See What’s Out There

This year, See3 is playing an active role in Tweetsgiving 2009, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. Last year, Tweetsgiving raised $10,000 to build a classroom in Tanzania. But as the story behind Tweetsgiving demonstrates, the real focus is not to raise money but to share gratitude all across the web.

Over the next few days, we’re encouraging folks to create a short video of themselves expressing what they’re thankful for this year. All you have to do is upload it to YouTube, tag it with “Tweetsgiving”, and include the tweetsgiving.org URL in your video description.

Watch the instructional video below, as well as three Tweetsgiving videos made by members of the See3 staff.

To see videos that others have created for Tweetsgiving, visit the Epic Change YouTube channel.

Any questions? Write in the comments below.

If you missed your opportunity to donate to a nonprofit on Facebook during “America’s Giving Challenge”, which raised more than $1 million from more than 50,000 donations in 3 weeks, you now have another chance to give on Facebook.

A new program is going live today called the Chase Community Giving Program, between Chase and Facebook.

What this means is:

· For the first time ever, Facebook users will be able to choose from more than 500,000 small and local charities to decide which community organizations they want to receive donations totaling millions of dollars from a corporate philanthropy fund.

· Facebook users, now totaling more than 300 million, will be able to vote for which small and local non profits will receive donations totaling $5 million

· The eligible charity receiving the most votes will be awarded $1 million, the top five runners-up will receive $100,000 each and the 100 finalists, including the top winners, will be awarded $25,000 each

· This $5 million Facebook effort is in addition to the bank’s traditional philanthropic giving, and if successful, the bank hopes to commit more of its annual philanthropy funds using this innovative method of giving.

We’ve already seen a lot of people casting their votes on Facebook, so now it’s your turn!

America’s Giving Challenge is an amazing program from The Case Foundation that See3 had the opportunity to support this year. It is a program that encourages nonprofits, large and small, to use the web to engage people in their work, and to encourage small donations. They make this happen through a competition that rewards nonprofits daily during the contest period and overall at the end. Today they just announced that the W.K. Kellogg Foundation added another $75,000 to the pot to give away.

Check it out right now at America’s Giving Challenge

Here’s the press release:

W.K. Kellogg Foundation Grant to America’s Giving Challenge Significantly Increases Number of Overall and Daily Awards Offered to Nonprofit Causes

Challenge Has Already Raised $1.1 million from More Than 50K Donations in Three Weeks;
Runs through November 6

WASHINGTON, D.C. (October 30, 2009) – America’s Giving Challenge, a 30-day, national online competition that encourages people to leverage their social networks to recruit supporters and win cash awards for nonprofit organizations, today announced that it has received a $75,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan to help mobilize participation in the last week of the Challenge.

The grant increases the total amount of award dollars in the Challenge to $245,000 for nonprofit causes that net the highest number of donations. America’s Giving Challenge, presented by the Case Foundation, Causes and PARADE Publications, launched on October 7, 2009. To date more than 50,000 donations have raised $1.1 million for nonprofit causes.

“America’s Giving Challenge offers a tremendous opportunity to raise funds and awareness for nonprofit organizations at a time when the communities we care about, including children and families, have never been in greater need of their services,” said Anne Mosle, vice president for programs at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. “We hope that collaborating with our colleagues in these efforts will not only encourage more innovation by all the participants in their fundraising efforts, but ultimately spark a larger movement of nonprofits leveraging technology to reach new audiences and inspire civic action.”

The $75,000 contribution from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation will enable the creation of five additional overall awards, including one $25,000 and four $10,000 prizes for the causes that garner the most unique daily donations over the 30 days of the Challenge. In addition, a $1,500 daily prize will be added for the last seven days of the Challenge beginning at 3 p.m. ET today. With the additional contribution, America’s Giving Challenge now offers 12 overall awards: one $50,000 prize, two $25,000 prizes and nine $10,000 prizes, and three daily awards of $1,500, $1,000 and $500.

Individuals and nonprofits can still get involved in America’s Giving Challenge. From now until November 6 at 3 p.m. ET, participants can compete for daily and overall awards – ranging from $500 to $50,000 – based on the number of donations to their cause using the Causes application on Facebook. Those who wish to participate in the Challenge can get involved in one of two ways:
• Champion a cause – Individuals can become “cause champions,” who are passionate about a specific cause and will compete to obtain the most donations for their cause through the Causes application on Facebook.
• Promote, donate or join a cause – all individuals are encouraged to take part in America’s Giving Challenge by joining, promoting and donating to the causes they care about. Facebook membership is not required to donate to a Giving Challenge cause.

Participants can register to compete in the Giving Challenge, view details and donate to a cause they care about at www.americasgivingchallenge.com.

About the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Established in 1930, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin American and the Caribbean, and southern Africa.

About the Presenting Partners:

The Case Foundation
The Case Foundation, created by Steve and Jean Case in 1997, invests in people and ideas that can change the world. The Foundation champions initiatives that connect people, increase giving, and catalyze civic action. For more information, visit www.casefoundation.org.

