Decentralized/Centralized Questions and Considerations

services@supportingadvancement.com — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 01:09:17 GMT

Even small institutions face some of the challenges of central vs. decentralization in terms of their advancement operations. What are some of the questions and possible challenges that we need to consider when designing our organizations to be effective? (Note: these are not in a priority order.)

How do the various mission statements of the central and decentralized units mesh or are different?

How do best practices get articulated down to all levels of the organization so that advancement is “institutionalized” throughout the organization? This is difficult to do even in just a central department, particularly with staff turnover.

How is coordination achieved between the various units, especially for mission critical items such as prospect management and clearance. The concepts of “yards and fences” may be critical when designing many of these processes, but they can’t be too restrictive as to preclude good contact and communication between the units.

There may be challenges where larger and smaller units have wildly varying levels of resources and/or expertise. Conceptually, this equates to the idea of fixed and variable costs. Each school may have expertise, but when there may be only one staff person, they end up being out of necessity, a “Jack/Jill of all trades”, which may lower effectiveness in a particular area such as a concentration and focus on major gift fundraising.

What is the balance between prescriptive activities at the center and capacity of a non-central unit to perform tasks for the center? The center many not understand the pain, even though they need to share it for the “greater good.” They key to much of this is to try and automate wherever possible.

Development of both common and separate branding is challenging, particularly during a campaign, where there is one overarching marketing message, and yet individual schools may have their own distinct and compelling brand identity already. Organizational standards manuals and style guides help to resolve this somewhat.

Sharing of costs. Salaries, travel and other costs can utilize an allocation methodology based on activity and where accountability and responsibility should lie or where there is a clear causal relationship between pieces such as an annual fund mailing. If good systems are not in place for both accounting and allocating all of these, the administrative overhead can create a lot of inefficiency.

Accountability for all tasks given multiple masters. Very often a decentralized office is accountable for major gifts and contacts as an example, but we sometimes fail to include measures of accountability into for other elements such as addressable rates or engagement metrics into job descriptions and performance contracts.

Professional development, training and orientation and articulation of policies and procedures surrounding these. Formula approach and allocation this way is an easy way to solve but may not address overall needs.

Data entry and maintenance. Many organizations prefer a centralize approach for this based on the need for strong controls, yet a hybrid model may actually work better. Many decentralized units are often “closer” to their constituents. Good reports on data integrity and edit controls in the system software are critical to making this work.

Dovetailing into “central” projects. For example, purchasing an alumni community with all of the requisite functionality may not always dovetail with a unit’s web site easily. There can be large difficulties in sharing technologies and costs. A centralized portal strategy may be a good alternative.

Strong policies and procedures for elements that may come into play in units such as shadow databases and other “rogue” activities may appear to be draconian in what are typically perceived as more “free enterprise”

“My grads.” “My prospects.” With the complexity of degrees now often crossing multiple boundaries, the controls for solicitations, opt outs and other standard activities are more complex. System support to manage these matrices, and to manage them in a multi-dimensional format are essential.

The “independents.” Foundations, institutions and other related organizations may have separate boards, financial statements and more. More than just being autonomous, many of these organizations may actually have conflicting motivations and needs. This is where leadership, and particularly strong leadership needs to be at the forefront of communication and policy decisions to help resolve any conflicts that arise. Reciprocal boar memberships, common mission statement elements, clear policies and procedures and special articles in the by-laws can go a long way to helping resolve.

There are probably lots of other areas, and the proposed reconciliation of all of them could take many books. Nobody has an endless amount of resources and time to spend re-coordinating our efforts in a world that is becoming more competitive and less continuous.

Many of the complexities inherent in our organizations are also what make us unique. It’s important that we don’t let these interfere with our efficiency and impede our progress.

- Know Your Organization

- Embrace the Mission

- Be an Effective Communicator

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

services@supportingadvancement.com — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 01:09:17 GMT

A few years ago some colleagues and I attended an event where Reverend Jesse Jackson was speaking. He uses alliteration a lot, and the one expression he repeated throughout was “we work every day.” Well, as you can imagine, we glommed onto that one pretty quickly and it soon became a standard office phrase whenever we were working late.

So where is this going?

We do work every day but sometimes we really need to step back and figure out what we are working for, and what are some of the ways we can improve our organizations. Simply put, to create a better customer experience.

