and we one of them. Anything one of the many things we’re doing for the residents a za part of our operating support. In addition to found scholarships and fellowships that we provide help them put on programming for the community. We’re usually subsidizing residents by at least twenty five hundred dollars per resident. Based on what? They would be paying to have to live in the same area have the same amenities at their immediate disposal on dh that’s really important to us in addition to providing between four hundred, five hundred thousand dollars a year in scholarship and fellowships, so that it’s easier for them to participate in the community, because that’s, the way we really believe that they get the most out of their time, thereby being engaged in the community by attending program’s, getting to know other people from other parts of the world, because our alumni are always very proud. Tio lee, go out and then say, oh, if i find myself in sri lanka, i’ve got five people i know i find myself in djibouti i know three people i’ve been to srilanka by the way i was bluhm bo the capital, your and then i went north into the jungle, and tio advomatic fora long i spent about four foot now better part of a week, five days or so orwell longfield more well traveled than i thought let’s let’s bring it back to dahna pretend yes how how important do you think the annual fund is for us? I’m sorry, i don’t mean the annual fund. I meant the annual report. How important is that? Donor-centric attention, i’m probably going i’m probably going to i’m going to have to say they’re on some levels very important, but to other people totally inconsequential. I mean to i think for the higher level donors, it’s i think with a higher level donors it’s going to be it’s always going to be of interest, to at least be able to have something tangible and see a while in a meeting. Oh, oh, this is this year. This is last year’s annual report and this is what? Okay, we meet met thes three these big objectives, here’s, some photos, here’s, the important financials. We added these people to the board and they’re bringing all this extra capacity to what we’re doing. But i think also for the annual fund donor-centric dollars a year, i don’t think they are, in my experience, at least working with them. They seem to be less interested in that it’s much more. Okay, tell me about the residents and what they’re doing on, much less of the hard core metrics. Hardcore financials. What what’s really actually happening, but that’s that is obviously a generalization because we have thousands of dollars. What about the house website the isles website terms of not don’t just describe it, but in terms of donorsearch engagement in retention ah, this will cause. We recently released a new website unveiled it rather, andre were very intentional about providing and as one specific area where we are sharing quotes from residents. I don’t think we have any video clips up yet, but that’s one of my goals for the next the school year that’s really focused about how do your gifts impact this community? And how does it mean so that’s? I mean for us, i think it’s, i’m hoping for the future going forward. People will be able to go to the website and really get to be able to see very clearly if i give international house one hundred dollars, what am i supporting and to know reasonably ok it’s going to be supporting leadership programs, scholarships, fellowships, outings that we do all over the city and within the region for people to learn more about the city and the u s but also have those opportunities to get to know each other. That noise behind dan is a spinning wheel. The booth adjacent ours is giving away either kapin t shirts, mugs or a chance to win an ipad, and you spin the wheel for the chance and that’s what you’re hearing. So so yes, we’re not we’re not having a dan does not have any kind of speech impediment have this ability to make a native american i don’t clicking sound while he’s talking and speaking code. There was no code underlying what dan was saying strictly a raffle wheel thank you for that very talented man, but does not do the clicking sounds as he’s, you know otherwise, i think you work for the national security agency if you were able to. Ok, i’ll take it all right, let’s say, well, let’s dahna retention let’s leave listeners with one mohr one more. One more thing they have advice for small and midsize shops, you know, not alumni related like international house, i would say be sure that you are tracking when you send out whatever sort of fund-raising appeals you’re sending out, whether they’re direct mail, email, web based, make sure you’re tracking who they came from what’s kind of. The tone that you’re taking, whether you’re talking specifically about impact or just really about good works. And then kind of the basic metrics of response rates. So you, khun, be able to compare over maybe two to three years to say, okay, what do more are more donors responding to a message from a trustee? Are more donors responding to mess from the president of the board? Someone who’s actually benefited from our programs, and if we’re talking specifically about impact, do a certain