Safe Kids Worldwide works with a network of more than 600 coalitions in the United States and with partners in 23 countries around the world to reduce injuries from motor vehicles, sports, drownings, falls, burns, poisonings and more. They’re not focused on skinned knees, bruised shins and scraped elbows; those are the telltale signs of a curious child, exploring the world, pushing limits and seeking adventure. But there are things parents and kids can all do to ensure that those bumps and bruises don’t turn into more disabling injuries and deaths.

The five leading causes of injury-related child deaths by age group, United States, 2010. Credit: CDC

Safe Kids categorizes injuries by where they occur: in the home, in the car and on the road, or during sports and play. This approach has allowed them to draw a linear correlation between the problem and their impact, essentially laying out the groundwork for their programs. These programs include research, education and awareness, and public policy, each devoted to specific areas of injury.

Safe Kids Day & Campaign

The success of their programs sparked a brainstorm and it became clear that their risk areas had one thing in common: they’re all preventable.

“We don’t want any parent to have to endure the loss of a child,” said Kate Carr, president and CEO of Safe Kids Worldwide. “That’s why we’re launching Safe Kids Day – a day for communities to come together, raise awareness and get involved so we can ensure that all children around the world have the chance to grow up healthy and safe, and do all the great things kids were meant to do.”

From here, Safe Kids combined their organization goals to form the objective of Safe Kids Day: to raise awareness around injury prevention as a cause.

They began reaching out to their network to build Safe Kids Day events in cities nationwide, creating a campaign from the bottom up. Powered by local Safe Kids Coalition Coordinators, events and information are handled on a city-by-city basis and communities are engaged in unique ways. Families can take part in the Safer in 7 challenge as well. Supporters can find events in their area here.

Each event is different. For example, Safe Kids Day California is focusing their activities on drowning prevention and water safety, since drowning is the leading cause of death among California’s toddlers and preschoolers. They cite that “statewide, 78% of drowning deaths occur in children under the age of 5. In California every year, 75 families lose a child under the age of 5 to drowning. That’s about three empty kindergarten classrooms.” They will use funds raised during Safe Kids Day to support the injury prevention activities of 18 Safe Kids coalitions across the state.

Attracting Sponsors

Safe Kids Day would not be possible without the support of the organization’s extended network. According to Safe Kids, they started by sharing the idea of Safe Kids Day with their current supporters and board members. From there, the organization presented Safe Kids Day to several companies.

Many were intrigued and wanted Safe Kids to share their results after the first year. While the majority of companies who are supporting Safe Kids Day have worked with the organization in the past, there are several new companies who are sponsoring this initiative. For a list of sponsors, click here.

Insider Insights

How to Attract Major Sponsors, from the Safe Kids Team

 
1. 1. Make sure your staff and board understands the idea and supports it. Ask them to talk to their friends, family and colleagues about it. The best leads come from the most unexpected places.

 

2. 2. Follow up on every lead. Every conversation helps your cause in some way.

 

3. 3. Listen to what corporate prospects say about the event. Is your presentation confusing? Is the event concept hard to grasp? If possible, refine your pitch and your concept to address these issues.

 

4. 4. Be able to articulate in detail the benefits of sponsorship to companies and philanthropic organizations. How many people will your event/marketing reach? How will their logo be promoted? This is very important and potential sponsors will ask about it, so figure out benefits at different giving levels ahead of time.

 
GET INVOLVED with Safe Kids Day]

Title Image Credit: Safe Kids Worldwide

But even though nearly everyone recognizes the importance of establishing an online fundraising presence, not everyone pulls it off equally well! In fact, a lot of organizations struggle with some of the basic elements of maintaining an effective online fundraising program. We’ve listed out 5 nonprofit website mistakes that can tank your online fundraising. Make sure you don’t fall into one of these traps!

1. Hidden Donate Button

This one is obvious, but not so obvious that it’s no longer worth pointing out! Don’t bury your donate button. The harder it is to find, the harder it will be for supporters to actually make a gift to your organization. It’s not rocket science, we know. Believe it or not though, we see nonprofit websites all the time that completely obscure access to the donate button. That’s not good.

You should have your donate button placed prominently “above the fold” (so you don’t have to scroll down the screen to see it). And it should be easy for people to find. That way, you aren’t getting in your own way when someone comes to your site with the intention of making a gift. Here are a few well-designed nonprofit websites: Invisible Children, Red Cross, Splash. See how long it takes you to find the donate button on each one.

Moving beyond the basics, you shouldn’t be satisfied with just placing your donate button in a prominent location and moving on. You should be actively looking for ways to improve conversions. With the rise of A/B testing software (our favorite is Optimizely) you can easily test different variations without any programming knowledge. Do conversions improve when you change the text on your donate button? The color? Its location on the page? These are all things you can easily test to find the optimal spot for your donate button. Take another look at the Splash website, not only do they use a sharp color contrast to draw attention to their donate button, but they’ve also altered the standard text.

2. Confusing Donation Form

Your first step is making people aware that there’s an option to donate through your nonprofit’s website. Your next step is making the process of donating as painless as possible. That’s why multiple step forms are a bad idea. The more hoops you make people jump through before they can actually make a donation, the fewer donations you will get. Again, not rocket science!

One step forms that are simple, clean, and match your branding are optimal for conversions. We’ve written before about how a branded donation form can actually result in increased average donation size, but branded forms also help with conversions. When you send someone to a non-branded donation form it’s visually jarring. It naturally invites the visitor to reconsider whether or not they want to take the next step in the process. By contrast, a branded form fits in visually with the prior flow of pages on your website. It doesn’t stick out to the user, and you get less of a second-guessing effect when people hit the page.

