Posts by Heather Mansfield
Top Ten Change.org Best Practices for Nonprofit Admins
Published September 21, 2009 @ 01:14PM PT
Please Note: All nonprofits in the United States that have an entry in GuideStar.org are also on Change.org. You can access your nonprofit's profile and the Change.org tool set by signing up for a Nonprofit Admin account. Now on to the best practices:
1. Brand your organization's profile on Change.org.
Nonprofits can easily design their profile to match their website and other social networking sites. Once you brand your profile, then your actions, fundraising projects, fundraising pages, etc. are also branded which definitely results in more donations and action participants. Learn More: Nonprofits can now brand their own profiles on Change.org!
2. Send "Thank You Compliments" to all your donors and fundraisers on Change.org.
Donors on Change.org love receiving compliments and they often result in repeat donations. It's especially important that you compliment your donors that have opted out of providing their contact information to your organization. It's the only way to further engage them! [See Compliments]
3. Ask your supporters to create a fundraising page for your organization.
The number one reason people donate to nonprofit organizations is because they were asked to by either a friend or family member, or the nonprofit organization itself. The same is true of fundraisers. They need to be asked. There are hundreds of thousands of kind-hearted, generous individuals out there on the Web. Your role is to empower them to fundraise on behalf of your organization.
That said, promote your "Start A Fundraising Page" link [View Example] on your website, in your email newsletter, on your MySpace profile, your Facebook Page, and your blog. Imagine if you had 100 fundraisers out there on the Web asking their friends and family to donate to your organization! Fundraisers on Change.org usually raise between $50 and $2,500 for their favorite organization and numerous new donors. All you need to is ask them to fundraise for your organization and your core supporters will be more than happy to oblige. Fundraising pages have the most success during the holidays, so now is good time to be thinking about asking your supporters to create fundraising pages for your organization this holiday season.
4. Create an E-mail Petition.
E-mail petitions are by far the fastest an easiest way to build your Change.org community. Unlike other online petitions, Change.org e-mail petitions send an e-mail to the target each time someone signs on. When people sign on, they also become members of your Change.org community and 10% of those will also provide your organization their e-mail when then sign on (which can be downloaded to an Excel spreadsheet from your Admin Dashboard). Learn More: 15 Steps to Launching a Successful E-mail Petition Campaign on Change.org
5. Get active in our Cause communities!
Change.org has numerous Cause Communities and each one is guided by a blogger who is an expert in their field. Send each blogger a Supporter Request and let them know about your organization and the actions your organization is creating on Change.org. As you may have noticed, each Cause community has featured actions and nonprofits. Building relationships with our bloggers and participating in their Cause Communities is an way to possibly receive extra promotion on Change.org. And of course, bloggers love compliments and blog comments and it's a great way to get your nonprofit exposure on Causes.
6. Post at least 2 "Asks" a week.
A little bit like a Tweet with a call-to-action, Asks are an easy way to keep your profile current on Change.org. Asks also show up on our Nonprofits Page and will be soon integrated into Cause communities!
7. Use our "Take Action" and Fundraising Widgets.
After you create an e-mail petition, you can grab a "Take Action" widget that you can post on Blogs, MySpace, etc. Fundraising widgets are located in your Admin Dashboard. To see an example, of the widgets live, please visit the Nonprofit Organizations MySpace.
8. Grab Web 2.0 icons from your Admin Dashboard and post them on your Web site, Blog, Facebook Page, etc.
Not only can you link to all your social networking profiles on your Change.org profile, but we have also created a tool that will allow you to grab the html for these icons to post them on other social networking sites. Learn More: Need Web 2.0 icons for your Website, Facebook page, MySpace profile? Just copy and paste!
9. Put a Change.org "Donate Now" button on your Facebook Page, Blog, Website
Many nonprofits limit their Facebook fundraising to using Causes, but not everyone wants to donate via Causes. Using the Static FMBL App on Facebook, you can very easily add our "Donate Now" buttons to your Facebook Page. Learn More: HOW TO: Add a Donate Now Button to Your Facebook Page, Blog, Website
10. Post fundraising projects that are $10,000 or less.
Individuals are very unlikely to donate to fundraising projects with large dollar amounts because they want to contribute to a project that they known has a good chance of being fully funded. In addition to your General Fund fundraising project, post at least one or two more projects, but keep them at $10,000 or less. [View Example]
New YouTube Channels: What Nonprofits Need to Know
Published September 09, 2009 @ 12:16PM PT
YouTube has been testing a new channel design since July. Nonprofits that already have a channel can easily upgrade to the new design and tool set under Account > Edit Channel > Channel Information > Upgrade My Channel. For nonprofits that have yet to create a channel on YouTube, you are automatically given the new channel design when you sign up for your new YouTube account. The fact that new accounts automatically come with the new design make it pretty clear that at some point soon all channels will have the new design, so rather than being caught off guard, I would suggest that you go ahead and upgrade your channel to the new design if you haven't already.