kind of doughnut respond to that one. And because all of this information really will help you better cater your message to the various constituencies that you have. But if you know certain donors on a regular appeal will give you fifty dollars. But when you talk specifically about you provide a clear picture of one resident, one person who has benefitted from your cause, they are, they’ll go from fifty to one hundred dollars. Then, you know, you need to keep sending them impact pieces and not just generic and ask pieces. So that’s that that’s an easy ruling road we can and we can explore that a little bit more. We got a couple minutes basically talking about testing. Yes, right. So it’s a little more about how you how? You conduct your test for me, it’s thus far, it’s really been been able to look back at i think i usually go at least four or five years back to say ok, which appeals? What was really the response rate? Let’s. See how many people were we mailing to? What did that mean? And then say how much money was raised? Obviously. Average doner average gift by her donor on dh then kind of try to figure out, even though it is. Every appeal is always different. You can it’s hard to pin the differences on any one thing. But if you’re seeing a trend that people are responding mohr two appeals from trust members of the board of trustees. Theun. Then you know, that’s that obviously needs to be something you’re focused more on. But you have to set up a method of tracking these things. Well, yes, i mean, for me, i do something. I keep it very basic. Usually tracking all in excel brothers. The response rates, the author’s kind of the tone way have what other variables you do control for still average average. Give her donor donors that actually responded the number of gifts. Just so that, you know, just it’s much more about having for me having as much information as possible because you could even see in the economic downturn. Yes, while we may not received as many gifts, the percentage is still stayed reasonably around. What are averages have been okay, so it wasn’t. It was an opportunity to say yes, our totals are down like everyone else is in america, but people are still giving at or above the usual rate, so we really don’t have it. It’s not like we not like we lost fifteen percent of our donor base just because the economy was a mess. And then this way you also have this data that you can go to your supervisors with you’re bored with to justify perhaps increases. Yeah, in spending in certain ways by saying, you know, we’ve got the evidence that more money spent here is very, very likely to have more money to bear more. Yeah, exactly. All right. We’re going to get their damned like, well, that sounds good to me. I appreciate the opportunity to be with you and get to your listeners to my pleasure. We’re connected in lots of different ways on the social networks. Oh, yes, ok, it’s, good to see you in person, that i am blakemore’s. The thank you is the assistant director of development for individual giving international house in new york city, and we’re in new york city with live coverage of fund-raising day two thousand thirteen. Thank you very much for being with us. Very happy, teo provide that from dan blakemore. Very smart guy let’s do some live listener love we got the netherlands checking in we’ve got seoul, korea and han nam korea on your haserot ni hao for all our visitors from china, beijing chung ching and shen juan doe welcome munich, germany checking in also uh, i missed a couple of shanghai and zang zhao, china here in the u s new bern, north carolina and someone masked on itunes radio can’t tell what city you’re from, but live listener love i’m able to go to conferences like fund-raising day i did in june and get recordings like i did with dan blakemore and about a dozen others that day, because we have sponsors and i’m very grateful to our two current sponsors. Rally bound, rally bound dot com they make reliable and very simple to use peer-to-peer fund-raising software it’s friends asking friends to give to your cause through runs, walks, rides, races as a non-profit listener rot non-profit radio listener, you will get a discount, you can pick up the phone and talk to joe mcgee he’s, the one who will help you set up your campaign you can reach them at triple eight seven six seven nine o seven six i’ve talked to john magee. I’ve worked with joe magee very good guy. I’ve met the ceo at rally bound shmuley, also a very good guy. If you don’t want to talk, you can check them out on the website, as i said, rally bound dot com trc cost recovery also supporting the show yourself, rabinowitz he will go over your past phone bills and he’s looking for errors, omissions, services that you didn’t order and well above market pricing. And when he finds them, which he does over ninety percent of the time, he picks up the phone and he’s, the one who fights the phone company to get you the money back that you deserve. He had told me about a non-profit that he saved very close to twelve thousand dollars for because he found over three hundred dollars a month in mistaken charges, and he was able to go back three years yielded the non-profit