I recently got back from helping my daughter register for college, and you know, there are some commonalities in our institutions, that we may need to fight a little harder to change.

Clearly marked parking lots, without having to consult a parking lawyer.
Clearly marked directions and maps to get to registration.
A customer service approach that is geared to helpful, especially if it is clear a student with a parent, just a student, or a prospective student.
Printed materials with consistent and clear fonts. Parents may be a little older, and some of the small print is hard to read. Readable documents make it easier for us to get organized.
Academic jargon, scheduling and similar terminology is confusing for outsiders. We need to change the way we talk about ourselves, and the words we use.
A service model that includes as much pre-registration materials, class schedules, class availability. It’s difficult for a young enthusiastic person to show up at registration and find out that some of the classes they wanted to take are already cancelled, and that their whole schedule now needs to change.

In fact, the web has to enable much more of our enterprise. As a parent it’s disheartening to have to spend thousands of dollars on textbooks that change slightly from year to year. I understand the need to have current knowledge, but in some cases, this seems like an attempt for professors to increase book sales.

A web based subscription model to class materials makes a lot more sense, and would also be a better way to build future bonds to our intellectual capital.

You may think that this is all sounding like a great big whine, but the fact of the current age demographics suggest that fewer young people will be available in the future to populate our schools. As they become a smaller percentage of the population, we will be competing for students both internationally and nationally.

Think of some of the great web enabled service models such as Ebay, Amazon, automobile rental companies, and others that have radicalized complete industries. (University of Phoenix?)

We need to think more strategically and make a much better effort to provide services that are an ideal combination of “Web and Big Box”.

Unfortunately, my daughter did shed a few tears during the day. Through cancellations, confusion, and the same things that I experienced myself so many years ago. The irony was that some things had changed but a lot had not. We are creatures of habit, creatures of experience, and creatures of our culture. These are all difficult to change.

Web Experience First – Was not bad.

First Onsite Experience – Could have been better.

“Will the circle be unbroken ….”

Some Random Thoughts from Vint Cert

services@supportingadvancement.com — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 01:09:17 GMT

We recently had the privilege of hearing Vint Cerf, one of the “founding fathers” of what we know as the “Internet”. So here’s some stream of consciousness thoughts from someone who’s been in “the business” since before many of us were born.

The title of the talk was “Uncovering the Science in Computer Science” where Vint was speaking to the need to re-formulate the way we think about computer science, and where and what this “science” needs to evolve to in the future if we are to be more successful.

One of the beauties of the original design on the Internet is that TCPIP packets don’t really care what kind of data is in them. It can be text, programs, video, sound and anything else that can be transferred digitally. The idea of transferring all information digitally, will have profound effects not only on society, but in all of the infrastructure that supports the brokering of this information.

He spoke about the “scalability” of the Internet, in that in 1997 there were approximately 22.5 million hosts, and with all of the additional devices now there are probably in excess of 1 billion devices attached. With the growth in cell phone technology and everything else over IP, the bandwidth required in the future will be supporting 3.6+ billion telephones, 2.5+ billion mobiles and 1+ billion computers. This is an enormous amount of devices to manage.

World market penetration also needs to be thought of in terms of change. There is currently and will be even a greater shift in demographics because of language. Asia 380.4, North America 227.5, and Europe 294.1 million users means that language will become of primary importance, not only in the presentation of information, but that there will be a cultural shift in programming languages.

Is computer science an oxymoron? If we use the scientific method, what can we predict and what can we discover, and is this the way in which computer science needs to be approached in the future?

Hardware improvements have been much more pronounced and have happened faster than software improvements. So in many cases, the solving of a problem relies much more on “brute force” than on the scientific method. While hardware performance has improved by orders of magnitude, software programming efficiency has only increased by a factor of 10 or more. Software is obviously more variable, more complex and much more complicated.

Some theories and predictors in computer science: 90% of the program will be completed in 90% of the allocated or estimated time. The remaining 10% will be completed in 90% of the time. Science has a difficult time predicting software completion. What things does the software do that it’s not supposed to? We often can’t find this out until it is deployed, and then have to use brute force to make it right.

Other challenges not currently addressed in computer science have to do with legal and regulatory environments. The industry is still changing quickly, and laws have simply not kept pace with the societal impacts of software and computers.