Now let's compare the two designs. The Born Free Foundation has not yet upgraded their channel while Big Cat Rescue [an early adopter of using YouTube] upgraded their channel almost as soon as the Beta channels were launched. Visually, the look and feel of the two is strikingly different. Like all new designs, it takes awhile to get used to the new, but after working with the new channel layout and tool set for a couple of months now, I am a strong advocate for nonprofits upgrading to the new design.
One thing to keep in mind is that the ability to add a banner at the top of your channel is only available to nonprofits that have applied for and been accepted to YouTube's Nonprofit Program. If your organization has been in operation for longer than a year and listed in GuideStar, then you should be accepted. Just make sure that before you apply, you have designed the basics of your channel (colors and and the "Profile" section) and uploaded a couple of videos.
Once you have upgraded your channel, the design process is incredibly easy. See Mashable's HOW TO: Customize Your YouTube Channel. If you need more help, take my webinar on How Nonprofit Organizations Can Successfully Use Facebook and YouTube. Please also make sure that you friend me on YouTube at www.youtube.com/nonprofitorgs.
I am going to leave you with some pretty amazing stats aimed mostly at those nonprofits that have yet to get a YouTube channel... hoping to convince you that you must. Video is the future:
1) YouTube receives 120 million unique visitors from the United States each month. Compare that to Facebook's 72 million, MySpace's 71 million and Twitter's 21 million.
2) An impressive 79% of the total U.S. Internet audience view online video each month, moving to 88% by 2012.
3) Consumption is high across all demographics: 76% of children and 44% of seniors watched online video. Issues of race and class do not play themselves out on YouTube like they do on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
HOW TO: Add a Donate Now Button to Your Facebook Page, Blog, Website
Published September 01, 2009 @ 06:51AM PT
Nonprofits that sign up for a Nonprofit Admin Account can get access to a "Donate Now" button in 24 hours or less. The button comes in eight different colors and can easily be embedded onto your Facebook Page, Blog, or website by simply copying and pasting a small piece of html code. Some answers to FAQs:
1. There is no set-up fee for the button.
2. All donations made to nonprofits on Change.org are processed by Network for Good. They take out 4.75% of your donation to cover bank and credit card processing fees, and to be able to hire a staff that can mail your organization a check and donor report each month. It's worth noting that Network for Good is also a nonprofit organization.
3. Your check is mailed to the address in your organization's GuideStar entry, so make sure your contact and organizational information is current in GuideStar.
4. Your nonprofit must be a 501c3 or 501c4 and have an entry in GuideStar to be able to use Change.org, or if you are a fiscally sponsored project, then your fiscal sponsor must be in GuideStar. You can get into GuideStar by simply faxing them your IRS Letter of Determination [More Information].
Once you have been approved for a Change.org Nonprofit Admin Account, then simply login > Go to the Admin Dashboard > Click "Get a Donate Now Button > Copy the code of the button with the color of your choice. Then you can embed the button on your website, blog, Facebook Page, MySpace profile, etc.
As an example, the Center for Democracy in the Americas recently dropped their PayPal button and replaced it with a Change.org "Donate Now" button on their website, and using Static FMBL App they were also able to add the "Donate Now" button on their Facebook Page.
HOW TO: Add Twitter and YouTube Tabs to Your Organization's Facebook Page
Published August 23, 2009 @ 07:02AM PT
Involver is a new start-up that has some pretty amazing Apps that you can add to your organization's Facebook Page. Your first two Apps are free to install and if you want to later upgrade they do offer nonprofit and multi-account discounts. I recently added the Twitter and YouTube Apps to the Nonprofit Organizations Facebook Page. The Apps allow you to then create Twitter" and "YouTube" Tabs on your Facebook Page that pull in and nicely display all your Tweets and videos from Twitter and YouTube.