roughly twelve thousand dollars, and i think it’s very telling that that referral to the non-profit came from someone who used to work at a company that yourself had. Done telephone bill consulting for that was the company. You heard me that mention this last week. They were making a part for the mars rover. And the woman was so impressed that when she moved to a non-profit she referred t brc and youssef and that’s when they got that twelve thousand dollars savings, you only pay yussef if he actually gets you cash back. I’ve known him for almost ten years. He is at t brc dot com or two one to six double four nine, triple xero which could also be to one, two six four four nine thousand. But i like the english way. Six double for nine. Triple xero with the two one to area code tony steak too. Some customer service reps, one at best buy and the port authority. Thie airtrain from jfk got me thinking that in your solicitations you need to ask for exactly what you want and ask confidently and not humbly and simply and that’s what those to customer service reps did and got me thinking there’s a lesson there for our fund-raising solicitations there’s. Much more on that at my blogged, which is tony martignetti dot com also. Deborah askanase our social media contributor i’m sorry, our social media dahna presenter, she does the social media for the show. Our social media contributor is amy sample ward, but deborah askanase does the social media for the show, and on her blogged she talked this week about facebook ad grants for non-profits so muchmore of facebook is address even now that they have a new algorithm for what gets seen in people’s news feeds. And so you’re probably seeing your reach dropping drastically, and that makes facebook now pretty much a pay to play place and non-profits need some help with that. So debra is suggesting that facebook give advance it’s too non-profits and there’s more on that on her blogged, which is community organizer two zero dot com community organizer the number to the number zero dot com that is tony’s take two for friday, twentieth of december forty ninth and final show of the year. I don’t know why we didn’t get fifty shows this year did i don’t know if i miscounted or ah, we got screwed, i don’t know, but i count forty nine, we’ll have tto look into that, but this is definitely the final show of the year. And here is marie a simple what happens if goodbye google lorts happens in twenty fourteen maria samples with us to talk about the possibility of google alerts going good bye. How are you, maria? Simple. I’m doing well, thanks. How are you today? Terrific. Thank you. We know maria she’s, the prospect finder she’s a trainer and speaker on prospect research. Her website is the prospect finder dot com and her book is panning for gold. Find your best donorsearch prospects now she’s our doi n of dirt cheap and free you’re going to prove that today is gonna live up to it. You can follow maria on twitter at maria simple. I see some disenchantment with google alerts is that is that part of the problem? Yes, you know, there has been some disenchantment with it. I’ve been seeing other colleagues in the prospect research profession kind of complaining about the alerts not working as well and so forth. And, you know, i had found that myself and we’ve talked about this before, right? Tony on your shows where, you know, talk about how to tweak the alerts and maybe you’ll get more. Results, but now i’ve actually started seeing some articles in recent months, nothing has been confirmed by google that i could find on their own website that have said that a google alert might actually be dying off. It might just go away. It might not be something they offer anymore, and that got me quite concerned because it seems like they’re not really maintaining it because the number of people are complaining that the number of alerts they’re getting has been reduced and the number of alerts within each message has been reduced and the ones that they’re getting are not so good quality, not not like they used to be, right, exactly. So i thought, well, there must be some alternatives out there and fortunately, some of the articles that i referenced, which, by the way, i can provide those article links if you like, on your social media sites telling readers, will have access to them. They gave some interesting alternatives, and i started playing around with them a little bit myself in preparation for today’s show, so i thought we could just sort of talk about what some of those alternatives are and also what you want to be setting up alerts on right? I’m sure that we can do that. So what do you and your promising, i think all free or free ideas today? Uh, yeah, well, i’m gonna provide you with some alternatives that all have free components to it. And then if people feel like those alerts aren’t yielding enough results, they could always go with some of the sea based resource. Is that those components also offer. So you like to give you a list xero options? Shall we? Ok, there, our listeners, maria, our listeners please share that share the lizard shared listener love. There are listeners. Okay, so, uh, what’s the first one you wanna