Zach Wales Just Blew Our Minds

Zach Wales, the philanthropic/marketing strategy blogger from OnLine, over at Changing Our World, has written an article about DonationPay.  Zach’s blog is terrific, informative and well-written, with detailed analyses of the challenges and joys of all things related to online philanthropy.  We are so flattered and thrilled to be featured and it couldn’t be by a friendlier or more well-informed fellow blogger.  Thanks, Zach!

United for Justice with Peace is a wonderful non-profit based in the Boston area.  They are unincorporated and were kind enough to be our guinea pigs, as we worked out some of the kinks of getting an organization set up without 501(c)3 status or other documentation.

UJFP mission statement is extensive and awesome.  Basically, they’re working for global peace through social and economic justice.

In their own words:

The individuals and organizations that comprise United for Justice with Peace express our profound grief for the thousands whose lives were cut short in the September 11, 2001 attacks, and extend our heartfelt condolences to all those who suffered losses in the event. We stand with people of conscience the world over in condemning unequivocally these horrendous acts of violence. In pursuit of a world without terror, the Coalition adopts the following principals:

• We seek global peace through social and economic justice.
• We will not support war, no matter what reason or rhetoric is offered by politicians or the media. War in our time and in this context is indiscriminate, a war against innocents and against children. Further militarization or restrictions of our society will also have dire consequences on human rights and civil liberties at home.
• We are opposed to the use of military and economic aggression that targets countries and peoples to apprehend the few who are culpable. Those responsible should be brought to justice through genuine international cooperation and through judicial process based on the rule of law.
• We oppose the diversion of positive human energy and material resources away from basic needs of health, education and affirmative social supports and toward the destructive and dangerous uses by the military.
• We stand in defense of our constitutional civil liberties and reject the rush to repressive measures. We cannot be secure by limiting our liberties, as some of our political leaders are demanding, but only by expanding them.
• We oppose anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and all forms of racial, ethnic, and religious violence and bigotry.
• We call for addressing the serious humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and other affected regions through genuine international cooperation under the leadership of neutral, independent aid organizations.
• We call for root causes to be addressed. Millions of ordinary people in the Middle East are angered at US support for the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the inhumane economic sanctions against Iraq, US support for repressive regimes, and the actions of unaccountable global economic institutions dominated by the United States, which have perpetuated poverty and despair at home and abroad. U.S. cultural domination over a pluralistic world and the unwanted forward deployment of U.S. foreign military bases are also a source of anger. Until these policies have been changed we will never be safe, and we will continue to betray the ideals of freedom, justice, and democracy which we rightly prize.
• We are committed to nonviolence in all actions done in the name of the coalition.
• We are committed to being a coalition which welcomes new voices and collaborates with other communities working for similar goals.

In summary, UJP is pretty great.  Check out their website, which has a wealth of information, resources and more details about their mission and what they do.

Donate to UJP

Are you an unincorporated non-profit? Need card processing?  Sign up with DonationPay now.

And I hope you do too. . .

Because I am an intermittent blogger at best, I end up accruing a large number of interesting gems from the Interwebs and elsewhere that I intend to share or reference later in my blog and then sometimes get lost in the shuffle.  I always think I’m going to use my favorites in one big, extensive blog post that really ties the room together, but alas, it’s not happening today.  There is literally no end to the useful information available online, but today I thought I’d just leave you with a hacky little list of food for thought:

1.) This 2008 article from the Harvard Business review is detailed and asks hard questions and about the viability, clarity of mission and operating procedures of healthy non-profits and offers extremely smart suggestions on how to improve.

2.) 10 Essential Social Media Slideshare Presentations For Non Profits is just what is sounds like.  Which is to say: awesome.

3.) 10 Blogs (actually 15) Pamela Reads.  You should listen to her.  She’s smart.

4.) The Arts Resource Network has a lot of information for emerging artists and arts-related non-profits.

5.) More on Founder’s Syndrome and how to tell if your founder has a little case of it.  Don’t let the picture put you off.

6.) 3 Apps And Networks Spurring Social Good.  Allyson Kapin is just amazing, she really is a wonderful resource for the non-profit world.

