Foundational to their approach are the 10 Core Values. Take some time on your own to dive into them, but today I wanted to touch on #1: Deliver Wow Through Service.

Service seems to be a dying art in America. I can remember my first job in high school working for The Finish Line. At the time, they had less than 50 stores and the four original founders were still actively involved. I can remember being intimidated that one of them came to the store for a visit. That day, he helped me unload a truck full of shoes. I was terrified! But, I learned he was a terrific guy and that listening to him would teach me a lot.  The Finish Line stressed product knowledge and excellent customer service back then.

Today, I rarely see the type of service they preached in retail stores (sadly, even at the Finish Line). Zappos is different! Much different. So different, they shouldn’t even call it customer service. Calling Zappos is like calling a good friend for a quick favor. There is a peacful, playful, interchange that makes you forget your handling a transaction. And that’s the magic!

Here is how they describe delivering Wow:

WOW is such a short, simple word, but it really encompasses a lot of things. To WOW, you must differentiate yourself, which means doing something a little unconventional and innovative. You must do something that’s above and beyond what’s expected. And whatever you do must have an emotional impact on the receiver. We are not an average company, our service is not average, and we don’t want our people to be average. We expect every employee to deliver WOW.

Insert nonprofit for company and either donor, client, or volunteer for customer.  Are you delivering Wow to your stakeholders? How would it transform your organization? How would it reenergize your career, your team, your organization?   How much more fun would work be?

Please share your feedback on Delivering Wow.

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Indy Media School offers small class sizes for more personal attention. Learn from the same team that brings you Blue Trolley Press!

The pot of charitable dollars that the U.S. population is willing to contribute annually is rapidly approaching its threshold, which means that either charities need to redefine what a successful year means – where growth from one year to the next might not be possible – or larger organizations may need to begin to consider acquiring or absorbing smaller organizations of similar mission to eliminate the competition for charitable dollars. At the very least small organizations will soon need to band together to leverage the “strength in numbers” approach, in order to manage an ever-increasing cost to market to their donors. If not just for the benefit of the industry, for the good of the donors across the United States who are being flooded with donation requests.  ~Stephen Ferrando, Donor Power Blog, Feb 3, 2010

Happy April Fools Day!

Some of the key findings include:

•77% knew that they could donate via texting to support Haiti relief work
•17% of Gen Y & 14% of Gen X donated to Haiti via texting
•3% of both Boomer and Mature donated via texting
•36% of all respondents would consider texting a donation after a crisis
•31% would text a donation if a friend was raising money for a charity

One of the drawbacks of mobile giving is the lag time from donation to recieving the funds. Nonprofits can expect up to a 90 day delay to recieve the donation. For disaster relief, that can be a big problem. Expect to see creative solutions over the next 6-12 months to reduce the wait time.

Once your event is created, the real fun begins. You can leverage social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to promote your event and send emails to prospective attendees. All of these features are available via their easy to use dashboard (screen shot).

You can use PayPal or Google Checkout to process payments, create waiting lists, and even generate name badges and check-in lists.  They even have a feature to reserve a spot for people who would rather pay at the door! It’s an event planner’s dream!

If your nonprofit has used Eventbrite, please tell us about your experience.

The competition is sponsored by the Case Foundation and Parade magazine and it launches October 7th.

Nonprofits can compete for awards of up to $50,000.  More details can be found on the Case Foundation Blog and in the October 11th issue of Parade. 

Causes Exchange has provided several useful tips to help nonprofits be more competitive:

Visit Causes Exchange for their complete list of tips for successful Giving Challenge campaign.

We’ll blog about it, forward it to our Nonprofit Boards and Executive Directors and hope that this is the time they listen. Sometimes it takes an outsider with the marketing chops and the publishing pedigree for the top decision makers to listen.

You don’t need to.

There are people with money out there right now – looking to donate that money to charities and non-profit managers who need and deserve it.  These philanthropists are becoming more intelligent and doing a lot of research using the web in recent years.  They are researching via search, looking for local companies that are making the most impact in their own back yard and those who are using resources effectively.

Are you in their search engine results?