Causes
Causes empowers anyone with a good idea or passion for change to impact the world. Using our platform, individuals mobilize their network of friends to grow lasting social and political movements. To date, over 85 million Facebook users have installed the application and created and joined more than 300,000 grassroots causes that benefit more than 60,000 nonprofit organizations in the U.S. and Canada. For more information, visit the Causes Application (www.causes.com) and Causes Exchange (www.exchange.causes.com).

PARADE
PARADE, the most widely read magazine in America, is distributed in more than 500 of the nation’s top newspapers. The magazine, which launched in 1941, now has a circulation of 32 million and a readership of 73 million. Each Sunday in PARADE and every day at Parade.com, our mission is to entertain, inspire and inform Americans about the issues they care most about and move them to action. For more information, visit www.parade.com.

Shirley Sexton, our Director of Interactive Marketing & Fundraising, recently hosted a webinar, “What Donors Want This End of Year Season”.

Below is the slidedeck to the presentation, which you should feel free to share within your networks. We will be adding the audio portion shortly, and in the meantime, feel free to send an email to info (at) see3 (dot) net with your questions.

[This piece was originally posted as part of “Video Week” on Care2’s Frogloop blog. Thanks to Allyson Kapin and the Frogloop team for inviting us to participate.]

I used to be quite the curmudgeon about online video back in the day—ask anyone I worked with in the late nineties at AppNet’s Nonprofit practices or later in the early 2000s as the head of the Internet group at Easter Seals. My reasons were simple… the technology just wasn’t ready yet. Too much could potentially go wrong, and I’m very careful (some might say paranoid!) about make sure there’s never any interruption in the donor’s online giving usability path.

1. Back then, a majority of our client’s constituents didn’t have broadband on their computers.

2. Problems abounded creating the right versions for cross players, browsers and accessible versions.

3. The video equipment was expensive and difficult to use.

But oh! what a difference a few years make! Now I’m a fan! And why?

1. US broadband penetration has now grown to 63%.

2. As the medium has evolved, support has come forth to stabilize online video formats.

3. The low cost Flip video camera and other new technology is democratizing video making.

So now that all those pesky technical obstacles are out of the way, now what?

Now it’s all about the content. And wasn’t it always, really?

Video is the next best thing to being there. How many times have you (or your development director) said, if only our donors could be here in our service centers, meet the people we’re serving, see the needs first hand. Video is a wonderful tool to help with that storytelling.

Storytelling with video can be a wonderful way of explaining a difficult or overwhelming concept. Watch the moving video above about one family’s experience with Trisomy 18 and see how it helps us understand the condition, the need for support and research, all through the story of this one little boy.

It is not an every day occurrence that I hear about a project and think — that’s firkin’ brilliant. But at the Cause Marketing Forum a few weeks ago I was looking over the attendee list to the workshop where I spoke and saw that someone was listed as being from Movember. I thought to myself, “self, this has to be a mistake, it must be November.” I saw the name again and thought to myself, “self, this isn’t a mistake, you have to look it up.” So I did look it up.

Movember is an organization that gets men around the world to grow a mustache during the month of November and to treat this activity as a fundraising event, the same way you would treat a run, walk or ride event for a charity. At the end of the month they have parties where the participants dress up as their favorite mustachiod stars — think Tom Selleck.

I know what you are thinking. That’s fun and cute. Oh, and by the way, they raised $30 million.

That’s no type-o. And they are just getting started. I was so taken with this idea that I called the founder of the organization Adam Garone. Adam is Australian and started Movember with some buddies in 2003, kind of as a joke. A “mo” is short for a mustache in the Australian language, and so November could become Movember. They had 30 friends do it that first year. They got grief from their bosses and girlfriends but they wanted to keep doing it. So they added the charity component and no one can argue with that.

In 2004 they approached the Prostate Cancer Foundation in Australia because the connection to men’s health was obvious and they felt prostate cancer didn’t get the attention that it should get. They raised $55,000 that first year and were the largest single donor to the foundation. They are literally changing the face of men’s health.

The idea has grown rapidly in Australia and they have raised more than $20 million there. They then added New Zealand, and came to the US in 2006. They are just getting started here. This year, they are partnering with both the Lance Armstrong Foundation, for testicular cancer, and they continue their affiliation with the Prostate Cancer Foundation. I expect this organization to reach $100 million annually in a few year.

They are very focused on cause marketing as well with US sponsors including Pepsi Max, Canadian Club, Wahl, Quicksilver, DC Shoes, Warner Bros. and others. The parties they have at the end of the year rock and they give prizes for the best mustaches.

What is particularly brilliant about this concept is that when I start to grow my mustache in November, people are going to say, “What’s that dirt on your face?” or “Have you given up your day job for that porn career?” or “Are the Villiage People recruiting?” I will then have to explain why prostate and testicular cancers are in need of research dollars and more public attention. Talk about viral.

Learn more about Movember and, for you men, plan on joining me in growing that mustache in November for men’s health.

Some famous folks with a mustache that you can dress up as for the Movember party.

The Giving USA Foundation’s annual report on charitable giving said that gifts were down in 2008, but not by much, 2%. Given the economic mess — the worst since the Depression — this sounds pretty good. And, overall, it is.

