Articles

By Katie Bess, MSW, and Gary Bess, PhD

A new era has developed where social media, including web and mobile technologies, have turned communication into an interactive dialogue, surpassing the days when telephone, letters, and in-person communication were the conventional ways to interact. Today, we can have social interaction no matter where we are in the world with just a mobile smart phone. We are moving into a generation where social media is taking over and expanding the ways in which we communicate. How can we use this new and powerful resource to promote and advance the world of nonprofit organizations?

The social media environment is expanding the way nonprofit organizations administer their services, communicate with stakeholders, and manage the relationships they have with other nonprofits and community members. It is an inexpensive and powerful networking tool to promote nonprofit interests by informing and empowering constituencies and supporters to raise money for services, advocate for important issues, or simply remain connected to the nonprofit's mission.  Whether your organization’s goals are to promote policy, advocate for a specific cause or a high-risk population, or to provide direct services, social media can help  promote awareness about the issue and the need.

Through Internet and mobile smart phones, social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter allow the user to send instant updates (aka Live Feed) with the intent that  your subscriber audience will immediately observe what you posted. This is a great way to get information out in a timely fashion to a large and presumed supportive audience. Social media platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and blogs can be easily added to an organization’s webpage, which remains the repository of key facts and organizational background information, and makes it even easier for your constituents and those interested to remain current on issues of importance to the agency.

Social media can provide many benefits for nonprofits. It can foster collaboration opportunities with other nonprofits, for-profits and governmental organizations by instantly providing information on important cause-related topics and issues in which the organization is currently involved in an easily accessible way.  It affords others the opportunity to provide support, fresh ideas and feedback on topics of common interest. For example, if your organization is working to pass a resolution or oppose a particular bill and you need people and/or organizations to quickly sign on and lend their support in little time, providing an instant message to your members will quickly spread the word.

It is important to keep your audience interested and engaged in your organization or informational campaign by providing a place for the audience to discuss issues. This can be accomplished by linking a social networking platform (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, blog) to your nonprofit’s webpage. Posting questions on specific topics that relate to your nonprofit agency's mission or practices, and asking for feedback from your audience of their views on the issue are ways to link your webpage to social media platforms.  You can encourage a rich, interactive and vibrant environment for sharing information while sustianing support for your organization. 

These opportunities for immediate engagement also come with potential risks, though if you are vigilantly aware, there are multiple ways to avoid them.  A key component in avoiding risks is creation of a social media strategy that anticipates possible problems in addition to strategic actions.  Developing and carrying out a social media strategy will assure your attainment of organizational goals, implementation of measurable objectives and overall delivery of performance, while safeguarding against potentially harmful comments that others make.  The social media strategy may include, for example, daily updates to webpages and other social media sites, weekly blasts to constituents, and daily reviews of new posts to ensure appropriateness of comments.  Many organizations are also including social marketing as a part of their agency's strategic plan as there is a logical fit with several key plan directives that range from fund development to advocacy to service integration.

To avoid potential risks once a social media strategy is implemented, stay active on the webpage and platforms (e.g., regularly review interactions / responses), and answer a respondent's question or acknowledge a respondent's statement in a timely matter. Since you cannot control what is said by your audience, it is important to control for inappropriate or harmful statements, which you can either refute or delete.  Hypothetically, if someone posted something on your nonprofit social networking site that wasn’t appropriate (i.e., expressed displeasure with a seminar  attended or service received,  or posted something that was against the nonprofit’s purpose), it’s best to stay active on the platform to either immediately delete the comment or provide a public response to the comment. Providing a public response will show your organization’s openness to other opinions and reinforce the issue, while assuring that everyone’s voices are heard.

While using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, it is important to remember that social media is another representation of your organization and therefore should be handled carefully as to not publicly post or provide information that is against your organization’s mission, goals or image. With that said, this is an exciting new era that can provide many benefits to nonprofit organizations. 

For more information regarding social media resources, strategy templates and training materials, please visit: http://www.wearemedia.org/. We Are Media, a social media blog in of itself, provides a community of people from nonprofits that are interested in learning and teaching social media strategies and and offers tools for organizations like yours.

Authors

Katie Bess, MSW, currently serves as the Washington D.C. representative for the National Association for Rural Mental Health (NARMH), is a research assistant with the National Association of Counties (NACo) and a senior policy intern with the National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Directors (NACBHDD).

Gary Bess, PhD, is the principal in Gary Bess Associates (GBA), established n 1991, a nonprofit and government consulting firm that specialized is grant writing, needs assessment and nonprofit management. For several years he directed free medical clinics in southern California, including the South Bay Free Clinic in Manhattan Beach and the Los Angeles Free Clinic, and building on this experience, GBA specialized in applications for Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) designation and renewals.   