Many charities with an online presence don’t realize that having a website isn’t an expense, it’s actually a gateway between donations and you.  It’s an investment.  Did you know that there are over 1,500 searches every month for indy charity, indianapolis charity, or indianapolis charities?

Spending a lot of money on a website without any search analysis and search engine optimization is like buying a beautiful office and putting it in the middle of the desert.  No one knows where you are and no one knows how to find you.

People are looking for companies like you right now to donate money, time and resources.  Developing a beautiful web presence and spending $10k+ on a cool website aren’t going to help you… but spending a modest amount on a standard website or even better – a blog, that’s optimized for keywords that will bring you traffic, will result in an incredible return on investment for your organization.

Don’t invest in a web presence without first checking the credentials of your web design company.  Find out how their other sites are performing when it comes to search engines… not how many awards they’ve won.  Ensure that part of your web marketing package is providing effective keyword research and lays out a web strategy that shoots you to the top of the search engine results page for those terms.

Talk to social media and blogging experts about how they can help you acquire donations through the web.  If you don’t know anyone that can help, please contact me and I’ll send you a free e-book on Search Engine Optimization and Blogging.

Utilize social networks to publicize your efforts – right here in Indiana, we have Smaller Indiana, a wonderful social network of Indiana professionals and creatives who pay a lot of attention to non-profits as well as arts and culture.  Networks like Smaller Indiana can provide you an inexhaustible supply of donors and volunteers – use them! (Disclosure: I’m a co-founder along with Pat Coyle.)

Those kettles continue today, raising more money each year, but in today’s so-called cashless society there are many manners by which people carry and spend their money. In addition to credit cards and checks, people are making financial transactions using the Internet to make direct online payments to merchants. But there exists an even smaller niche with potentially big rewards for nonprofits: online bill pay.

Online bill pay is such the norm for consumers today that we don’t hear much about it anymore. It’s been three years since the New York Times reported that the percentage of bills paid online was nearly equal to the percentage paid by check (May 29, 2006, Pay Bills With a Click? More Americans Are Doing It and Banks Are Loving It). Since then, online bill pay has continued to grow. Fisv Inc. reported in August 2008 that ¾ of Americans pay at least some of their bills online. As the Internet becomes more secure and as the usage of the Internet by our more experienced Americans (defined by age) increases, the percentage of bills paid online is going to grow even more. In fact, at one local high school, the Economics class now teaches students how to safely pay bills online before they teach them how to write out a check!

Why is this important for your nonprofit? Smart fund raisers like Captain McFee and you go where the money is. In this case, your donors are making financial transactions using their online bill pay service, and a donation to your organization is a financial transaction.  I believe that if you put that idea into your donors’ heads and show them generally how to do it, you will see that avenue of payment vehicle grow for your institution. Last year the caging vendor who takes care of our direct mail donations reported to us that they are seeing a steady growth in checks coming from banks in the form of online bill pay checks.

Making a donation using an online bill pay service is quite easy. The donor simply sets up your nonprofit as one of its Payees and makes a donation in exactly the same fashion as they would pay their utility, cell phone or credit card bill.

Stay ahead of the trend and score big by encouraging your donors to use online bill pay to make one-time or even regular recurring donations using their online bill pay service. They will see how easy it is to do so and you may reap great reward.

YouTube is an inexpensive way to leverage the power of video to reach your audience. Not sure where to start? If you are new to YouTube, watch this video to learn some of the basics. If your nonprofit is already using YouTube, send us a note and we will post your video to Blue Trolley Press.

Particularly useful is a “Twictionary” that helps you understand the language of twitter and “10 Twitter Tips to Increase Online Donations.” You will want to share this free download with your development staff and board. For those who are skeptical about how Twitter can help your organization, Twitter Jump Start will win them over!

So here are three easy things to keep in mind when you are planning and designing your next research report.

1. Make your research usable, and re-usable. Choosing a restrictive copyright can discourage readers from sharing or using your information – even for a good cause. An easy way to apply non-restrictive but legitimate copyrights to a document is using Creative Commons.

2. Leave Them Asking for More. The research abstract can be a great way to generate further interest in the entire body of work, but really it should tell a journalist on deadline everything they need to know. So, distill valuable information, make the abstract comprehensive and quotable, but don’t just copy and paste the executive summary.

