Author:
ycarter, May 13th, 2013
Dr. Ruth, Dr. Phil and Oprah have it right: a successful relationship requires clear, effective and responsive communication. That’s true between two people, and it is certainly true when it comes to the relationships involved in cause marketing.
Cause marketing grows out of the relationships between nonprofits, corporations and their various stakeholders. Communication provides the path to successful, win-win outcomes for all partners. And mobile communication in particular can strengthen those relationships and help you realize the full power of cause marketing.
Here are just some of the ways mobile communication can strengthen your cause marketing relationships and programs:
Empowers visibility and engagement in a multi-screen world
- Text provides easy access to participation while making campaigns more relevant to mobile supporters
- Cell phone penetration in the U.S. is greater than 100 percent
- By 2014, mobile internet is predicted to take over desktop internet usage (source: Microsoft Tag, 2012)
Increases message credibility
- Consumers get the engagement level they want, in the way they want it
- Supporters must provide permission to be messaged through text
- Text donors like to give through their mobile device because it is easy, convenient and allows them to retain control
Provides a heightened level of supporter engagement
- Mobile is one of the preferred methods of giving. The top three ways donors reported they like to give were 1) online, 2) mobile, and; 3) special events
- Americans keep their phones within arms reach 19 hours per day and 85 percent of text messages are read within 15 minutes of receipt.
Increases the efficiency of marketing dollars spent
- Mobile is more cost-effective than direct mail, building a website, telemarketing, staging live events and other traditional forms of fundraising.
- Mobile can integrate and support multiple channels at the same time, including email, website, social media and apps.
Enables measurement and listening abilities for all partners
- Mobile provides a quick conduit for feedback through polling as well as providing easy methods for sharing photos, comments or thoughts.
Mobile communication is essential to building winning cause marketing relationships and outcomes. A cause-marketing program without effective mobile communication is like going to the top floor of the Sears (Willis) Tower – by climbing the stairs. You might make it to the top, but it will be a long, difficult slow climb. Mobile communication, like the elevator to the Observation Deck of the Sears Tower, can easily lift your cause marketing to new heights – without causing you to break a sweat.
Look for the mGive team at the Cause Marketing Forum in Chicago to discuss ways in which mobile communication can strengthen your cause marketing relationships. Or contact the mGive team to set an appointment while we are there by emailing Cassie Bair, VP of Marketing.
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Cassie Bair is the VP of Marketing at Mobile Accord. Cassie has worked with many U.S. nonprofits leading marketing, strategic partnership, mobile and cause marketing initiatives. mGive, a Mobile Accord service, educates, engages and empowers nonprofits and their stakeholders through our groundbreaking utilization of SMS (text message) technology. Contact Cassie by texting CASSIE to 50555. Message and Data rates may apply.
Categories: mGive Blog Tags: cause marketing, Effective Mobile Communication, mobile engagement | 
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Author:
ycarter, May 10th, 2013
You’ve done the research. You’ve identified likely supporters, the right messages, tactics and tools to win them over. You’ve cultivated relationships. And now it’s time to ask for a donation. If you have gone through all the previous principles of fundraising, you are ready to solicit.
Here is a partial list of solicitation “dos.”
Make Fundraising Easy: Look at your solicitation from the donor’s viewpoint: is it easy, convenient and does the donor control the process? These are all reasons why donors like text donations, according to the mGive 2012 Text Giving Survey. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be factors of any appeal.
Ask. And Repeat: Consider asking for donations on a recurring basis. Sometimes a one-time donation is the right thing to do. For other donors, asking for a routine or recurring donation works. For example, according to the Text Giving Study, one out of every four respondents want to have the ability to have automatic monthly recurring text donations added to their phone bill.
Say “Thank You”: No one takes their donors for granted, right? Well, if you don’t thank donors for a gift, being unappreciated is exactly how they might feel. According to the Fall 2012 Charity Dynamics and NTEN Donor Engagement Survey, 21 percent of donors reported they had never been thanked.