7.) A list of ‘how-t0′ resources for grantwriting.

8.) How A Non-Profit Brand Goes Bust, Part 1 was Nancy Schwartz’ opening salvo analyzing the KFC-Susan J. Komen brouhaha and how it weakened the brand.  Here is her in-depth analysis on the situation.  Right-on as per usual.

9.) I’ve been reading the Mission-Minded blog lately and you should check it out too.

10.) Wild Apricot’s tips on how to keep your organization Free of Spam Complaints.

Thats it for the day but I promise a real post for the next time, folks.

A.J.

Take Your Victory Lap with Pride, Marketers

Welcome to the third and final chapter in our basics-of-email-marketing tutorial; you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll come to terms.  At this point, you’ve written a carefully worded, engaging, attractive, compelling email and sent it out to your email list.  Now what?

Part 3

1.  Tracking and Collecting Metrics

Whichever service you’ve chosen to use will be able to give you stats on how your email was received.  You can check who actually opened and read the email, whose spam box it went to and who discarded it without even reading, amongst many other things.  This data will be invaluable for your organization as you calculate your ROI and decide whether or not to rework the campaign.  I hope you’ll have success the first time, but if not, take advantage of this aspect of email-campaign services to help you do user segmenting and collect information about how to connect to your potential donors in a more focused way.

2. Use Google Analytics.

I’m quite the fan of this free tool that Google offers, as evidenced here (and a lot since then).  I’ve posted this tutorial video before, but if you didn’t catch it the first time, here’s a concise summary of how to use Google Analytics.

After sending out an email newsletter, you should see a major bump in traffic to your site, that day and the following, at least.  Figure out which pages people from your email are visiting, how much of an increase of traffic you had and how long traffic is lingering on your site to determine the effectiveness of your email.

3. Website Improvement

The  days following an email campaign also provide crucial information about how your site is working.  Using analytics, look closely at how the site traffic that comes from your email is moving through your site.  Is your landing page converting or are your visitors just bailing after a few seconds?  Is your site funneling your traffic correctly or botching the job?  When you send out an email campaign, you want to be sure that any link on the page takes your user directly to a place where the can perform the task you’re asking of them, whether it’s the donation page or the blog.  If people are coming to your site from your fundraising email, then just lollygagging around not making donations or commenting on your blog or signing up for your workshops or whatever, it’s worth making some tweaks to your site, to make sure it can actually convert once you bring people to it.

4.) What now?

Those are the basics of launching a successful email marketing campaign.  There’s a lot you can add to the process through careful assessment of the needs of your particular organization, market testing and further demographic investigative work.  The return on investment for email marketing is so high that it’s almost always worth it, if you can put together the interest-piquing material to initially draw people in.  As you are tracking your email marketing metrics, consider this

-How accurate is your list?  How many bounces were there out of your total sent mail?

- How current is your list?  How many people opened your newsletter, out of the total amount sent?

-How many positive responses did you get (how many people actually clicked through)? How many negative (how many people opted out)?

-The number of responses to an email campaign varies wildly based on the content of the email- an informational newsletter will get far fewer click-throughs than a specific promotion.

-3 is a good number to keep in mind with your marketing process: if you’re doing a fundraising drive, give your subscribers three chances to pitch in.  A typical response pattern goes as such: the numbers for the first two mailings will be pretty similar (with a slight decline in the second) and the third will help coax your undecided recipients into completing the task you’re asking of them.  The third mailing may bring in just enough to take  care of the cost of the mailing.

-If you’re not seeing a return by the time you’ve sent three emails, you need to change it up, re-analyze your data and try again.

All right, that’s it for this how-to.

Good luck, happy fundraising, and see you all tomorrow.

Try not to let the office dullard cramp your style, as you create your newsletter

So it’s an exciting day in the office for us nerds, as Glee is returning tonight after a terribly long hiatus- our squeeees! can be heard for miles.   I will try, however, to focus on the business at hand, which is Part 2 of this weeks email marketing tutorial.  Here goes. . .