talk about so one interesting when i came across that i’ve been testing for a few weeks, actually it’s called talk walker dot com uh, so they have free alerts that you can set up, but they have a fee based online service. But from what i have found in using it for the last couple weeks, i’ve been getting alerts from them on the same exact alerts that i had set up on my google alerts account, and the results definitely have been different? I can say that. Okay, it’s not supposed to be that way. But if google is not keeping up, are maintaining it’s alerts than i guess. It’s, i guess that’s the explanation. Okay, so so what is it you like about talk, walker? Well, i like the fact that you can set up those alerts for free. You can still have those alerts delivered to tear email inbox. So again, it’s sort of that push technology that we’ve talked about in the past set it up once. Once you’ve got it set up the way you want it, it’ll just keep delivering those those results to your inbox. So i really like that feature very much on talk walker. Also, you can set it up to be able tio send it to you as an alert as often as you like, you can set it up, you know, once today, as it happens or once a week. So you’ve got a few options there and how often you get those alerts delivered very much like google. So i think anybody who’s familiar with google alert, they’re going to find this interface to be very similar, so the interface is is similar, but the quality of the results is much better your seeing a difference? Obviously, yeah, i have been seeing a difference. I’ve been finding more alert that air coming through where there are mentions on blog’s on dh, some other social media related sites. So i thought that was definitely kind of interesting there, you know, how those alerts air coming through and how it seems to expand upon just the number of sources that it seemed to be picking up on, for example, i haven’t alert set up on my name and there’s an author, maria sample, we’ve talked about this before, and, uh, so i was able to filter out the results where her book title was also mentioned in the search results, much like i would do for aa for a google alert, for example. So is this shortcoming that you see or part of the shortcoming that you see in the google lorts is that it’s not indexing and searching blog’s or yeah, this is part of the services that i’ve looked into seemed to be covering more on the social mentions side, which, as you know, could be really important for a non-profit to be monitoring when they’re, you know, looking to monitor their own brand or who’s talking about them on social. So i thought that was really pretty cool, okay? And you’re not seeing those results on the google alerts. Not as extensive. No. Okay, interesting. So you’re doing side by side comparison because you said the alerts you’re setting on these test sites are the same as the ones you have set for google. Okay, avery, right. And the only one that i set up for the last few weeks is on the talk walker site on the others too, that i really kind of test sit out in preparation for today’s. Show it. I didn’t. Mora’s, you know, live looking at the search search results. And i i did look atyour name to see where some of this came up on social one of the other sites that that we’ll talk about called mentioned dot net that the only one where i definitely different is that the only one where i appeared is unmentioned or that’s. Really? Where you set the alert for may? I said it i that was the one where i set up. Thea the alert. For you on dh then yeah, definitely. That was one where i set up toe look at tony martignetti and i’ve noticed something that came up on philanthropy dot com for you and this is on mentioned dot net that’s going, we haven’t talked about yet. Why don’t we move someone? We moved to that one since ah, it’s, it’s all about me and thiss must have been the most interesting a sight in your searcher, and you’re testing because so was it mentioned dot com it’s actually mentioned dot net okay mentioned dot net? Yeah, and uh, so they had a neat analytics tool is built into it. You can get emailed alert, which i did not set up the email alerts. I just kind of monitoring what was going on on the site itself. Thie alerts can actually be shared with a team of co workers, so i mean, think about this in a team of non-profits i mean, a non-profit development team or development committee or something like that in a smaller non-profit where you would want to make sure that people were also sort of aware of where your key donors might be mentioned or where. Your organization name might be mentioned, so i thought that was a pretty neat feature. Yeah, saves you having to get the e mails and then forward them to people. Right? Exactly. But i understand you want you want getting using yours? Yes, i did come across some mention of the tweet that you had sent out about listening toe episode one forty nine i saw you mentioned on ah blawg for n green non-profit dot com. I saw your mention on philanthropy. Dot com where else would i see? Uh, do you do you know a person named david durin, jer? No, i don’t attorney no, no. Well, yeah, he was talking about me, and i