Asking Smarter Questions » Non-Profit Industry

Nonprofit Marketing Trends 2013

Jeff Adelson-Yan (@jeffadelsonyan) — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 16:08:53 +0000

Digital marketing is becoming an increasingly large portion of nonprofit marketing. With methods extending into every corner of the Internet, including search engines, social media, blogs/forums and paid advertising, it is easier than ever to share your message with the world. Since the main goals of any nonprofit marketing initiative are to increase awareness about the cause and generate fundraising dollars, it is important that the message is conveyed both passionately and succinctly.

However, in order to figure out where to best spend a nonprofit’s limited budget, it is important to keep up on current and emerging trends. According to a study conducted in 2012, the use of digital media for fundraising and advocacy initiatives grew this year by 19.6%. As a result, online donations grew 12.6% from 2011. Likewise, the median donation size is up to $93.67, a 2% increase from 2011. The top three performing verticals in donations were higher education, hospitals and human & social services. The importance of online advocacy has grown in our culture, as it is now easier than ever to share information about those charities for which you are the most passionate. The number of people who have taken at least one online advocacy action grew by 17% in 2011. On average, 12% of each organization’s email lists took online advocacy action. There is also good news specifically for smaller nonprofits: Of those surveyed with fewer than 10,000 emails, online donations increased 26.7% in median revenue.

Given this information, here are some tips to improve your nonprofit marketing channels:

Email marketing: Harnessing the power of your list is going to become increasingly important. Therefore, try to simplify advocacy actions that can be taken from an email send. Examples include linking to your site, offering social share buttons and registration options from an email could make a huge difference in engagement. Also, share the good news. If your nonprofit meets a milestone, send a “thank you” email to more than just donors. You can also check out this white paper on email marketing for more tips and tools.

Social media: It’s no secret that donors want to see where their money goes. Therefore, transparency is key. Help them visualize the data in concrete terms with an infographic or a similar medium. Your brand has to become a digital storyteller. Update frequently with personal stories of how fundraising dollars impacts the cause. Share information about your volunteers and ways to get involved. Creating compelling content will increase shares and thus, your message.

Paid ads: Increase online donations with paid ads on search engines and social media channels. Whether it’s a click-to-call extension for mobile or promoting a video about a campaign’s success, give potential donors every reason and opportunity to share your cause. If you’re not sure how to get started with SEM, read our blog post about paid search for nonprofits.

Remember: With a limited source of funds, it can often be difficult to decide where to allocate your budget. That’s why it is extremely important to optimize each marketing initiative in which you participate. It is better to have the money to do one thing well (testing, measuring, optimizing) than to be spread thin. Therefore, choose your channels wisely and be sure your target audience is there.

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The Collective for Good: Season 1

Amber Ludeman — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:59:19 +0000

The Collective for Good is a new initiative that brings together buyers and sellers of digital media for a great cause. A brain child of David Herscott from NetX and Steve Parker, Jr. of Levelwing, the idea for The Collective was born at the 2011 iMedia Agency Summit in Scottsdale, AZ when both execs got to talking about saving the world.

The Collective is essentially a nonprofit that helps nonprofits increase their visibility in the digital space, thus increasing awareness and fundraising opportunities. The idea is simple: Bring buyers and sellers of digital media together in order to highlight a charitable cause (one per season). In Season 1, The Collective successfully brought together people from 11 companies and created digital campaigns that shined a light on Children of Domestic Violence, generating over 40 million impressions.

The campaign results:

121% increase in site traffic
377% increase in pledges
54% increase in Change a Life program engagement
150% increase in Change a Life program registration completions

A special thank you to the partners in The Collective: NetX, Levelwing, iMedia Connection, MediaMath, 24-7 Real Media, Verve, Audience Science, MediaMind, OwnerIQ, rocketfuel, POLITICO & Turn. The success of Season 1 is incredibly inspiring and the digital companies cannot wait to begin with another charity next year. Do you have suggestions for Season 2? Are you in the digital space and want to help? Please visit www.collectiveforgood.com. You can also tweet about the initiative using #C4G.

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Nonprofit Marketing: Increase Fundraising with Paid Search

Jeff Adelson-Yan (@jeffadelsonyan) — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:08:54 +0000

Paid search marketing is an incredible way to get the message out about your nonprofit. With 90% of adults using search engines to find information and 54% of those using a search engine every day, it’s a great way to make your business visible to the masses–and quickly. Since Google has the majority share of search volume (about 60%), it also makes sense that a nonprofit would want their ads to be visible there. However, nonprofits often have limited marketing budgets. That’s why Google Grants was invented.

