Strategic Online Communication for Nonprofits

The Upleaf Blog

Audience segmentation is one of the most important keys to any successful marketing or communication campaign.  But you must know your audience well to decide whether you should segment by behavior, interests, or demographics.

Segmenting allows you to effectively target your message, to appeal directly to the specific concerns or aspirations of your audience.

While many nonprofits know a lot about their offline target audiences (including donors and top contributors), many don’t know as much about the people interacting with them online.

People react and interact differently online.  The segment of your donors that goes online may be very different from the segment that doesn’t.  Here are a few interesting statistics to get you thinking about online audiences and online donors in particular:

Who is giving online?[1]

• Less than 15% of all online donations are from older generations of 70 years or above.  They usually give offline, and prefer to give offline;
• 50% of online donations are made by baby boomers.  They are active web users, and often give both online and offline;
• 30% of online gifts are made by Generation X’ers.  They rarely give offline.  This is a great generation to tap into now, and cultivate relationships for the future.

What are the preferences of online donors?

• According to the “Wired Wealthy”[2] study, most wealthy donors prefer just to receive email a few times per year from an organization they donate to;
• Almost all online donors want to see a tax summary report at the end of the year to know that their donation was well spent; they also want to receive a tax-deductible donation letter from the organization at the end of each year for their own tax purposes;
• Some online donors are interested in receiving action alerts or success stories (as long as they don’t arrive too frequently).

If you want to learn more about your online audience here are a few ideas:

1. Develop a short email survey to send to a randomly selected sample of your email list, with a few key questions that will help you craft your next campaign.  You could use an online survey application that tabulates answers for you, or you may even be able to administer the survey through your constituent relationship management tool.
2. Set up a poll on your website.  This can be fun and interactive—most people like being able to see the results right away.  Many content management systems have this feature built-in or available through a plug-in.
3. If you’re on Facebook causes, take advantage of the tools available to you. You can view your best donors or fundraisers in the “Hall of Fame”, and build a personal relationship with them to learn more about what motivates them.
4. Use your Analytics! Google Analytics can give you lots of great information.  How are people finding your site? What geographic region of the country generates the most visits? How often are they viewing your mission or your donation page? What are the most trafficked sections of your website?

Posted by Elizabeth Beachy, Upleaf Co-Founder

[2] The Wired Wealthy: Using the Internet to Connect with your Middle and Major Donors. Convio, Sea Change Strategies, and Edge Research. March 2008

One of our greatest struggles in the nonprofit sector is how to maximize our social impact with limited resources. We’re usually gifted with a tremendous empathy for the people we serve and a passion for what we do—but few of the technology tools we need, because the funds simply aren’t available.

Several generous companies have made their world-class technologies available for free to nonprofits with 501c3 status in the U.S.  These technologies can completely transform the way we do business, and increase our impact exponentially.  They include:

1. Salesforce. Salesforce is a powerful constituent relationship management (CRM) tool that can help nonprofits organize, track and evaluate all interactions with donors, partners, media, and even project beneficiaries.  It is an excellent tool for fundraising, project management, monitoring and evaluation. The Salesforce Foundation typically donates 10 licenses per organization for an annual value of $15,000.  The application is hosted by Salesforce for free, and only requires some customization.

2. Vertical Response. One of the most popular mass email tools on the market, Vertical Response offers user-friendly templates and powerful evaluation tools to measure the impact of email messaging. Vertical Response integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, and is free for qualifying nonprofits for up to 10,000 mass emails per month.

3. Google Apps. The Google App package includes email, calendars, word processing, spreadsheet and collaboration programs, among other features.  Google Apps is designed to replace the costly Microsoft Office package and is free to nonprofits with less than 3,000 users.  Organizations can establish their own email addresses (name@organization.org) with almost unlimited storage.  It is all hosted by Google which means HUGE cost savings:  internal servers are no longer needed so you can say goodbye to server maintenance fees and email downtime caused by internal server problems.

4.  Google Ads. Google Grants is an in-kind donation program that offers free AdWords advertising to qualified 501c3 organizations. The program helps nonprofits promote websites or campaigns through advertising on Google, at a value of up to $10,000 per month.

With so many remotely hosted state-of-the-art technologies available for free, nonprofits can slash IT costs and upgrade to powerful packages that increase productivity, efficiency and visibility.

To learn more about free or affordable technologies and services available to nonprofits, contact Upleaf.

Faced with the reality of shrinking budgets and fewer grant opportunities, many nonprofits– rather “social profits”– are turning to new web-based technologies to help out.

New technologies offer opportunities for online fundraising, publicity, participation in policy debate, and perhaps most importantly—and opportunity to deepen community engagement and social impact.

A new Hatcher Group report surveyed 30 organizations to see how they’re using social media and what their experiences have been.  All respondents reported currently using some form of social media, and most intend to ramp up their efforts next year.

Key findings:

Blogs. Blogs have offered a good ROI for nonprofits.  Nearly 100 million Americans read blogs at least once a month, and effective outreach can take less than 2 hours per week.

• 83% of the organizations reach out to bloggers, but only 30% do so frequently
• 88% reported being cited in blogs as a result of their outreach
• 16% of organizations were invited to submit guest posts
• 93% of the organizations monitor references to their organization or issues in the blogosphere

Facebook. Facebook is popular among nonprofits and with good reason: More than 200 million users, 50% of whom sign in every day; users become fans of causes (4 million per day) offering free visibility and endorsements for nonprofits; nonprofits have collectively raised more than $10 million through Facebook.

• 60% of the groups are currently on Facebook
• Facebook was used by respondents to generate record event turnout using Facebook’s event invites, raise money, and promote fundraising events

Twitter. Twitter was less popular among nonprofits, used by only 24% of respondents.  Those who did use it found it effective for disseminating news, promoting reports, and building connections with other organizations.

Conclusions? While we know that social media offers excellent opportunities for nonprofits, many are still not using it to its full capacity.  Those who are using it are ahead of the curve and already seeing the returns.  For those who aren’t—it’s time to start!

For tips on how to develop effective social media outreach, view our strategic communications blog posts and tweets.

Posted by Elizabeth Beachy, Upleaf Co-Founder