Free Online Fundraising Tips

Network for Good has made a free set of tips for online fundraising available here. You have to fill out a brief form, but free is always a good price. If you're doing or contemplating more online fundraising, check it out!

Remote board participation

Let me start and the end and work back: Should board members be allowed/enabled to attend board meetings remotely by conference phone, conference video and/or Skype?

There's a confluence of events that's pushing us in this direction: A reduction in people's willingness to serve on boards resulting in a lessening of nonprofits dunning (or canning) board members who don't attend in person; the improvement of technology; the expansion of many nonprofits to multiple locations and, as a result, having board representation from those often disparate sites; top flight board members traveling for work less and being used to attending meetings electronically.

So, the next time you revise the part of your bylaws that deal with board attendance and quorums, should your nonprofit allow remote attendance? What's the impact on board cohesion and discussion? What's the policy impact? Is this simply inevitable?

I have a good friend who runs a large nonprofit in Virginia, one that recently merged with a nonprofit in another part of the state. Board members representing both service areas come to meetings with a video hook-up that's hosted at the agency location nearest to them. My friend notes that anyone doing this kind of thing needs a dedicated tech person at each site so that the staff or board members won't be distracted. My friend also feels the technology works well, dialogue is easy since everyone can see everyone else, and that it has increased attendance at meetings.

My question to him was, "..and what about the board member who is on the road and wants to attend via Skype?" He stopped and said, "We can accommodate that, but only to the point that our video screen fills up too much. We'll probably have to set a limit on that."

There you go. You don't want a future where board members never meet in groups, but at the same time, the trade off, if well done can benefit the organization tremendously by increasing board participation.

This will be interesting to watch unfold.

Webinar listing for February 2011

As regular readers know, having a culture of life-long learning is a key component of success for any nonprofit.

Leading that culture by example is the job of senior management.

"But I just can't get away right now" is the early foreshadowing of failure in this crucial area.

So, stay at your desk and choose one (or more) of over 30 webinars for nonprofits listed on the Wild Apricot Blog yesterday. A shout out to them for gathering all this information.

Go. Learn. Be brilliant......and show your staff that they should do the same.

Updates and reflections

I've had a week, no, ten days now sitting most of the day with my laptop in my, well, lap. I had surgery on January 4 (new hip) and am doing really well, thank you very much.

The reason I'm telling you that is that I've had LOTS of time to do two long delayed jobs: updating my website links and content, and starting a new book on nonprofit decision-making. The updating has allowed me to reflect and be yet again awed by how many thousands of resources are available online for nonprofits. To any of you under forty, this statement probably results in a "Yeah, so?" But to anyone over 50 who can still remember the 80's or early 90's, you are probably saying "Yeah!" because of how much improvement there has been.

And this spills over into the new book. When my first book, Mission-Based Management, was being researched in 1992-3, I did a quick (well, nothing was quick then) search on Compuserve (remember Compuserve?) for "nonprofit management" and found three (3), THREE titles, one of which was an early edition of Bruce Hopkins' terrific books on nonprofit law. There was nothing for nonprofit marketers (some stuff on fund-raising, but not on marketing) nothing on technology, nothing (NOTHING!) on nonprofit boards.

And to access the few books or papers that were there, anyone interested had to find a Foundation Center outpost at a regional or University library. If you didn't live in a town with one of these collections, you were screwed. Oh, these Foundation Center collections were also where you went if you wanted any information on the funding interests of a particular Foundation. Think how hard it had to be just to startup a nonprofit. Go google the search string "How do I start a nonprofit" and see what happens? I could darn near start a nonprofit from my house while recovering from surgery.

But back to books: If you go to Amazon.com right now and just look at the first page of results from a search for books in the area of "nonprofit management" you'll see twelve (of the 4,265 total hits) books that are ALL awesome. How wonderful for the sector.

My point is not how hard we old folks had it in the past. Rather, it's to celebrate how far we've come. If there are people who feel that nonprofits should be better managed (and trust me, that's a huge improvement in itself from 1985) and publishers who think that material will sell, it's because there's a demand for that message from board, staff and funders.

That said, with all this excellent information out there in print and online, we're confronted with the sad fact that there are still only 24 hours in the day. We can't just sit at our computers and read, or in our offices and read, or go to webinars, or look at HowCast videos. We have organizations to run.

We have all this amazing information at our fingertips that can improve our nonprofit's mission-capability and not enough time to use it all.

