One of the many treasured clients of Serengeti is the Kids Wish Network. It is a privilege to create support for their efforts to help benefit sick, ailing children.

Please see our video of young, sweet Ashley who sadly has passed on. Ashley’s valiant story is profound and moving. Her last wish – to meet Country-pop singer, Martina McBride was fulfilled through the kind souls and benefactors of kidswishnetwork.org.

We all are humbled and honored to assist in these nurturing endeavors where, ultimately – a child’s wish can come true.

One of the challenges of online advertising is getting your message out to the right crown. Google, Yahoo and MSN have geotargeting and dayparting solutions to show your ads to the right locations (based on IP address), and at the right times of day, but of the 3 only MSN has a basic demographic targeting tool. Facebook realized that they had a great amount of user entered data that they could make use of for ad targeting, so they set up their demographic targeting.

Let’s imagine that we have a nonprofit that wants to target young women that have an interest in politics, and work in the DC beltway. The first step is to head over to the ad generation site.

Not bad, 18 million people that we can target to. But let’s change those parameters so that we’re just reaching those who have identified themselves as women.

8.6 million is still a great number to target, but we wanted to go for young women, let’s try narrowing it down to just 18-25 years of age.

Facebook has an option where you can specify your political leanings, so let’s use those options to only show young women that have identified their political views.

2.7 million. How about just those that live in the beltway states – Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia?

Still over 174,000. This may be where we’d want to place our ad, and see what response we get from it. Of course, we can go more and more granular in ways that are just not possible on the regular paid search sites. How about if we specify that they must work in some capacity for Congress?

520 young women, who state their political preference, live in the beltway area and work for Congress. That’s absolutely amazing targeting. To be able to go down to virtually any level of granularity, based on education, favorite books, etc, etc, etc. gives you so many options when targeting your ads. If you understand your customers, and can segment them appropriately with the correct messaging, this should allow you to increase your conversion rates and improve your ROI, which should be everyone’s goal.

Which of the following environmental nonprofit videos do you like?

This one from the National Fish and Wildlife Fund?

Or this one from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation?



The first video is… boring. the imagery is great, but with the style of the voice over, it comes off like a corporate training video, it just doesn’t work. The second video does, it’s fun, and it has personality, lots of personality. Is this just my opinion? Look at the count of views for each; the NFWF video has had 43 views in the almost 2 months it’s been live, whereas the other video has had over 1,400 views in the same time period. 43 viewers in 2 months is poor, especially for a professionally produced video. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation video was most likely pushed out to their members, through both YouTube channel subscriptions and other marketing efforts, whereas the NFWF video doesn’t appear to have been marketed, or if it was, the conversion rate is not good.

A couple of other things to note about the NFWF video:

• at 6 minutes, it’s too long to keep viewer’s attention, especially with the voice.
• they don’t provide their URL in the video, so they will probably lose some potential conversions

I think the lesson for nonprofits, and for anyone else, is that you can’t just take your efforts from other channels and assume that they’ll work effectively in all channels. You need to look at what works in each of these channels and tailor your message accordingly. Still, not everything will work, just keep plugging away and refining your message, and eventually it will.

There’s some interesting news out of the UK today. Britain’s biggest fashion Retailer – Marks & Spencer – has teamed up with Oxfam in an effort to reduce the 1 million tonnes of clothing that end up in UK landfills every year, by encouraging people to give their used, unwanted clothes to Oxfam.

For each bag of clothes that is given to Oxfam that contains at least one item of M&S clothing (non-underwear / lingerie / sock /hosiery / swimwear), a £5 voucher, good for one month for purchases over £35 will be given. This is a great idea. It gets M&S branded as a caring company, one that helps out nonprofits and one that cares about the environment. It also drives people into their stores to purchase new items of clothing. It will probably work out cheaper for them than just giving a lump sum to Oxfam, and it will generate more publicity for them as people who are personally affected may write / blog about the gift voucher system, generating links to their site.

Nicely done M&S, and if your company would like to partner with some nonprofits, we can most assuredly put you in touch with some.

Last night, I watched Grey’s Anatomy. As Dr. Bailey’s son was brought in to the emergency room with major internal injuries, one of the themes was about mistakes. Who had left the baby play pen gate open or unlocked? Was it Dr. Bailey or her husband?