3. Get the facts out there. Once your report is released, go through it and extract short phrases, quotes, and statistics that can easily be shared online. Micro-blogging (sending brief text updates) has become an increasingly important skill and tool for organizations that wish to keep constituents informed. Lastly, always make sure you include a direct link to your report listing page or .pdf – nothing worse than not finding the source of good information!

By Luise Barnikel, IssueLab

Auction Cause recently gave a presentation called: eBay Fundraising: Branding Your Cause. Thanks to the magic of SlideShare.com, we can share it with you. Let us know how your organization is using online auctions to raise money and raise awareness.

We’ve started the page off with a Twitter theme.  Three white papers and your choice of Tweet Deck or Twirl as free downloads to manage your nonprofit’s Twitter account more effectively.

Consider these numbers from the Causes blog:

• 26,000 Causes have received a donation
• $25 median donation
• $5,000,000 donated in 2009
• $1.4 million donated via the Birthday Wish feature

The Birthday Wish feature is of particular interest because it has raised so much money in such a short time. It’s a very simple app that allows a user to donate their birthday to their favorite cause. This is a Facebook twist on the peer-to-peer campaign that makes it simple for you to ask friends to make a donation to your favorite cause in lieu of a birthday present. The success of which, you can’t afford to overlook as a fundraiser.

With the $10,000,000 mark reached, more nonprofits will be creating Facebook Causes. If you haven’t created one, keep in mind the fundamentals of fundraising before you do.  You still have to make a strong case for support and you have to present a clear call to action. These still apply whether your online or meeting a donor face-to-face.

Sessions include:

• “Using Social Media for Real-World Community Improvement”
• “Microblogging (Twitter)”
• “Choosing a Blogging Platform”
• “Promoting Your Blog Through Social Media”
• “Three Effective Blog Writing Techniques”
• And others to be announced. 

Tickets for just the nonprofit session are $79.  As we get closer to the event we will post more info.

Blog World Expo 2009 will take place in Las Vegas October 15-17. On the 15th, the Social Media Business Summit will take place.  We had hoped to give you the speaker lineup before the early bird registration deadline, but as yet they haven’t released it. I know that’s been frustrating for some of you that were waiting for the schedule to make the decision on whether you would go.

We will keep an eye out for any special discounts that might pop up via a particular sponsor/vendor. And, we will post the schedule as soon as it is available. In the meantime, if you can afford it, we recommend this conference for any nonprofit that wants to elevate the quality of their blogging strategy.

When I was a kid, friends were the other kids you hung out with, playing homerun derby in the street, building forts in the woods, facing off on Nintendo and just chilling during recess. I knew my friends’ faces, physical attributes, and mannerisms because I spent hours with them every week, if not every day.

When I was a kid, I watched some of my classmates who had many followers, those other classmates (and me) who literally followed others around, walking down the hall after them, sitting near them for lunch, playing with them during recess, hanging on their every word as the spouted their knowledge to anyone who would listen.

When I was a kid, having friends and followers (or being a friend and a follower) took time, and presence. Today it is oh so different.

Today, when you say the word “friend,” I would venture that a majority of the under-50 crowd would immediately first think of Facebook where you and I can be linked with hundreds (up to 5,000) “friends” who can follow each other through the computer. For many of these “friends,” the only picture they have of you is not the one they see in your presence, but the photo you’ve displayed on your Facebook page.

And the word, “follower” immediately conjures up Twitter where you must sign up to be a Twitterer’s follower in order to read the daily or hourly machinations of the Twitterer which is many cases is nothing more than the what you would have casually said to each other while playing on the playground or passing each other in the grocery store. Ashton Kutcher is on a race to beat CNN to be the first on Twitter to have one million “followers.”

Why is this good news for you as a nonprofit major gifts officer? Because you no longer have to be physically present with all of your donors and prospects. Certainly, being literally in front of your donors and prospects is likely going to have better returns and should still be your goal as much as is possible. But we no longer define “personal” contact as that contact which happens in person or over the phone. Today, “personal” is as much defined as being a “friend” on Facebook or a “follower” on Twitter. The advantage there is that whatever you do on your own Facebook site or Twitter account, you do for all your connected donors and prospects simultaneously.