Science also addresses how things are used, and with the Internet, there are no real usage statistics other than generalized traffic. It is impossible to keep track of what people are clicking on in a systematic fashion, since web sites track independently. A user may click on a video, a link, fill in a form, send an email and perform other tasks on a multitude of sites, and at the same time incorporate various elements of on-line and offline activities. We have a long way to go before we can obtain detailed global inferences about how users use.

We are increasingly moving towards user self service. Much of this is based on commercial and business models rather than on what is learned in computer science. For example, one change in advertising behavior is that an advertisement is more effective if a user chooses to view it rather than if it is pushed towards the user involuntarily.

Computer science will need to help improve and further evaluate how indexing and search engines work, since most of our access to information is initiated by search engines. Some of the “newer” areas are semantic indexing, modal indexing. Time and location indexing is also becoming very important, and there are currently not many good ways of doing much of this. Type jaguar into one of the search engines. They still can’t very well decide on whether you mean the car or the animal, or a combination of both. Try to see how a web page looked 6 months ago. Time and location of the page have probably changed a lot, and yet there are no succinct and constructed archives of the time and place of the site.

Information decay. It is more like tooth decay, and how will we do preventative maintenance to make sure information is accessible in the future? The PowerPoint of 3000 may not read the files of PowerPoint 2000. (Interesting question and answer that came up on this. “If we all use open source software, will we not be able to deal with this? Answer: While it’s true that the software development environment may be open source, the developer of the viewer of the PowerPoint 2000 files, may keep that aspect proprietary in order to capitalize on their efforts.”

Remember Sputnik, the first satellite launched by the Russians. This created a furor in the United States, and was really the initiator of NASA and a number of programs for funding many branches of science. Vint suggests that one of the ways to invigorate computer science would be to use global warming as the new Sputnik, in terms of creating programs and resources to solve the most important issue of the modern age.

Solving this problem will require new algorithms, new expertise, new ways of working together, new ways of cooperating politically, financially, common language and much more.

And finally, back to the roots: The Interplanetary Internet. A new project to create the first Internet in our solar system.

One of the challenges of the Mars landers, is that the telemetry was expected to happen in almost real time, but the distances involved, make this difficult. For example, imagine a network, where one point is broadcasting to another point, but the second point doesn’t send a response back for 20 minutes to let the first point know when the signal has stopped or started. On Earth, the distances are much less, so a lot of the data streams can be easily buffered.

So, working with NASA, the Mars orbiters were used to be a relay point for the Landers broadcast to the orbiting satellites, and then the satellites send the signal back to earth. The Landers are newer, and have a much higher bandwidth. The orbiters were reprogrammed from earth in order to do this.

The end result is that any device that is now sent out becomes a new node in the Interplanetary Internet.

Always fascinating to hear someone speak who continues to be a visionary, and who continues to work on some of the most leading edge projects in our small corner of the galaxy.

Your Electronic Ideas and Tools for Implementing Them

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:04:26 GMT

We need to apply our ideas where they will do the most good. Be very clear on ideas that you thought might not have been great, but that could eventually lead to a practical implementation of something. Your idea may have been a little too far ahead of its time and maybe the tool just didn’t exist. The “Internet Bubble” of a few years ago is a prime example. Much money lost, but survivors capitalized R&D, and for all the failures, we ended up with ideas that worked, and technology tools to support them.

What tools are available, and how do we maintain what we currently have?

Select your tool set based on where you need to go vs. where you’re currently at. i.e. We all know HTML, but content management as a tool makes more sense for implementing and training staff than investing a lot of money in a new HTML editing tool.

Who makes decisions on your programs and services? For electronic services, these decisions are not always as obvious. These tend to be determined by outside advice and trends. Internal staff may not have the knowledge. The idea of electronic communications as a “program area” with a separate manager and job descriptions is uncommon. This is changing, and some organizations have now implemented “electronic divisions” at the most global level of the organization and are applying significant resources. We’re starting to see the development of job descriptions based online activities such as online revenue generation.

Electronic engagement needs to be a critical part of our programs. Electronic components however, are not as distinct as something as a print piece, and need to be much more fluid in their application and how they are presented. For example, an electronic magazine, where the front page pictures randomly changes, are more specifically served to the user based on their affinity and interests.

Knowledge, experience and expertise come from both internal and external.