So what to do? My suggestion for nonprofit leaders is to set an example as a life-long learning and tell your staff that you expect them to do the same thing. Delegate the search for good ideas online and in print to all your staff (yes, all) and have regular discussions about what's been learned. You can have a book club, sure; they're great. But you can also have "website" clubs, or online magazine clubs, or .pdf article clubs, or webinar clubs where you all experience (read, listen, watch) the same thing and then discuss how to utilize what you've learned to the benefit of the people your organization serves.

Happy learning!

Your tax cuts to charity?

Interesting idea in an article today in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. A new site called Give It Back For Jobs is designed to help anyone who wants to to give their tax cut back. There's a method of calculating your tax benefits, and links to four charities as well as the option to name your own and do the donation right on the site.

As I say, interesting idea, and I hope it works!

Is there an app for common sense?

Got an iPhone? Want to make a donation to a worthy nonprofit via an app that the charity provides? No can do.

What? We're in an era where just about everything except using the toilet is migrating to smart phones and you can't donate from your phone? What's that about?

Well, ONLY if your smart phone is an iPhone, according to this article from the New York Times posted yesterday. An Android phone is fine. Hmmmm, and I thought Apple was always on the cutting edge of awesome.

This is ridiculous, and good for Beth Kanter for spearheading a movement to get it changed.

Many hands, light work

Most of us donate some of our time, talent and/or treasure to nonprofits.

In the treasure department, I'm all about aggregators for charity donations. Whether loans through Kiva, or direct donations through groups like DonorsChoose, or GlobalGiving, a group of us can help an individual or small group by each pitching in a few dollars. There are dozens of other sites like these, some that get a worthy social enterprise going, or a highly creative idea, like KickStarter.

So, we have a way to micro target our donations of money, but what about our time and talent? I can volunteer on a ton of websites, but that usually means the standard volunteer positions that take up a lot of time and require a longer commitment. What if I just have a little bit of time, or am interested in solving a vexing problem for a nonprofit?

Enter Sparked, a cool and growing solution for just this problem. Not only can your nonprofit post needs, or individuals (or small groups) provide help, but Sparked also encourages and facilitates small business and large corporations to facilitate volunteering through the site.

Very cool...check it out.

Innovation, Part 2

Earlier in the month, I neglected to post that the April edition of the Mission-Based Management Newsletter is up. This month, the newsletter covers the second part of a two-part series on Nonprofit Innovation.

Check it out, and remember to scroll down to see the topics of past newsletters over the years.

If you think you or your nonprofit could benefit from reading regularly, subscription is easy and free.

Kiva for college

Regular readers know I am big on aggregation models for philanthropy (as well as innovation). You take lots of people, ask each for a little bit and good things usually happen. Kiva led the way with this a few years back and now there are many similar programs, like SmallCanBeBig or WorldFlix. I'm sure there are many others by now, because the process works and the technology is there to enable the great idea.

I was watching a show on Hulu last night and this in-your-face ad popped up about someone who couldn't go to college because he couldn't pay the tuition.

All $700 of it.

That got my attention, as did the charity name: vittana.org So, I went, checked it out, looked for some background and found articles on it not only from the New York Times but also the Huffington Post.

As with Kiva, you lend money, though in this case to a non-US student (through an in-country intermediary). The student goes to school, hopefully graduates, gets a job and pays you back.

Are there issues of concern? Of course. But it's a great idea and another way to help international development.

The power of small donations

You may remember that in past postings, I've talked about the power of small donations, and how younger donors come with a network of friends who, if asked, can often make a $5 or $10 donation...instantly. 500 $10 donations total, of course $5,000, and may be a heck of a lot easier to get than one $5,000 gift.

A story in today's New York Times on the results of the many small fund-raising efforts for Haiti is a bit different, but related in the idea that small donations add up.

And, it's good news from the perspective of Americans' undying generosity.

More tech, more $ for Haiti

In yesterday's post, I noted that the majority of funds raised so far by international charities for Haiti relief had come online, as a reminder to all nonprofit s to make sure that they focus much of their fundraising online.

Today, the Chronicle of Philanthropy notes that, as of Friday, nearly $12M of the $150M received came through texting, "an unprecedented amount" according to the Chronicle.

Last night, I was watching an NFL playoff game and the announcers noted at least 4 times that viewers could donate $10 to the American Red Cross for Haiti relief simply by sending a text to 90999.