HOW TO: Add a Twitter Tab
Make sure you are logged into Facebook and designated as an Admin for your organization's Facebook Page. Go to the App Gallery. Click the Facebook Install button for Twitter. It will ask you to choose which Facebook Page you want to install the App. Select your page and then click the "Add Twitter for Pages" button. You will then be prompted to enter your name, email address, phone number, and Twitter User Name. All four fields are required.
Click "Save & Continue" and then "Continue to Fan Page". The final step is to click "+ Add a new tab" on your Facebook Page, then Select "Twitter". The Twitter Tab will automatically appear. You can then drag and drop your Tabs in the order you think it most important for your Facebook Strategy. Keep in mind that the default settings are that the "Wall" Tab is first, the "Info" Tab is second. [See the Involver Twitter App live]
HOW TO: Add a YouTube Tab
Simply repeat the steps above! You will not be prompted to enter your contact information again, however you will be asked to enter your YouTube User Name (www.youtube.com/username) and whether you want only your uploaded videos or your favorited video displayed, or both. That depends on how you use your YouTube channel. Most organizations would likely only want their uploaded videos displayed. [See the Involver YouTube App live]
Pretty amazing, eh? It takes less than 5 minutes and it's free. If you want to learn more about how to transform your Facebook Page and strategy to the next level, I cover Involver and many other Facebook Apps, tools, and strategies in my Webinar, How Nonprofit Organizations Can Successfully Use Facebook and YouTube.
#FollowFriday, #FanFriday and #FriendFriday Explained
Published August 14, 2009 @ 08:42AM PT
#FollowFriday, #FanFriday and #FriendFriday are hashtags. #FollowFriday has long been used by the Twitter community to suggest Twitter profiles to one another that are worthy of being followed.
Yesterday, as I was browsing through Tweets by nonprofits, I saw so many "Check us out on Facebook!" and "Become a friend on MySpace!" Tweets that I thought the law of diminishing returns must be kicking in by now. So, today I started experimenting with two new Twitter hashtags:
#FanFriday: A simple way to ask followers to fan a nonprofit on Facebook. Example Tweet:
#FanFriday Please help Gorilla Doctors achieve 100 fans on Facebook! http://bit.ly/fYP8H
#FriendFriday: A hashtag used to ask followers to friend a nonprofit on MySpace, YouTube, FriendFeed, etc. Example Tweet:
#FriendFriday Please help the Wild Dolphin Foundation achieve 46,000 friends on MySpace! http://bit.ly/42YdEm
These hashtags can also be used on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Change.org, etc. For example, on the Nonprofit Organizations Facebook Page and my personal profile, I just posted this Status Update:
#FanFriday Please help Gorilla Doctors reach 100 fans! A great organization that provides medical care to the world's remaining 740 mountain gorillas: http://bit.ly/fYP8H
Some hashtags take off, most don't. We'll see.
Celebs, Rock Stars and Nonprofits Are Not Friends (or Friendly) on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter!
Published August 12, 2009 @ 07:40AM PT
MySpace is the social networking site to all things pop culture. Launched originally as a social network for bands and musicians, there are now over 8,000,000 Music profiles on MySpace. I use MySpace to check out and find new music, but I mostly use it to promote nonprofit organizations and their causes to the MySpace community. The Nonprofit Organizations MySpace is a great community of mostly friendly people that has grown to over 40,000 friends over the last three years, but had any of the Top Artists on MySpace put the Nonprofit Organizations MySpace in their Top Friends, I have no doubt that the NPO MySpace would be well over 1,000,000 strong. But they didn't... not once.
It's a pet peeve of mine. If I had to guess there are well over 25,000 nonprofits on MySpace, but you'll find less than 10 of them in the Top Friends of Top Artists on MySpace. Beyonce? No. Jack Johnson? No. Katy Perry? No. John Legend? Sadly, again. No. Most of these musicians have over a million friends on MySpace. Something as simple as putting a nonprofit organization - any nonprofit organization - in their Top Friends would transform that nonprofit's brand on MySpace. I have spent hours and hours emailing hundreds of celebrities and rock stars on MySpace asking them to put their favorite nonprofit in their Top Friends. I only got one response ever... from Annie Lennox. She is the one exception in all of MySpace and has only nonprofits in her Top Friends. Thank you very much, Annie. Quite simply, you rock.