Learn more about GBA at www.garybess.com

You’d think that selecting a decent webhosting service provider (webhost) would be as simple as, well, choosing a new laptop – or even a washing machine for that matter. But the simple, somewhat bizarre, truth is: it’s not. It’s truly maddening. No wonder webhost customers would rather endure overpriced and under-serviced accounts rather than roll the dice to find a better one. Maybe that’s why I’ve kept mine – Jumpline.com – for a dozen years, when I should have let them go a long time ago.

“Dude, just Google a review, choose a new webhost – and stop whining,” you say. (“Ha! Go ahead and try that,” I retort.)

Call it a conspiracy, fear of advertiser backlash, or even an untapped news niche (hardly), but finding a bona fide review of webhosts is far more elusive than the rational mind would think.

When I decided to check into a possible replacement webhost for DOWW, as well as for a few of my clients, I did the first logical thing: I Googled “webhosting reviews.” What spewed out were hundreds – perhaps thousands – of “web resources” on hosting: “Top WebHosting Reviews, Top 10 Web hosting reviews, Web Hosting Reviews of 2011…” What I realized after slogging through a couple dozen of these sites was that they were just advertising portals for the webhosting industry. Although all of them provided some sort of rating, if you bothered to check the customer reviews on the very same site they rarely supported the ratting provided by the reviewer! (I remember looking into a couple of well-positioned webhosts and all of the reviews were scathing. Those were the top rated webhosts!) So, I then took the next logical step: I sought out advice from the established big dogs of technical reviews: PC Magazine, PC World, Laptop Magazine, CNET Reviews and even Consumer Report. Nada. Really! None of these guys had any webhosting reviews done in the last decade. CNET’s page was simply another list of paid advertisers.

Finally, I started asking a few of my colleagues which webhost they’d recommend. They had all, more-or-less, simply chose the least problematic webhost. At best, they’d say “my webhost support is polite” or “I can’t complain, but I rarely use the tech support.”

Well, to put this story in the nutshell where it belongs, I finally sorted out four hosting services – discovered through different means – to put through the test. For FatCow.com, one of the nation’s largest and emerging companies, it was because the first half-dozen “webhost review sites” I’d thought might be the most ethical, had positioned this webhost rather well.  For Superb.net and later WestHost.com, it was based on on-line articles that I’d stumbled upon. For these three I went as far as paying for hosting, uploaded a WordPress site, and then tested their speed and customer support. As for GreenGeeks.com, which was mentioned in an article by PCWorld about the environmentally conscious hosting market, I didn’t bother.

What I wanted from my hosting provider was this:

• cPanel technology that would handle php and MySQL versions 5 or greater. (All offered that.)
• 24/7 live tech support (with phone, chat and email preferred). Support that was both knowledgeable and would not automatically state “We don’t support that outside application.” (Most failed this test.)
• A personal customer representative should tech support be unwilling to help. (Only half could oblige.)
• A company big enough so it’ll be around for years to come, but not too big that the support staff wouldn’t act like robots – like they do at NetworkSolutions.com. (Most succeeded.)
• Reasonable Internet speed. (Most passed this test.)
• Shared hosting plans (all offered this); with dedicated IP address option. (Most offered this.)
• A fair price. (They were all pretty good.)

Findings

FatCow (Albuquerque, NM) were very pro-active and very polite. Although they would not provide me with a personal customer rep, I was willing to test them out. Their cPanel was intuitive and pricing was great. But they were too short on hosting plans (they have just one) and offered no dedicated IP address option (which is very important when you’re building a new site). Finally, when I needed their help in configuring their service to the WordPress “config.php” file (which any decent support person should be able to handle with little thought) they were unwilling to. Needless to say, they failed the test. (But, I would not rule them out for a small organization needed minimal services and support.)

GreenGeeks (Santa Monica, CA) have been touted as the green alternative, so naturally I had to check them out. After a long conversation with one of their senior sales representative, she told me that having my own personal customer rep was not possible – even if I brought some of my client accounts with me. (She sounded a bit snarky when she said this.) I got a bad vibe with GreenGeeks, so I compared some of the customer reviews on them (which I took with a grain of salt), found them not to be a good-enough fit for me, before moving down on my list.