Also, to extend the testing idea from above, you should be testing your donation checkout form in order to maximize conversions. With nonprofit fundraising software that integrates with analytics platforms like Google Analytics, it’s possible to track the number of people that hit your checkout page and actually complete a gift. With this setup in place, you can swap out colors, images, text, and gift amounts to see if they impact your donation conversion rate.

3. Beginning and Ending with Donations

Up until now we’ve been talking about accepting online donations through your website. And that’s a logical starting point for a discussion about online fundraising. The ability to accept gifts through your nonprofit’s website is really the first thing you need to have any sort of online fundraising presence to speak of. That being said, you shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that your engagement options begin and end with donations. They don’t.

The focus on donation buttons and donation form optimization can lead you to imagine that your average website visitor is someone ready and willing to make a donation. If you just get the placement, colors, and text right you can capitalize on as many of those visitors as possible and increase donations! The only problem with this picture is that it doesn’t actually match reality. Sure some subset of your visitors will come to your website with the intent to make a gift, but that won’t usually be the case. People rarely act in such a linear fashion. They may be visiting to gather more information, to get contact information, to scope volunteer opportunities, or for another reason.

As far as your online fundraising is concerned, you should make sure that your website has a variety of engagement opportunities to cater to the diversity of your visiting audience. Have soft options like signing up for a newsletter or subscribing to your blog as well as options that require more commitment, like making a donation, starting a fundraising page, or signing up to volunteer. You don’t want to lose a chance to engage someone because you’re too narrowly focused on donations. When you can engage someone (even if they don’t give to you) you’re more likely to turn that person into a donor later.

New Organ is one of many organizations that now offers a permanent fundraising option on its website.

It’s also worth mentioning that organizations are increasingly adding year-round fundraising options to their websites to provide additional engagement options. This allows supporters who may not want to make a simple donation to fundraise for your nonprofit instead. This strategy has proven especially effective with younger supporters, but it can appeal to anyone. There are lots of people that would rather dedicate their birthdays, anniversaries, sporting events, or other life milestones to your nonprofit than make a donation. Fundraising requires deeper engagement and can feel more personal and fulfilling to supporters.

4. Failing to Follow Up

Whether you get a website visitor to make a donation, create a fundraising page, or signup for a newsletter, you should always have some sort of follow up. Using email automation software, you can easily create messages to go out supporters after they pass through one of these conversion points. But does this really matter to your online fundraising?

You might think, hey “so-and-so” already made a gift and got an auto-receipt, I don’t have to do anything else. The problem with this approach is that it weakens your relationship with a supporter that has already shown you they care enough to make a gift. This makes it much more likely that the person will be a one and done donor. You want repeat donors. And that means including personal touches.

No one likes to feel like they have sent money down a black hole. By scheduling a personalized email follow up to go out to new donors and fundraisers you well help provide the recognition that sets the stage for repeat support.

5. Not Focusing on Creating Value for Others

As we’ve already mentioned people come to your website for a variety of different reasons (usually not to make a donation). Your website should hold value for visitors that aren’t intending to make a gift. Educational resources, an interesting blog, a vibrant member community, these are all ways to offer value to people through your website.

Valuable content helps to drive traffic to your website, and it gives visitors something to do when they get there (aside from supporting you financially). When you focus on creating value for your visitors you give them something helpful to interact with before they are ready to give. You also create reasons for them to come back and visit you again and again. For instance if you regularly produce interesting articles on your nonprofit blog, your supporters will naturally be more inclined to come back to your website. Each time you get them back you have another opportunity to build the relationship, and hopefully, convert them into a donor or fundraiser.

The point is that your focus cannot exclusively be around optimizing your donation flow or your fundraising calls to action. Your website should offer real value to those who visit it. That’s how you build traffic and get people coming back. And both those things are necessary if you expect to grow the volume of donations you bring in through your website.
 

Photo Credits (in order): Flickr User Rhys Asplundh, Flickr User Thomas Hawk, Flickr User golbenge, New Organ, Flickr User RiverCrouchWalker

Same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts on May 17, 2004, as a result of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. This marked Massachusetts as the sixth jurisdiction in the world to legalize same-sex marriage and the first U.S. state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

 
There has since been a dramatic change in fundamental social attitudes towards same-sex marriage, with the Massachusetts ruling being a significant catalyst. As Yale Law professor William Eskridge puts it, “LGBT people have moved from outlaws to in-laws in a generation.”

 
Progress made for the gay rights movement since May 17, 2004 can be tracked in many ways, but notably through the number of states following in the footsteps of Massachusetts and the rise in public onion favoring the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Since 1996, public support for same-sex marriage has risen 26 points, with a major rise between 2004 (32%) and 2013 (58%). During this time, the number of states to legalize same sex marriage has gone from one in 2004 to twelve in 2013. Most recently was on Tuesday, May 14, when Governor Mark Dayton signed the bill and made Minnesota the first Midwestern state to pass gay marriage through a legislative vote.

A closer look at the Marriage Equality Progress Infographic

 
“As more and more LGBTQ people come out, the American public is realizing that we don't have anything to be afraid of. For a long time, people opposed to LGBTQ rights used divisive, polarizing language to talk about these issues, and what we're seeing now is the reality that the power of love is greater than the power of fear,” said Zach Wahls, an advocate for marriage equality, an Eagle Scout and the founder of Scouts for Equality.

 
“A big part of this movement began when Massachusetts became the first state to ‘come out’ for marriage equality. Just as we see the positive effect of LGBTQ people coming out, Massachusetts sent a powerful message,” he added.

 
Learn More: 12 States That Will Probably Legalize Gay Marriage in 2013-2014

 
“Our work isn't over yet, but it's definitely aided by the fact that today, we find ourselves in a feedback loop, where more folks are becoming accepting of LGBTQ people, so more LGBTQ people come out, and as more LGBTQ people come out, folks become more accepting,” said Wahls.