appreciate it. That’s. Fine. I’m happy to have people talking about me. Who i don’t know that they’re the ones who’ll say the best things cause they don’t they don’t know me that well. Um okay, so so this actually goes into tweets too, but but now i send tweets under my name many a day like, i don’t know it doesn today or something. Would it? Would it not be finding those for some reason? Or is it only people talking about? Me, not me, not not my own content. Maybe that’s it right? So it was i just did it on your name. I didn’t do it on your twitter handle. I did it on tony space martignetti is what i’m having it track on mentioned dot net on dso it tell it told me that, for example, seven hours ago is when you tweeted out that tweet about listen toe episode one forty nine you know, etcetera, so it’ll it’ll tell you how long ago this mentioned was also mentioned online are xero so, you know, i just thought it was definitely something that could be interesting for organizations, you know, where this got me to really thinking it could be fascinating would be an article that i read i don’t know if you you picked up on that in the june issue of the chronicle of philanthropy, and that particular issue talked a lot about raising money online and one of the things that brought kind of to the forefront. For me, the ability to use these alerts was the organization, the environmental defense fund. I don’t know if they’re listener of your show, but it turns out that the article mentions that they’ve trained their data specialists to scour the internet to find out who is advocating on behalf of the organization online, and then they conduct research to find out what would swayed the activists to make a first time gift and then give again okay, so that got me to thinking, wow, this is just sort of a way to find out who’s talking about you, perhaps start connecting with them online, bringing it to the attention of your front line fundraiser that you’re being talked about by this particular person and this could be a real advocate could be somebody you should get to know. Yeah, for sure using i mean, that that’s the value of the prospect research, right? I mean, they’re they’re feeding their feeding the pipeline with potential prospects with right suspects, become prospects or suspects could could become prospects. Okay, absolutely. Now, do you see differences between mention and talk? Walker? Yeah, definitely the interfaces is a lot different and, you know, i think that people just take a look at it and see where they’re you know, most comfortable they do have a zay said they also provide that emailed alerts and analytics tool. And this company actually does provide certain levels of service so that you can have plans. They range from six, ninety nine a month to sixty five dollars a month. And so again, there, if you’re finding that you really like this service, but you’d like to have many more search results than what you’re getting, or you want to track a lot more alert than you, you know, maybe you’ve got a twenty donorsearch teamviewer want to track or something like that. Then you know you you might have to go into some of the fee based services. Okay. Okay. So there’s limits on the number of alerts for the for the flint. This window. Limit the alert. Okay. Okay. We have about a minute before we go away for a couple minutes. Another site you want to talk about besides talk walker and mention yes, there’s. Another one called social mentioned dot com and, uh, they have set up. That is again similar to setting up your google alerts in terms of being able to set up in advance search like the filtering service. And before we go to break just a teaser, i’ll just save your listeners come back, because you want to know what we’re talking about here when we talk about a passion score for, uh, for social mention, okay, look at maria, give it doing little outro to the break that’s. So that’s, so skilled, passion score sounds, sounds pretty cool. We have passion in the studio every every week, i believe, okay, we’re going to take that break that maria just brought us into, and when we come back, she and i’ll keep talking about the alternatives to google or it’s, just in case they go away, and to me, it sounds like even if google lorts doesn’t go away, she’s got alternatives. That seemed better, so stay with us. Yeah, you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Schnoll are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Have you ever considered consulting a road map when you feel you need help getting to your destination when the normal path seems blocked? A little help can come in handy when choosing an alternate route. Your natal chart is a map of your potentials. It addresses relationships, finance, business, health and, above all, creativity. Current planetary cycles can either support or challenge your objectives. I’m montgomery taylor. If you would like to explore the help of a private astrological reading, please contact me at monte at monty taylor dot. Com let’s monte m o nt y at monty taylor dot com. Talking alternative radio, twenty four hours a day thing. Hi, this is claire meyerhoff from the plan giving agency. If you have big dreams