Live Blogging for Nonprofits

Ah, social media! It's everywhere, all the time and frankly, loads of fun! Erik Evans joins us again with an article on live blogging during events. Haven't you noticed that at practically every conference you attend people are multi-tasking with their devices even as workshops are being conducted. Live blogging can help you keep your attendees focused on your organization and what's happening in real time. Thanks again Erik! Bunnie

Live Blogging for Nonprofits

by Erik Evans
Public Relations and Web Information, Sons of Norway

If last year’s election cycle taught non-profits nothing else, we learned that live blogging from an event is of great interest to the public at large. Whether it was on the campaign trail, at the RNC/DNC or even from the inauguration ceremony, people loved reading real-time accounts of an event they were unable to attend. The same can be said of an association or non-profit’s members.

For many of these two groups we often hear member comments about their regret in not being able to attend large events because they lived too far away, the cost of attendance were too high, etc. A good way to overcome this challenge is by taking a note from what we saw from the campaign trail and began blogging live from the events you host or sponsor.

For example, if you are hosting or sponsoring a big event, turn your blog into THE resource for up-to-date information about the event, which helps build excitement amongst your members/audience who were already planning to attend. Then, during the event, make live posts with real-time updates about what's happening at the event, issues being discussed, interviews of VIP's and post photos from social events.

It's an exciting challenge, but a challenge nonetheless. You'll learn quickly that if you are going to do this, you're often expected to be in more than one place at a time. For that reason alone, it’s best to try and plan out your days ahead of time and learn as much as you can about what’s going on when. Also, trying to carry a camera, laptop, assorted cables, etc. proved to be difficult and sometimes a hindrance as well.

In the end, though, it can be well worth the effort because of three important results you may see. First, it keeps non-attending members engaged in the event by making them feel like they were part of the experience. Second, by showing them all the fun and excitement they missed, you are showing that attendance is worth the travel and cost of attendance. Essentially, you are increasing the chances that these folks will attend in the future. Last of all, you have probably exposed a whole new group of people, those who read the blog but aren't members, to your organization in action. This kind of exposure can be very helpful in recruiting new members.This is especially true when you work with the event planners to get into places/meet VIP's that most attendees can’t, then blog about it. It’s like giving your readers a proverbial backstage pass, which engages and entices them to participate in the future.

Also, I've learned that blogging live from events can stretch your current sponsorship budget even further. You see, blogging about an event you sponsor can be just as valuable to the planners as a cash contribution because it can lend weight and added credibility. The best part is that the cost is minimal on your part and it’s something you should probably be doing anyhow.

In the end blogs can serve a lot of purposes, all of which help strengthen a non-profit and increase interaction with its members.

To learn more about live-blogging, or using other forms of social media as a resource, contact Erik Evans at eevans@sofn.com.

Friendraising

Nonprofits can't afford to do business as usual, they have to get creative and try new strategies. When I came across Jenifer Daniel's website and I saw that she calls herself a "friendraiser" I was fascinated. What does that mean? Jenifer explains below that friendraising is all about cultivating relationships not just donations. Bunnie

In the past few years, nonprofits had experienced healthy growth in terms of dollars raised. The industry saw record years for fundraising across America with natural disasters and free flowing credit. However, the current recession is presenting challenges for all organizations.

Organizations must now deal with shrinking donations and reductions in services. Many arts and culture organizations are on the brink of collapse with some even closing their doors.

Now more than ever, nonprofits need friends. Unfortunately, most do not know or understand the strategic ways in which they could obtain them.

I have worked on developing strategies that help organizations transition their fundraising activities to friendraising activities such as: obtaining new friends, educating them on your mission, mobilizing them to act as advocates and acknowledging their efforts for doing so.

Obtaining New Friends

Easier said than done right? Not necessarily so. With the rise of social networks, it is easier than ever to find and cultivate new friends. The problem is that most groups don’t know how to use social networking effectively. Some groups believe that ‘virtual friends’ aren't friends at all. But they are incorrect. Virtual friends function in a world that is unfamiliar to nonprofit organizations. NPs are so used to doing the work of their surrounding community that they miss the virtual community.

Some of these new friends belong to multiple networks, have several email accounts and have lived in several states before the age of 35. These virtual friends are ripe for the picking and they are multi-taskers – the perfect new friend to have for the longevity of your organization.
You want these new friends in your fold. You will benefit from them today by cultivating new avenues of fundraising, developing a service minded volunteer core and as future potential leaders for your board.

Educating Your Friends

What good is it to obtain the friends if you don’t include them in your mission? You should be using this time to educate them. Host them in your location, tell them what you do and explain to them how vital it is in the community. They will see that their participation is needed and required and they will do what they need to make sure that your organization survives. Educating your friends expands your staff exponentially.