Who staffs the electronic enterprise?1
What is the overall budget?
How do we integrate “outside” knowledge?
What is our confidence level in making electronic decisions?
What common sense and ROI to you apply?
How do you continually become aware of new tools and techniques?
How do you build creativity into the process?
What problems or needs do you need to fulfill, and how are these evaluated?
What are some simple steps to success?

Rely on the expertise of your profession. No matter what the tools, the expertise as to what constitutes good engagement techniques and how to build relationships is a constant in all of our professions.

Familiarize yourself with the options. You don’t need to be a technical expert to understand the tools and techniques. A little professional development goes a long way to helping your understanding.

Relate the tools in your toolbox to your mission and goals. Just like everything else you do and employ, when we become disconnected from our purpose, our task becomes much more difficult.

Generating Loyalty on Your Site

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:04:26 GMT

Success in the electronic world is becoming more dependent on the idea that interactions on a web site are a two way street. Expectations for robust interactivity are increasing.

Online behavior, especially a constituent’s willingness to invest in an organization can be positively correlated with some aspects of online behavior such as visiting and logging into a web site. Here are some ideas to help motivate visitors:

Giving up Control of your Site. Let your visitors decide what content they want on THEIR site. Talk to your audience, feature what they want as subjects and then track the traffic on these features. A feature list that comes up as you login that can ask you for, or to rate your preferences can help to activate, and subsequently cultivate these processes so visitors get used to asking. Content is then served based on login and preferences.

Make Options for Giving Clear. Visitors should be able to control their giving. We all know that unrestricted money, while being the most useful is also the most difficult to raise. Give choices for designations. Designations can also be served to a form based on past giving history or interests. You search engine results for giving inquiries can also be tailored to specific funds or projects. Check MIT’s giving site for the idea of wish lists and how these can be customized for visitors.

Design Communications Specifically for your Web Site. Investigating online magazines and other content for the site. A PDF of a magazine or other publication may not work as well as a “magazine” specifically designed for the web, that in addition to content has various ways of interacting with an individual. MSNBC’s site recommends articles that you might be interested in reading based on ones that you’ve previously viewed.

Connect Blogs or other Interactive Features to Extend your Static Content. Referenced in a magazine to a blog based on the subject of an article. Tie a blog on a travel program to specific trips so visitors can self report their travel experiences and post photographs. Reinforce interactive features through content reinforced by your e-newsletter.

Live Class Notes on the Site. Don’t make people wait for a print piece. In addition to submitting a class note, make them available immediately. Balance between freedom of speech and some kind of an audit and approval process is necessary, but self reporting of information by users, especially when they want to make it visible is extremely desirable. Search and serve the notes for users that login based on affinity and content. Not on the print pieces that class notes were submitted online, and have a link on the print piece that reinforces the idea to submit these on the web site.

Think Beyond Class Notes. Blogs for alumni to keep in touch with other alumni. Link to alumni groups – i.e. A window into past graduates and other content areas related to graduation years or other affinity areas.

Write for the Web. Not always an obvious skill. In fact, write for the web first, and then develop the same writing for print. Small point form copy blocks. Take a course and learn how to do this well.

Encourage Interactivity. Check the Carleton University Café for a good example and combination of encouraging interactivity, and good marketing.

Offer a Variety of Newsletters. Focus on a variety of topics targeted towards individual activities and affinity. Tie variable content into the newsletters, and develop RSS feeds to tie to users who wish to receive their news in different ways. Have archives of all e-newsletters on the site.

Connect to Alumni Websites. Allow your constituents to add links to alumni web sites to your pages. Same audit and review process needs to apply as with other self entry and reporting.

Respond Quickly to Bad News. Up front in-depth explanation of any serious issues helps improve your credibility in the face of adversity and people are now used to going to the web as the first source of information when they’ve heard something they want to find out more about.

Embrace and Deploy Active Communication. Instant messaging, individual photo galleries, web pages, blogs and other features that are targeted down from overall site, to groups, to individuals, and a matrix combination of all or any of the above. RSS feeds in and out of all pages help to leverage content.

Keep an Eye on Popular Web Sites that Create Capability Expectations. Too often we just look and review higher ed web sites to evaluate our own. We really need to look at leaders in the field and use this knowledge to try and create similar features for our own users. These are the benchmarks we need to try and emulate.