Part 2:

1. Check It, Y’all

So you’ve written and designed a fabulous html email marketing newsletter or fundraising manifesto (or whatever it is you crazy kids are working on these days) and you think you’re ready to send it out.  Well, bad news: you’re not.  You have to test this thing before you send it out, so you don’t flood your entire list’s inbox with incorrect usages of their, there and they’re, dead links, inappropriate exclamation points and spellings of the word ‘definitely’ that somehow use an ‘a’.

As you are checking your email, make sure:

-your spelling, grammar and flow are impeccable and in keeping with the tone you will use in future emails.

-the content of your email matches the subject line.

-your organizations contact info is in two (2) different places in the email, but usually not more.  A link at the top and a link at the bottom of the page will do just fine.

- An opt-out message is included at the bottom of the page.   With a good, content-rich, engaging e-newsletter you won’t lose many subscribers, so don’t sweat it; an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the page is just good form and also a lot of services you might use for this project actually require it.

- you’ve checked EVERY link in your email and made sure it goes where it needs to go, not to anywhere inappropriate, of course, and not to a ‘Page Not Found’ purgatory.

- your email is written as if it is to one person only.  No ‘all of you’ or ‘you guys’- just ‘you’ and ‘your’ and other singular statements.  If you’ve written your email as you would address a speech to a crowd, please change it now to address the individual reader.  I’ll wait.

2.) Test It

Now that you’ve checked your email for errors in tone, grammar and content, it’s time to test it out.

-check the look of your email in as many different email and browser platforms as you can.  Create test email addresses at all the free sites (gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc.), so you can test every newsletter in this way.  You want to be sure that all your images work, the layout of your page is not radically altered, and that every relevant piece of information is visible.

-Spam-check.  Send copies out to ten people you know personally and find out if the email went to their spam folders.

-get notes on the effectiveness of the message, the aesthetic and the content of the email, maybe from your spam-test folks.

3.) Send It Out

This part should be extremely self-explanatory, especially if you’re using a service that makes this step even easier.  However, timing is important here: consider the demographic of your audience.  If you’re sending out a volunteer recruitment newsletter aimed mostly at high school kids, avoid sending it during school hours.  If most of your readers will be working standard hours (Monday-Friday, 9-5), don’t send it on Monday morning, when it will blend in with the beginning-of-the-week spam influx.  Best practice for a normal, working adult demographic is to send marketing emails on Tuesday or no later than Wednesday morning.

Tomorrow: tracking and follow up in Part 3!

Have a great Tuesday, everyone.

-A.J.

Get Suited Up For An Email Marketing Extravaganza!!

This week, I’ll be doing a three part tutorial about how, exactly, to launch a successful email marketing campaign.  I know that this method of direct marketing can be frustrating and expensive, but a well-calibrated e-fundraising letter can really rake in the dough or drum up serious interest in your non-profit’s website.  There are plenty of services out there- like Constant Contact and Emma (we prefer the latter)- who can help you get set up with a minimum of fuss; their whole business is making email marketing easier for you.  There is also software you can buy, consultants you can hire and ways you can do this a little more on the cheap.  For this how-to, I’m going to assume that your organization has a little money to spend and has someone reasonably web-savvy on staff.

How to Launch Your Successful Email Marketing Campaign, Part 1:

1.)  Strategize

To begin your campaign, have a strategy meeting with everyone on staff who will be involved in the project.  Talk about what message you want to send with your newsletter- is it a hardcore fundraising email or are you going to start with a soft-sell email trying to solicit traffic to your site or blog?  With a monthly service, you can advance your message every time: maybe start with a ‘Welcome’-ish letter, detailing the resources and info available on your site and a brief description of the undoubtedly amazing work your organization is doing.  You can move forward with specific fundraising drives more easily with an email list that’s already quite familiar with your organization.  In any case, get everyone working on this thing on the same page in your initial strategy meeting.

Also to think about while strategizing:

What is your budget and how will your money be best spent?

-What service should you use?  We recommend Emma, but there are dozens out there that could fit the bill for what you need.