Google Grants is available to nonprofit businesses and is basically a grant to run paid search ads free of charge. Here are the guidelines when creating these ads (some are not dissimilar from normal paid search ads, but have a few more restrictions):

Ad copy must be relevant to the destination page
Ads must link to a page on your nonprofit website and not any other
Ads must not exceed a maximum bid of $1.00
Ad copy must reflect your nonprofit’s mission
Ads must be text-only
Daily budgets cannot exceed $330 a day ($10,000 a month)
Campaigns must be keyword-targeted

Google Grants is great on its own or when used as supplemental marketing budget for your nonprofit fundraising campaigns. Google For Nonprofits, an entity that also incorporates YouTube for Nonprofits, can be applied for here. For more information about how the Google Grants program works, check out this video case study from Direct Relief International:

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The Spirit of Thanksgiving: Meals on Wheels

Steve Parker, Jr. (@sparkerjr) — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:13:21 +0000

In the spirit of Thanksgiving weekend, we would like to pause our regularly scheduled data insights to spotlight a great charity that is dear to our hearts. Meals on Wheels is committed to ending senior hunger in the United States by preparing and delivering meals to homebound seniors. There are 5,000 local Senior Nutrition Programs throughout the country that provide over a million meals each year. And as you can imagine, Thanksgiving is one of their busiest days.

That’s why we’d like to highlight the great work that MOWAA (Meals on Wheels Association of America) is doing.

Facts:

-Senior women make up the majority of those affected by hunger. The gender gap has widened even further since the last poll in 2009 when women accounted for 60% of hungry seniors.

-60-69 year old seniors were more likely to go hungry than those 80 or older.

-Seniors in rural areas are much more likely to go hungry than those living in metro areas.

-87% of seniors surveyed said that Meals on Wheels helped improve their overall health.

-93% say Meals On Wheels means they can continue to live in their own home.

-91% rate Meals On Wheels service as good to excellent.

Levelwing’s client-partner Bridgestone Retail Operations is partnered with MOWAA to make a difference in seniors’ lives and contributed over $470,000 to the cause in 2011. Please visit the Meals on Wheels site to find out how you can help.

The “Growth” of Movember

Amber Ludeman — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:31:17 +0000

Adam Garone, Founder and CEO of Movember, jokes that Movember was merely founded by several blokes in a mustache-growing challenge for the month of November in an effort to bring back the glorious ’70s mustache that had dominated the decade. Indeed, back in 2003, “before the ironic hipster movement,” it created a lot of controversy, says Garone. The following year, in 2004, Garone and his pals decided to “legitimize” their mustache-growing antics and were inspired by the Breast Cancer movement and charity. Therefore, they tried to partner with the Prostate Cancer Foundation, who shrugged it off. That year, however, they were able to raise $54,000 and donated it all to the Prostate Cancer Foundation, which then drew massive amounts of attention. Foster’s Beer put up their first sponsorship. Now they had money and an official platform. But how did they go viral?

They established Movember one country at a time, beginning in Australia, then New Zealand, Canada and the USA. Then it went global. With the help of social media efforts (Movember has tweeted over 4,000 times to date) and the fun twist put on a serious cause, people have embraced the mustache in all its glory.

In 2010, they had 400,000 “Mo Bros” across the globe and raised $77 million dollars, which makes it the top funder of prostate cancer research, awareness and education, and cancer support programs in the world. With the ushering in of Movember into North American pop culture (much of it taking place in Canada), the mustache can be found everywhere–and not just on faces. The mustache has made a comeback on coffee mugs, rings, necklaces, even stick-on mustaches are appropriate for ladies at parties. With the Movember movement, the age of the mustache has returned to pop culture (and as Garone mentioned, the hipster movement hasn’t hurt either). Some say that it is the “jarring effect” that mustaches have, which is even better for raising awareness. Since they are not prevalent in society, people inquire why you have one. This gives the Mo Bro the opportunity to talk about the Men’s Health Issues platform.

This year, Levelwing is maximizing their Movember efforts. With the participation of everyone in the company and their communities at large, Movember will be a huge success and we will raise awareness about men’s health issues.