Many have bemoaned the new definition of “personal,” but regardless of our concern for such a definition in the course of how we experience and relate to each other from an anthropomorphic or psychological sense, the new definitions could help you in your personal connection to donors and prospects. Imagine the look on your boss’s face when your monthly statistics for “Personal Contacts” with donors go from 66 one month to 512 the next…and it’s only a matter of time when nonprofits will begin tracking friend and follower statistics for their major gifts officers, AND income that comes from those two channels.

While no one can guarantee that using Facebook and Twitter will work for major gift officers, one thing is certain, your donors are alive and well on both platforms. Big business and small business alike are spending a lot of time and energy in doing the Facebook and Twitter thing right. And nonprofits are doing the same. Is yours?

Newspaper model broken. Americans get their news more from blogs and Twitter than they do from this newspaper.

How can you, as a nonprofit marketer and fund raiser take advantage? Read on.

Newsies in the early 1900’s were as much the news sharers as they paper they sold. While we don’t have kids hawking papers on street corners today, we have a similar phenomenon that while we trust our local newspapers to give us the news straight up, we trust more the newsies of the 21^st century: bloggers and Twitterers. Truth be told, bloggers and Twitterers are really “anti-newsies”  because real newsies used their headline yelling to sell more papers. The anti-newsies leave newsstands at the end of the day with dozens of unsold copies.

It is common knowledge over the past 18 months that traditional media outlets—especially newspapers—are struggling mightily to keep their operations above water. With the proliferation of blogs and Twitter, you and I aren’t going to our big local daily newspapers for our news as much as we used to. We each have our own trusted bloggers and Twitterers from whom we soak up the “news” we want. It no longer is the big daily newspapers that are determining for the public what “news” is.

The little secret in the newspaper world today is that these bloggers and Twitterers are not only the source of news for the public now, they’re also the source of story ideas for the journalists at your local dailies. A reporter from one of the local metropolitan dailies spoke recently at my Rotary Club and she told us that she has three main sources for story ideas and information: trusted contacts all over her beat that she talks with on a regular basis; story tips emailed to her from readers; and blogs and Twitter that are talking about the things on her beat. This is groundbreaking in terms of opportunity for nonprofits to get their story heard.

The news gathering paradigm has shifted in a gargantuan way, and as the newspaper industry searches for ways to change their business model, nonprofits have the opportunity today to get ahead of the newspapers in changing their media relations strategies. Traditionally, getting your nonprofit covered by a local daily newspaper was a big deal as the newspaper was a powerful and respected story-sharing outlet. Today, blogs and Twitter may be an even more powerful way of getting your message out.

You need to be doing two things in this new paradigm. One, you must find the respected bloggers and Twitterers who write about the type of work you are doing and get them on your contact list much as you have your local media contacts on a list that you send potential story ideas and press releases out to. The goal is to get those bloggers and Twitterers who have a faithful following to be talking about your organization, event, program, and news. Two, you should be actively employing blogs and Twitter on your own. The key word here is “actively.” Any blog that isn’t updated nearly every day is quickly going to lose the attention of your followers. It used to be that Websites had to be kept up to date and regularly changed so that viewers had a reason to check your Website often, it’s even truer with blogs.

This news paradigm shift is good news for nonprofits as such strategies are very low in cost, and very high in potential return. Nonprofits small and large have the opportunity today to take advantage of the 21^st century newsie—you.

“Through this valuation, we hope to help all nonprofits better understand how to protect and evolve their brands to generate as much revenue as possible. Valuing brands gives organizations a license to demonstrate to companies and other partners that there is an established and justified cost to aligning with nonprofits.”

The report also includes a variety of good information about enhancing your nonprofit brand and a breakdown by sector.  If your organization is not on the list, spend some time studying how the top 10 manage their brand and online presence.

So, what is Blue Trolley Press?  We’re an online resource for nonprofit professionals.  We will focus on websites, social media, software, and technology.  We will strive to be a safe place for you to ask questions (We promise we won’t roll our eyes at you like your IT guy does!).  If we don’t know the answer, we’ll find it.

We will keep you up to date with all the webinars, conferences, and goings on in the nonprofit and tech world. Thanks to the magic of SlideShare, we will post relevent content for you as well. If you’re curious about a topic we have yet to cover, please let us know. 