Superb.net (Honolulu, HI) was nearly my choice. Although they are a smaller company, they’re owned by a much larger one – so that was reassuring, sort of. I had landed a personal customer rep fairly easily who wasn’t some kid just answering phones, and I found their listed options met all my basic requirements. However, after purchasing a hosting plan and uploading my WordPress test site, I found that only one out of the five tech support people I’d dealt with seemed to have a clue about their job. And when the Internet speed failed to come up to snuff (the time to load the site took between 8 and 20 seconds – which is way too slow) after a week of them assuring me that they were checking into the matter, I thanked them for their time and work and moved on to the next one on my list.

Westhost.com (Providence, UT) is the webhost I eventually went with – and not just out of exasperation either. Within the same day I landed a “can-do” personal customer rep, got a free month of service (that’s for any of my clients as well), uploaded my test site without a hitch, found their support staff knowledgeable and helpful, the Admin (cPanel) interface intuitive, the speed fast, and their pricing fair. ($4/month for the regular hosting, $8/month for preferred).

Now I don’t know how long I will recommend Westhost.com, but since they’ve floated to the top of the heap, I believe they’re certainly worth considering. That said, if you've been satisfied with your webhost, please share with a comment. Oh, and if you’d like to get a free month of service via Westhost.com, just click this link: WestHost.com or email me and I’ll find out for you what the current online coupon code is.

Disclosure: DOWW participates in WestHost’s affiliate program. Details are available upon request.

Although nonprofits have been hurting like the rest of us during these past few years, 2010 saw a significant increase in online giving. According to Blackbaud (they’re the big dogs when it comes to nonprofit consulting) 2010 Giving Report year-over-year growth was 34.5% compared to 2009. Apparently, funds for Haiti relief spiked the data a bit, but online giving nevertheless is very much on the rise. The larger organizations benefitted the most with 55.6% growth compared to 15.9% for smaller organizations – which makes sense since larger organizations can employ stronger web fundraising tools.

How does online fundraising look against other means of income? Well, the percentage of total fundraising that comes from online giving has grown to 7.6%. Since the last analysis of this kind, large organizations have shifted from having the lowest percentage of online dollars to total funds raised to the highest percentage. International Affairs and Health Care sectors now bring in more than 10% of total fundraising from online giving.

Why is online giving becoming popular? It’s simple: donors what to get their donations to work as fast as possible. In the past several years we’ve seen mega-disaster after another, from the Asian Tsunami of 2004 to the Japanese Tsunami of 2011, and when people see a crises they want to help now. Moreover, they now instinctively know to go online rather than pick up the telephone or wait for mailed solicitations. As Blackbaud pointed out, online giving is becoming the first-response method of choice for donors. Major events like the Haiti earthquake are going to continue to increase the use of online and mobile technologies to engage with donors. Nonprofits across all sectors can learn valuable lessons from Haiti and other disaster relief programs and apply them to their fundraising efforts.

Not just small gifts anymore. From the analyzed data it was found that significant online donations have been made for the third consecutive year. In 2010, 88% of nonprofits had at least one online gift of $1,000 or more. This was an increase from 77% in 2009.The largest online gift made in 2010 was $100,000 and there were 10 gifts of this size. This was up from 2009, when the largest online gift was $60,000. The median online gift of $1,000 or more was $1,250.Online gifts of a significant amount are likely to increase and be a greater source of fundraising results for nonprofits.

So, how is your nonprofit faring? Are you taking advantage of Internet tools to your advantage? If you’re not sure, you may wish to click the “Your Website” tab on this site to see what you might be mission. But ask yourself this right now: Are the donation results shared with other sectors of your fundraising team? (E.g.: when you get a large contribution is it fed to your major/corporate gifts person for follow-up?) Are donors immediately added to the mailing list and email alerts? Are you showcasing larger contributions on the website (with permission granted, of course) to inspire others? Are you “Sharing” on Facebook and other social media networks? Within your online appeal, do you offer donation amount suggestions and how that money would be invested? And, do you have sections and/or pages for Planned, Corporate and Major gifts? Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, are you showcasing your appeal prominently? Your Home page should prioritize your need for contributions now, and what it will be used for. Having a compelling image on the top of your Home page with a simple message (e.g.: “Free HIV Testing Program to close. Please give now to ensure it doesn’t.”)

Should you have any questions or website needs, please feel free to contact us.

By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: April 1, 2011

Some nonprofits, like one fighting malaria or another serving victims of the Nazis, are happily closing their doors as they run out of work.

Read the whole article here.

This morning I came across a clever online (top-ten list) article by Philanthropy Journal regarding when it might be time to redesign an organization’s website and, moreover, how best to approach the organization’s leadership that the time is now. I thought I’d comment on the individual points - plus add an additional key item - before sharing this list with doWW viewers.