Broaden Your Appeal: According to the Donor Engagement Study, supporters are willing to do a lot of different activities for their favorite charities. Thirty-six percent said they volunteer one time or more and a significant group said they participate in fundraising events at least one time per year. You can also ask existing donors to share information with and recruit friends or family. According to the Donor Engagement Study, “A significant number of respondents spent time trying to get their friends and family involved with their favorite charity. Most frequently, donors encouraged others to donate and volunteer… Donors also forwarded emails and eNewsletters from their favorite charity often.”
Solicit Strategically: Think about how to get higher levels of support from existing donors. A supporter who volunteers at an event could also be asked to participate in other ways. Tier or prioritize activities like donations or volunteering in a continuum, with low engagement on one end and higher involvement on the other. Set goals to move your donors along this continuum. Someone making a text donation should be encouraged to engage on your website and possibly make a larger donation there. Someone who attends an event or gives money can be asked to recruit friends and family, or share your message through their activities in social media.
Solicitation is not the ending point of the four principles of fundraising. You build your appeals based on the research, identification and cultivation work you do – and your solicitation results feed back into those first three steps. Fundraising is a cycle. What your donors do today fuels your research, helps you identify new sources and messages for engagement and offers new ways to cultivate stronger relationships.
Cassie Bair is the VP of Marketing at Mobile Accord. Cassie has worked with many U.S. nonprofits leading marketing, strategic partnership, mobile and cause marketing initiatives. mGive, a Mobile Accord service, educates, engages and empowers nonprofits and their stakeholders through our groundbreaking utilization of SMS (text message) technology. Contact Cassie by texting CASSIE to 50555. Message and Data rates may apply.
Categories: mGive Blog Tags: mobile donations, mobile fundraising, mobile giving, Text Donations | 1 comment
Author:
ycarter, May 1st, 2013
The Organization
Active Heroes provides financial and emotional support to veterans, active duty military and their families through community projects, challenges and fundraisers.
The Highlights
- Active Heroes executed an mGive mobile donation campaign during the inaugural #GivingTuesday
- Active Heroes raised $2,510 in $10 donations from one day of calls-to-action activity
- Active Heroes activated their calls-to-action through social media using compelling imagery and stories
Overview:
Active Heroes executed a mobile donation campaign during the inaugural #GivingTuesday event on November 27, 2012 through the infrastructure provided by The mGive Foundation.
By following mGive’s best practices, they used social media to cultivate relationships and drive supporters to take action and donate within 24 hours of their first call-to- action.
The #GivingTuesday initiative was created to promote nation-wide giving during a season that revolves around gifts. Active Heroes didn’t have a mobile database that they could use to drive donations. They had to get people to see a call-to-action and drive them to pull out their phone to donate.
Leading up to the event, Active Heroes worked with mGive to create a campaign plan that would use social media to drive donations.
Before the event they created images with their calls-to-action to posts throughout the day. Active Heroes began posting their photos in the early morning and they continued posting well into the evening. They created a sense of urgency by reminding donors that they only had until midnight that night to donate repeatedly due to the one-day duration of this campaign.
They continued to follow a posting schedule and increased their posts as their midnight deadline got closer. By including these photos and using “we” verbiage, they were able to get 251 unique $10 donations.
The Background:
Active Heroes is committed to providing assistance to veterans, active duty military and their families. They are able to provide financial and emotional support through community projects, challenges and fundraisers.
In 2010 Yocum began a 17 month walk across America to raise awareness and funds to help military families. He traveled across 37 states and garnered National attention and media exposure for his cause. When he finished his “Hike for Heroes” he formed Active Heroes to continue helping military and their families.
Since then, Active Heroes has helped over 1,800 military families, veterans and wounded warriors with financial support, programs to combat PTSD and veteran suicide and more.
The Problem:
How do you stand out as an organization to donate to on a day dedicated to giving?
The Solution:
Trial a mobile campaign during #GivingTuesday; use your social media channels to empower followers to change the lives of military and their families with text messages.