Support Organizations Accelerating This Movement
The Trevor Project
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)
Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD)

 
 
Title Image: Flickr User kevin dooley

Director of Customer Growth

 
Full Webinar Available at Bottom of Post
 
There’s a lot of data out there about fundraising best practices – everything from conventional metrics like new donor acquisition and dollars raised, to more out-of-the-box concepts like how the delivery of fundraising incentives can affect fundraiser behavior. We do our best to present a lot of this information on our blog, but it’s difficult for a reader to distill a large volume of content (especially since it’s distributed across many pages). And that’s where webinars can really help. They provide a nice format to condense a lot of this best practice information into a digestible 45-minute timeframe.

We recently had the opportunity to partner with the Run Walk Ride Council on a webinar to share tips and best practices in Peer-to-Peer fundraising with nonprofit leaders from across the country. As the registrations began rolling in, it became clear that this would be no ordinary webinar. Among the registrants, were representatives from some of the most respected fundraising organizations around: Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, Team in Training, MADD, American Cancer Society, Alzheimer’s Association, Livestrong, and Wounded Warrior Project to name a few. It was a veritable “who’s who” of endurance fundraisers. At the end of the day, the interaction between all present turned out to be really great. Everyone, including us, walked away with some valuable insights.

Here are the top 5 takeaways from the session:

1. Break the Campaign up into Manageable Parts

Producing a Peer-to-Peer campaign that raises hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars can seem like a daunting task depending on your level of experience and the resources at your disposal. By breaking the campaign into manageable sections, and more importantly, achievable milestones, you will make it a lot easier to meet, and even exceed, your goals.

For example, how many supporters can you get to create fundraising pages, and by when? How many of them can you get to raise money, and what should the individual goal be? At what point should you shift your focus from getting people to start fundraising towards helping active fundraisers achieve their goals?

The timeline below outlines the campaign “phases” we recommend, and the webinar goes into even more detail, but you can help yourself out by planning specific milestones for each phase of the campaign and defining what “success” looks like at each stage.

2. Focus Your Marketing Efforts

Every donor or fundraiser has his or her own perspective and level of commitment. Make sure you’re communicating with each type of participant in a way that’s meaningful to them. Small donors, large donors, active fundraisers, and those who expressed interest but have been unsuccessful raising money each have their own set of concerns and challenges. Develop communication strategies that will help each of these groups feel good about their involvement, and empower them to contribute as much as they possibly can. Providing sample appeal letters or social media posts, educating them about the cause, and helping them compile lists of likely donors are just some of the things you can do to ensure fundraiser success. Weekly meetings and phone calls go a long way too!

3. Coach Your Fundraisers (Be Hands-On)

Donors give to people, not causes. With P2P fundraising, donors are giving because their friend or family member asked them to – in essence they are recommending your organization to their networks. Make sure your relationship with your fundraisers is strong, and that they have everything they need to be successful. Provide them with information about the cause, and work with them to develop their own, individualized strategy for reaching their fundraising goal. To help you out, we’ve created a free resource that nonprofits can share with their supporters to help them become better fundraisers.

4. Fundraising Incentives are NOT All Created Equal

Prizes, contests, and gifts for donations all make fantastic incentives, and they can go a long way towards helping your campaign raise more money and build community. However, if done poorly, these incentives can actually inhibit your efforts. Make sure that you frame incentives in a way that reinforces a connection to the cause. You aren’t giving someone a free t-shirt, you’re allowing supporters to spread awareness and become more effective activists. When you cast incentives in a way that aligns with your mission, you can more effectively boost engagement (and fundraising totals!).
 

5. Maximize Long-Term ROI

No campaign (even a Run Walk Ride event) happens in a vacuum. It’s important to look at how each campaign relates to the others in your annual fundraising cycle. And it’s important to measure your campaign ROI, not just from a financial standpoint, but by looking at how many new donors you acquired, and how many new people you reached, even if they didn’t end up giving. It’s also crucial to provide these people with additional ways to get involved. Thank them, share the impact their efforts have helped you achieve, and direct them towards year-round fundraising opportunities that they can manage on their own, like pledging an upcoming birthday or holiday party, doing another race, or becoming a volunteer. Creating a year-round fundraising community on your website will provide an avenue for your supporters to remain engaged between campaigns and empower them to take independent action like never before!

Creating a permanent fundraising option on your website opens up new engagement opportunities for supporters.

The feedback we’ve gotten post-webinar has been fantastic, and we’re planning many more webinars like this one in the coming months (so stay tuned!). In the meantime though, we invite you to check out the recording of this one. Just click below to get the full video and download the presentation slides!

 
 
We offer bi-weekly webinars highlighting the best ways to leverage our fundraising platform, and present “special” webinars like this one, featuring the top minds in the nonprofit sector at least once a month. Just subscribe to the blog to stay up to date with all upcoming sessions.

Photo Credit: Flickr User Akash k

Ross Campbell

UX Developer

StayClassy is an online fundraising platform for nonprofits.

Since you’re already reading this blog post, that fact may seem relatively trivial.  It’s important to note, however, that we are a fundraising platform for more than one nonprofit. When we build new features and design new interactions, we’re very aware that what we build needs to work for many different organizations, both big and small.

That being said, there are some common techniques and best practices that we’ve come to favor because they happen to work exceptionally well for our diverse client-base. Today, I want to focus on one of these design patterns: providing immediate feedback.

This particular pattern is rather self-explanatory, but at the risk of stating the obvious… it’s all about giving immediate feedback to the people using our site. We use feedback loops to reinforce desired actions and to round out communication with our users.  In fact, this design element is integrated into everything from our donation checkout forms to our automated email communications,. Let’s start by taking a peek at how we use immediate feedback to enhance the checkout experience.

Provide immediate feedback to reinforce desired actions.

