Update: Here's a followup post with some more thoughts on the nonprofit community's relationship with social networking tools.

There's been a lot of discussion over the past week about Causes leaving MySpace and becoming a Facebook-only application. In a sense, the news isn't that surprising (being a for-profit company, Causes must focus on platforms generating the most commercial interest), but it's raised a lot of questions about how closely the nonprofit community aligns itself with commercial tools.

My colleague Amy wrote in a Stanford Social Innovation Review column, "The debate around social media and the Internet in general as a leveling force is still heated from all sides. Yes you can claim that anyone has the power to blog, but that's really only the people who have access to the tools and the time and the empowerment. The access debate aside, the removal of Causes from MySpace where there are active communities of supporters means 'equal opportunity activism' is defined by only certain communities." If nonprofits have the goal of making more resources available to more people, what happens when the tools we're using seem to undermine those goals? Amy points out danah boyd's much-discussed research on the socioeconomic and racial differences between MySpace and Facebook users. Justin Massa goes so far as to call the move redlining: "Causes' justification sounds an awful lot like what financial institutions and the real estate industry used to say about poor and minority neighborhoods."

Marshall at ReadWriteWeb snaps:

Causes co-founder Sean Parker poses sitting with crossed legs in his photo on the company profile page; his mission statement begins with the words "According to the historical Buddha..." It's hard to imagine a beneficent religious figure that would ditch MySpace for Facebook, isn't it? Perhaps "the historical Buddha" would choose to pull up stakes from the 11th most popular website in the world if the people were too shallow and go to the hip social network where the money-raising action is.

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The results of two new surveys paint a bleak picture of the effectiveness of social media for fundraising and volunteer recruitment. The first from Philanthropy Action, has the depressing title, "Social Networking and Mid-Size Nonprofits: What's the Use?" The survey is based on responses from about 200 mid-sized nonprofits (defined as having revenues between $1 and $5 million annually) between July 2008 and March 2009. It concludes that:

Social technologies are not delivering much in terms of fundraising or attracting volunteers. While the majority (of respondents) began using social networking with an expectation that it would help the organization attract donors and volunteers, results have been particularly disappointing in those categories. More than 70 percent of respondents indicated that they had raised less than $100 or did not know whether they had raised any money.

However, despite poor results to date, "the overwhelming majority of respondents... say they are going to increase their investment in the use of social networking."

A second survey, from the Cone communications agency, reached similar conclusions.

Here's an idea from our friend Laura at Idealware: what if you measured any communications method by whether it would have more or less impact than spending the same amount of time calling donors on the phone?

…You could spend that time simply calling donors and constituents at random, to thank them, or to ask them a quick set of questions (how did they like the services they used? what do you do well? not so well?). If you've never done this, it can be pretty magical. Often people are amazed that you've called, happy to talk, and have useful insights. It gives you a great sense as to who your constituents actually are and what they care about. And not coincidentally, my experience is that it fosters great new connections. People want to volunteer, wanted to ask you something, and, not coincidentally, donate at considerably higher rates after. Nothing starts a conversation like, well, an actual conversation.

I love the way Laura articulates this. When we adopt social media strategies, we often tell ourselves that it's not just about donations, it's about starting a conversation. There are plenty good reasons why it's important to keep conversations going with supporters, but are Twitter and Facebook always the best way? If your goal is to have a conversation, then why not pick up the phone and have one?

This is not to say that there's no place for social media; rather, I think that the phone test can actually help you articulate the purpose of any communications tactic, be it a fundraising letter, a donor event, a print ad, or a Facebook page. If you can clearly identify who the target audience is for a particular effort and what action you want that audience to take, you can put together the right campaign for achieving that goal. It might be a letter, an email blast, or a social media campaign, and it might be a phone call.

The latest round of the America's Giving Challenge is on. This is a national competition to encourage people to use their personal and social networks to help win cash for their favorite nonprofit. The Giving Challenge is not focused on how much money you can raise, but on how successful you are at getting people to donate to your cause. The goal is to get as many unique daily donations as possible (minimum of $10), to your cause each day. The contest runs through November 6, 2009.

This week, Craig Harris, the founder and CEO of NOZA, Inc. is sharing his wisdom on developing a major gifts program at nonprofits. NOZA (a TechSoup donor partner) is a Santa Barbara based technology company that has developed a platform to convert unstructured web data into searchable databases. Prior to founding NOZA, Craig founded South Coast Strategies, a fundraising consulting firm. Craig graduated from U.C. Santa Barbara in 1995 and then spent two years as Peace Corps Volunteer in Paraguay. Upon finishing his Peace Corps service he began his nonprofit career as the founder and first executive director of Servicios Ecoforestales Para Agricultores (SEPA), a large agroforestry demonstration farm in Eastern Paraguay. Eligible nonprofits and libraries can request a special NOZA discount through the end of this week.

Where do major gifts come from?