2.) Design Your Email Template

Emma and similar services all offer free html email templates for your organization to use while setting up your online campaign.  These are easy to use and can be customized to fit your non-profits’ aesthetic identity.  When you’re designing the email, just remember that all best design practices and principles apply: keep it consistent with your site, your branding and ambiguous enough to be used for the variety of e-newsletters you will want to send.  Use your template for every email you send; your recipients will associate the visual design of your template with your organization, so make something you like enough to not switch it up for awhile.

3.) Write Your First Email Newsletter

When you sit down to write your letter, first consider the tone.  The tonal content of your newsletters should remain consistent, every month or week or however often you choose to send it out (btw, we recommend not more than twice monthly).  You don’t necessarily need a professional copywriter, just someone familiar with your organization and who can create engaging, concise content.  No matter what, keep the tone consistent.  If you use serious, corporate language the first time around, be prepared to keep it that way.  If you want your emails to be hee-larious more than you want them to be informative, than be prepared to sustain the funny.  A good tenet for most organizations is to follow the same rules that apply to blogging, but in a slightly more formal medium: keep it light, short, personable (but not too personal) and direct.  If you’re doing a fundraising drive, devote your letter to asking for money, telling your readers why you need it and what it will be used for.  Period.  If you want people to visit your site or blog, include excerpts or examples of the materials available.  Don’t muddy the waters with too much content or send out an email without enough content to be compelling.  A definitive call-to-action is essential.  The idea is to develop a distinctive, immediately-identifiable voice, that your readers respond to and don’t send directly to their trash box.

4.) What’s Up with Your Email List?

There are 3 above-board ways to acquire an email list: buy one, rent one or cultivate one yourself.  The best way, of course, is to develop a list yourself.  A list can be culled from blog subscribers, donors, site visitors, contacts out here in the real world, and dozens of other sources that all your non-profit worker bees out there are already pretty familiar with.  That being said, though, if you are a mid-size non-profit, it can still be pretty hard to come up with ten thousand email addresses that you’re vaguely sure will open your emails and not instantly trash them.  Even if you start out with a purchased list, which is frowned upon, make it a major priority to be building up your own marketing index.  This article about building up your email marketing list has some helpful tips and also a very persuasive passage about why NOT to buy pre-made email marketing lists.  The author’s most salient point, as far as I’m concerned, is this: if you could have an email go out to 100 people who care about your organization or 1000 people who couldn’t pick it out of a lineup of one, which would you pick?  That’s what I thought.

All right, folks, that’s it for now.  Stay tuned for the sequel and threequel to this post, arriving at a laptop/desktop near you later this week.

-A.J.

Hey there, moneybags

More on Non-Profit Marketing

It’s easy to make presumptions about how much money you think your organization should be raising, or how much you think others of a similar variety might be making from their donor base.  As it turns out, even in these recession years, there is an upward trend in giving online, to non-profit organizations.  This is good news, and you should be rightfully concerned if your organization is not moving forward with some new, improved online or practical fundraising options.

Convio has recently released their Online Marketing Non-Profit Benchmark Index, a survey and synthesis of online marketing data from 500 non-profits from 15 sectors.  The information is free at their site, though you have to put in your own information (email, etc.).  The survey was made of non-profits who use Convio’s services and software, so full disclaimer, but the information they gathered is actually very useful for any NPO starting to build up their contributors.  From the data in the report, it looks as if this report was taken from many already-quite-established non-profits, not so much of ones just beginning to cultivate their online donor base.

Alison Kapin from Frogloop (one of our favorite non-profit blogs, btw) has written a fairly extensive article on this subject, with an excellent, far less dry (and less shamelessly promotional) summary than the one at Convio.

It’s so hard to get an accurate idea of what should be happening with your online fundraising.  Sometimes even when you use the tools available and are doing everything right, you still can’t seem to squeeze a penny from the folks visiting your website.  And sometimes (much less often, I’ll add), you can be making errors right and left and taking your donors to a decision page before the donation form and not properly displaying your donation button and all these other basically heinous mistakes and still, STILL be making money for your organization.  But, those two examples aside, the best ways to truly build an online donor base that you can tap into again and again is to use all the best practices, make use of every tip you can find, and try, try again until you get it right.

