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This past week, the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival hosted a panel on nonprofit organizations, called "Activism At Its Best." In it, the main question was: What can organizations do to increase online engagement among potential supporters? This is an especially big question when it comes to the one demographic that everyone likes to talk about but nobody seems to grasp: millennials. You can't just coast on your name anymore, especially because there are so many organizations out there that are trying to do what you're doing. Instead, your cause is the focus, since their interest in you is often based on that alone. You have to reach out to them, rather than the other way around. Nonprofit CRM software can assist by giving you better ways to effectively communicate with them. It can be challenging to handle all the tech roles for your nonprofit. This is especially the case if you were given the role just because you happen to know your way around a computer. You likely want access to a few programs that will make it easier for you to manage your constituent and volunteer data. A reliable nonprofit CRM can help you with the most important tasks, such as managing donations and events, and with Salesforce as that CRM, you have at your disposal a great many apps that can make your job even easier. Here are two free apps that can aid with some of the tasks that come with running the technical side of your organization.
As a nonprofit, why would you need a "sales" database and a customer relationship management software solution? CRM software, such as Salesforce, and integrated technologies can help you not just run your organization more quickly and effectively, but also help you grow and sustain relationships.  We're proud to welcome Presence Social Impact as the latest Soapbox Engage Salesforce Partner.
Large nonprofits often have passionate volunteers who are eager to help out. There are a lot of different ways to engage and inspire those volunteers. With more young volunteers looking to their mobile devices for information, it may seem like social media is the key to success. However, good old email can be enough to get people going, assuming you follow some best practices. Nonprofit CRM software can help make this happen through automating many important processes. If you work for a charity or nonprofit, chances are, there's a day in the calendar year that's dedicated to your organization's cause. According to NP Tech for Good, 64 known cause awareness days take place throughout the year. With two months worth of causes, it's a lot of recognition to go through. That's not even including some of the awareness months out there. The cause days are so frequent that some causes share the same day. Consider our personal favorite, World Penguin Day, which shares April 25 with World Malaria Day. Okay, it's not the best, but we'll take it. So how do you play up your cause over the course of that day? Preparation helps, but here are a couple specific ways of going about it. You know that Facebook is one of the main resources for developing a strong rapport with your constituents. With more Likes attached to your page, there's a chance more people are looking at your mission and cause, increasing the potential for additional volunteers as well as donations. A lot has changed in recent years, and as Business Insider notes, the recent restructuring of the news feed has resulted in significant challenges for nonprofit organizations. But that doesn't mean you should throw in the towel when it comes to that social media channel. Here are some ways to make sure you're still reaching out to customers through the feed and beyond.
We're proud to feature this guest blog post by Ashima Saigal, Founder of Database Sherpa. Database Sherpa is a Salesforce.com consulting firm serving nonprofit organizations and a Soapbox Engage Partner.
Salesforce does it again, working toward their mantra of Clicks Not Code, with Process Builder. Released in Spring 2015, Process Builder takes Workflows and Visual Workflows to the next level. You can create records, update fields on any related record, launch trigger-ready flows (immediate or scheduled), send an email, post to chatter and submit for approvals with Process Builder. So, what does this mean for a nonprofit? It can be difficult to find new donors. Every person has their own unique tastes, and more importantly their own reasons to be interested in your cause. There are many things going on in a potential donor's head that could either favor your appeal or cause it to be ignored. In addition, today's society is increasingly individualistic and fragmented, turning everyone into special snowflakes. It's become increasingly less useful to send out blast communications and expect people to follow through. So what can you do then to drum up support or increase the amount of money raised through each donor? Targeting your donors can be the answer. Here are some ways to do precisely that with the help of nonprofit CRM software:
Tomorrow, we will be hosting a gathering of community members for a Salesforce.com Nonprofit Starter Pack Community Sprint, and we couldn't be more excited! What's a community sprint? It's an event where everyone, whether accidental techie or rockstar developer, can collaborate in person to contribute to an open source project. And, oh what a great open source project the Salesforce Nonprofit Starter Pack is! Empowering thousands of nonprofits to manage donor and supporter data, track program metrics, and do just about anything with data they need to through free or deeply discounted tools, we confess we're massive fans and couldn't be happier about lending a hand to help make it even better.
We'll be giving a round up of the day's events and accomplishments here on our blog after the keyboards are set aside and the dust settles. For now, we'll just give a massive shout out to the fantastic community members who are giving of their own time and resources to make a contribution for the good of the nonprofit sector! So, you've got a lot of supporters, and many of them make donations on a regular basis. But not every donor is the same. You need to think about them both as individuals and as different groups of people. But they all donate money, what's the difference?It's how much money they contribute. Depending on the amount of money they're willing to give, people have certain expectations for you and your nonprofit. Like, they want a place on the board? Special privileges? Snacks?No, not snacks. However, through giving more or less money, donors have different expectations about how they should be treated and what they should have access to. They also have unique ideas on how they receive communications from you regarding your organization. But the behavior varies with the amount of money contributed. This is why you should consider using donor levels. Nonprofit CRM software can help you develop and assign them to new and existing donors.