Active Heroes used social media to inspire their supporters to donate on #GivingTuesday. They shared emotional pictures alongside their calls-to-action on Facebook and Twitter. As they added new pictures throughout the day, they also updated supporters on how much they had raised so far, and how much more they needed by the end of the day.
$10 text-donations rolled in, and Active Heroes encouraged donors to share their generosity on their own social media pages and challenge their friends to do the same.
“Mobile is a great fundraising platform, and that is why we chose it on a day dedicated to giving,” said Troy Yocum, Active Heroes founder and president. “People won’t go a long way to donate, and they dislike taking an extra step through a website. Text donations are easy for the masses and are great in audience settings.”
The Results:
Through a partnership with The mGive Foundation that provided a mobile infrastructure, Active Heroes was able to raise $2,510 in $10 donations from one day of calls-to-action with no prior mobile program or promotion in place.
mGive allowed donors to confirm their donations for three days after #GivingTuesday.
• $170 was donated the day before the event, due to pre-#GivingTuesday promotions
• $1,860 were confirmed on the day of the event
• The remainder of the donations were confirmed the following two days after the event
“Mobile is a great fundraising platform, and that is why we chose it on a day dedicated to giving. People won’t go a long way to donate, and they dislike taking an extra step through a website. Text donations are easy for the masses and are great in audience settings.” – Troy Yocum, Active Heroes Founder and President
Continuing with Mobile:
Since their great success using mobile during #GivingTuesday, Active Heroes entered into a long-term fundraising partnership with The mGive Foundation to continue to use mobile to change the lives of those serving our country.
While their new campaign is still in the start-up process, Active Heroes has big plans to make mobile an integral part of their fundraising and engagements strategy.
“I see mobile as a long term source for donations,” Yocum said. “By placing the text to donate keyword and short code on pictures, videos and walking teams clothing, I hope to ramp it up and use it as the main source for donations.”
Categories: Case Studies, mGive Blog Tags: Case Studies, case study, mobile case study, mobile giving case study | No comments
Author:
ycarter, April 30th, 2013
To cultivate: it means to prepare for or foster growth, to encourage and to seek society or make friends. Cultivation is usually associated with gardening, but it is a fundamental principle of fundraising.
A cultivated donor is one who is more engaged, involved and whose level of support continues to grow.
Let’s look at three aspects of cultivation: using fertile “ground,” fostering growth and making it social.
Sow in Fertile Ground: A fundraising program, like a lush garden, has to be planted in fertile ground. This means conducting the research and identifying likely supporters and the best messages and media to reach them. We’ve covered that in two previous blog posts, on research and identification.
Fostering growth: It’s a competitive world, and your organization is not the only one vying for donations.
According to the 2012 Donor Engagement Survey published by Charity Dynamics and the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN): Most donors give to more than one charity. Nearly half of the survey respondents give a majority of their annual total donation amount to the charity to which they feel most connected.
Fostering that connection is essential to your fundraising program. And one main reason people give is to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
How do you do this? Simple: talk with donors. Regular, frequent communication through multiple channels will keep your donors engaged and feeling a part of a solution to a problem they care about and want to support.
One of our clients provides a good example of cultivation. The Mile High United Way was able to recruit new donors and supporters though mobile communication and donations during it’s annual fundraising race. Following the event, they continued to use mobile to cultivate relationships with their new supporters. Through focused, regular messaging they recruited a large number of opt-ins to their mobile list and had a near 90 percent retention rate.
Robert Thompson, director of media relations for Mile High United Way, said, “Now that we have a healthy audience of mobile opt-ins, we plan to regularly talk to them, mostly storytelling about our impact in the community, links to videos [and] volunteer opportunities…”
Make it Social: Thompson hits on an important point about cultivation – engaging your supporters in all the tools (as appropriate) to keep their interest. Social Media can do that. Share your website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, eNewsletter, email blasts, with supporters so you can reach them through multiple channels. Just be sure to match message and method with each audience segment, as identified in your research and identification phases.