Finally, if you are a nonprofit professional and want to contribute an article, contact us at info@bluetrolleypress.com.  Please check back often (or subscribe to our RSS) as we will be adding content daily.

SlideShare is a great resource for nonprofit professionals to find useful tips.  We will try to post some of the best presentations here so you don’t have to sift through their large database. Today we’re featuring this presentation by Network for Good.  They’ve done an excellent job of putting online fundraising into perspective. 

Please let us know if this was helpful so we can continue to bring you the best content available.

1. Track info related to your cause
2. Notify your followers about critical updates
3. Announce new blog posts
4. Dialogue with constituents
5. Sending reports in an emergency
6. Update campaign results.
7. Thank your donors
8. Raise money!
9. Track specific keywords
10. Disaster updates

Purchasing a unique URL for your event costs less than 10 bucks -it won’t break your budget. With a simple WordPress based site, you can create an inexpensive place to host your event. Consider a solution like eTapestry to take registrations or ChipIn to encourage individuals to raise money for your cause.

So why go through the trouble?  Here are 3 good reasons to create a page.

1) It provides another opportunity for people to find you on the web. You use multiple types of fundraising techniques, right? (direct mail, special events, planned giving) Why wouldn’t you apply the same concept to your online fundraising master plan?

2) It allows you to step outside your agency’s normal look and feel to create some excitement. Check out this example from the Salvation Army in Indianapolis. Here is their main page. Here is a special event page for the WIBC Radiothon.  Notice the difference in graphics, tone, attitude.

3) You get to show off your sponsors, create value for them, and strengthen that relationship.  The Salvation Army Indianapolis hosts event pages for 2 of their media partners: WIBC radio and WISH-TV.  The media partners are happy because they have one less thing to worry about. The sponsors are happy because they get more focused promotion.  Of course, both the media partners and the nonprofit are linking to the event website from their main pages.

These pages always manage to pay for themselves and the extra value keeps your partners happy.  If you have a good example of a specific event page please post a link in the comment section below.

For quite a while, I’ve viewed the newspaper business as dead. Turns out, it was only “mostly dead.” Check out this blog post from Chris Anderson (Author of the Long Tail). Some good food for thought when considering your marketing mix.

“We’re currently reviewing ********’s request for services to ensure we don’t have any business conflicts to be concerned about. Assuming not, we would look forward to the opportunity to meet with you and your Executive Committee to further discuss your needs and how we might best help you get to the next level.”

Why bother sending the package? Why not figure out the answer to that first before writing the letter? Why waste my time if you can’t work with me and why waste the time to write it if you can’t work with the customer? This is the equivalent to landing on a “page under construction” message on somebody’s website.

Sadly, this was from a well known firm and written by a Vice President. Keep this in mind when crafting letters to sponsors, donors, and volunteers.  Respect their time and do your homework first.

The problem started when Yahoo formed an agreement with Rivals.com to place college football and basketball content on Yahoo’s team pages.  It’s an interesting marriage because one company has created a subscriber based business model (Rivals) and the other thrives on providing free content supported by ads and up selling users various services and tools (Yahoo).  Unfortunately, Yahoo chose to rss feed the subscription content to its own pages.

Why does it matter? Imagine reading an interesting headline on your favorite college page on Yahoo. You click the link (which isn’t marked as premium content) and you get two more sentences and a sales pitch to read the rest of the article. Now, your ticked. Yahoo has wasted your time. You’ve been conditioned by Yahoo to expect to read articles for free. And now you’re mad at Yahoo and Rivals.  Do this enough times, and you find one of the many other sports news outlets.

The lesson in this is that Yahoo spent years training visitors to accept a particular model: Read our stories for free, put up with a few ads in the margin. Any partnership that disrupts this model costs readers. For nonprofits, it is a reminder that we can’t force donors to interact with us in a way that’s contrary to their conditioned expectations. They might not come back.

So, how do you get quality people at a discount?  First, if you’ve never read the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis, I recommend starting there. It follows the Oakland A’s baseball team as Lewis tries to answer the question: How does a team with half the payroll of the New York Yankees seem to field a competitive team year after year?