One example of “immediate feedback” design that we’ve implemented on StayClassy is the donation bar on our fundraiser checkout pages.  The bar shows the amount of money raised for a given fundraiser, a great way to remain transparent about funds raised and to encourage giving.

More importantly, however, as one selects a donation amount on the page, the goal bar dynamically adjusts to show the “impact” of your donation.  If you change your mind and choose a larger donation amount, the bar will nudge closer to the fundraising goal.

Technically speaking, this isn’t a complex effect to produce.  But from a personal interaction standpoint, there are huge gains to be had by responding immediately to a donor’s actions. It’s a playful behavior, but it also transforms an abstract dollar amount into a tangible level of progress. It moves the bar forward, and edges the fundraiser closer to completion.  By coupling this responsive goal bar with the picture and name of the individual fundraiser, it’s almost as though you can hear the fundraiser saying, “Thank you so much!  Your donation will get me ‘70%’ of the way to my goal.”

Check out charity:water’s pledge your birthday page, for another good example of how immediate feedback can be used to reinforce desired actions. When you fill in your info and pledge to fundraise on your birthday, a few things happen. After you put in your birthday the screen automatically displays the number of other people with that birthday that have already pledged their support. Then after you’re finished putting your information in and prompted to share on social media, the total tally of “Birthdays Pledged” goes up by one. All of this feedback subtly reinforces the fact that you are joining a community of other like-minded individuals. Similar effects might be added to volunteer signup forms, petition signups, or email list signups to improve conversions.

 Support instant feedback with supplementary communication

Feedback doesn’t just need to exist on a single page.  Our system has been constructed to send automated emails when certain interactions happen on our site (when donations are received, for instance).  As a charity, this gives you insight into the level of donations that you’re receiving.  As a donor you receive a receipt and thank you email after you complete your gift.

So why are reinforcing emails important? Well for one thing, interactions over the Internet are, to a large degree, impersonal and abstract. Although this is hard to completely overcome, using email communication to integrate personal touches into your web presence can help humanize and personalize the process. An action, like a donation, deserves thanks and should receive thanks. Using an email platform to schedule an automated (but personalized) message a few days after a donation is made is a great way to add another level of communication to reinforce and express gratitude for the gifts you receive.

The same types of triggered communications can also be applied to other interaction points on your website. To continue the charity:water example from before, once you signup to pledge your birthday, not only are you reinforced on the page, but you also get an auto-email thank you. Then when your birthday nears you get additional auto-emails to remind you and prompt you to take action on your pledge. The point is that actions on a website don’t happen in a vacuum and when you can reinforce them with personalized email messages you’ll improve retention and future conversions.

Actually, your follow up doesn’t even have to be automated or confined to the Internet. One of our recent blog posts highlighted the tremendously positive effect that personal phone calls can have on donor loyalty.  We take this for granted in the offline world, but the principle extends to our online world as well.  And your outreach doesn’t just need to end with “thank you” messages to donors.  A personally styled message asking for feedback, or providing news and updates to contact information, can go a long way to reinforcing supporters’ commitment to your organization.

Parting Thoughts

They key takeaway here is that using design elements to integrate instant feedback for your supporters can be enormously beneficial.  You can implement this feedback online, on your websites, blogs, and social media, or you can implement supplementary forms of communication like automated emails, personal messages, and even phone calls.

These feedback loops add an incredible sense of liveliness to any process or set of interactions.  For your organization, this means that donors and supporters will be able to participate at a much more engaged level.  Increased engagement is precisely what you want because it helps foster passion and excitement around you and your organization.  So take a few minutes to find areas on your website where you can incorporate instant feedback or supplementary communications.  Start small and incorporate a few feedback strategies into your current offerings.  Of course, feel free to implement the above examples or branch out with your own techniques.  And be sure to let us know of what you come up with!
 

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Image Credit: Flickr User Dominic’s Pics

As tends to happen with most social phenomena, similar patterns replicate themselves online. Take a look through your group of Facebook friends and you’ll undoubtedly notice that some of them have impressively high numbers of online contacts. More often than not, these people also tend to be the most prolific information sharers.

So, how can you effectively leverage these influencers to help propel your fundraising and awareness building efforts?

We’ve broken down a couple ways you can target social media influencers to help spread your message online.

In Network Influencers vs. Out of Network Influencers

To start with, let’s make a basic distinction between what we’ll call “In-Network” and “Out-of-Network” influencers. Your In-Network influencers are the people that are actually in your current social media following. These are supporters that have high numbers of friends relative to your average social media follower and/or that tend to share content more frequently.

Out-of-Network influencers, as you’ve probably guessed, are social media influencers that are outside of your current following. How you define an Out-of-Network influencer is really up to you, but you’ll basically be looking for two things: (i) large numbers of followers and (ii) some connection to your work or cause. When it comes to Out of Network influencers, it’s ultimately up to you to decide who you might realistically be able to draw a response from. Depending upon your organization’s size and influence, you could be targeting anyone from local activists to A-List celebrities.

With that distinction drawn, let’s look at a couple of ways you can use influencers to enhance your online efforts…

Using In-Network Influencers to Improve Your Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

A well-balanced online fundraising program will consist of a year-round rolling peer-to-peer option with anywhere from 2-4 shorter p2p campaigns layered on top throughout the year (with shorter campaigns typically lasting no more than 90 days).

Each time you launch one of these shorter fundraising campaigns, you will go through a similar set of experiences as you plan, launch, and see the campaign through to a (hopefully) successful conclusion. We’ve summarized the stages of a peer-to-peer campaign before, but here they are again so everyone is on the same page.

After you finish planning your campaign (setting a goal, selecting a theme, etc.) you will move into the recruitment phase of the campaign where you will look to get as many fundraisers up and running as possible. We advocate splitting this recruitment phase into two halves: the soft launch and the hard launch.