Ideas summarized from a session given by Bob Johnston.
For more ideas: http://bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/

Do More With Less on the Web Every Day

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:04:26 GMT

Look for things that make you productive so you can find time for other tasks. It sounds simple. For example, standardize your events invitations so that they work simultaneously in print and media. Encourage all of your institutional staff to send information updates to you via a web form rather than a paper one. If people phone in database changes, help train and direct them to the web form.

Efficiency is also about removing items from your site that may be extraneous or not particularly useful. Rearrange content according to statistics move lower traffic items from the main pages. This reduces maintenance.

Simple things – re-arrange the items on a form. Many web forms use a drop down box for country to drive the format of a postal code. Yet, with most forms users need to select the country and then tab back to edit the postal code. Some fields in an address form may no longer be of much use. How often do we really use a fax number any more?

Registrations and business processes that involve the collection and deployment of data should be driven by the database directly. You should no longer have to update an HTML list of lost alumni to display on your site. If a user logs in, form fields where you have information int eh database should be pre-populated for your users.

Viral marketing goes a long way to promote your messages. Send this page to a friend, forward to a friend, friends asking friends. Saves you having to ask.

Use content management software. In this day and age it is irresponsible to manage a site without it. Use templates, style sheets and component based architecture for maximum efficiency.

Stand time management techniques - record where you’re investing your time in and look for “holes in the bucket.” Task inventories help us understand where we can improve.

Measure your activities. How much time to you take to authenticate and manage users and passwords? Is there any manual intervention required? Can some of this be automated? Address common customer services issues though carefully designed FAQ pages. Make administrative chores easier such as the availability of a form on your site for submission of an alumni branch report.

Running total of frequently asked questions and build a database to provide answers to users and visitors. Use this to re-jig the site to put information up front that may be buried and hard to find.

Re-synching your database. What portions of this can be automated? Create data integrity reports, automated response emails and postcard marketing that allow direct updating of the database by users and visitors. With the right controls and audit trail, this works.

Multi-purpose your information. Example - use reunion photographs to create a specifically targeted flash piece to send out as part of your reunion invitations or follow up questionnaire. Builds loyalty through association and maximizes use of your photographs.

Distribute work. Volunteers may be able to update a chapter web site if you delegate authority.

Learn how to work with influence. Politics play a role in all of this and you need to know how to manage and sell up if you need to get more resources. Understand who butters your bread and build the appropriate alliances. (There are many books on the subject.)

Reinforce good decisions. You don’t necessarily do an ROI, but talk up successful projects such as increases in online registrations with decision makers.

Budget. Your electronic program areas should have separate and distinct line items rather than being just part of some nebulous or undefined pool. You online presence is no longer “experimental”. Evaluate program budget areas and remove amounts to cover online services since these typically cut across all budget areas.

Most important - think creatively and you’ll easily come up with many more.

Transforming the Advancement Environment

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:04:26 GMT

Reconfiguring your information resources for the next century.

Change is now discontinuous and at the same time continually transformational. We’d like the world to remain steady, but the desire for continuity becomes a mirage. I.T. is now the way, in fact the primary way in which society is moving closer to working and collaborating as one global unit. Change is changing and the pace is ever faster.

Consider content management software. We can produce content at a comparatively low cost, and even include interactive elements as part of our content. And without programming on the user end. We lose independence of development by following a more generic approach, but experience great gains in efficiency.

Technology has now become our means but not our end. We are more capable than ever of transforming our organizations and our processes.

Think about …

Distributed learning
Competition
E-commerce models
Portals
Support
Research

However, change is not easy and there are some barriers to transformation:

Mission and Markets. Not clearly defined. We need to think about unbundling services and provide a more custom approach initiated by information technology and independent of our development and advancement silos. For example a closer affinity travel program and planned giving link, since those that go on affinity trips have been discovered to have a greater propensity for planned giving.

Erosion of Historic Markets. Market demographics are changing so radically, that traditional approaches to technology may no longer be effective. i.e. Old product development life cycles and software replacement no longer apply to your online community. If your community is not built from components that you can easily move in and out of pages, and customize the functionality, fields, and other elements, it’s time to re-architect the piece.