The lessons learned in the book apply to staffing your development team. Don’t have time to read the book? Here are some tips I’ve used.

1) Learn to spot inefficiencies in the way talent is evaluated.

Example: The obvious answer to how are we going to fill the open grant writing position is to hire the candidate with the most grant writing experience/success. I recently did the exact opposite! Of the final three candidates, I chose the one who had only marginal grant writing experience. What she did have was a vast array of experience that could easily have her filling a variety of roles in our department. The other candidates had much more grant writing experience, but that’s ALL they had. Plus, I knew she could write, she just needed some coaching. Now, I have an excellent grant writer who can do just about any job in our department (even mine!).

2) Learn to get talent at a discount.

Example: When A-Rod gets sick of playing in New York, he might just take less money to play in Minnesota. The same applies to recruiting staff. Keep your eye on people at other organizations who aren’t happy in their current positions and whose life goals align with your organization’s mission. This isn’t about paying somebody less than their worth. That’s not the mindset to have. It’s about being able to offer someone a position within your organization that rewards them in ways that a higher salary can never do.

3) Learn to let staff make mistakes.

Example: I frustrated a lot of staff members last fall at an event because they kept coming to me with issues and I kept sending them to the event coordinator. To some, I was goofing off or not taking my job as boss seriously. What they didn’t know was that our relatively new event coordinator had never put on an event of that scale before. She needed the experience. All of the experience, including issues, problems, and making mistakes. I intentionally removed myself from the decision making that day because I wanted her to grow as a person and an employee. I also know that someday, she would like to run her own event company. I’m not afraid to help her reach that goal, because I know she will work harder for me while she’s here if I help prepare her for what’s next.

The result: sure a few people thought I was a slacker that day. But, my event coordinator emerged with a confidence that has been noticed by many people. Now, she’s creating an event top to bottom and I don’t lose a second’s sleep over it. I know the event will be first class.

You can field a Major League team on a Little League budget. It just takes a different mindset to attract and keep talent.

First, let’s look at the pitch. Corporate Rain Founder & CEO Timothy Askew wants to request the opportunity to meet with me (sort of) to discuss his recent successful work with Easter Seals, Lighthouse for the Blind, etc. He then goes on to say that Corporate Rain is “the elite international company specializing in initiating the executive rainmaking process. Specifically, Corporate Rain executes high-level new business campaigns that open doors to new corporate business through substantial appointments with senior level executives.”

He then goes on to say that his company is the “#3 sales outsourcing firm in the world and the #1 boutique sales outsourcer by The Black Book of Outsourcing.” Wow, that’s pretty impressive stuff! Then he tells me that CR “creates a pipeline of new leads and prime prospects in your target market. We bring a bespoke and discreet outsourced executive presence to your new business efforts that will save you time and money.”

Finally, he lists a lot of impressive companies like AT&T, AIG, Wells Fargo, Deloitte & Touche, and others who are clients.  Sounds like a can’t miss prospect?  Corporate Rain will (for a fee) get me connected to that “pipeline of new leads.” Well, I’m a little worried about what that pipeline is connected to…

You see, despite the impressive credentials and the A-list clients (who may disappear after reading this), Mr. Askew lost me from the beginning: the letter was addressed to the wrong person. And that person was addressed by the wrong title. (A big deal when you work for the Salvation Army and the officers have ranks.) The letter had to work its way to me -the real decision maker for this type of service.

So, let’s review:

Corporate Rain claims they get you quality leads to get you in front of the decision makers.

Corporate Rain doesn’t know who the appropriate decision maker is in our organization, or that Salvation Army officers are addressed by rank, or that any of this could have been cleared up by spending less than 5 minutes on our website. And they think I’m going to hire them to qualify leads?

I won’t even go in to the whole “bespoke” thing.

This applies to nonprofit fundraising as well.  People under 40 are more apt to believe what their peers say about a nonprofit than what we say in a mission statement.  Amazon gets this better than any for profit or nonprofit.  Of course, you have to be prepared for the good and the bad.

Nonprofits need to be transparent in the new age of fundraising. Don’t be afraid to allow your site visitors to comment or interact via a forum.  Let the donor speak. She might be your best fundraiser.