Engaging online is easy. According to the Donor Engagement Survey: “Nearly 30 percent of donors report both visiting their favorite charity’s Facebook page and liking it.”
And, according to the 2012 mGive Text Giving Survey, mobile donors report that social media networking is the second channel where they learned of text donation campaigns (following television or radio).
One idea: provide tools to make it easier for supporters, using their mobile phones, to put pre-written messages or share links into their Twitter feeds or Facebook updates.
Other ways to use social media include using apps for phones and social media like Facebook. Adding functions like “forward to a friend” to your email or on your website can also be useful.
When you have carefully cultivated your supporters and they are well-informed, engaged and feel a part of your cause, it is time to solicit. We will cover solicitation in the fourth and final part of our series on Principles of Fundraising. ###
Categories: mGive Blog Tags: mobile engagement, mobile marketing | No comments
Author:
Esame, April 26th, 2013
By Jenifer Snyder, Executive Director of The mGive Foundation
“I was born this way,” proclaims the anthem of a current pop diva. If you prefer a more traditional expression of that sentiment, consider, “to thine own self be true.” But whether it’s the words of Lady GaGa or William Shakespeare that speak to you, my advice is to embrace that message and be true to who you are and not who others or our culture tell you to be.
And that advice goes double in matters of gender roles in the workplace.
I’ve never let myself be constrained by conforming to society’s norms of how a woman should act in the workplace if it wasn’t consistent to who I am as a person and my own professional values.
Long ago, I decided to shrug off how I was “supposed” to behave. For me, this meant not listening to advice about how I was to ignore what might be considered stereotypical female behaviors. It is more important to me to be genuine and cultivate a leadership style that plays to my strengths and fits the organization and people I lead. Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama offer two good examples of women who are comfortable with themselves and who embrace their own distinct approaches to gender roles.
“Which designers do you prefer?” a reporter once asked then-Secretary of State Clinton, to which she famously replied, “Would you ever ask a man that question?” Whereas First Lady Michele Obama has appeared on the cover of Vogue, embracing her influence as a fashion trendsetter without diminishing her stature as a successful lawyer. Both women have stellar careers forged by their own unique personalities and approaches to “traditional” gender roles.
Women in the workplace sometimes face a bias against them as being “weak.” One response to this stereotype would be to fight it by proving we can be as steely and tough as men are thought to be. Or, better yet, this line of reasoning goes, women can get ahead by acting even “tougher” than men.
My advice is be who you are and turn that into your source of power. If you are a good listener, empathetic and compassionate, use those skills. Some of my most successful moments as a leader have come when I’ve been thoughtful and flexible and balanced my priorities among multiple demands.
Flexibility and the ability to juggle multiple priorities is a key skill for any leader of a non-profit organization, especially given the scarcity of resources and the need for non-profit leaders to wear multiple hats. Are women better multitaskers than men? The research is mixed. But many women have developed a unique set of cultivated skills that come from juggling the twin demands of being manager and mom.
When it comes to multitasking in a non-profit setting, modern women have had practice at balancing, prioritizing and making decisions about what roles to fill and when those roles need primary focus. Having a successful career and being caregiver at home teaches us to be nimble. This is an advantage that many men do not have. These multiple demands force us to plan and strategize – a key advantage for women according to one researcher.
Professor Keith Laws from the University of Hertfordshire conducted a study on multitasking and found that, during an exercise to find a lost key while enduring multiple interruptions, women had the edge. “The women have a much better planning and strategy for finding the key. The men tend to jump into it and be far less organized and thorough. It’s as if they don’t stop to reflect and plan for a moment.”
That advantage for women may diminish, however, as the Millennial generation enters the workforce. We typically hear that striking a balance between career and family is a concern for women more than men. Not so for Millennials. According to Boston College professor Kathleen Gerson, there is a greater emphasis on “gender flexibility” among Millennials than other generations in fulfilling roles at home and as breadwinners. A Boston College study The New Dad underscored this point – “more than ever before, understanding a young employee’s belief that that he or she can sufficiently meet the needs and responsibilities of parenting as well as meet the expectations and obligations of the workplace will be paramount to retaining and advancing high quality workers.”