During the soft launch you recruit core supporters and get them fundraising early so you can build up some momentum before your broader launch. This helps establish a frame of success that will energize your wider audience during the main campaign launch and will help set the campaign off on the right trajectory.

One way to leverage your In-Network social media influencers is to get them to help spread your message during the recruitment phase of your campaign. Of course, to do this, you need to identify them first. The easiest way to do this is to have the person who manages your social media accounts periodically take note of who shares your content most actively. Over time, you can accumulate a list of social media evangelists. You can also periodically scan your followers to see who has the most contacts and add high contact followers to your influencer list.

Once you’ve compiled a list of your In-Network influencers, you can use them like a megaphone to boost recruitment. Start by reaching out to your list during the soft launch period and ask them if they will help spread the word about your upcoming campaign. Then prepare some powerful content (videos, blog articles, etc.) to help promote the launch of your campaign. Make sure that each piece of content you create ultimately leads back to a call to action to join the campaign and start fundraising.

When the time comes to launch the campaign to all of your supporters, send your influencers the first piece of campaign content and ask them to push it out to their networks. Follow this up with a couple other pieces of content throughout the rest of the 1-2 weeks of the recruitment phase. By proactively approaching your In-Network influencers before your full launch you can use them to help amplify your message, and hopefully, to recruit more fundraisers for your campaign.

Using Out-of-Network Influencers to Help Spread Awareness

One of the most underappreciated benefits of peer-to-peer fundraising is its ability to help generate awareness. As a natural byproduct of having supporters share fundraising pages across their social networks, you will likely reach thousands of new people. Even though the majority of these people won’t become donors, you will still be able to plant a seed of awareness– awareness of your cause and awareness of your organization. As anyone who has ever worked in marketing can attest, this is where it all starts.

One way to amplify the awareness effects of peer-to-peer fundraising is to target Out of Network Influencers to help spread your message. You might, for example, choose one or two points throughout your campaign where you rally your supporters to mass message a handful of Out of Network influencers you have pre-selected.

Let’s say you know that local celebrity X supports your organization’s cause. You might have supporters message that person on social media to try and get him or her to share an awareness video you’ve made for the campaign. If the tactic works, you get exposure to a whole new audience of people (celebrity X’s followers).

A variation of this strategy was used very effectively in the Kony 2012 campaign. As part of their plan to generate awareness of the atrocities of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army, the Invisible Children crew laid out a group of 20 “culture makers” and 12 “policy makers” for its supporters to message. They mobilized their massive social media following to contact the people on the list (everyone from Bill Gates to Bill Clinton) to get them to help spread the word about Kony. By strategically targeting people with massive social media followings they were able to push their message further faster.

It’s probably unrealistic to expect that every nonprofit is going to be able to get the ear of Bill Gates, but the basic strategy is still sound. You just have to choose the right influencers to target depending upon your size and following. It could be a local news anchor that you know has a connection to your cause, a prominent local citizen, or anyone else who has a relatively large following that you think will likely share your content.

Concluding Thoughts

Whether you want to boost your fundraising results or reach new pockets of people, targeting social media influencers can be an effective strategy to help you achieve your goal. Taking the time to chart out your social media plan before you launch a peer-to-peer campaign will help you improve your results. And while it’s not a standalone path to success, it is definitely an important piece of a larger campaign communication strategy.
 

Title Image: Flickr User Tim G. Photography

It’s a concept that hits close to home, so this Mother’s Day we wanted to highlight 5 organizations that were either started by or inspired by those closest to us – moms.

“When I walk into Bright Pink’s HQ each day, I greet my staff and say good morning to my mom, an 18-year breast cancer survivor, and 17-year ovarian cancer survivor. She works part-time helping with Team Bright Pink. I pause with a moment of gratitude for she is why I was afforded the gift of knowledge, the chance to save my own life, and now lead the charge to help thousands of other young women around the country save theirs. The strongest, most positive and courageous woman I know, she is truly the greatest inspiration.”

1. Lindsay Avner, Founder of Bright Pink

At 23, Lindsay Avner became the youngest patient in the country to opt for a risk-reducing double mastectomy with reconstruction. After losing her grandmother and great-grandmother to breast cancer before she was born, and watching her mother fight both breast and ovarian cancer when she was only 12, Lindsay underwent genetic testing at the age of 22. During this experience, Lindsay realized the lack of resources for women in her specific situation—those who didn’t have breast or ovarian cancer but wanted to take a proactive approach to their health.

Her Impact
In 2012, 15,550 women died from ovarian cancer and it is estimated that 39,620 women will die from breast cancer in 2013, according to research done by Bright Pink. In 2012, the organization educated thousands of young women through educational workshops, literature and public awareness campaigns, matched 500 high-risk women with a PinkPal mentor, and provided 2,500 women with monthly mobile reminders to check their breasts.

“To be the best parent to your children and leader within your community, you have to take some time to take care of yourself. When I’m not running Pablove HQ or helping my son Grady navigate his late teenage years, I make sure to keep up with my Bikram yoga classes. To achieve balance in the triangle of work/family/life, you can’t ignore your own health and well-being!”

2. Jo Ann Thrailkill, Co-Founder of the Pablove Foundation

In 2008, Jo Ann’s son Pablo was diagnosed with a rare cancer of the kidneys; he was five years old. For Jo Ann and her husband Jeff, life became a struggle to monitor blood counts, appointments and medications, and decipher treatment protocols and medical terms. They quickly became frustrated with the little information available for families dealing with childhood cancer. A successful treatment protocol did not exist for Pablo’s diagnosis, and he passed away just after his sixth birthday. Jo Ann and Jeff didn’t know how but they knew they wanted to dedicate their lives to helping people who found themselves in the same position as theirs.

