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.

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

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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."

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

What: NTEN is holding an online workshop on social media using a Choose Your Own Expert format. They've gathered a group of nonprofit social media experts to help you devise a solid organizational strategy and learn the secrets of a variety of social media tools.  After an opening plenary by Beth Kanter, you'll choose one of 4 breakout sessions:

Many of you may not know, but TechSoup Canada has its own site and services for nonprofits in Canada. If you've not visited their blog yet, you should, regardless of where you are.

They have a terrific recap of a recent Net Tuesday held in Toronto that was focused on online storytelling with video. They highlight a variety of attendees' experiences and list some really useful tips for getting started even if you don't have any video experience. It can be a great way to tell your organization's story or to tell the story of the people you're working with, in order to grow supporters, broaden your reach, and deepen the relationships you have with the communities where you work.

Here's a great project that Mozilla has put together in conjunction with Idealist, Social Actions, and others. For one week in September, tech experts all around the world will donate their time to organizations and individuals who need help accessing and using the Internet. It makes sense for Mozilla to take the initiative to put together a project like this; after all, it's largely volunteer efforts that have put together Mozilla products, translated them into dozens of languages, and built plugins to extend functionality in every conceivable direction. Imagine the impact that those developers, designers, and translators could achieve by focusing all of that attention on their own communities for one week.

If you head over to the Mozilla Service Week site, you can sign up as a volunteer or as an organization in need of help.

As we've noted previously, The Chronicle of Philanthropy has been running a series of online discussions on how nonprofits can use social media tools. In addition to these open discussions, the Chronicle has been conducting a series of recorded interviews.

In the latest, Allison Fine interviews Joe Green, one of the creators of Facebook Causes, and Amy Eldridge, Executive Director of Love Without Boundaries. These podcasts are available at http://philanthropy.com/media/audio/socialgood/. Topics to date include:

Next week, I'll be attending
The Online Community Unconference (OCU), along with my TechSoup community colleague, Susan Tenby. The OCU is a gathering of online community practitioners — managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors — to discuss experiences and strategies in the development and growth of online communities.

Those involved in online community development for-profits and nonprofits alike share many common challenges: community management, tools, marketing, business models, legal issues, and more. And often the best source of information on all of these challenges is other knowledgeable practitioners, which is what makes the OCU a rewarding event.

"What's an unconference?" you say? Well there's a good description of it here and a detailed FAQ here. Suffice to say, you won't be seeing the usual PowerPoint or formal presentations, but instead the sessions and topics are proposed and chosen by the users.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy is holding another in its series of free online discussions on Tuesday, June 2 (tomorrow). Here are the details:

What: Promoting Causes on Online Social Networks

When: Tuesday, June 2, at 12:00 p.m. Eastern

Cost: Free

Where: Online. Questions are submitted via keyboard, and answers come the same way. The discussion will be archived, so even if you can't attend, you can at least read the transcript.

Register at: http://philanthropy.com/live/2009/06/promoting/chat.php3

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