The African Wildlife Foundation’s Annual Safari Sweepstakes promotion is as close as it gets to perfect. The design and branding is modern and mobile-optimized, visuals and call-to-action graphics are prioritized over text, and social media is integrated throughout the entire process of entering the sweepstakes. Not only by entering the contest may you win a trip of a lifetime, but...
As a follow-up to Five Online Fundraising Best Practices for Small NGOs in Developing Countries, below are five social media best practices specifically tailored for small NGOs in developing countries. Once your NGO has laid a foundation for online fundraising success by launching a mobile-optimized website, an e-newsletter, and having the ability to accept online donations, your NGO is...
Thanks to Microsoft Citizenship Asia Pacific, I’ve had the great honor to present a series of online fundraising and social media trainings to over three hundred non-governmental organizations (NGOs) throughout Asia Pacific over the last three years. The experience has made me acutely aware that access to information about trends in nonprofit technology, online fundraising, and social media often...
Launched in 2007, YouTube’s Nonprofit Program has gone through multiple changes over the last six years. Initially the program was only offered to qualified U.S. nonprofits and the benefits were limited to premium branding functionality and the ability to add a Google Checkout donate button to nonprofit YouTube channels. Today, however, the program has been expanded to Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland,...
This blog post officially launches the research stage of writing my second book which will be published and shipped in Spring 2014. A follow-up to Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Guide for Nonprofits, this book will place much more emphasis on using social media and mobile technology for fundraising. That said, I am very curious how social...
There absolutely is a math to social and mobile media. If your nonprofit has a good content strategy in place and understands the power of integrating all your nonprofit’s communications channels (website, email, Facebook, texting, etc.), then as your numbers grow on social networks so will your e-newsletter and mobile lists which in turn significantly increases your fundraising success. It’s...
Until recently the nonprofit pioneers of the Social Web had to mostly rely on their intuition that their social media campaigns were resulting in more dollars raised online, an increase in brand and cause awareness, and higher rates of volunteer recruitment and retention. However, as LinkedIn, Blogger and Myspace all celebrate their 10-year anniversary this year, nonprofits have now...
My e-newsletter is by far the driving force behind Nonprofit Tech 2.0. Those 27,000+ subscribers produce more return on investment (ROI) in terms of bringing in new clients and webinar attendees than my 600,000+ Twitter followers and 40,000+ Facebook fans combined. And even though a recent report pointed out that email open and donor response are dropping in the nonprofit...
Nonprofit website design and online fundraising have dramatically changed in recent years due to the rapid rise of social media and mobile communications. Using the Wayback Machine – a website that allows you to view archived screenshots of your website all the way back to 1996, below is an exploration of how the World Wildlife Fund’s website and online...
Each year I select 31 Favorite Nonprofits to which I donate 10% of my webinar income. Part of the reason is a commitment to altruism, but I also use (for lack of a better word) these 31 nonprofits to study how nonprofits are progressing in online fundraising, social media and mobile communications. That said, over the last few days...
I am researching “Donate Now” service providers. Nonprofits ask me often for recommendations of what service(s) to use and I have yet to find a “Donate Now” service that meets all of my ideal criteria: A custom-branded “Donate Now” page that’s embedded inside of the nonprofit’s website where the donation process happens entirely on one page. A custom-branded “Thank You”...
On August 1, Google quietly launched Google Wallet for the Web – and the technology has the possibility of transforming online and mobile fundraising as we’ know it. Described simply, donors can sign up for a Google Wallet account, enter and save their credit card information, and then donate to any nonprofit (or purchase from any online store) that has a Google...
Last month I donated online to 25 of my 32 Favorite Nonprofits in celebration of reaching the benchmark of following 100,000 nonprofits, nonprofit staff, and nonprofit service providers on Twitter. Usually I donate to one or two nonprofits at a time, but to go through a list of 25 nonprofits in less than two hours made it abundantly clear that...