Her Impact
An estimated 12,060 new childhood cancer cases occurred in 2012, according to the American Cancer Society. Since 2009, the Pablove Foundation has built a Childhood Cancer Symposium, created the Pablove Shutterbugs program, which teaches the art of photography to children living with cancer, and driven $500,000 in funding for research of better childhood treatments.

“I am present in all of my children’s lives, and I count Alex among them, as I continue her work to find cures for all kids with cancer. In a way, running our nonprofit is continuing to be a mom to Alex. I feel like I am still taking care of her through this work—at least taking care of her legacy.”

3. Liz Scott, Co-Founder of Alex’s Lemonade Stand

The idea for Alex’s Lemonade Stand began in 2000, when Liz’s then 4-year-old daughter Alexandra “Alex” Scott set up her first front yard lemonade stand. At age four, Alex had been battling cancer for more than half her life, and after receiving a treatment that made her feel better, she decided she wanted to help doctors on their way to helping other kids feel better too. Through multiple lemonade stands and fundraising events, Alex would raise $1 million before ultimately losing her life to the disease. Liz and her husband set up the foundation in early 2005 after she passed away to continue what Alex started– working toward cures for all childhood cancers.

Her Impact
Childhood cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of 15 in the US, yet less than 5% of the Federal Government’s total funding for cancer research is dedicated to childhood cancers, according to research done by Alex’s Lemonade Stand. Since 2005, the organization has raised over $60 million and funded more than 300 research projects across North America.

“I am proud to be part of the Priyanka Foundation team that has worked tirelessly in raising awareness about giving children a soft place to land during their hardest times. We’ve been able to give young patients with cancer the power of ‘hope’ and to go to bed excited about the possibilities of tomorrow.”

4. Leela Rao, Founder of The Priyanka Foundation

Leela lost her daughter Priyanka to leukemia when she was just 8 years old. Full of laughter throughout her battle, Leela knew those laughs were only possible because of the Child Life Services Priyanka received at the Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis. When Leela and Priyanka had visited India, they discovered that these services did not exist in other parts of the world. Realizing this, she was inspired to take action and correct that.

Her Impact
60,000 children are diagnosed with cancer in India each year; only 1 in 10 receives complete therapy, according to The Lancet Oncology. Priyanka Foundation established the first ever Child Life Services Center in India in 2007, creating a new genre of jobs in healthcare for the country that have helped more than 2,500 pediatric patients through 5,500 Child Life sessions.

“For me, success of motherhood is the unexpected hug in the day, the text ‘I love you’ just because, and so much more. For Taylor’s Gift, the success comes in other ways. I am lucky enough to work with my husband towards the same goal and I love watching him lead the foundation and our family. I guess success is seeing the efforts we are putting in pay off in others lives, and doing it together.”

5. Tara Storch, Co-Founder of Taylor’s Gift Foundation

In 2010, Tara and her husband Todd lost their oldest daughter Taylor in a skiing accident during a family vacation. They were asked if they would donate her organs; their answer was a resounding YES! After making this choice, they realized the overwhelming need for organs in the country and the correlating low number of donations. Tara’s husband’s grandfather used to tell him, “It’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you react to it that does”. They knew they could crawl up in the grief and cave in, or try with everything they had to find the good. Organ donation became their purpose.

Her Impact
As of 2012, there were 11,000 people waiting for an organ donation in the state of Texas. In addition to awarding scholarships to graduating seniors, Taylor’s Gift Foundation has worked to increase organ donation registries in their home state and across the country. As of May 2013, the Texas database has grown from 2% to over 21% registered in 3 years, according to Donate Life Texas.

How has your mom inspired you? Share your story in the comments or tweet them to us @stayclassysd

And as supporters consume your blog content they will naturally feel more informed and connected to your organization. Eventually, your nonprofit blog can turn into a valuable communication channel for sharing relevant information and deepening relationships with supporters.

Take this example from Team Rubicon:

As you can see, the Team Rubicon crew uses their blog to keep supporters informed of their latest disaster relief missions, helping everyone stay up to date. Of course this example isn’t actually of a blog post per se, but it still gets the idea across. The blog is being used as a communication channel to keep supporters connected to the organization’s work. In fact, highlighting the Facebook post rather than the actual blog helps to illustrate another important point…

Because a blog is passive by nature (you aren’t really broadcasting it out to anyone when you publish something) you need to rely on other communication channels to lead people back to it (especially at first). By leveraging social media and email to share your posts you can direct existing supporters back to your blog so they can read your articles. With time, many of your supporters will get into the habit of regularly coming back to check your blog.

As you continue distributing links back to your blog through email newsletters and social media you will build up a group of regular readers. And if you are paying attention to the appropriate search engine optimization fundamentals, you will also begin to bring in additional readers from search engines. With consistent posting, you can expect to gradually grow the number of visitors you are bringing into your nonprofit blog each month.

The really great thing about building traffic back to your blog is that it gives you a chance to motivate people to take further action on your behalf. Each time someone comes back to your website to read an article, you have another chance to engage them with your mission. And this is where your nonprofit blog intersects directly with your online fundraising strategy.

Blogging & Year Round Fundraising

We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating– the most forward-thinking nonprofits are using peer-to-peer as a year-round option that they add to their websites. By creating a permanent fixture on your website where supporters can easily create a fundraising page, you free people up to fundraise around the events in their lives that matter most to them. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, sporting events, and other milestones are instantly transformed into opportunities to support your nonprofit. And when you combine this “rolling peer to peer” approach with your nonprofit blog, you’ve got a recipe for recruiting and engaging new fundraisers throughout the year.

By embedding calls to action to “start fundraising” at the end of your blog posts you can make sure that each time your readers are clicking through to consume your content, they are also being offered the opportunity to support your nonprofit. Of course, most people won’t take you up on the opportunity at any one point, but some will. And the one’s that don’t will continuously be reminded that you have an open-ended option for supporters to start fundraising whenever they want. Later on, when an event comes up in their lives that they want to fundraise for (say a birthday or a road race) you will be top of mind.