Hybrid Models. Combination of online and physical presences are becoming more commonplace. For example, we need to be better at creating events on our web sites that are tangential to events in physical places. If you can’t attend one, you can participate in the other, but maybe through the simultaneous use of web cams and on-online messenger services you can do both simultaneously, and from anywhere in the world.

I.T. should be a strategic resource and applied across the board, but not necessarily in an equal fashion. I.T. managers should not make decisions in isolation, but should be part of the board or executive council that picks and decides priorities. Many of us in I.T. like to make decisions on our own, but now more than ever, there needs to be a clear partnership and a direct partnership with our most important decision makers. I.T. affects everything we do, and is now so complicated that any operational or business process decisions shouldn’t be made without I.T. involvement.

We need to be agile, mobile, and flexible. We need to develop new organizational structures to cop with the speed and pace of radical transformation. We need to be able to scale all of our technologies and the people that support it. Most of us are constantly dealing with the limitations of scale, and as the future is upon us, limitations of scope. A simple example – what’s your strategy for using text messaging as part of your solicitation strategies? In Hungary, one of the large charities partnered with one of the large cell phone providers to do a text messaging campaign to the provider’s customers.

The fist text message was talking about the campaign, giving a brief case statement, a link do give. The second text message that went out to those that didn’t respond to the fist campaign, actually asked people if it would be OK for the charity to call them on their cell phones directly. The positive response was very high.

Granted, some nations are much further ahead of North America in the use of text messaging, but the strategy implications for the transformational use of I.T. in our business is …

Transforming our environments is not only critical to our future, but to maintaining our edge in the present, and celebrating our past. The world is changing more quickly and we need to accelerate our own pace.

Raiser's Edge Tip of the Month

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:04:26 GMT

On the gift tab of a constituent record, you can right click anywhere in the grid and export the whole gift history to Excel, and then group by gift type, etc. We've found this extremely helpful when doing our Donor Wall updates.

For more information on this and other hot hot Raiser's Edge tips and tricks, please visit http://reusers.server-planet.com.

Peter Gulka
Database Administrator - NAIT Development Office

Changing Demographics and the Impact on Philanthropy

services@supportingadvancement.com — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:59:00 GMT

Much of what we realize in our philanthropic efforts has to do with the changing demographics of population. How often to we think about or deal with this on a conscious or proactive basis?

Birthdates and your place within time to a large extent determine your attitudes and inclinations. For example, those people born during the great depression have a much different attitude as a group towards saving and purchasing than someone born even as little as 15 years later.

If baby boomers are defined as a group born between 1945 and 1965, with the peak in 1955, the ways in which we approach target groups within the broader population should be quite different if we are to be effective.

Those at the late end are in a position where mortgages are beginning to be paid down and children have finished college. This group is much more able to consider their philanthropy than those in the early end, who are still paying mortgages, and applying much of the rest of the fruits of their labor to the education of their children.

The baby boomers create mega trends as a whole, but this on an average as opposed to distinct populations within the group. The example of a mega trends would be the borrowing of money to buy homes in the suburbs to raise families, large cars, and other family startup costs. This has significant implications for rates of return on investments, what will be done with these returns and for philanthropy.

All of this speaks to the need for us to be much more effective targeting our constituents based on age demographics. The competition for dollars has increased greatly, and almost all organizations are now doing, or are planning major gift fundraising. This is also a pronounced international trend, with many organizations outside North America now running or planning large campaigns.

It also speaks to the need for split testing, and the use of techniques of variable content in all of our media interactions with our target markets. Data mining will continue to play an ever expanding role in managing demographic interactions in the future, and in the last 5 years or so, we have witnessed an explosion of the use of these techniques in our operations. We’ve started to see many more job postings in the last 2 years for these skills, and these jobs are paying large premiums for skilled practitioners. We’ve moved much more towards data driven decisions.

There’s lots of literature, web sites, and other information on these and other trends. If you haven’t already, you need to begin to learn and understand how to utilize them.

Judith Nichols includes a number of these trends and discussions in Modern Donor
http://www.moderndonor.com/

More about population demographics including Canadian Population Pyramids:
http://www.davidfoot.com/pyramids.html

Responses and Observations on Email Solicitations

services@supportingadvancement.com — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:59:00 GMT

Responses and Observations on Email Solicitations

Response by Jim Moore from CommUlinks of Colorado (www.commulinks.com) to a question on the appropriateness of sending out a solicitation to people for whom you have their email addresses, when you have not informed them in advance that you will be using these for solicitation purposes.

