BIG’s Blog: Now here is a doozy of a question!

Joe Marchese asks in a recent blog; “Does advertising, as we know it, have a role in a world where content is on-demand?”

Whoa!

See, here’s the thing . . . people like you and me don’t even think about what advertising is or the role it plays; we know what it is and we know its role. Pretty straightforward, right? And then this 30-something asks the question that only someone from his generation would ask. And POW . . . we’re stumbling, we’re stammering, we’re caught off-guard.

As nonprofit fundraisers, we know that we will be creating much more and varied content in the future . . . videos, blogs, podcasts, and articles and on and on. We get it that we will have to do a much better job at storytelling to be compelling. Although we’ve told stories through our direct mail for years, we realize we are going to have to “up our game” across other media as direct mail declines.

Meanwhile, in our real lives, we are already plugging into and paying for Netflix, Hulu, and cable-pay channels that offer on-demand entertainment content which means we are watching fewer and fewer venues where “advertising” is present. All this means that our tolerance for “advertising” is either going down or . . . going away. That is really the core question that Mr. Marchese is asking, “What is advertising’s role when all the content is ‘on-demand’?”  

So think about it, as fundraisers, will we be advertising or just delivering compelling stories? And if it is the latter, do we have a fundraising business model that can deliver dollars to our charities in the same way that Netflix and Hulu deliver revenue to their companies? You know, a subscription model. Will a subscription-like model work for fundraising?

Our take is . . . absolutely!

And it’s about time.

Join us.

-Mike

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BIG’s Blog: Why did this video go viral?

First of all, do you understand what the phrase “going viral” means when we use it in connection with a video? I’m sorry, I am certain most of my readers know this term, but some do not. And even those of you who understand the term as it applies to videos, still have yet to internalize the concept in what it could mean to your fundraising organization.

From About.com Web Trends: What Does “Viral” Really Mean? By definition, viral comes from the word “virus,” which is a medical term used to describe a small infectious agent that can infect all types of organisms. In terms of the Internet, a piece of content can spread just like a virus if people become “infected” when they see it. The infection usually comes from emotions that spur the viewer to share it, so they can relate with other people and discuss how they feel.

Watch this short video.

Have you watched it?

Now sit back and ask yourself, “What if instead of WestJet, our organization would have done that?”

Look, I get it that this is not typically or even remotely part of your mission or ministry, but think about it . . . it isn’t WestJet’s mission either.

The Net has the POWER to connect you . . . introduce your organization . . . to millions of people (19 million in WestJet’s case) who have NEVER heard of your organization. Honestly, have you ever heard of WestJet before?

Oh, and by the way, WestJet is a low-cost Canadian air carrier. Why do I bring up that Canadian fact? Well, big news out of the great white north this last week. Last week Canada’s Postal Service announced that they will cease home delivery over the next five years, and substantially increase postal rates. Why? Because just like the United States Postal Service, they are dying. Don’t miss that point.

How far behind is the USPS?

But what were we talking about before I digressed into Canada’s Postal Service? Oh yes, that potentially you could reach 19 million people if you create a video that goes viral.

At this juncture now that you are really thinking, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that we have a few slots open for our online learning Course’s, “Acquiring the Next Generation of Supporters,” January term where you could learn how to do fundraising 100% online.

Join us.

-Mike

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BIG’s Blog: I’ve got a friend who . . .

I’ve got a friend named Cindy who is about my age (I’m 60). Cindy refuses to get a smartphone. Why? Because she says she doesn’t want to be bothered with work after she leaves work.

Cindy is convinced that as soon as she can pick up emails and texts on her phone that all hell will break loose and she’ll be expected to be connected 24/7/365.

I’m not saying that Cindy’s excuse isn’t real in her own mind, but I wonder . . . what is her real hang-up???

Besides, what message is she communicating to her boss? She could just say, “Look, don’t expect me to respond to an email or a text in two minutes at 10 o’clock at night.” But don’t you think that her boss knows her cell phone number?

Do you work with any Cindys?

In fact, are you a Cindy?

When the boss won’t get a smartphone, what does that say to the rest of your staff about their future? Or worse . . . what if the boss has a smartphone but your Website stinks and it isn’t optimized for mobile?

Join us.

-Mike

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BIG’s Blog: We Need Heroes

Right now in the nonprofit fundraising world, more than anything else . . . we need heroes.

