There was a very interesting thread of discussion on the N-TEN email list today about fundraising widgets, or charity badges. It was interesting enough that I will reproduce some of it here.

What kicked it off was this question from Chicago-based nonprofit consultant Betsy Harman.

A recent NTEN blog posting talks about charity donation badges as one of the 10 cool tools for nonprofits to use the web

I also think these can be very powerful tools for nonprofits. I wrote about it on my blog too (after ignoring my blog for far too long) and created a couple of badges recently using different tools.

At Sixdegrees.org you can create nice looking badges with photos and even links to videos and there are celebrity badges although the celebrity badges thus far haven’t raised much money (Tyra Banks $10 / Jane Kacmarek $30 -
lame!) Sixdegrees has received some media exposure recently so perhaps things will pick up. I saw Kevin Bacon on the Today show.

The NTEN posting mentioned the great work Beth Kanter did with the Yahoo for Good badge campaign for Sharing Foundation. In the case of The Sharing Foundation, they use the Network for Good donation page for all online donations anyway so posting the badge on their website or on an official org blog wouldn’t cause any confusion for donors as to which donation page to use or why do these donation pages look different from one another.

All this is leading to a few questions I’d love to throw out to nonprofits that have been experimenting with these badges:

1.) What methods are you finding to be most effective to encourage current donors and volunteers to create these badges and post them on their blogs, My Space page etc…? Are you posting badges created by your donors on your website as examples for others?

2.) If your primary means of processing online donations is not through Network for Good, do you have any concerns about steering people to two (or
more) different donation tools and forms with different looks?

3.) If you don’t use Network for Good and your own donation processing vendor has tools for creating badges like this are you steering donors to use those tools instead but potentially missing something by not tapping into the media buzz and celebrity connection of something like sixdegrees.org?

This is all still very new and I’m just wondering what people are trying and what people are thinking about this so thought I’d toss it out to this list where there are lots of smart folks who can comment.

Betsy Harman
Harman Interactive
773-728-4194

I replied.

Betsy

We have been working with clients on the issue of Charity Badges, or as they are also called, fundraising widgets. (There are some differences in look and function between many of these tools.) So in our experience, to answer your questions…

1. How do you get people to use them?

We believe that it is best to see charity badges in the context of a toolkit that enables constituents to reach out to their friends on behalf of an organization. This toolkit is both a marketing program and a set of technologies. Just as putting a Donate Now button on your website doesn’t mean anyone will actually do that, so too just having these badges doesn’t make anyone use them. One successful strategy we have employed is to look for cohorts among an organization’s broader set of constituents. For example, we are working with some programs that run trips and have service programs, where the alumni can be tapped. Giving a cohesive group a group goal creates a virtuous circle of peer pressure — for example, those returning from this alternate Spring Break, or those who volunteered in 2006 — are seeking to raise a total of $x by y date. Getting buy-in in advance of a launch is key. Identifying the influencers is also a key step – their buy-in will have a greater impact. In terms of a broader audience online, we are mapping online communities that discuss and act on particular issues and identifying the influencers (for example, the most popular bloggers on a specific subject). Relationships needs to be cultivated first, but having a good lay of the land in terms of who can influence a wider community is a key step. With a relationship, compelling content and a discrete campaign, organizations can then mobilize these influencers. We also believe that the toolkit needs to be more than donation processing. SplashCast, for example, allows you to create a custom video/photo channel that can carry real content about the work of the organization – critical for making the kinds of emotional connections that lead to support.

2. Consistency of donation processing

It is certainly best to use a tool that links right into the same data collection framework that you already use. It is also important to look at costs. Network For Good might have significantly higher processing fees that you have with your own merchant account. On the other hand, our opinion is if you have an opportunity — because you have an uber-networker like Beth Kanter on board, for example — then you shouldn’t allow the consistency issue to stop you. On the other hand, you need to have a very good, clear, rigorous process for getting the data into your main database even if it’s time consuming (and this, as well as any difference in processing costs or fees, should be considered a cost when reviewing whether the effort was worth it.)

3. The buzz from sites that encourage donations through alternate tools

There are many sites launching these days designed to encourage philanthropy and connection to nonprofits. Some of these include: changingthepresent.org, kiva.org, change.org, globalgiving.com, justgive.org, universalgiving.org… They vary in emphasis, stage of development and quality of offering. It is very easy for nonprofit managers to panic, and think they need to be in all these things, that they are missing major opportunities. While it is important to be aware of the landscape as much as anyone can be, there is no free lunch. Any site or community or new effort needs to be worked to be successful. Our advice… lay out the opportunities and only do what they can put their resources behind. I also think the overall impact of all these sites today is very very small relative – insignificant — to overall support. Pay attention, participate where it makes sense, but keep things in perspective.

For some perspective, I recommend Tate Hausman’s (from dotOrganize) article in the most recent N-TEN Connect newsletter. In this piece he demonstrates that most organizations simply need to get their own basic data/email/donation systems in order and put first things first.

Michael Hoffman
See3 – Media for Nonprofits

And then Tanya Zumach replied as well. Tanya is a nonprofit consultant who used to work at Mercy Corp.

Betsy, thanks for starting this discussion!
Michael, thank you for your thoughtful response.
And Tate’s article is great, too.

OK, with all of that out of the way…

When presented with these opportunities and partnerships and portals and more, I always very carefully evaluate them by these criteria:

1) ROI. Always my number one bottom line. Even for the supposedly “free”
opportunities, there are costs involved – time in setting up, maintaining and monitoring, back-end data, etc. I look at the results from others who are participating, ask what results others have seen, ask how the most successful ones implemented the tools. Bottom line – maybe my time be better invested in developing a strong renewal campaign or in tweaking and testing my donation page -things I know I should be working on. (Also second here the comments others have noted about data integration, etc.)