but a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio. Welcome back to the low qui loki sesquicentennial, loki, sesquicentennial show maria, why don’t you tell us what the what the passion score is at social mention dot com so the passions score as they define it. They say it’s, a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly. For example, if you have a small group of very passionate advocates to talk about your product or brand all the time, you will have a hyre passions score. So imagine in a situation where you’ve got people who are who are just really, always tweeting about your organization. Uh, i mean, these are people that are right there, add they’re they’re advocating their retweeting your stuff, etcetera, this’s something that you want to be aware of is and this is free. We could get our passion score for free from social mention. Dot com. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Absolutely. So, for example, i had gone in and just on a search and put in my name in quotes like i would on an advanced search of for google because i wanted to search for maria semple is a phrase, and then i wanted to knock out any of the search results where that other author was mentioned. So i knew what keywords to put in there to knock out the results, and i came up with a very interesting set of searches search results, i should say that included photos that were taken of me speaking by others and posted on flicker ah, video that i had created and placed on youtube. Um, what else did i come across other videos where i appeared like a non-profit times interview, so i just kind of left it open for all dates, but you could also, if you find the search results are are too high, you can also filter it down and say, well, i’m also only interested in seeing, say, up to the last thirty days worth of results as to where your your mentioned excellent. So you want to share your passion score? Uh, actually, it said it was fifty percent when i did that search in that way, so i thought that wasn’t too bad. Ok, i’m going, i’m going to try this one. I like this one on dh if my passion score is higher than fifty, then i’ll reveal it, and if it’s not, then we’ll just forget about it. Yeah, and then i thought, well, let me set the sectors and alert, and unfortunately, right now they’re alert service is disabled so you can go to the website without having toe log in and create an actual account or anything, and you can you can go ahead and do a search on social mention dot com and see what the search results are and trying to filter them down. But in terms of then linking that particular search up to be constantly sent you through email or like we talked about before, they’re alert services currently disabled, so i hopefully i mean it says it’s coming up in the next week or so, maybe they’re just revamping it, making it bigger and better. I’m not sure, but that was that was a little disappointing to see i couldn’t actually test the alert feature tio it’s good for listeners to understand we’re recording on tuesday the ninth so by the time you listen, maybe will be back-up but it sounds pretty cool, but can we get the passion score without the alert feature being up? Yeah, yeah, so i just went to social mention dot com i put in the search that i was looking for and it came up with a passion score. And then they come up with something also called a sentiment score. Oh, and they say that that’s the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative. And i have no idea how they define positive versus negative. But ah, this was out of the search. The thirteen let’s see out of the twenty six mentions, they gave me a sentiment score of thirteen xero meaning that i guess it was mostly a positive i hope that’s what the issue is not okay, i hope it’s positive to negative not negative to positive for your for your benefit, right? Tell you what, why don’t you just do a little have a little fun? We only have a few more minutes and i still won’t talk about what you should be monitoring. Why don’t you put my name in quotes in social mentioned dot com let’s see what we come up with, like passionate zoho are put it in it’s tony martignetti passion vs see what we come up with. Versus the other one sentiment and okay, but let’s move let’s, you and i will get to that before we get seven percent passion score. Tony, i killed you. It’s around it’s? Not even close. It’s not even close. It started in krauz it’s a route cream and clothes wearing that t thiss tony martignetti a seven percent passion scores your sentiment score came up three to zero three. All right, let’s not talk about that sentiment score clearly is not. I’m looking at things in here from fund-raising day in new york. Somebody’s gotta blogged on youtube videos about you. Well, clearly the sentiment score that’s inaccurate. So we dismissed that that that that function, that function is not working clearly. So don’t pay any attention to what you get for the sentiment score the passion scores very accurate. But you know, these vanity mary-jo vanity and you believe that these are vanity metrics? We don’t pay that much attention. I killed you, but we’re not paying that much