Historical heroes like George Washington in the United States or Nelson Mandela for South Africa are in the pantheon of heroes because they personally sacrificed so much so that we could be the beneficiaries.

When you compare the sacrifices of George Washington or Nelson Mandela to what is being asked of leaders today in nonprofit fundraising, it seems on the surface that there is no comparison. . . yet that is not true. There is courage and sacrifice inherent in stepping forward and finally saying, “we need to seek a new way, we need to leap.” That does take courage and, on any level, courage is courage.

As Seth Godin stated in one of his recent blogs . . .

“Rapid change exposes the work of outsiders, neophytes and most of all, those attracted by the chance to grow. Rapid change sweeps aside the status quo and those that defend it (the stuck former geniuses and the stuck bureaucrats). It replaces them with those willing to leap.”

Will you leap?

Will you be the hero we look back 20 years from now?

We need heroes more than ever today!

Join us.

-Mike

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BIG’s Blog: Towards Sustainable Faith-based Fundraising

Isn’t the goal of our faith-based and charitable organizations to not only sustain year-to-year but also grow? Merely surviving cannot be the operational goal.

Yet again for the fifth straight year in a row, reports are coming to me that results of mail appeals . . . with a few exceptions . . . are down again for the fall appeals and, worse, trending down for the all important end-of-the-year and Christmas appeals. Some faith-based organizations reported an increase last year over the previous few years but, again, they are off this year. They’re off yet again!

At what point do some of these groups say, “Maybe we need a different strategy?”

I know it has been said in these blogs as well as many other places, and by many writers, but it bears repeating yet again . . . the bedrock generations [Depression and WWII] who have supported your organization for the last 40+ years are declining so drastically in number that as another writer has said, “this decline will turn into a firestorm of red ink for way too many fundraising organizations very soon.”

Recently, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, the Founder of the Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen Foundation, wrote an article wherein she, as a Generation X philanthropist, shared the way she thinks about choosing who she gives to. Her points are a peek into the mind of younger generations who are not just giving, but really checking out how their involvement makes an impact.

Her list:

1. Outline your strategic giving plan.

2. Research organizations online.

3. Select high-quality nonprofits in which to invest.

4. Apply your time, skills, money and/or networks to a cause you support.

Almost sounds like an approach to retirement saving rather than choosing an organization to donate to. Look at some of the key words and phrases: “strategic giving plan,” “research . . .online,” “in which to invest (not donate . . . invest),” “apply time, skills, money . . . networks.”

Can you even imagine my 86-year-old Mother (or the average prospective donor you are mailing to) thinking like this? How does my Mother choose? Whoever makes it into her mailbox, that’s how.  Forget the issue of direct mail; can’t you see that the “thinking process” of philanthropy has changed? Not “is changing” but “has changed.”

My fear is that too many faith-based organizations think that they “get a pass” and the new thinking doesn’t affect them.

Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen is giving you a true gift this holiday season . . . and that gift is a glimpse into the mind of the supporters you want to reach.

If you don’t have a plan, seek help and information that can help you quickly develop a fundraising plan that can connect and engage younger supporters. These new younger donors offer you sustainability and growth . . . if you can connect and engage them.

Join us.

-Mike

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BIG’s Blog: Fundraisers in the Driver’s Seat

Cory Treffiletti posts some great blogs about marketing in the commercial world. Problem is, marketing in the nonprofit fundraising world has historically been somewhat different in scale and focus of media. Recently he posted a blog with the intriguing title: “Does Marketing Work?” Is it worth reading for a nonprofit fundraiser? I’ll let you decide, but below I pull out his major point for commercial marketers that . . . interestingly enough . . . connects to nonprofit fundraisers.

Cory’s major point is that, historically, when large corporations spent money . . . significant money . . . on marketing, there was no way to quantifiably measure. To quote Cory, “the metrics simply weren’t there for a significant portion of the budget, and it’s hard to defend millions of dollars worth of expenditures without concrete numbers to justify it.”

Yet when it comes to measuring ROI, those nonprofit fundraisers that utilized direct mail for a significant portion of their revenue were way ahead of large commercial corporations that relied on television and other media, where 1-to-1 metrics were impossible to obtain.

But now direct mail is fading in effectiveness for nonprofits. But then, television and other forms of traditional “push” advertising media are also fading in effectiveness for large commercial corporations.

Why?

Digital disruption!