Even if you only get two people each month to start fundraising from calls to action on your blog, you’re still looking at a pretty good return. Our platform data from 2012 shows that the average active fundraising page brings in about $568 from 7 different donors, with 4 of those donors being new to the organization. If you can get two fundraisers per month from your blog, you will bring in over a thousand dollars and acquire eight new donors. Not too shabby!

Because a blog is such a powerful way of generating traffic back to your website over time, it makes a perfect partner for a year-round fundraising program. Your blog serves as the engine that drives people back to your website, your content enhances your connection with those people, and then your calls to action help convert those visitors into fundraisers! Take a look at the call to action immediately below this post, and the one on the top right hand part of this page. If you simply changed those to “Start Fundraising” and “Pledge Your Birthday” you’d have two great ways of activating supporters with each new blog post you put out!

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Image Credit: Flickr User Timothy Tolle

“I’m embarrassed to show my belly.” “I’m tired of feeling cold air on my back.”

This is what Luz Quiroga, Patient Services and Transportation Coordinator for the Emilio Nares Foundation (ENF), kept hearing from her son Martin during his endless rounds of chemotherapy. The problem wasn’t just that Martin was tired from the chemo; the problem was the process of lifting up his shirt to receive the medicine. For Quiroga, the answer wasn’t a cure. Or more fundraising. Or more research. It definitely wasn’t less treatment. It was a t-shirt.

“Receiving chemotherapy is stressful and dramatic, particularly for children between the ages of 3-7,” said Richard Nares, co-Founder and Executive Director of ENF, a San Diego-based nonprofit that exists to assist families with children who are battling childhood cancer. Even teenagers, who may have gained weight from steroids in their treatment, feel uncomfortable and embarrassed to show their body.

“Children are used to a routine,” said Nares. “Their diagnoses [and the chemo needed to treat them] pull them away from it.” Heidi Cramer, Development Officer of the nonprofit, added that the act of lifting a child’s shirt to give them chemo is so disruptive to their routine that it becomes the worst part of their day and causes most to “scream bloody murder.”

For Martin, lifting his shirt became unbearable. During one particular treatment session, he begged his mom to “just cut it.” When she finally did, he complained because the shirt was his favorite.

Unsure of what to do, Luz and her sister-in-law Corina sat down to brainstorm. Knowing that other children experienced the same struggles, they came up with the idea to sew the shirt back together with Velcro snaps near the shoulder. The “Loving Tabs” Shirt was born.

What is the “Loving Tabs” Shirt?

With a grant from The Bravo Foundation, the idea for creating a shirt designed to facilitate easy access for medication to children with cancer became a reality. ENF began by testing out different styles and getting input from physicians, patients and families. Over time, they transformed the Velcro to buttons and decided against the sometimes-too-harsh feel of cotton.

According to Cramer, the latest version of the Shirt is the best yet. Now made of 100% bamboo, the Shirt is anti-bacterial, hypoallergenic and breathable. The tabs on the shoulder are strategically designed to easily open and allow full exposure of the top of the torso. They’re also available in a variety of colors such as black, nautical blue and orchid pink.

Watch the KPBS Segment on a San Diego girl already benefitting from the Loving Tabs Shirt.

Progress Through Partnerships
Realizing the implications that this Shirt could have for the pediatric cancer community, ENF worked to build as many collaborations with like-minded organizations as possible. “Our mindset was that we are all trying to do good work in the community we love and we all need the help from outside resources. Collaboration seemed natural to the success of fulfilling our unique mission, and we hoped it would help our collaborators’ missions as well,” said Cramer.

To test the satisfaction and usefulness of the Shirt, ENF distributed 200 of them to pediatric cancer patients and began collaborating closely with Rady Children’s and Children’s Hospital of Orange County to survey physicians, nurses, family members, and patients.

For financial and strategic purposes, ENF sought out additional partnerships with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a source for money, gap intelligence as a source for market intelligence and analytics, and LEAD San Diego as a source for a smart distribution plan.

Reciprocating their call for collaboration, LEAD San Diego saw great potential in the Shirt and selected the program as one of six LEAD San Diego Leadership Action Team (LAT) Initiatives, the service-learning component of LEAD’s flagship program, IMPACT San Diego.

The LAT team working on the Loving Tabs project is in the process of creating an actionable marketing plan that begins locally with the broader goal of providing national awareness and distribution of the product, said Carole Ravago, Marketing & Alumni Relations Manager for LEAD. The plan includes an assessment of the product, its story, targeted patient segments and distribution channels, and means to solicit grants and underwriting support to acquire the Shirts for distribution to patients.

The collaboration ensures that no stone is left unturned in the distribution of the Shirts. “The LAT for ENF is creating a financial model to represent the impact of the strategies included in the marketing plan. The team will incorporate direct costs of production, sales and marketing efforts and other expenses to provide a fiscal road map for ENF,” explained Ravago.

“The LEAD team has given amazing insight into how to create a realistic and plausible marketing plan so the Shirt will be distributed properly,” said Cramer. “They’ve also helped us understand how we can allocate the funds to come back to the Emilio Nares Foundation so we can continue to operate our valuable and imperative programs for low-income, underprivileged families whose children are battling cancer in San Diego.”

Coming to You – Soon!
For Nares, the Shirt has the potential to be an absolute game-changer for families and medical staff that know first-hand the struggles with children and chemotherapy. The results from initial surveys and verbal feedback have been extremely positive.

“Kids are calling the Shirt, their ‘uniform’ for when they go into treatment,” said Cramer. “They’re are able to provide a sense of normalcy for the patient and they finally don’t feel that their privacy is invaded. Anything that can be done to alleviate such discomfort is crucial.”