attention. Really, teo, vanity metrics smear, but they’re not really that important. Let’s talk about what? What? We should be monitoring because only have a couple minutes left. What should we what should non-profits be paying attention to and setting in these different of these different sites. Okay. So the name of your organization again here that will help point you toward people who are advocates on your behalf. You should be setting up alerts on your top donors. Think about reasons tohave to send out and reach out and have a touchpoint with your donors that don’t involve asking them for money. So this might alert you to wear. Your donors are mentioned in the press. It might alert you, teo, on somebody having ah, major appointment or advancement or appointment to a board of directors somewhere. So your top donors, okay, the companies were your donor’s work. So again here, if that’s important for you to also maintain a relationship with the company because it’s a large corporation or if it’s one of your donors, private companies that’s almost more important, i think because whatever is happening in that donors world related to his his or her private company, you’d want to know about those those major, you know, advancements in the press, for example. So again, here it’s an opportunity for you to perhaps pick up the phone send out an email sent out a card somethingto have some sort of a touchpoint thatyou noticed, right? And we could add foundations to that too, for the same purpose, right? We like. We like to keep in touch with foundations just like they’re people because they’re they’re staffed by people. So foundations that are funding you, you might find a reason to write to them and you’re not, uh you’re not sending ah, request for, you know, a grant grant proposal. Exactly. Okay, we pretty much have to leave it there. Maria. Excellent advice, as always. Thank you very much. You will find maria at the prospect finder dot com and also on twitter at maria simple. Thanks, maria. Thanks so much. Excellent. Um, i was reminded of that routing in the passion score. So cool, so cool. Got more live listener love here in the u s lynette singleton is listening from lawrenceville, georgia. I know that because she’s using the hashtag non-profit radio and we’re monitoring it here in the studio. Hello, lynette. Also east lansing, michigan. Alexandria, virginia live listener love to you, australia checking in craggy burn i loved that. Some of some of the towns in australia just wonderful. I met someone from blues bay ones just sounds so nice blue he’s bay she’s an artist but live listen love whether you’re in virginia, michigan, georgia or australia, i didn’t mention japan got a shoutout, japan lots of listeners from japan actually too many to name, so i’m just going to say konnichiwa next week. It’s merry christmas to those who celebrate christmas, i hope that everyone enjoys the holiday and time off with family. We will be back on january third with consultant janet folk she’s talking about your twenty fourteen media relations plan. Also, amy sample ward returns with best social media platforms to watch for in the new year you have my best wishes for a very, very happy and healthy new year. Really, i hope that it’s successful for you and i hope that you in the transition between years get to take a little time and reflect and i thank you very much for loving non-profit radio in twenty thirteen, thanks so much. Remember we’re brought to you by rally bound dot com and tb r si dot com that’s telephone bill reduction consulting they’re very good people. Please talk to them. Our creative producer is clear, meyerhoff. Sam liebowitz is our line producer. The show’s social media is by deborah askanase of community organizer two point oh, and the remote producer of tony martignetti non-profit radio is john federico. Of the new rules are music is by scott stein. Happy new year merry christmas, hope to see you with us on january third, twenty fourteen, one p, m eastern at talking alternative dot com. Didn’t didn’t. Didn’t dick tooting. Good ending? You’re listening to the talking alternate network, get in. Nothing. Cubine are you a female entrepreneur? Ready to break through? Join us at sixty body sassy sol, where women are empowered to ask one received what they truly want in love, life and business. Tune in thursday, said noon eastern time to learn tips and juicy secrets from inspiring women and men who dare to define their success. Get inspired, stay motivated and defying your version of giant success with sexy body sake. Soul. Every thursday ad, men in new york times on talking alternative dot com. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. You’re listening to talking alternative network at www dot talking alternative dot com, now broadcasting twenty four hours a day. The aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Fund-raising board relations. Social media, my guests and i cover everything that small and midsize shops struggle with. If you have big dreams and a small budget, you have a home at tony martignetti non-profit radio friday’s one to two eastern at talking alternative dot com. 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