The Internet and all things digital are changing the landscape of how commercial marketers and even nonprofit fundraisers connect with and engage their customers/donors.

The dirty little secret is that all nonprofit fundraisers with a history of direct mail (read “direct marketing”) experience have a leg up on their commercial marketing brethren. Success in the new digital marketing world is built on a knowledge of direct marketing. Yes, the Internet is forcing the un-measurable old media advertisers to learn what nonprofit direct marketers have always understood . . . and that is that all direct marketing is built on three tiers: data (the list), execution (the direct mail package) and reporting (back-end analysis).

But that isn’t the only advantage of the new Internet paradigm for nonprofit fundraisers.

Nonprofit fundraisers can play on the Internet and SIZE DOESN’T MATTER.  Everyone can create a Website, send email, use Facebook and use all kinds of the same inexpensive or free online marketing and analysis tools. Example: Facebook costs your organization and a multinational corporation exactly the same thing . . . zip. A nonprofit raising $250,000 a year can play as big on the Internet as Ford or Apple (okay, maybe not Apple, but you get my point).

Am I oversimplifying to make a point? Yes, but only a bit. The fact that you know what I am saying is true doesn’t mean that you know (today) how all the details make it work for your fundraising organization. One thing, however, is an absolute certainty, and that is the digital marketing world isn’t “going to happen,” it’s already here.

Join us.

-Mike

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BIG’s Blog: The Vanishing Nuns??

Did you see the article on FoxNews.com about “The Vanishing Nuns: 100-year tradition ends with convent’s closing” that ran last weekend?

Fox News reported that, according to the Camden Courier Times of Camden, New Jersey, the Monastery of the Dominican Nuns of the Perpetual Rosary, who lived a cloistered life and committed to pray the rosary in shifts 24 hours a day, is this month closing down.

Imagine that . . . over 100 years, praying 24 hours a day, and now shuttered.

Why?

Well, the real point of the Fox News article about these Camden, New Jersey Dominicans is really about the decline in the number of religious women in the United States from a high of 180,000 in 1965 to 56,000 in 2012. And they report the average age for U.S. nuns is 74 years old.

I work with a lot of faith-based organizations, including a significant number of women’s religious communities, and this story doesn’t paint the whole picture I am seeing.

Yes, I do work with women’s religious communities where the average age is probably 74. I know there are a lot of communities where 74 is probably the average age, but these “older” communities fall into two distinct categories, and a third category I want to tell you about as well.

The first category is women’s religious communities that may have an average chronological age approaching 74, but they are vital and have a “youngish” attitude and mindset about their future. In other words, they are not shying away from the future. But, truth be told, before they got a glimpse of the Internet world, they wondered what their future would be. Now their attitude is distinctly changed. They “get it” that they must be online since that is where people 50 and younger are. They get it!

This attitudinal mindset is also a dividing line, because there are other women’s religious communities that also have an average age approaching 74 that do not have a “youngish” mindset. They fear change and the Internet represents change. They live with the view that their best days are in their past. And, yes, they are dying.

But what about the third category?

Most of the women’s religious communities that we work with connect to our message and end up signing up for our online learning program to learn how to engage the world online. They understand that learning about being online is way more than fundraising. Most of these communities have an average age closer to 40 and, yes, these communities are in the United States. Some are even younger. We don’t have to convince these communities that the Internet is not to be feared or that it is their future. They are young enough to see it is THEIR PRESENT.

But not being afraid to engage through the Internet is not the same as KNOWING HOW TO ENGAGE the world through the Internet. That is what we and others can teach them.

But here is the real puzzler for me. When the Pope is tweeting and begging Catholic bishops and religious organizations to go online and engage the world . . . what is the hold up?

Permission AND Encouragement are given. All it takes is “the will to do it,” because learning is the easy part.

So, a question. Would the monastery of Dominicans in Camden, New Jersey have closed if they had an intentional online presence?

Too bad we’ll never know.

Whether your organization is a Catholic religious community or some other faith-based organization, what can you learn from the news out of Camden, New Jersey this week?  

Join us.

-Mike

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BIG’s Blog: Burning Your Boats

“Burning your boats” is a grand and dramatic gesture to emphasize to those who you lead that “There is no way back home now, we must conquer this new land.” I had always heard that the story originated with the Conquistador Hernan Cortes who conquered the Aztecs of Mexico. When his men arrived in the new world and were safely ashore, he ordered the boats burned. However, as it turns out, the progenitor of the story was actually Alexander the Great on his way to conquering the world. Upon arriving on the shores of Persia, his army found that they were greatly outnumbered by the Persian army. Alexander ordered his boats burned and is reported to have told his men, “We go home in Persian ships, or we die.”