From May 4 to June 1, Nares is running down the coast of California for Richard Runs California and will be distributing the Shirts to at least six different children’s hospitals along the way. The goal of the run is to spread awareness of Loving Tabs Shirts and to raise $75,000 for ENF.

While future distribution depends on the outcome of current survey results and marketing strategies, ENF’s end goal is to make the Loving Tabs Shirt available in hospitals across the country for every child to use.

LEARN MORE about ENF & the Loving Tabs Shirt ]GET INVOLVED with Richard Runs California ]

Brad Chrisakis

Client Success Team

Have you ever wondered what goes on in the minds of your fundraisers while they’re raising money for your cause?

Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore because I’m going to give you an inside perspective on my recent personal fundraising experience. I’ll take you through the roadblocks I encountered, share what I learned, and hopefully empower you to become a better fundraiser.

But first a bit of background….

Cancer happens to be prevalent in my family, so it’s a cause close to my heart. Every year towards the end of March when my birthday rolls around, I use the occasion to fundraise for cancer research. This year I decided to fundraise for an organization called Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure, a Washington D.C. based charity that uses entrepreneurial methods to enable new and innovative therapies to be developed. I started my personal fundraising page only 4 days before my birthday and set a pretty lofty goal–  $2,600 for my 26th birthday.

I’ve worked with countless nonprofit organizations over the past few years, so I was thinking fundraising would be easy for me. As things turned out, fundraising was a little tougher than I expected it would be. Even though I came close to reaching my goal ($2,200), I definitely encountered some challenges along the way. Here’s what I learned.

1. Leverage your contacts’ contacts

Immediately after creating my fundraising page I was excited to start sharing it. I started with Facebook (I was logged in at the time), I posted a Twitter update, and then I went to compose an email to ask for donations. When I opened up my email though, I realized something; I didn’t have as many personal email contacts as I originally thought.

Sure, I’ve sent and received tens of thousands of emails over the years, but at the end of the day I couldn’t think of more than a dozen people that I felt comfortable sending a donation solicitation to. This is probably more common than you might think. Many people believe they have hundreds of email contacts waiting in the wings, but when it comes time to push the send button there’s hesitation.

The solution I came up with was to use my closest circle of family and friends as ambassadors for my fundraising efforts. I sent messages to my closest friends and family, asking them to reach out to their own companies, clubs, and groups on behalf of my fundraising efforts. I supplied them with an email template, and a link back to my personal fundraising page. By enabling them to be the bridge between my fundraising page and their (many more) email contacts, I was able to successfully share my page beyond my own personal circle.

2. Treat everyone as a potential donor

As I mentioned before, I started my fundraising by sharing on Facebook and Twitter. But even though my first instinct was to pump the message out to all of my friends, I wasn’t sure if my peers were actually going to become “donors.” Sure, everyone that supports causes like these will “like” your status updates and congratulate you on a charitable endeavor, but will they take that extra step and donate?

Assuming that your peers won’t become donors can absolutely hinder your fundraising efforts. This assumption can prevent you from actually coming out and asking for the donations you’re looking for. This is what happened to me at first. But after some of my friends donated I realized that my assumption was only limiting them. I quickly changed the approach and by the end of my one-week fundraising blitz I ended up receiving donations from 50 different individuals, including many of my peers.

When fundraising, it’s important to treat everyone as a potential donor. The best way to do this is by explaining that any gift, regardless of the amount, will help you reach your goal and ultimately better the lives of the individuals helped by the nonprofit beneficiary. If supporters understand that it’s a collective effort and that even $5 matters, everyone will be empowered to become a donor.

3. Set an achievable fundraising goal

As someone who works with nonprofits, one of the most common questions I get is “what should my campaign’s overall goal be?” Undoubtedly this is an important step in planning a fundraising campaign. That being said, I never really understood that goal setting at the personal fundraising level is just as important.

Because I was fundraising on behalf of my birthday, it was up to me to choose my fundraising goal. I immediately thought that $2,600 would be an amazing goal to shoot for. Now that I reflect back on my fundraising though, the goal itself may have ultimately been what kept me from reaching it.

I was too focused on creating a goal related to the number 26. And while $2,600 is a great goal (and is absolutely attainable) starting lower and incrementally increasing my goal as my progress went up probably would have been a better approach. I guess I’ve decided that it’s most important to choose a realistic starting point and not to get too hung up on gimmicky goals. You don’t want to discourage people from giving because the goal seems unattainable.

4. Decide when to start, and create a plan

I created my page 4 days before my birthday, which happened to fall on a Thursday this year. So was four business days really enough time to raise $2,600?

Seeing as how I came just short of reach my goal, most of you are probably reading this and saying to yourselves that 4 days was not enough time. And you may be right. On the other hand though, I raised the most amount of money ($1,127) in the first 48 hours of my fundraising endeavor. So does that mean I should have created my page on Wednesday in order to create the ultimate sense of urgency? Would that extra urgency have helped me reach my goal?

This is a tough one; you want to have enough time to promote your efforts, but at the same time you don’t want them to stall out. Really you could go either way on this one. There is no one perfect time range.

That’s why I’ve decided that the best solution is to come up with a plan for your individual fundraising, regardless of how many days you’ve chosen to fundraise for. Decide when you want to start fundraising and then think about to how you’re going to reach out each day, what your goal for that day is, and the best ways to achieve it. By plotting a brief plan of attack, it will be less about how long you’ve given yourself, and more about what you’ve chosen to do within that time frame.

In conclusion…

Every individual will fundraise differently and each will encounter various roadblocks along the way. I hope that the examples I’ve shared will be empowering to your supporters and give them a few more tools to help them succeed!

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Photo Credit: Flickr User fabbio