But the overall number of 2% down hides the differences within the numbers. For example, get-out-the-vote work was counted and was way up because of the historic election last year. Gifts to United Way and others who aggregate giving to mostly local, mostly poverty-focused work was up as well. Religious giving was way up as well.

But other categories got hammered. Arts, environment, health and education — is that all? — were all down. All is not rosy.

Remember, the research says don’t talk too much about the economy. People want to support winners, not those desperate for cash. The actionable intelligence from this report is this: Tell your stories. Find your best stories and work extra hard to tell them to your potential donors. It’s the stories of people and their real lives that get people writing checks and clicking on your donate button.

You can hear more about this story at NPR.

More on this story from Blackbaud, which analyzed the data. They have some nice graphs. They show online giving is way up.

Online Giving Surpasses $15 Billion in 2008
Blackbaud analyzed the Giving USA data, along with other important metrics, and estimates that more than $15.42 billion was given online to US charities in 2008. This is a 44% increase over 2007’s online giving estimates. Online giving accounted for just over 5% of total giving to charities in the US during 2008 and has been growing for many years now.

more from Blackbaud here.

See3 will be well-represented at the 2009 Bridge Conference and we hope you can join us! July 21-23 in Washington DC.

We are sponsors and I will be presenting about using video for fundraising.

We made this video for the conference. A fundraiser’s dream! (Watch in HQ.)

You can register for the conference here.

See3 Communications Names Shirley Sexton Director, Interactive Marketing and Fundraising


Leading provider of new media services to nonprofit community adds experienced online fundraiser and strategist to manage expanded service offering.

Chicago – April 3, 2009 – Continuing its growth as a national provider of interactive services to the nonprofit and cause community, See3 Communications proudly announces the addition of Shirley Sexton to its team as Director, Interactive Marketing and Fundraising.

Sexton joins See3 from Easter Seals, the 8th largest nonprofit organization in the United States, where she served as Assistant Vice President, Interactive Marketing. Sexton lead the creation of Easter Seals online infrastructure of over 140 Web sites, and established their Online Fundraising program, bringing their online income from virtually nothing to over 1.5 million dollars in just six years. Under Sexton’s leadership, Easter Seals’ presence online has became a leading model in the nonprofit sector for innovation, integration of headquarters and local chapters, and accessibility. In her position, Sexton managed a staff of seven employees and oversaw all online communications, including website development, email fundraising and outreach. During her tenure at Easter Seals Sexton also contributed to the nonprofit community by serving on the Convio Advisory Board, the ePhilanthropy Board of Directors and the Network for Good Advisory Board.

“We are thrilled that Shirley is joining See3 and bringing her vast knowledge of online fundraising and her sector leadership to our organization,” said Michael Hoffman See3 CEO. “Shirley is the anchor to our expansion of services, including comprehensive interactive assessments and email communications plans. In today’s environment it is especially critical that organizations optimize and coordinate all of their fundraising activities. At Easter Seals, Shirley was running an interactive program in a complex organization with a massive direct mail background, major corporate partners and large federal grants. She knows how to integrate channels and collaborate with stakeholders to optimize outcomes.”

Sexton has long been a trailblazer in utilizing online and direct marketing for social causes. Sexton’s online experience includes serving as principal strategic consultant for engagements with hundreds of national nonprofit clients at AppNet/Commerce One and managing the ground-breaking online experiment of marketing online subscriptions for Slate.com at iXL. Her direct mail portfolio includes work for Highlights Magazine, The New York Times and AOL. In addition, Sexton worked for nine years as art director in the direct marketing department of the National Geographic Society.

About See 3 Communications

See3 is a communications firm that works exclusively with nonprofits, foundations, associations, and social causes. See3 specializes in online strategy for fundraising and advocacy. They use their skills in video production and web development combined with their experience in strategic communications.

See3 creates compelling media and online initiatives for causes, from national organizations to community-based programs. They approach each engagement with a fresh eye, take the time to consider the clients’ audience and goals—fundraising, recruitment, education, awareness—and execute tailored video, web, and outreach campaigns to achieve maximum impact.

On a popular email list I am on there was talk about how effective fundraising emails still are. This came up in a recent conversation with a large nonprofit we were talking to here at See3.

Sarah DiJulio, Executive VP at M+R Strategic Services — a terrific online fundraising/marketing/PR firm and increasingly frequent partner with See3 on client projects — had this to say about email. She based her comments on real data from nonprofits:

Open rates, have fallen much faster than other rates. Response rates have also declined a bit over the past few years, but not nearly as fast as open rates. I simply wouldn’t read too much into open rates, because of all of the oddities around how they are calculated.

On response rates, these have been gradually declining, but part of what we’re seeing is that the non-urgent emails are performing extremely poorly, but emails that are near the deadline – ie DEADLINE TONIGHT kind of emails – are performing better than previous averages, and actually making up for shortfalls in other email messages. My experience so far is that email is still working, but some email is working better, and other email is going more poorly.

So the regular stuff is working less well, with the authentically important and urgent stuff doing better. Pay attention - you just can’t keep doing the same old same old here, especially in this environment.