Tim Fullerton

The wonderful blogger Beth Kanter recently posted this comment and I thought I would respond.

I wonder how much care and feeding it takes to get an ROI? What has been your experience? Do you think the choice of myspace might also be directed by the audience segment you want to reach?

The reason I picked MySpace as the social network for nonprofits to start with, was that it was the most accessible and easiest to start. It also relatively easy to measure ROI (or return on investment). By starting a MySpace page, you are giving your supporters a way of showing their friends that they support you. In most cases, your supporters friends will be like-minded. So it’s a cheap and easy way to reach out to new supporters. Also, the bulletin tool is extremely important. By putting a source code and the end of any action alert links, you can tell who has signed up for your email list from MySpace. Some groups are finding that these people are becoming good activists for their causes. Plus, people will forward your bulletins to their friends.

However a downside is that most groups seem to be having trouble fundraising through MySpace. It is strongly suggested to look at the site as an advocacy tool and not for fundraising at this time.

Generally when people are thinking about how many emails is too much, they think about whether sending emails in successive days is going to drive supporters away. Well, I received five emails TODAY from the campaign of Duncan Hunter. The worst part is that none of them really say anything. Here is the entire text of one email.

We won the straw poll at the Anderson County convention in South
Carolina last night! 63 hunter, 33 romney, 9 mccain, 7 guiliani, 5 thompson,
4 brownback, 4 newt, 3 tthomson, 2 huckabee, 2 cox. This is a
significant win!

Really? That is significant? Also, note that Fred Thompson’s (or is it Tommy Thompson?) name is spelled wrong and all are in lower case letters (plus there is an extra space in there).

In some of the other emails they actually include attachments. Unless it’s really important, never do this. It most likely will look like spam to your supporters, take longer to send out, and no one really wants a .pdf from a campaign anyway.

Sloppy and careless messaging like this will drive people away from you. Whether you are a candidate or non-profit, professionalism is key. So to round up:

Sometimes it’s good to see examples of what not to do in order to develop stronger messaging.

After almost a year of people getting excited about Second Life, I finally decided to give it a chance. After wandering around for about an hour I decided I can’t even begin to understand why most non-profits would attempt to build a presence in this thing. It’s incredibly hard navigate unless you know exactly what you’re looking for. This is the perfect example of something that seems to be all hype, little substance. The only time I hear Second Life mentioned is when something funny happens on there like John Edwards site gets vandalized and he has to build a new one.

A quick tip for all nonprofits. Sometimes something is cool, but not worth doing. Second Life would fall into this category.

I received this response to my NTC review the other day and I thought I’d write a whole post about it.

tim,
I attended some of the same sessions you did - heard you on 2 panels. If you were to give advice to a web 1.0 np about advancing into the 2.0 world, what would you pick as the starting point? blogs, videos, rss, tags … Or should they just start on their e-Newsletters and use social networking to “create their community.” Am excited about the tools but don’t know where to start.

I actually don’t think there is a right answer to this question. However, if it were my decision I would start a MySpace page first. This is probably the one that takes the least amount of time to set up and maintain. To have a successful page, make sure you have strong action alerts. MySpace users seem more compelled to action than anything else, and this is a great way to get people to forward your alerts (in the form of a MySpace bulletin), and get them to join your friends list. Your MySpace page can also serve as the main part of your social networking strategy as it can host your blog, pictures, videos and action alerts in one place. Some groups have found MySpace users will join your email list, and some will even donate.

This is a simple first step to test the waters and see how things work. You’ll find you become more brave with Web 2.0 after trying one or two things.

Of course the other thing you could do is hire me:)

Now that I’ve been back from DC for a couple of days, I thought I’d post a quick review of the Nonprofit Technology Conference. This was my first year at the conference, but it was pretty much what I expected. A pretty interesting mix of experts in communications, web development, bloggers and technology providers coming together to discuss how nonprofits use technology to further their message.

Day 1

The first session I attended was one on eNewsletters. This is always a tough topic, but one that is vitally important to all nonprofits. It was interesting to hear the panelists all say the same thing. Make the newsletter fun an interesting to read. This is always tough for nonprofits, as we all want to make every supporter know everything about what we do. While it might be against our nature to make things fun, it will go a long way in increasing the readership of eNewsletters. They also stressed the need for dynamic content. Overall the session was pretty interesting and told me that most nonprofits have a ways to go before we see compelling eNewsletters. For some good examples, check out the link here.

Up next was a panel I participating in on how nonprofits are using YouTube to broaden their audiences. My favorite (other than the Oxfam one) was one done by Amnesty International. If anyone says you can’t make an amusing and engaging video about a serious situation, this video proves that wrong.

Day 2

On Friday morning I attended a fundraising session, which showed that email is still the best way to raise money (something I highly agree with). The session showed that creating different and unique appeals can help raise money. It also showed that using segments of your list is a much more effective way to raise money than to blast your entire list. While I didn’t learn much new in this session, it helped to solidy a lot of what I already thought, which is useful in itself.

Finally in the afternoon I added a session on social networks and how they can help nonprofits. They did something in this session I have never seen at a conference before: they brought beer. Since it was 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, this seemed to make sense and brought a laugh out of the attendees. Again, nothing earth shattering here except if you’re not on social networks, you are missing out as an organization.

Overall I really enjoyed the conference. If I had one negative to say, it is that there were too many consultants speaking and not enough people with real-world examples of how they had used certain tools to further their message. That being said, I hope to be at next years NTC in New Orleans!

Starting Saturday I’ll be reporting back on what I’ve seen/learned at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington this week. A lot of interesting stuff going on, which I think is very valuable to any non-profit organization.

Later this week I’ll be traveling to the Non-Profit Technology Conference in Washington, DC. I will do my best to give as many updates as possible throughout the conference. WiFi will be available and I’ll have my brand new MacBook, so it should be pretty easy.

Still waiting on Barack Obama’s online fundraising numbers. I expect to be impressed.

Today the Clinton and Edwards camps announced that they raised $4.2 and $3.2 million online respectively in the first quarter. These numbers are highly impressive, but what I’m really interested in hearing are Barack Obama’s online numbers. He is boasting over 82,000 online donors on his site, so I would expect him to surpass these numbers. The internet is going to be a critical place to raise money for 2008, and it will be interesting to see if Obama’s approach has paid off.

Today I’m going to review Senator Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) site. Though he is one of the lesser-known cadidates, he has a pretty good campaign site. While it is a little busy, there is a lot of interesting content and he allows the site visitors to choose how they want to get content (through email, Facebook, Myspace or the site itself). The real interesting part of the site is the “Get to Know the Senator” part. This tool allows people to record a voice message showing their support of Senator Dodd. I thought this was interesting for two reasons. One is that it gives the campaign a more human touch by allowing unscripted comments, and two, it shows he has supporters (something the Daily Show likes to poke fun at). The only down side is that it seems to be the same message every time I go to the site. Might be a better idea to have rotating comments.

Dodd also has a pretty good blog on the site. He allows comments and seems to be updated every day, which is key. There are a lot of images inbedded in the blog, which I also think is a really good idea.

In summary, I think Dodd has a pretty good site. He’s certainly in the top half of all the candidates.

Overall Grade: B+