I believe that by being true to ourselves and being unconstrained by traditional roles also means that we can be more open to innovation and useful change. A corporate culture that sticks to a top-down, non-listening leadership style can easily miss bold new ideas. That sort of rigidity is one reason why great companies like Kodak became obsolete – they refused to listen to a changing world and the world left them behind.
Being flexible and unconstrained also empowers you to take risks. Nearly everyone told me that starting a company to empower text donations through mobile phones would never work. They were wrong and today mobile fundraising is making a difference in earthquake recovery to helping the victims of the recent bombing at the Boston Marathon.
We live in a world now where conformity – gender or otherwise – is valued less and authenticity is prized more. Be authentic. Be yourself. The world awaits.
Jenifer Snyder, Executive Director of The mGive Foundation
Jenifer Snyder is Executive Director of The mGive Foundation. She brings years of leadership experience in the mobile industry to the position. Previously, Jenifer was a founder and General Counsel for 9 Squared, Inc., a mobile content and services company subsequently acquired by the Zed Group. She left Zed in 2007 and started building the mobile channel for social and charitable effort, later forming The mGive Foundation.
Categories: Guest Posts Tags: Best Advice, gender, The mGive Foundation, women | No comments
Author:
ycarter, April 24th, 2013
Good fundraising ideas don’t just happen. And reliable, loyal donors don’t fall from the sky. If you’ve been pulling your hair out trying to determine how to raise more money with shrinking resources, perhaps it’s time to review fundamentals. Last post we discussed the first principle of fundraising – Research. Today, let’s look at the second principle: Identification.
Management expert Peter Drucker said: “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
Identification will enable you to find likely supporters who “fit” your message and mission. And it helps you find the most effective messages to use and the best ways to deliver them.
The key is to segment your list into categories of similar people. It’s finding the who, where, what, why, and when of fundraising for charity.
The Who, Where, What, Why and When
First, Identify who they are: What age groups will support your cause? Where do they live (city, state, region, zip code or even neighborhood)? How much education do they have and what are their household incomes?
What do they do: What level of activity can you expect from them based on their history? How much will they give? Will they volunteer to attend an event? Participate in your social media? Recruit friends and family to the cause?
Why they get involved: Looking at survey responses, or even the performance of individuals or groups to specific appeals, what messages work best? Are there specific subjects or issues they are more interested in than others? When they get involved: Some donors may give at year-end; others may make routine donations. Others may only give at an event. Timing is everything in determining how to raise funds.
Where, or how they participate: Do they respond best to direct mail? Mobile solicitation? Event fundraising? Is a phone call the most likely way to guarantee their involvement? Identify the best method for outreach.
Example: Identifying text donors
One way to help identify supporters is to overlay market research with your data. This research can help guide you who to seek and how to reach out to them. Using mobile outreach as an example, we know from the mGive 2012 Text Giving Study that the following is identified profile of a likely text donor:
- Thirty-four to 44 years of age
- Female
- College educated
Our data also tells us that this universe is also:
- Likely to give amounts greater than $250 that can be solicited through other channels.
- Willing to donate through an organization’s website (increasingly accessed through smartphones)
- Likely to give at fundraising events
- Wants additional information via text on more topics than text donations
- Can be solicited for monthly recurring text donations through their phone bill.
This information enables you to identify who to solicit for text donations, drive traffic to your website, ask the right supporters for recurring and larger donations and build better relationships with donors who want information via mobile.
The principle of identification makes your fundraising more effective. Identifying the supporters and communication strategies that “fit” will make your fundraising blossom. Think of it as landscaping your yard. Plants have different needs, with varying requirements for water and sunlight. Identifying their proper care causes them to grow. Now we have to carefully cultivate — the next topic on our series on the principles of fundraising.
Categories: mGive Blog Tags: Mobile Donation, mobile fundraising, mobile marketing | No comments