Shake The Money Tree

Fundraisers Galore

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . for fundraising.  But seriously folks, all terrible, obvious literary references aside, fundraising in a recession can be incredibly difficult and incredibly rewarding.  Giving means more when there’s less to go around.  I’ve written at length in previous posts about how fabulously the Interwebs can convey your marketing messages and how useful a tool basic SEO is, but have left the direct, out-there-in-the-community side of things without much comment.

Grass-roots fundraising can be so much fun.  Observe:

Pie throwing, HA!

Some of the most satisfying experiences in my adult life have been coming together with my friends, family and community to do some grass-roots fundraising.  It’s spring, we’ve got good weather coming (though in the Northwest it will, admittedly, be a bit of a wait), and the time is right to get out there and raise some cash for a worthy cause.  This type of fundraising doesn’t need the power and structure of an organization to make things happen, it just needs a motivated adult or savvy teenager to get things started.  With two recent major natural disasters and all the non-profits we all know about that ALWAYS need money, why not add a fundraiser to your list of things to do for spring cleaning?

Five Community Fundraising Ideas

1.) Throw a Secret Cafe

I did this with friends in college on several occasions, for various causes that floated our boats at the time.  It helped us build our activist community and taught us some extremely valuable lessons about marketing, the many perils and joys of restaurant management and, weirdly, how to properly cook a turkey.

The idea is this: Your home is a restaurant for one night.  Put up some flyers at your local grocery store or neighborhood bulletin board (and don’t forget to tell all your friends), advertising the date and time of your Secret Cafe and a number people can call for reservations (I’d recommend 2 seatings- for dinner, one at 6 pm and one at 8), though of course walk-in guests are welcome.  Decide on a donation amount that people will pay at the front door (usually between $5 and $20, for a low-key SC).  A Secret Cafe works best in a house with indoor/outdoor space.  Set up a bunch of tables and enlist your pals to be the servers for the night.  You can either decide to buy the ingredients for your Secret Cafe Meal (here is a sample menu) or go and ask local restaurants to contribute ingredients or dishes.  In my  experience, some restaurants/co-ops/farms/where ever are willing to at least donate a side dish, a crucial ingredient or maybe a keg of beer (if it’s that kind of party), especially if you display news of their generous sponsorship on your flyers.  The easiest meals to prepare for Secret Cafes are ones that lend themselves to family style eating: roast a couple of large turkeys,  multiple racks of ribs or large casseroles of pasta or veggies.  Make cupcakes for desert or something similarly easy to serve.

For a busy SC, you’ll need to consider your ‘staff’ for the night and plan accordingly: maybe 3 people in the kitchen, 1 or 2 shifts of dishwashing (if you’re not using disposable plates), 3 servers and a host at the door to seat people with reservations and without.

The food takes some working out, but this is a great project for a group that’s already enthusiastic about entertaining.  I’ve had some of the most delicious meals of my life at various Secret Cafe’s and been a harried waitress, cook-in-a-pinch and bartender at a few, as well.  This is a great way, slightly more formal than a barbeque, to have a fabulous meal with your neighbors, not to mention raising that moola.

2.) Car Wash.

Total cliche, yes, but it’s spring, dammit, and you shouldn’t tamper with this tried and true formula for hustling up some quick cash.  This is a great one for teenagers to plan and have fun with- turn up the tunes (like this one), put out that money jar, and be sure to have a large cache of dry towels at the ready.

3.)  50\50 Community Garage Sale

As an avid garage saler, there is almost nothing that delights me more than running across a whole block that has pooled their used-goods resources and organized a multi-family garage sale.  Extra awesomeness at these events is often generated by a baked goods or cold drink table.  The next time you’re planning one of these extravaganzas (and, c’mon, spring cleaners, you know you want to!), consider giving 50 percent of your proceeds to a designated cause, or making an agreement with your neighbors that everyone will give half to the charity of their choice.  This can not only help you get rid of those old bar stools, VHS tapes and Star Wars posters, it could also, say, do a lot toward the rebuilding efforts in Haiti or go to your favorite local arts organization that is suffering in these trying times.  Or, for us stalwart Commie liberals, there’s always, always, an NPR pledge drive.