Major gifts come from three primary sources: (1) Corporations (2) Foundations (3) Individuals.  According to the annual GivingUSA Foundation statistics (PDF) charitable giving in the U.S. topped $307 billion in 2008. Here is where the money came from:

• Corporations:  $14.5 billion (5%)
• Foundations:   $41.2 billion (13%)
• Individuals:      $251.9 billion (82%)

While foundation and corporate giving play a major role in U.S. philanthropy, most of the money comes from people. Having spent several years as a fundraising consultant, I've worked with organizations that excelled at major gift fundraising, and I've worked with organizations that couldn't raise a major gift to save their mission. One of the common threads for the successful organizations is that they followed the money, focusing the majority of their time and resources on individuals. Those that failed typically hid behind the relative ease and comfort of shotgun blasting grant proposals and letters to foundations and corporations. In fact, I'm yet to find an organization that was able to develop and SUSTAIN a major gift program from only foundations and corporations. While the relative proportion of individual/corporate/foundation giving will vary from organization to organization, for those just getting started with major gift fundraising, my advice is to focus on individuals.

Why do people give major gifts?

What is the number one reason why people make major gifts to nonprofit organizations? Because they were asked. During my early years as a fundraising professional, I once heard a line during a fundraising workshop that I've always remembered: "People don't give money to causes. People give money to people with causes."

Here's a fantastic blog post at NTEN from Network for Good's Rebecca Higman and Katya Andresen (we've linked to Katya's excellent blog numerous times in the past). Rebecca and Katya try to pin down the seemingly erratic behavior of online donors and offer some lessons on how we can develop longer relationships with Internet supporters.

Imagine a scenario when a check arrives in the mail as a result of a direct mail campaign. That supporter may receive a hand-written thank-you note back via mail. Perhaps even a phone call. And, of course, the donor database is updated immediately!

What about an online donor? Is his or her name ever retrieved from the online report? Is he or she added to a direct mail list? What about the thank-you? Is it sent back via Facebook or email, or will there be a snail-mail letter on the way?

It seems there's a bit of a discrepancy.

They go on to suggest that for follow-up communications with an online donor, you should defer to the donor's medium of choice. "Would you add a direct mail donor to your email list and remove her from your direct mail list? Probably not. If a supporter donates online through a nonprofit website or social network like Facebook, that supporter should be thanked online through that same medium." I would add that not only should the thank-you note arrive in Facebook instead of snail mail, but it shouldn't sound like a snail mail letter either: it should have the personal tone of an online exchange.

What: Another in The Chronicle of Philanthropy's series of online discussions: How to Use Facebook Causes to Promote Your Nonprofit Group

When: Tuesday, October 13, at 12 noon, Eastern time

Where: http://philanthropy.com/live/2009/10/facebook/

How Much: Free

Description:

Here's a blog post I wish I'd have written. Mark at Queer Ideas takes on the concept of voice and tone in nonprofit communications. "I've come to the conclusion that the instructional approach that so many brand guidelines take to defining 'tone of voice' simply doesn't work when it comes to specifying how non-profits must use language," Mark says. "Most direction is either unnecessary or confusing."

He then goes on to examine some of the words we use in our in-house style guides or when talking about how to write fundraising and communications materials:

Positive: What's the point? I'm writing for a charity. I'm hardly going to be negative about what a donor can achieve with a gift. Neither am I going to present the challenge a charity faces as being insurmountable.

Honest: Cripes, lucky this was there otherwise I'd just lie about everything the charity does.

Respectful: And there I was just about to kick off with a long tirade of patronising and sarcastic abuse. Phew! That was a near miss.

On he goes, and the point is clear: words like "passionate," "caring," and "honest" are great sentiments, but they don't offer much practical guidance. They don't tell you how to craft your nonprofit's story, where to place the "ask" in a fundraising letter, or how long a piece of copy should be. Those are hard questions, and they need better answers than a simple feel-good word.

Mark suggests that the best thing you can do for your nonprofit's branding is to focus not on tone, but on empathy. Study what your audience reacts to; write for them. As we've discussed here before, nonprofit professionals are often very different people from donors. Sometimes the message we most enjoy writing isn't the one that resonates most with supporters. Jeff at Donor Power Blog takes it a step further: "If your belief, or theory, or intuition about fundraising is based on your own personal experience, you are wrong."

Our friends at Idealware have partnered up with Third Sector New England to offer a one-day, intensive bootcamp on October 7 to help organizations maximize their fundraising through email. And, they've extended an offer to TechSoup users for a special 15% discount off the registration fee by using the discount code TS325 when registering.

Here's more info from their site:

CARE2 is holding a webinar on strategies for successfully welcoming, cultivating, and converting new leads into donors. Holly Ross of NTEN will moderate a panel with Heidi Hess of Children's Defense Fund and Greg Zelder of the California State Parks Foundation. They will review data about nonprofits' speed and type of responses to newly acquired email subscribers, then focus on specific online engagement and conversion strategies that have worked for them — as well as approaches that have failed (and why).

What: While They're Hot! Converting Fresh Leads into Donors

When: Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 2 p.m. Eastern