People make mistakes. Computers appear to make mistakes too. And entire companies and non-profits also make mistakes. I wrote in October about moving beyond the simple monitoring stage of reputation management and indicated that you must measure those monitors to determine where to focus your efforts in a proactive reputation management strategy.

This morning, I came across a blog post about nonprofit mistakes. Kristin and her friends have supported and have “long-term ties to at least three charities.” But “these charities had let us down – calls that went unanswered for weeks or never, promises to send materials that don’t arrive, wrong contact information, direct mail appeals sent within days of each other, and clueless staff.”

She went on to describe “frustration and brick walls,” “hassles,” and suggested that some organizations may be “rude, incompetent, or egotistical.”

Can you imagine a donor, one perceived as reliable and engaged, using this language to describe your nonprofit? With the power of consumer generated media, individual donors have a voice whether you’re listening or not.

Kristin asks, “when was the last time you or your nonprofit sister organization got serious about donor satisfaction?” And she indicates that she means more than e-surveys, but “focus groups, one-on-one donor ‘check ups,’ donor coaching and more.”

Here are some web 2.0 forms of focus groups, one-on-one donor ‘check ups,’ and donor coaching.

Focus Groups:
While I always trumpet going to the communities where your donors are most likely already engaged, there is definitely something to be said about going to the largest social networking sites. There is definitely some truth to strength in numbers. With a MySpace page or a Facebook fan page for your nonprofit, you have “friends” who have at least a modicum of interest in your organization. By building out these profiles with regularly updated news and information about the work your nonprofit is doing, you are connecting with donors and potential donors on a more intimate level than your latest direct mail piece. Similar information may be passed along, but in a different format, more conversational. If you establish regular communications with your MySpace and Facebook friends, you may have your focus group right there. Going a step further, you might develop a volunteer member advisory board to help you improve donor retention and donor satisfaction.

One-on-One Donor Check Ups:
MySpace and Facebook both have private messaging capabilities. A check up really can be as simple as a short message to a Facebook or MySpace inbox, separate from your email marketing efforts. And one-on-one can really mean one-on-one. Do not blast out a message to everyone. If you reach out to just one donor a week, you’re bound to learn knew things that you can do, discover what you can be doing better, and get testimonials that say you’re absolutely wonderful. Social news and bookmarking sites may also allow for one-on-one donor check ups through the posting of relevant charitable news. By exploring the profiles and contacting them to determine whether they already donate to your charity or might like to receive more information, you will begin to establish processes for the recruitment of new donors in the online space.

Donor Coaching:
Donors have intentions and may have financial and philanthropic plans and goals. A donor coach can use demographic data from a nonprofit and help donors think beyond the dollars and means of their donation, but to the end goal of not just where their donation is going, but how they are aiding the organization achieve its mission. Enter blogging for your donor coaching outreach. Consider creating donor profiles, similar to individual investment profiles which indicate income and giving levels and the return an individual donor receives from donating to your organization.

Yes, the holiday season is drawing to a close, as is the federal tax year.  You now have 6 days left to donate to a worthy cause and get the benefit of it for your 2007 taxes.  Who should you give your money to?  Well, that’s a personal decision; you’ll want to donate to charities that support causes that you believe in, and which you believe are doing a great service.  Of course if you’d like some suggestions, then I’m only too happy to list several for you here.  Disclaimers: several of the charities listed below are clients, but not all.  Secondly, these are my personal picks, which may or may not reflect charities and causes that others at RBDRodeo support.  So now that’s out of the way, here are some deserving charities that you may consider supporting, in no particular order:

• SOS Children’s Villages – Providing food, shelter, education and a village family for orphans and abandoned children around the world.
• HOKAFI – Helen O. Krause Animal Foundation Inc.  A no-kill animal shelter in Dillsburg, PA.
• Kids Wish Network – Fulfilling the wishes of sick and dying children around the US.
• HSUS – The Humane Society of the US is the biggest voice in the fight to stop the annual seal cub hunt in Canada.
• RSPCA – The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is currently leading the fight to stop a UK government plan to have massive cull of badgers, which a government study has claimed to be necessary to limit outbreaks of bovine TB.

Since next Monday, like most, we’ll be on vacation, I thought I’d open the random thoughts box, which holds a variety of topics in and around the work that we do, and that you do.