As the author of the article pointed out, and I certainly agree, the website is the most cost-effective communication tool a nonprofit has. I’ll add that since few supporters and, perhaps, clients can afford the time to come visit the organization in person, the website really needs to keep the “front lobby up,” as it were. It needs to meet and greet the person like a well informed and caring reception staff. Moreover, the website not only needs to reflect the organizations services, programs and wants, it needs to reflect the organizations vitality and ability to engage the visitor.

Remember, a website is not a digital version of a static brochure, but an interactive venue – a social network between the public and the organization.

That said, now the list:

10. Your website and social media don't speak the same language and can't get along.
In other words, the ability to “share” with your social network (e.g.: Facebook, LinkedIn, an email) an article you find interesting is becoming one of the best means of steering traffic to your website. And, of course, traffic equals participation and potential support. Share the wealth of information!

9. Your website assumes that visitors are willing to wait several minutes for everything to load, and doesn't care that its programming and graphics files are the cause. (Your web statistics indicate that 95 percent of your visitors don't get past the homepage.)
Skip the bandwidth-heavy flash intro, optimize the graphics to the appropriate file size, and get to the heart of the matter. Also, always keep in mind that the Home page is prime real estate; don’t overwhelm viewers with too much information. Yet, make sure that they can get to where they need to go in no more then 2 clicks.

8. You have absolutely no idea how to log in to make changes and your volunteer website administrator stopped returning your calls six months ago.
Since the website is the organization's main communication tool to the public, maintenance and content development must be performed with the same regularity as an organization’s scheduled staff meeting. If you rely on a good-hearted volunteer to maintain the site, he/she will have to have not only some basic webmaster skills, but the ability (and this is important) to showcase the organization in the best light possible. They also need to be as reliable as any paid employee or outsourced webmaster. Also, be sure to keep accurate records on how to login to the site and how to make basic alterations should your volunteer (or staff member) disappear.

Finally, keep in mind that just because your website was built as a Content Management System (CMS) which permits client-side alterations, that does not necessarily mean that the person tasked with updating the website will be able to understand CMS procedures and will be able to budget the necessary time to stay on top of the website maintenance.

7. Your nonprofit's website looks exactly like your brochure, with no more and no less information and photographs.
As stated earlier, the website is not a digital brochure. It is a venue where the public can interact with the organization. It is your communication nerve center.

6. Everything is a downloadable PDF file.
Having someone download a document will tire your visitor faster than a weekend budget meeting. Your important content must be viewable onscreen with minimal loading time.

5. Your homepage reminds you of when you were studying for yours SATs - too much text and information than is possible to digest.
Engage your viewers! Make them want to return! How? It is done by judicially selecting just the right amount of content with appealing graphics and images, and then laying it out in the most user-friendly format possible (think magazine structure). Lead them to additional content from excerpts, and don’t overwhelm them. Finally, offer them the option to comment on an article and share the information with others.

4. It takes visitors, and you, at least three attempts to successfully click your intended selection on a complicated drop-down menu. (Keep trying - you'll catch that link!)
Not only does your navigation/menu selector have to function properly, it needs to be set up logically and intuitively.

3. An over-zealous intern or volunteer installed a fancy flash introduction that makes your website look like it is for a video game rather than a nonprofit - and that decreases your traffic by 40 percent to 60 percent.
Before you move with your website design, you must go through some sort of branding/market identification process. Serving the needs of the underserved is not the same as selling surfer shorts or plumbing services. Make sure your style, approach and content reflects this critical fact.

2. You completely redesigned your logo and look three years ago, but your website still has the logo and look designed 15 years ago. Again, your website is not an afterthought. It needs to reflect where the organization is NOW. And having an old logo, or a past event, still on the Home page is a major faux pas.

(That said, the creation of a logo is a specialization. It requires skills that are not usually available to even the best graphic designer. Logo creation is the key part of the organizational identity process.)

1. You are being charged by the hour for a web programmer to make all of your changes and updates even though there are free open-source templates with content-management systems built-in. Periodic content updates and new articles do not necessarily require the skills of a webmaster. Keep him/her for the design, structural and back-end work. But if the task of keeping the website current is “falling through the cracks,” some sort of outsourced website maintenance schedule may serve the needs of the organization best.

1+ Your website is almost invisible in the search engines.
If one cannot locate your website because of poor or non-existing search engine optimization (SEO) practices, then you are not marketing. (Your Internet outreach is now Intra-net.) Few things are as important in the development of a website as getting the SEO down right on every page.

For more information on website development practices, options and ideas, visit Your Website at doww.