1. I can't speak from the perspective of alumni, but I do have experience with memberships.

2. Permission & Respect

a. Your organization's contacts expect you to communicate with them.
b. They have a relationship with your organization.
c. When they share contact information with you, they are not granting explicit permission for you to exploit it to the fullest, but only the most naive individual would expect that you would not exploit it to some degree.
d. I believe "Opt-In" appeals are self-defeating. People are far less likely to invite what amounts to commercial appeals than they are to passively accept them as part of the relationship with a nonprofit organization. If I send you a letter that asks, "Can I pester you for money every so often? Check yes or no. "What would you choose?
e. "Opt-Out" options are far more useful. They demonstrate respect without making it too tempting for a person to shut the door on you. Be sure to use an email tool that fully automates this process and prevents re-adding the email address. Make sure you can impeccably honor opt-out requests.
f. RESPECT: as with any communication medium, you must be willing to accommodate the (typically rare) demands of a few constituents for "special handling." Just as you would respect a donor's appeal to "Send just one appeal per year," or "No calls," or "I like to donate in June," you must accommodate similar caveats regarding email. VERY few donors will be so angered by the first contact that they abandon you on the first attempt. Just be ready to accommodate those for whom email is a bad fit.

3. Ensuring Loyalty:

a. Communication should take several forms-not just appeals for money. Multiple types of messaging will ensure that your constituents don't feel as if all you want is money. If only one in four or five contacts is an appeal, your mail will be opened far more often:

i. Education
ii. Advocacy
iii. Grass-roots organization and involvement
iv. Propaganda
v. News
vi. Marketing--fundraising

4. Media-if a constituent shares a means of communication-mailing address, phone number, email, fax, other?-there is some recognition that you will use it.

i. I believe a case can be made that email is the least intrusive and most readily shielded form. To be on the safe side, junk snail-mail must be opened and examined lest something of value be discarded - Ever notice the envelopes Ticketmaster uses to deliver tickets? Recipients must pay to have the trash hauled away, pay for the bags and handle the trash-perhaps shredding items containing anything remotely resembling personal info.
ii. Phone calls can be very intrusive - that's why we have do-not-call lists.
iii. Faxes are intrusive, and they cost the recipient in paper and ink. In the world of nonprofits, this is the only medium that may require explicit permission from recipients-even members and donors. This may vary by jurisdiction.
iv. Email is the least expensive, easiest to filter against SPAM, and easiest to delete unread. I contend that it is the least intrusive medium for contact.

5. Efficacy:

a. In my experience, response rates to email are significantly lower than to snail-mail. There are many reasons why this may be true:

i. Instant delete -- The very nature of email makes it easy to ignore.
ii. It doesn't sit on the counter, nagging recipients to respond-even if it's not deleted, after another 8 or 10 emails hit the inbox, it's off-screen and may never be seen again until the "big purge."
iii. It has no reply envelope - on-line transactions may be easy, but for many people, nothing beats a check for making a gift.
iv. Two words: SPAM FILTERS

Recommendations:

1. Use email;
2. Start gently with quality information and high-value content;
3. Embed a very discrete opt-out in every communication;
4. When a donor asks for TLC, give it to him or her. It's really not much of a burden, and very few will demand it;
5. Don't expect too much. Email is just another piece of the communications puzzle. It supplements, but it does not replace other media.
6. While you're at it, get a couple of Blogs going. Well known organizations should be able to entertain constituents on dozens of topics, from sports, to research, to awards, to scholarships, and so on. "What do you think?" questions are very engaging.

That's more that 2 cents worth, but I've had quite a bit of experience and success with email. A great model for how to use email effectively is (forget the politics of this please) Planned Parenthood. Their email campaign comes at constituents on many fronts-just one of which is fundraising.

Jim Moore

CommUlinks of Colorado
www.commulinks.com

Archive

Decentralized/Centralized Questions and Considerations

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

Some Random Thoughts from Vint Cert

Your Electronic Ideas and Tools for Implementing Them

Generating Loyalty on Your Site

Do More With Less on the Web Every Day

Transforming the Advancement Environment

Raiser's Edge Tip of the Month

Changing Demographics and the Impact on Philanthropy

Responses and Observations on Email Solicitations