Also, what are the hidden costs? I was always amazed when people asked me to promote these things to my list – my most valuable and profitable asset.
Does it make sense for me to ask my donors to jump to another platform or social networking page or somewhere else to *maybe* get a 10th of my normal average gift on my own site? Probably not – but every now and then the potential is there (see #4).

2) Brand Integrity. This is interesting – and important to consider. We hear that “Web 2.0″ is supposedly moving the power of brand interpretation to the user (personalized content syndication, consumer generated media, etc.). But carefully consider the true essence of your brand and how that guides your interaction with supporters. Does it support your brand to allow users to put your mission and work in their own words? Sometimes, yes. But remember that your strongest opportunity to share your brand values and make strong, lasting connections with donors is on your own site. If you’ve already done that, great – spend some time working on how to use these networks, but if you haven’t – work on your own site first.

Also be mindful of how your story and your brand is presented in context of the tool(s), networks and sites involved. You may find yourself side by side with messages, images or other organizations that might be in contradiction with your values, or that might dilute or confuse your message.

3) Donor Care and Cultivation Potential. One of the biggest drawbacks that I’ve seen with some of these opportunities is that you don’t get donor contact information (or poor or incomplete info). You lose the potential of further cultivation, and if they never really directly interact with your organization (because they hadn’t visited your site or received your normal (assumedly high-quality) donor care) they probably aren’t as strong prospects. Consider the cost of acquiring a new donor and what you lose if you don’t get this info and sometimes it can be a deal-breaker.

That said, I also consider what opportunity I have to build even stronger relationships with my current donors who are really looking to do more – perhaps this is a fantastic option for a particular group of donors.

4) Potential. Sometimes opportunities arise where the potential is just so dang strong, and even though the initial calculations from #s 1-3 above don’t pencil out (or more likely you just don’t have enough data) you just have to go for it and see what happens. Perhaps the potential to reach a huge audience is there (and makes sense for your organization and goals).
Perhaps your donors have asked for something like this. Perhaps this is the next YouTube and you just have a feeling… After all, if we don’t take some risks to try something new we may never see something that’s really great take off.

Cheers to innovation and to people trying to help us do good! I look forward to continuing this conversation here and at NTC.

Tanya

———-
Tanya Zumach, ePMT
Senior Director of Online Strategy
Metropolitan Group

UPDATE: Beth Kanter, who really started us off with testing and blogging about the fundraising widgets, was a little late to this thread, but her response is worth posting here as well. (A little late in Internet time means about 8 hours…) Beth is the nonprofit blog guru, a trainer and consultant to nonprofits. Beth knows what she is talking about with widgets. She raised $50,000+ for the Sharing Foundation as part of a Yahoo! contest which then matched it with another $50,000. So, $100k+ from a little fundraising widget and a lot of networking. Wow.

Hi Betsy:

Great questions!

Sorry I missed this thread, been involved in an interesting discussion about the whole notion of technology stewardship in a community of practice context. It’s about guiding people in a community to effective choices about technology — it’s about when to say yes and when to say no – even there is a lot of hype surrounding a particular new or cutting edge technology.

I’ve been thinking a lot of about technology stewardship as it applies to charity badges and widgets. I think we might do a disservice to nonprofits to focus on widgets as “powerful tools.” It’s about personal fundraising, it’s about effective campaign strategy and execution, it’s about mixing both online/offline and range of techniques, and finally it’s about having the basic capacity to make it successful.

With that said, I started tinkering with widgets back in October and shortly after ChipIn launched, I set up an action learning experiment for a personal fundraising campaign on behalf of the Sharing Foundation.

My reflections on the campaign can be found here:

http://widgetfundraising.wikispaces.com/

Widgets are fun.

For that particular campaign, I asked other bloggers to post the widget on their blogs – and lot of people did. Most of my effort when into crafting a personal, compelling campaign message on why I felt it was important to support this project (sending a young Cambodian woman to college).

The money went into a paypal account — TSF has one set up for several other online projects they are involved with.

The Network for Good/Yahoo badge campaign was connected to our network for good account. A big incentive to enter that campaign was the matching funds from Yahoo. There were 20-25 TSF board and volunteers who were involved with the initial campaign. (Note: I put the badge on my blog and it was also on the TSF Web site replacing our regular network for good button during the campaign. I asked some other people to put in their blogs too.)

The key to the success of the campaign was the fact that everyone on the board forwarded the messaging to their golf buddies, church and synagoge members, social clubs, neighbors, friends, family, PTA, employees. Board members also got on the phone, went to Rotary meetings with their laptops, knocked on doors, asked other parents while at kids soccer games, etc. It was all person-to-person fundraising – either face-to-face, on the phone, or via the Internet.

Hard copies of our messaging also went out in church bulletins during the week after Christmas. In addition, we outreached to both our organizational as well as personal email lists – many of whom are parents who forwarded to out to their networks. I also got all the tech savvy monks with laptops to forward the information to the Cambodian community – and crafted pitch in Khmer.

One reason why the personal fundraising online is a good match for Sharing Foundation culture – is because we do mostly grassroots person to person fundraising. The widgets are simply an extension of the way of have been fundraising over the years.

What I learned was this:

1. Make sure your technology capacity – as well as your fundraising campaign is place.
2. Design a small modest experiment that uses the principles of personal fundraising 3. Reflect on the results of that small experiment — what worked? what didn’t? Then plot a larger campaign involving more people