Wow. How many $10 donations went in right there and then?

And, I would put money on the fact that no 50 year old thought that up. Yet another reminder to empower your younger staff to get tech to help your mission.

Lessons for nonprofits from Haiti

Before we get to the point of this post, let's get to the real point:

If you and your friends, and their friends, and everyone's families haven't yet given to Haitian disaster relief, stop reading this and do it now.

Then, mark on your calendar to do it again in a month and again six months from now. Go. Now.

OK, you're back. Think back about what you just did or, if you had already given before you opened this post, what you did when you gave. If you're like many people, you just decided, "I'll give to X Charity." Then, you went online, pulled out your credit card and donated. Good for you.

If you're like many others, (including my wife and I) you were unsure which relief agency to support. Which organization will provide the most needed help right now? So, you may well have gone online, looked at different relief groups' websites, even checked them out on Guidestar.

But when all was said and done, you went back online, pulled out your credit card and donated. Again, good for you.

My point? You gave online. You wanted to help, help now, and a check in the mail just didn't cut it.

The data so far support this feeling: as of Friday, according to National Public Radio, over 80% of funds donated to the top 10 international relief organizations had come online. To be sure, a lot of paper checks are still in the mail and haven't been counted, but that percentage is still impressive.

There are two lessons for nonprofits from all this:

First, make sure your organization can accept donations easily online.

Second, a week ago, many nonprofit staff were bemoaning their situation vis a vis the economy. The pictures and stories from Haiti put that in a bit of perspective for all of us.

Building better websites

Regular readers know that I continue to push nonprofits on the fact that more and more people (and certainly EVERYONE under 35) will check your organization out (whether for donations, volunteer opportunities, job openings or actual service) online first and, perhaps, only.

Thus a key to nonprofit success is a great website. But where to start?

TechSoup (again) to the rescue. Here's a great article on Designing or Redesigning an Great Nonprofit Website.

Every nonprofit manager should read this, and then look at your own website!

Nonprofit Innovation

I'm involved with a very cool project on nonprofit innovation through the Kellogg Action Lab. I'll be posting in the coming months on what our work produces so that as many people as possible can share and benefit from it.

Our rules are pretty straightforward. First, we want to build a set of innovation engines that are replicable, scalable and usable in a variety of environments.

Second, none of the ideas (or innovation engines) that come through our project will need attribution--they will be open source and free to everyone.

Third, we're going to use the best in crowdsourcing to generate more innovation. This, to us, means at the local organization, community and national level.

Fourth, we don't care where the ideas come from: from the nonprofit world, the business community, students, private citizens. It doesn't matter.

The problems nonprofits face are hard ones to solve, so we need as many neurons as possible on the job to come up with new ideas and new approaches.

In related information, take a look at this article from on Lessons from Nonprofits on Innovation, then spend some time reading this article on crowdsourcing high end solutions from Wired. The first makes me happy to see someone acknowledge the innovation in our field, and has some good rules for all of us to follow. The second is flat awesome, with LOTS of lessons on the wisdom of crowds.

Expect more on innovation here soon, and often.

Mission-Based Management 3.0

In early March, I sent the text for the third edition of Mission-Based Management to John Wiley & Sons. If all goes well, the new edition will be out in the fall. I'm really pleased about the new content. In addition to updated stories, examples, and bringing the book up to speed for 2009 and beyond, I made two major changes in the theory of the book.

The first change was to add a tenth criterion to my Characteristics of Successful Nonprofits. Readers of either of the first two editions will remember that these characteristics laid the foundation for the rest of the book. The new characteristic, listed second after "A Viable Mission" is "Ethical, Accountable and Transparent". In the chapter on this subject I talk about not only the expectation for transparency and high values, but also how ethics, accountability and transparency begin inside the organization, between staff, between volunteers and between staff and volunteers. Placing this second after Mission, and before characteristics dealing with board, staff, marketing, technology, controls, strategy or finance, is intended to emphasize the importance of these issues in today's nonprofits. As I say in the book,

"The mission is why you do what you do. Your values are how you do it."

The second change is to ramp up the chapter on technology, and not just the content to catch up to changes since the Second Edition. Rather, I try to convey my deeply held belief that the future of philanthropy is in the successful merging of technology and mission. Thus, instead of just getting better at tech, instead of accepting that tech is here to stay, I labeled this characteristic

"Embracing Technology for Mission." And, that's what its going to take.