Not much room to maneuver there, eh?

Well, is such a grand gesture needed in fundraising today as nobody . . . it seems . . . can figure out whether to stay with the old fundraising methods tied to analogue direct mail, or shift 100% to digital online? Is it both or moving 100% online?

The answer is . . . Yes, to both.

Huh?

Come on, this isn’t that hard. Look at your physical mail at home over a week and you will begin to get a clue. Today, unless you are over 70 years of age, the vast amount of mail you get at home is mostly local advertising. Your next big category of mail is bills you don’t get online. But . . . and this is a big BUT . . . you probably pay most of your bills online don’t you? And the third or fourth biggest category of mail you receive is mail appeals from other nonprofits.

Since most of my readers are over 50 years of age, ask younger people in their 30’s and early 40’s about the composition of their physical mail at home. They receive even fewer nonprofit appeals than you do and, for the most part, they reply to virtually none of them.

You wonder why your donor files have aged so much in the last 10 to 15 years! Seriously, what percentage of your donor file is under age 50? 1 to 5% . . . maybe?

And why is that? Could it be that more and more people under age 65 are moving online?  The percentage goes up dramatically as you look at younger and younger cohorts.  And what does “moving online” mean? It means their “behaviors” have shifted online. They have shifted from physical modes, such as mail, to digital modes.

I know that you KNOW this, but in your nonprofit fundraising world you are suspending belief to pretend it is somehow different. It is NOT different.

But the real question . . . assuming that what I say is TRUE (AND IT IS TRUE) . . . is, what are the implications of this?

The major implication of this . . . and the one you had better pay attention to . . . is that for the last 15 years you have been increasingly missing a whole market! That market is, today, the 18 to 50 demographic. This demographic in the United States is today about 60% of the population . . . 60%!

Thirty years ago. Forty years ago. Even fifty years ago, your organization had a representative proportion of the then 18 to 50 demographic in your donor file. But not today!

Why?

Because they live and act in the digital world . . . and your fundraising organization DOES NOT!

The other extremely sad implication is this: you think that by combining direct mail appeals with online digital tools (you know, “integrated marketing,”) that somehow you are going to connect with the under 50 crowd.

How long have you been doing integrated marketing? Is it moving the needle with the under 50 crowd? I would bet . . . NOT.

At some point . . . and I hope it is sooner than later for your organizations . . . you are going to realize that attempting to integrate analogue direct mail and digital is like slapping on a new paint job and adding a new Bose sound system to your old 1980 Buick (you know, your Father’s Buick) only to discover that it will NEVER be a 2013 model. And a 2013 model is what the 50 and under crowd expect. Sorry.

So, back to my original question: “Is it a balance between the old fundraising methods and online or moving 100% online?”

And again, my answer is . . . Yes.

Yes, in the near-term (defined as the next five years) you can still send mail appeals to the declining file of oldsters who have supported your organization for the last 40+ years. But you must . . . YOU MUST . . . go down the hall, across the street or move to another location entirely and set up a new group that operates 100% online. Yes, the new group gets the Website and all the social media and digital tools.

Oh, and . . . STOP INTEGRATED MARKETING FUNDRAISING!

All integrated marketing does is offer digital options to current donors who would rather donate online or be communicated with online.  This group will probably follow your new online group, so don’t worry about them. And as for the people who still send you checks . . . the oldsters . . . just keep mailing them until it is no longer profitable.

And, yes, for the 18 to 50 demographic . . . figure it out QUICKLY and move 100% online! You can get a clue from those new nonprofit organizations that have appeared in the last six to eight years . . . virtually NONE of them use mail, but rather fundraise 100% online. And also, watch our clients.

If you are a start-up fundraising organization, do I recommend you use direct mail? NO.

If you are a long-established nonprofit with a historically successful fundraising group that includes direct mail, do I recommend you “burn your boats” and move 100% online tomorrow? NO, but you need to LEARN how to be successful 100% online and quick!

Join us.

-Mike

Welcome to BIG's Blog!  Please feel free to forward this post to your friends and coworkers...and email me a comment at: mike@big-db.com