4.) Fun Run. Just don’t eat a big plate of Fettucini Alfredo (a la Michael Scott) beforehand and you’ll already be ahead of the game.  I’ll let EHow tell you how to get this thing rolling, as it is a complicated process.    This event will take a lot of planning, but is an incredibly fun and healthful way to join a community in a single purpose.

5.) Rent a Karaoke Machine.  This is not so much an idea for a specific fundraiser as a general tip: go out, rent one, invite 30 or so friends, neighbors and strangers, mix up a couple (or six) big jugs of hard tea or blended margaritas, put out that donation jar (a buck per song you sing, five bucks so you don’t have to sing, 5 bucks donation per drink etc.) and just see where the funnest night of your life takes you.  This is another fundraiser that could be held in a friendly bar, willing to yield their mic and karaoke system to some folks trying to raise some money and have a good time.  You can also use a rented karaoke machine to have a kid-friendly fundraiser, but that’s not really my area of expertise.

And now onto online fundraising: here are some sweet basic adjustments you can make to your site to take in more money for your organization.  Tinkering with your website in the middle of a beautiful spring day is, yes, slightly less fun than having a backyard barbeque or making bracelets for a cause, but suck it up, and you’ll be glad you did.

5 Easy Tips for Increased Donations Online

1.) Keep your Donate Button visible and above the fold.  If you’re a non-profit and one of your websites objectives is to raise money (and, somehow, I have a feeling it is), don’t be scared to place it prominently on your site.  ’Above the fold,’ in this case, means placed in the top half of your website, so no one has to scroll up or down to see it.  It needs to be immediately visible when your visitors land on your index page, or you’re looking at countless missed opportunities for donations.  This seems basic, but you’d be surprised how many people resist, or somehow, crazily, believe that online fundraising isn’t a big enough deal to warrant coveted space in the most visible areas of their site.  It IS a big deal and you WILL regret it if you don’t let your fundraising flag fly, in the most prominent place possible on your website.

2.) Make Your Goals Clear.  Keep a running tally of how much money you’ve raised and how much you need to raise to meet your fundraising goals- donors like to see the progress and are more inclined to donate if there’s a target amount specified.  I’ve already praised The Uniform Project for their use of this exact fundraising technique, and it’s still going smashingly for them, as they round the corner into this last couple weeks of their project.

3.) Provide Volunteer Opportunities. It’s counter-intuitive to be offering people ways to not contribute their cold hard cash, as a way to increase fundraising efforts, but the fact of the matter is that most organizations need from their donors both time and money and the two usually go hand in hand.   If you offer non-monetary options for people to contribute to your organization, this will also help you build up your donor base.  People who care enough to volunteer their time will almost always end up giving money to your organization.  When you do rope some folks into volunteering for you, here’s how to keep them happy.

4.) Timing is Everything.  If you use a service like Constant Contact or Emma to send newsletters or fundraising outreach emails (or if you don’t), there are some best practice tips to take into account: for the love of Pete, send your fundraising emails out early in the week (by Tuesday morning).  You want your email to be waiting in your potential donors inboxes when they get to work in the morning, so the smart thing to do is to send out any mass-mailings (repeat after me: it’s not spam!) late on Monday night or early in business hours on Tuesday.  Disobey me and regret it, dear readers.

Also, parenthetically, here are some things to ponder as you’re assembling those definitely-not-spam newsletters:

-keep the tone personable, but professional.

-keep it short.

-send consistently or don’t send at all.

-don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.

-if you’re not seeing any return, change it up and see what happens.

5.) Get Your Narrative Straight. People love a good story. Donors in particular love to be told exactly how their money is being put to use.  We all know the why, the who and the what we’re giving to; what we want to know is the how. How does it work, who does this money go to, how does it get there?  These are questions all your potential donors will have in their minds as they’re deciding whether to add that extra 50 bucks to their bills this month.  Explain it to them, in a relatable, specific way, with a minimum of overly-salesy language and you’ll increase your donation volume almost instantly.