Firstly, Nancy Schwartz of Getting Attention, has decided that she’s going to make 2008 the year of the nonprofit tagline. To that end she’s running a quick survey on taglines that she’d like all nonprofits to complete. As a thank you for completing the survey, she’ll give you a copy of the final report for free, so if you’re a nonprofit, head over there, but come back for the rest of this post.

Now it’s time for a minor technical rant that’s off topic for this blog… Why, oh why can’t IE and Mozilla based browsers load and parse XML using the same common functions?

Don’t forget to protect your data, and that of your customers / donors / members. The UK Revenue and Customs sent 2 CDs with the personal details of every family in the UK with a child under 16 to the National Audit Office. The CDs didn’t arrive. The personal records of 25 million people in the UK, including bank details, were lost. In the era of identity theft and fraud, this is a catastrophic failure. Make sure that your data is protected, and don’t send it all on CDs in the mail.

My great grandparents lived in the market town of Helmsley in North Yorkshire on a small farm. I visited there many times growing up, and loved the old market town feel of the quiet Yorkshire village. It was with interest that I read an article on how a band from Helmsley had become a featured artist on MySpace, garnering over 5 million hits per day on their MySpace page. It just goes to show that you don’t have to be in a big city to make an impact using social media sites, you just have to have a compelling story.

Mashable recently posted list of 20+ Charity and Fundraising Sites, and 30+ US Political sites that are worth looking at.

Finally, remember, if you’re modifying Wikipedia pages, people will look to see who you are, and what your motive is for making those changes. For example; if you work at Guantanamo Bay, and make changes to wiki pages talking about the detainees, Fidel Castro, and the War in Afghanistan, expect to get called out…

Well, that’s emptied the random thoughts box for now. Enjoy your holidays, and look for my next post on December 31st, when I’ll do a recap post on the first 6 months of life for this blog.

Are you a non profit that is looking for a cheaper method to process your online credit card donations in the coming year? Well thanks to Google you can use Google Checkout free of charge through at least the end of 2008. That means no processing, setup or gateway fees. In addition to being free for non profits, it’s also convenient for potential donors since they can make a donation with just their Google login.

In addition, by using Google Checkout you will also have the added benefit of having the Google Checkout badge displayed on your AdWords ads. This will allow your ad to stand out from your competition which can be a significant factor in drawing a larger share of searchers to your site.

Google Checkout should then be combined with a Google Grants account to potentially drive a considerable amount of donation revenue without any out of pocket expenses. For help in taking advantage of these programs check out this post on how to apply for a Google Grants account and this one on how best to leverage your Google Grants account.

Since Google is willing to provide this service free of charge there is no excuse to not at least test and see the impact it can have on your non profit organization and see if you can help allow more dollars to go directly to the causes that it supports.

As a follow on from Nate’s post the other day, where he talked about this being the ‘donation season‘, I thought that we should throw out some advice for anyone intending to put out a direct call for donations using Google’s Pay Per Click program.  Whenever you place a call for donations in your ad copy, you must ensure that the landing page that you’re pointing to has the details of your 501(c)(3) tax exempt status, otherwise your ads will be denied by Google, and your campaign may screech to a halt.

Usually ads placed in Google are manually reviewed days, weeks or even months down the road, but it seems as though at this time of the year Google has placed a strict watch on donation appeals in ad copy, so save yourself the hassle and make sure you’ve got the right text on your landing page(s), besides having that text there is probably going to lead to more donations anyway, as visitors will see that your organization is a legitimate nonprofit.

When you push out something to the public, you want to make sure that it puts your best foot forward. Make sure that you proof read it, have someone else read it, if changes are required, make them, then have someone else proof it. It sounds simple, but not everyone does it…

From the otherwise excellent FIFA announcement about their commitment to social causes in Africa (bold added below for emphasis)

With the world’s focus on Africa, the broad consensus on the need for action towards social change and the acknowledgement that football itself is a powerful tool for development, the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ represents a unique opportunity to use football at a catalyst for social development. The 2010 FIFA World Cup Official Campaign (link to introductory text) is designed to harness the power the beautiful game for positive social change across Africa.

…and now if anyone copies that text, or links to it they’re not getting the link benefit they may have received had the link been there…