It's not that these musicians don't care. Most of them do quite a bit if charity work. It's more that there is just a huge disconnect between the entertainment industry and the nonprofit sector on MySpace. The example I always use to demonstrate how significant this disconnect actually is: Bono doesn't even have The One Campaign in his own Top Friends... his own nonprofit! What a missed opportunity. It takes less than 10 seconds. It's almost tragic when you consider how much time nonprofits are investing in just getting 1,000 friends on MySpace (or Facebook and Twitter). I wonder sometimes is it just a disconnect or are they afraid of losing fans/sales because they put the Humane Society, Amnesty International, or St. Jude's Children's Hospital in their Top friends? Hmm... does making any kind of statement at all hurt record/CD sales?
It's not just MySpace either. Celebrities and rock stars have hundreds of thousands of fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter, but the super vast majority don't use that power to promote nonprofits or causes one little bit. Despite the tens of thousands on nonprofit pages on Facebook, you'd have to search for hours for a famous celebrity or musician that "favorites" a nonprofit page on their page (I have never actually found one).... much less posts them as a link in Status Update. Can you imagine the power of the Black Eyes Peas posting the Facebook page for Save the Children as a status update to their 400,000 fans?
The same is true of celebrities and rock stars on Twitter. I have browsed around quite a few celebrity Twitter profiles, and the honest truth is most of their Tweets are vain, lack in substance, and just pretty much a complete waste of Twitter. Even Ashton Kutcher who has the most followers of any profile on Twitter - over 3,000,000 - and who rose to fame on Twitter by promoting Malaria No More's Twitter profile, doesn't even follow @malarianomore anymore - or any nonprofit on Twitter! Guess he can't be bothered... too busy being famous on Twitter.
Yes... celebrities and rock stars need to make a living just like the rest of us and use social media sites to sell their CDs and movies to make their millions. But personally, I think asking for 10 seconds of their time for a status update or tweet and one tiny top friend spot for their favorite nonprofit is very little to ask in return for seeing their movies and buying their music. In fact, it would most likely help their brand on social media sites. So nonprofits, if you have any connections with celebrtities and rock stars, make sure you send them a friend request! Then harass them endlessly until they give you 10 seconds of their social media fame.
5 Fun and Fabulous Twitter Tools for Nonprofit Organizations and Activists
Published August 04, 2009 @ 07:45AM PT
The number of third-party Twitter Apps has exploded over the last year. Twtbase currently lists over 500 of them, and I have highlighted five of my favorites for nonprofit organizations and activists below:
1) Twitter Mosaic: Twitter Mosaic allows you to generate html code of your Twitter Followers or Friends that you can then embed on a blog or Web site. CarbonFund.org used it to celebrate reaching 1,000 Followers. See their Twitter Mosaic.
2) Twibbon: Twibbon allows your followers to embed ribbons, icons, etc. on their Twitter avatars, and then spread them throughout the Twitterverse. It's an easy and effective first step for launching an awareness campaign on Twitter. Love146 is effectively using Twibbon. See their Twibbon campaign.
3) BubbleTweet: BubbleTweet allows to embed a video directly on your Twitter profile. We all know how annoying it is to go to a website and video starts playing right away, so BubbleTweet can be an effective tool, but I would suggest you use it only on special occasions. If you are a global health organization, then add a BubbleTweet to your profile on World Malaria Day. Or if your organization is doing a special campaign to push to get folks to call Congress, then add a BubbleTweet on that day asking them to call and telling them the phone number. I don't know of any nonprofits using BubbleTweet yet, but click here to view an example of an individual using BubbleTweet on Twitter.
4) TipJoy: TipJoy allows nonprofits to accept micropayments from individuals on Twitter. Both the nonprofit and the individual needs to have a PayPal account. See TipJoy's FAQ for more information. Charity:Water's Twestival is probably the best know TipJoy success story.
5) Twititions: Twitition helps you create, sign, and share petitions on Twitter. I like the idea, and the functionality of the Twititions themselves, but I personally don't sign them because it automatically posts to my Twitter profile that I signed the petition. The idea is a good one, but the agressive marketing component could be annoying to your supporters. Hopefully a service like this will come the nonprofit sector soon!
In my Webinar covering Twitter and Flickr, I cover all five of these tools... as well as 15 more that are useful to the nonprofit sector. Tweeting and ReTweeting is powerful in and of itself (that's been my experience), but using some of these third party tools can really transform your Twitter strategy!