All right, those are my dueling lists for the day.  Those you already enjoying shorts-weather, get on out there to your car washes and secret cafe’s and outdoor karaoke fundraisers- enjoy that sunshine, raise some cash and get to know a neighbor you’ve never met before.  The rest of us cold-weather nerds will still be inside, hiding from the drizzle and bluster of  long winter, making some slight adjustments to our websites that will yield some big cash.

-A.J.

Get it while it’s hot, folks

DonationPay is looking for additional test accounts while we are in beta testing.  If you run a non-profit that needs or wants free credit card processing, please contact us pronto!

You’ll get a full Donation Pay account, plus the benefit of working with us one-on-one to help us further develop our service and correct kinks in the system.  We can help- whether you want to start accepting donations online or you want to stop paying the processing giants (Paypal, Authorize.net, I’m lookin’ at you!) and save your organization money.

Come and be a lab rat for us.  You won’t be sorry, we promise.

Contact us today!

-A.J.

You better believe she can rock that cape: Sheena from The Uniform Project.

For my inaugural posting, I thought I should write about an organization whose online presence has grown steadily since it’s inception, whose daily postings are a real kick in the pants and whose cause is utterly right-on.  This NPO is less than a year old and already they are kicking butt and taking names, and making a serious run at their very lofty financial goals.  And they’re doing it all online.

The Uniform Project is based on a very simple premise: one upwardly mobile, fashion-forward young woman, Sheena, wears one LBD (fellas, that’s Little Black Dress to you) every day for one year, with different recycled accessories each day.  She posts a picture of herself in her outfit daily (these outfits, as you might imagine, cover quite a spectrum: from the chic masterpieces of a true fashion visionary to stone-cold-crazy get-ups that often look like something Marie Antoinette would wear if she were a salesgirl at Hot Topic, who dresses each morning in the dark after ingesting an unimaginable amount of controlled substances), on her website.  She lets her readers rate her outfits (and berate them), describes where all her accessories came from and creates a silly little name for each sartorial innovation.  Sounds simple and fun, right?

Well, it sure is, and it’s also for a great cause.  Sheena is taking on this project in service of a cause close to her heart:  The Akanksha Foundation for the education of underprivileged chidren in India.  100 % of the donations she takes in online via PayPal go to this wonderful organization (minus operating costs of the website, I’d imagine).  Of course, I want to recruit her (and her undoubtedly fun staff) to try one of our free donation pages and cut some of her overhead costs, but that’s for another posting. . .

The most impressive thing about The Uniform Project is it’s wild marketing success and focus.  Sheena and co. can offer us all a veritable tutorial on how to pull together an NPO that knows how to take advantage of incredible amount of fundraising resources available on the web.  Here’s how. . .

1.)   A Simple, User-Friendly Website That Clearly Explains The Mission

The Uniform Project has a stylish, minimalist website that allows the daily pictures of Sheena to really shine.  Her page about the mission of the project is concise, heartfelt and makes clear that what she’s doing is serious work to affect change, something it’s quite easy to forget when you’re giggling over her dress, paired with, say, a batwing cape, bright legwarmers, a porkpie hat, a Victorian blouse and always, always, vintage pumps.  Not only does she make the deeper message and aim of her fashion odyssey clear, she keeps a running ticker on the top right corner of her website, letting her faithful supporters know close she’s coming to her financial goals.  The Funds Raised ticker (currently at about $44,000- go on, Uniform Project, with your bad self!!) shows the current amount of cash raised and also what that really means to the organization.  For the Uniform Project, what $44,000 means is: 122 Kids in School.

The site has a clear message, coherently stated goals, regularly updated content and a cool gimmick (every morning, over my morning coffee: good lord, is she really wearing a fannypack??) that helps supporters feel more invested in the cause.  Also, Sheena’s really kind of singing for her supper: when you donate, you not only get the good feeling of having committed an act of generosity, you also feel as if you have personal stake and ownership in some of the flatly crazy outfits Sheena devises.  Donating to her cause is win-win!

2.)   Cross Marketing.

