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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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.