Mobilizing Current Friends

Now that you have obtained and educated these new friends, how will you use them? Hopefully for the betterment of your organization. You should use these new friends to help you promote your mission. For instance, if your group operates a museum, you should have a ‘young friends’ group to help introduce your museum to young people. This introduction begins a lifelong relationship and helps you bring others into the fold. Then they tell all of their ‘friends’ through Twitter and Facebook that they are hanging out at the local museum – this sparks interest among a group with whom you had no knowledge of before.

You should also mobilize your friends as advocates. When you know your funding is on the chopping block – use these educated friends to mobilize on your behalf. When your organization asks for continued support from the county or state – letters or emails from hundreds of your friends speaks volumes.

Acknowledging Your Friends

Now that you’ve obtained your friends and they’ve done some work on your organization’s behalf – it’s time to thank them. And I know that your budget is crunched so don’t think that you have to throw a big soiree –but you do have to honor their participation.

Offer your friends lifetime memberships at discounted rates, give them a special bumper sticker acknowledging that there are a ‘friend’ (see the AMIGO campaign from the Latin American Coalition in Charlotte, NC http://www.latinamericancoalition.org) and keep a printed running list of your ‘friends’ in the same way that you acknowledge your new donors. Show your friends that you value their time as much as you do their donation.

Remember, friendraising is a strategic process and much more involved than this blog article, but it is a necessity. And in hard times like this – it’s good to have friends.
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jenifer daniels – jenifer daniels is the "friendraiser" – a nonprofit management consultant based in Charlotte, NC. She specializes in community relations, grassroots advocacy, trainings and workshops and signature events. To find out more about her – visit her site http://www.jeniferdaniels.com/ or tweet with her at http://www.twitter.com/thefriendraiser

Creative Conference Planning

by Bunnie Riedel, Host of Nonprofit Conversation

I’m hearing it from everybody. Conference attendance is down. Conference sponsorship is down. Conference revenues are suffering. And if your organization relies on conference revenue as an income generator, these are scary times. Are there some things you can do to adjust how you create and budget for your conference so that at the end of the day you won’t be hit so hard?

Think about the barriers to conference attendance. Many organizations, businesses and most government agencies have scaled back travel budgets. What changes can you make in your conference to accommodate these reductions?

Location, location, location

Where do you normally hold your conferences? First tier cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami or Philadelphia? First tier cities pose a challenge because room rates are typically much higher. Could you hold your conference in a second tier city such as Sacramento or Reno or Richmond or Dayton? Will you find less competition in these cities and more cooperation from the convention and visitors bureaus? Is the city willing to “throw in” incentives for your bringing your conference to them? Perhaps free space at their convention center or special accommodations at city owned attractions such as the museum or the zoo or perhaps free bus transportation to special events?

The only caution I will provide in looking at second tier cities is sometimes (not always) airfare is more expensive and direct flights are harder to find. But other than that, I have always found that the smaller cities are very willing to go the extra mile to make sure they win conference contracts for their hotels.

Do you really need to have a national conference?

National conferences are wonderful because they bring your members together in one place. But, if your attendance has been waning, perhaps it’s time to think about smaller regional conferences. Perhaps it’s time to take the conference to the membership with conferences that could draw attendees within driving distance from surrounding regional areas. It’s like breaking up the conference into manageable bits. Let’s say rather than a four or five day conference, you create several two to three day conferences. You lower the actual conference registration rate, provide trade show vendors with the opportunity to show at one or several “regionalized” conferences (package deals) and increase overall attendance because more people can attend these regional events than the one large national conference.

Lower your overhead

Do you really need to serve all those cookies at the break or could you just serve coffee, water and sodas? Will people be offended? Not usually. Especially if they understand that your trimming back is part of the organizational trimming back. Members actually like when the organization is spending their membership dollars wisely. By the way, never-ever buy the “tea,” you will be paying $65-$85 per gallon of hot water with very few people actually using the tea bags. Or if you live in a country where you absolutely have to have tea as a beverage option, negotiate that you will only pay for tea bags that have actually been used.

Can you negotiate meals with the hotel? I once booked a cruise on the Potomac as our conference party and was able to afford it because I negotiated a lunch menu rather than a dinner menu. It dropped the cost per attendee from $75 per person to $35 per person. And guess what? Nobody noticed that the chicken entrée wasn’t a dinner entrée but instead the luncheon entrée.

Can you contact members with an online brochure? Do you really need to print the brochure? And if you really do need to print it, can you print it two color rather than four? One of my favorite tricks is to use lighter weight paper, it reduces mail cost.

Is it possible to replace staff with volunteers so you can reduce travel costs and staff hours (and potential overtime)?

Is it time to move from a cloth conference bag to a plastic one, can you use clip on badges rather than lanyards, do you really need to provide a notepad to every attendee?

Did you know that people really do like the “dinner on your own” night? That way they can have time with friends and catch up with one another.