More on both of these issues in future posts, and I'll be previewing the entire book in posts starting around Labor Day.

Speaking of holidays, if you are here in the US, enjoy yours and remember those who have, and do, serve us so well.

Great new information on what makes a good website for donations

Here's some great material from Jakob Nielson's Alertbox on
Donor Usability on your website. A must read for anyone who is seeking to increase online donations...and who isn't?

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/nonprofit-donations.html

Good website challenge

Here's a great idea that can be used locally everywhere if you can find a local tech funder for the challenge.

GREAT idea!

http://www.pitchengine.com/nonprofitconversation/can-nerds-help-nonprofits--sierra-bravo-shows-nonprofit-conversation-how/4196/

Video, video and more video

I've been increasingly harping in my speeches to nonprofit managers about using video on their websites to tell their story. YouTube has brought down the required quality of video (which doesn't mean that you don't have to give it any thought), and that video is a, if not the, key communications tool to get and hold people's attention.

Like any other marketing tool, you need to focus your message: Who are you appealing to? Why? Is the video for donors, or to recruit the best volunteers? Does it tell you story to the press, or inspire people to seek employment with you. Just as in the case of written materials or website pages, one size does NOT fit all. Focus, focus, focus.

Here's a good starting how-to from Third Sector New England focused on fund-raising videos.

Here's another good article from TechSoup.

GoodEye Video works solely with nonprofits on video production.

Check out what's possible at DoGooderTV.

Cautionary tale: About four weeks ago, I was in Sarasota and met a staff member of the Dattoli Cancer Treatment Center. Went to their website and was really impressed with the story telling that the opening set of videos provides. Click on each of the vertical bars (such as "About our Team") to see more of the staff and hear about the center. For something like cancer treatment, this rocks: you see the people and hear more about the process. Bottom line: I loved it.

Then, I showed it to my two techie sons. Neither were impressed. One jumped on his iPhone to show me that when he went to the site, NOTHING came up---the page has not been configured to work with hand-held devices. My other son looked at the site and asked, how do I navigate AWAY from the video for more information? It was not intuitive for him.

Lesson: Make sure your video is useful on all parts of the web, and don't get so focused on its Wow! factor that you forget to make basic navigation easy.

All that aside, video rocks....why? It tells stories. About people. In ways that get to us.

Proof? Watch this: it's from an Easter Seals/ARC in northern Indiana. Tell me that this didn't affect you.

And, if you have videos you want to share, shoot me a note and I'll post them.

Green for the holidays...

No, not money--I know your nonprofit needs more green of that kind. But since we are in the middle of the holiday season, I thought I'd post some ways your nonprofit can save money and give a gift to everyone: greening your nonprofit.

This is, like so many things, the right thing to do and the smart thing to do.

Example: Chris and I moved into a 1992 vintage house in August of '07. Lots of energy drain due to poor maintenance from the prior owner. We've done the normal stuff--changed to florescent lights wherever possible, caulked, etc. So far, so good. Then, in August, our main heat pump failed (we have one for the main living area and a second one for the smaller guest area on the second floor.). We bought a highly energy efficient one. So far, in first four months of use, our BTU consumption for the house is down over 20%. And we know we can do better. It's one of our 2009 goals.

And, here's the thing: 20% is not an unusual savings nonprofits (and businesses). Look at your organization's energy costs for 2008. How would you like to save 20% of that to use for other mission needs? I'm sure most of you have started greening in your nonprofit. Good for you. Keep going. And, here are some resources to help you:

I wrote the April edition of the Mission-Based Management Newsletter on "Greening Your Nonprofit".

TechSoup has a list of 10 Resolutions to Green your Technology.

TechSoup also has a longer to-do list on greening your nonprofit.

A set of great ideas from The Nonprofit Center in Boston.

So, think about the gift that keeps on giving. Pushing the green envelope helps you in three ways: You help the planet (the right thing), you save money (the smart thing), and you steward your valuable resources to be able to do more mission (the best thing!).

A win-win-win.

2009 Nonprofit Accounting Software Review

Here's a terrific holiday gift for those who are thinking about updating their accounting software: a great review of nonprofit-specific accounting software from Anna Sheets at the CPA Technology Advisor.

Eleven different products are reviewed in depth. If you are thinking about investing in new software in 2009, this is for you.

Thanks, Anna!