This point sounds pretty minor and actually isn’t.  I’m not talking about The Uniform Project’s savvy use of social media outlets or the publicity they’ve received from other online fashion sites and publications (in fact, I’m going to get to this in a minute); I’m talking about the symbiotic relationship Sheena has with her accessory suppliers.  The Uniform Project accessories are almost all donated by various artists: etsy vendors, up-and-coming designers and boutique owners with a keen eye for the kinds of accessories Sheena loves (and from the looks of it, she never met one she didn’t like).  In exchange for these donated accessories (which are later sold on Ebay, turned into cash donations, and put back into the cause), the designer gets a link from a blog that gets hundreds of thousands of hits per day and also gets his or her work showcased on a live, and now moderately famous, model.  Sheena gets from this exchange not only an amount of accessories that can only be called an embarrassment of riches, but hundreds of in-links from these same designers blogs of websites.  For an NPO to grow successful online, it is imperative to have linked connections with other organizations, blogs, or individuals sites who are of similar mind; this will increase the traffic through your site in number, certainly, but will invaluably increase your web traffic by bringing your site visitors who are already aligned with your mission.  The Uniform Project has made a lot of online friends and they are all helping, directly or indirectly, bring in more cash to the cause.  Ebay is, through the holidays, matching every dollar donated, up to 15k; now that’s what I call a valuable web ally.

3.)   Social Media

This is kind of a well, duh point to make, but having an interactive quality to your online presence is key to fundraising success.  The Uniform Project is linked into all aspects of online media; Twitter, Facebook, youtube, etc.  They send out regular email missives and update their social media sites often and humorously.  These outlets may not always be a good fit for your particular site or cause, but it’s always important to keep in mind that one of the earmarks of a successful website in general (and successful online fundraising in particular) is creating a sense of community.  While the idea of Twitter is, yes, totally time-wasting and preposterous, it would behoove any organization to consider its’ value as a vehicle for increasing online traffic and donations.  I swear, even if you’re not a hipster who wears gem sweaters and fringed vests to help needy kids in India, social media methods can really help get the name and mission of your NPO out there.  All this junk isn’t just for the kids anymore, honest.

Watch The Uniform Project Trailer

4.)   Clarity of Goals and Message

One of my favorite things about the Uniform Project is watching the ‘Funds Raised’ number climb daily.  I’m aware of the mini-goals Sheena and friends have set for the holidays, of the overall financial goal and where specifically the money is going.  I know what motivated the project, who supports it, and why it is personally important to Sheena, the face of the organization.  The directness of their fundraising lets the donors feel directly involved in every step of the process, and also keeps us exactly apprised of how close we’re getting to the goal.  This type of honesty and clarity of message is crucial in online fundraising, where it’s harder to ‘make the sale’ through a website than it would be face-to-face or at a benefit, or even cold-calling.

5.)   Interesting Content

My biggest point of praise for the U.P. is that the content of their site never gets old or stale.  There is always a new video, link, picture, or promotion to look at and experience.  Many non-profits think that throwing up a static website with some info about their mission, some basic search optimization and a PayPal account is enough to guarantee some online donation activity.  Unfortunately, in most cases, it’s really not.  Believe me when I say that it truly does pay to put some time and effort into creating compelling content for your site.  I’m not saying it has to be daily photos of a sassy fashionista unaccountably blessed with a models figure, but putting thought into who your target audience is and how to maintain their interest is crucial.  Web sites that have dynamic, changing content are far and away the ones who command the most web traffic and NPO’s that keep a blog or regularly update their sites are much more successful than their static-site counterparts.  A great blog will eventually become it’s own donation engine, of sorts.  Blog readers become donors become staunch supporters of your cause, whose yearly contributions you can count on like clockwork.  This is especially true if you are just starting out and looking to establish your web presence: put some time, energy, and creativity into your website and it will repay your organization many times over.  Sheena and the Uniform Project are being handsomely rewarded for their efforts, with recognition from online and print publications, articles in the trade blogs and, most importantly, by building an online donor base that is sure to remain rock solid as the organization grows and moves forward.  I, personally, can’t wait to see what she wears tomorrow.

-A.J.