Can you combine special events? Perhaps you can combine an awards ceremony with the keynote luncheon.

I’m not saying be cheap, I am saying be frugal. And right now, as we see all across the globe, “frugality” is in style.

Offer special registration incentives

Make sure your early bird registration is discounted enough from regular registration to make it attractive (and do have an early bird registration, it helps so much in conference planning). Offer a special discount to attendees coming from the same organization or business. Perhaps one at full price and the other 25% off; two at full price and two at 50% off, etc. Have a contest: those organizations or businesses sending the most attendees will receive a certain number of free conference registrations next year (and include hotel expenses). Offer a discount on membership with each registration, combine the package: membership = $100 and conference = $100, combine them for $135.

Make sure your trade show vendors also receive special perks

You can hang on to charging $2,000 for a booth or you can charge $1,200 and have more vendors. And while the cost of drayage will be more overall (more booths), at least you will have a trade show that will be worth attending and your vendors will be more likely to come.

Remember that trade show cotton candy is the attendees’ list. Don’t scrimp on that, these vendors have paid to be at your trade show give them the attendees list, with phone numbers included, and I prefer email addresses but some organizations have policy against that. Combine your trade show charges with advertising charges and provide a discount.

Start early

A previous post discussed negotiating with hotels and recommended you always be looking three or so years in advance. The same with conference publicity, let your members know where your conferences are going to be and when, well in advance. Having advance notice allows attendees to budget for the cost of attendance or make special arrangements with their organization or business.

I hope these tips help you in conference planning. Re-thinking how you “do” conference can save you quite a bit of money and increase attendance.

Contact Bunnie info at riedelcommunications dot com

Ideas That Work--Donor Relations

When it comes to fundraising, there are two schools of thought. One, just throw enough spaghetti at the wall, something will stick. Two, be precise and work smart. Lawrence Henze lays out the second (and more effective) approach. Read his article and then take a few minutes to take inventory, are you spaghetti or are you working smart? Bunnie

Ideas That Work--Donor Relations

by Lawrence Henze
Managing Director of Target Analytics
Blackbaud

Regardless of the state of the economy, I find that the majority of colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations I interact with do not have an accurate reading on the number of communications initiated by them with each of their constituency groups in any given year. Are you able to answer that question, not just for areas of your own responsibility, but for the institution as a whole? Is it not reasonable to assume that the relationship any individual has with the organization is impacted by the entirety of the messaging he or she receives?

There are many historical reasons that explain why we don’t look at the length and breadth of our donor communications. These include but are not limited to:

1. A narrow view of donor relations focusing on communications directly related to fundraising efforts

2. A siloed approach to the structure of our development operations which encourages compartmentalized communication plans

3. The willingness to not account for, or even seek, the donor’s opinions of all of our communication streams

I am frequently bombarded by three, four, or five direct mail contacts per month from organizations I support with my gifts, particularly during peak fundraising months, such as October or November. I wonder if anyone in that organization is aware of that number, or is interested in knowing what I think of the frequency of these contacts?

My thoughts rest on simple solutions the organization could employ:

1. Determine and chart the average number of contacts — direct mail, telephone, and email — the different constituents receive from your organization each month for the entire year. Move outside your own area of operations to view the entirety of its communications stream from your organization as a whole

2. Analyze the content and purposes of each communication and chart accordingly (for example, cultivation, solicitation, information, or recognition)

3. Identify areas in which these communications overlap, looking for opportunities to consolidate or eliminate individual pieces

4. Ask your donors, through surveys via email, direct mail, or the telephone, which communications they value, as well as those that are not personally important to them

5. Implement a communication plan reflecting the donor’s wishes

Remember that knowledge is both powerful and enabling, and the insights your donors and prospect share with you create opportunities for stronger relationships. Do not assume that an individual’s request to receive fewer communications is a sign of declining interest in your organization. It is equally, if not more, likely to be a thoughtful response indicating the elements of your mission that are of particular interest, thus defining that person as a better prospect. In the end, fewer touch points may create a more meaningful relationship, particularly if you communicate your interest in being more cost effective.

Finally, special events often serve a dual purpose of building donor relationships and ongoing fundraising. During a recession, you may want to think twice about introducing new special events, particularly those of the “gala” genre. And take a look at ongoing events as well to ensure that these activities are successfully addressing stated goals. For example, if the primary purposes of your annual ‘Harvest Ball’ are to cultivate and solicit major donor prospects, and if you observe little post-event staff interaction with attendees, it may be time for a makeover.

In all honesty, my personal and professional bias is that most events lose focus over time. Recession or not, it is a worthwhile undertaking to annually review each event to ensure that its original goals and objectives are being met. Are you seeing growth in annual and major giving from event attendees, or doesn’t their giving match the event fee?

Perhaps this is a topic worthy of its own paper for another time.

Find Blackbaud at http://www.blackbaud.com