Every nonprofit, including yours, are likely still envious of the ALS Association. Last year's Ice Bucket Challenge campaign not only raised a significant amount of cash for the organization, but brought a huge amount of attention to the condition also known as Lou Gehrig's disease and its overall lack of research funding. Can you imagine what would happen if you could knock out two birds with one stone like that for your cause?
Raising awareness for your cause can be a tricky business. You may have clipboard people on the streets and special ad placements in print and web publications, among other things. What about search, though? There are a lot of people thinking about your organization's mission, either directly or indirectly. These people could become donors, volunteers or supporters very easily. As a result, you should be looking at ways to improve your search engine optimization, or how you're seen and discovered on search engines. By doing that, you'll get more people to look into the projects your nonprofit is working on. But how do you measure your SEO? Being a nonprofit is quite different from being a media page. You don't have people placing ads on your site, and you're not necessarily looking for page clicks. So here are some tips to get you going in the right direction, using basic analytics tools:
Last week, just outside Washington, D.C., a large group of video game players and fans gathered for a week-long event called Awesome Games Done Quick. It was a marathon streamed live on the Internet that had gamers finish video games as fast as possible using skills and a variety of exploits, a process called "speedrunning." You may think that this event seems ridiculous and unrelated to nonprofits. However, by running it like a telethon, AGDQ raised $1.56 million in donations through various channels in that week for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Such an incredible fundraising drive helps us provide valuable insights on using the Internet as way to hold events and raise money. Here are four lessons you can learn from this experience, especially as it relates to using nonprofit CRM software. The Coast Guard Foundation made waves when it landed the celebrity endorsement of Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch star, on the show Celebrity Apprentice. We sit down with Jennifer Fyk, Senior Director of Communications for the Foundation, to ask how nonprofits can leverage celebrity endorsements to further their missions and how using Soapbox for their website empowers them to get the most out of this unique opportunity.
Q: Why did Sig Hansen choose to support the Coast Guard Foundation? A: As a crab fisherman who makes his living in the rough seas of Alaska, Sig Hansen is personally familiar with the life-saving work that the U.S. Coast Guard does on a daily basis. Once he learned there was a way to give back to the men and women of the Coast Guard by supporting the Coast Guard Foundation, it was a perfect fit.
While some people like to think that looking back on 2014 is strictly limited to December, we at PICnet believe that a year-in-review should happen in January. After all, December is part of the year, so it's rather silly to consider the year finished before the ball actually drops. In any event, 2014 was a big year for us and we saw a lot of things happen in the nonprofit sector, from payments to petitions. Here are some of our best articles from the last year. We think you may find them enlightening and fun. We couldn’t be happier than to see organizations using Soapbox for their website needs succeed so we could barely contain ourselves to learn that the Coast Guard Foundation reeled in Deadliest Catch star and Celebrity Apprentice contestant Sig Hansen’s nod as his charity of choice on the popular TV competition ruled by Donald Trump and his coif. When you're sending out an email to your constituents, the idea is that they'll actually see it and open it. But the viewing part can be an assumption. There is a distinct possibility that your messages won't land in the inbox, but the spam folder. In some cases, they may even be blocked. As a nonprofit organization, your online presence and reputation depends on making sure your email gets to people consistently and effectively. As a result, you have to develop a strong strategy for ensuring overall deliverability on any message, whether it's a call to action or just a general newsletter. Here are a few ways of doing this, some of which can be easily managed with nonprofit CRM software.
Now that the New Year's celebrations have come to a close, you should already have a strategy in place to improve your organization's standing this year. You do have one, right? Of course we do! Why else did you publish that previous post?That's true. In any event, planning and executing strategies is important to running a nonprofit organization. That includes implementing constituent relationship management software that targets and nurtures your members. But you also have to pay attention to what's around you, especially when it comes to current or new development. Otherwise, you miss small things that lead to big events like that viral "Ice Bucket Challenge" that the ALS Association completed last summer. Well, nobody saw that coming…But they were based on trends that were developing at that point: A straightforward silly viral campaign to raise awareness. Our strategy isn't about raising awareness, though. It's about raising funds.Well, then, there are trends to look out for there as well. Consider donors: They made a roaring comeback in the last year, according to fundraising expert Gail Perry in her blog. Building up your relationship is now more important than getting more of them. They're becoming more trusting of you and your organization to use their donations for the aim of your organization. Their mentality has changed, however. They are far more cautious with their money. They don't like the idea of donating for the sake of giving so much as they want to make an investment that has a return.
What's your plan for the new year? What do you have in store for your nonprofit organization? Well, we've got some balloons, silly hats and flat champagne…No, what are your plans in terms of operations? What are you doing to further your mission in the next 12 months? The same we've always done: raise funds and bring more people into the fold.Perhaps you should look into more specific goals, since everybody does that. If you have specific goals for your nonprofit, you can actually achieve those results. Developing some resolutions around constituent relationship management (CRM) can help you do that successfully.
Well, then, what would you suggest? |
By Ashima Saigal, Founder, Database Sherpa
Q&A with Jennifer Fyk, Senior Director of Communications, Coast Guard Foundation
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