I’m not proud of this, but I’m obsessed with the Proust Questionnaire feature on the back page of Vanity Fair.  Made famous by the responses from Proust at various ages throughout his life (I prefer age 20 to age 13, for the record), the questionnaire is a smart little treat.  It’s a perfect coda to enjoy after reading the magazine’s take on the whole Colzine travesty, Christopher Hitchen’s last piece (on Dicken’s, with customary affectionate but unsentimental tartness) or, say, a long piece on the lavish life of Valentino (possibly one of my favorite magazine articles- and movies- of all time, if only for the bits about the pugs).  I like the questionnaire not only because it provides essential (read: non-essential) information- Ralph Fiennes and I have the same greatest fear- being eaten by a shark- and the same greatest joy- swimming in the sea- quelle surprise!- but because it makes me reflect on what my own answers to the questions, which are simple but telling, might be.

While the extravagant preposterousness of this feature and of Vanity Fair itself is clear, I started wondering if the questionnaire could be a potentially unifying and clarifying tool for non-profits trying to find their own spirit and voice.  I think that often the most useful tools are the roughest and that’s why I decided to create a new version of The Questionnaire, for non-profits, to take a brief measure of their organizational character.

As with the original questionnaire, this one is designed to help your organization get to know yourself a little better- not just in terms of measuring metrics or creating long-or-short term goals- but in getting a holistic picture of what your organizational values are, how you operate in the world and, yes, what animal you’d be if your organization were one.  The trick here is to think of your organization as one living, breathing entity; your staff, mission, values, and practical work are now one dynamic and vibrant whole and your answers to the questionnaire should be, if nothing else, in the spirit of this unified organizational force.

I’ve linked to a PDF of this questionnaire below, so jump over to it, print and answer away!  To more thoroughly illuminate the intended spirit of this exercise, I’ve also included DonationPay’s responses to the questionnaire  (and adjusted it in two spots to make it relevant to our growing business, rather than organizational status)- we took some time to get feedback from our team on all these questions and the answers are included below.

Faux-Proust Questionnaire For Non-Profits:

What do you regard as the lowest depth of organizational misery?

An unhappy client or an uncorrectable mistake.

What do you regard as the greatest peak of organizational joy?

Helping an organization exceed their internal fundraising expectations, saying yes when other services say no.

What is the greatest flaw in your organization’s leadership?

Disorganization and chronic silliness.

What is the greatest strength in your organization’s leadership?

Love of the work, diligence.

How does your organization define success?

Having happy clients that are effectively fundraising online, happy staff members that are motivated and enthusiastic, and providing an agile service that adapts and innovates.  Also: learning, constantly.

What is your greatest fundraising success, to date?

N/A

What is your greatest fundraising failure, to date?

N/A

What qualities do you most desire in a prospective employee?

Adaptability, humor, boundless capability.

What qualities do you most admire in a prospective donor investor?

Flexibility, an innovative and strategic mind.

If your organization could be represented by the work of one artist, living or dead, who would it be?

Chuck Close.  Each tiny square and moving part has an enormous impact on the whole.

What are the guiding principles of employees of your organization?

Consummate friendliness, fairness and thoroughness.

What are the guiding principles of your mission?

Collaboration, innovation, fairness, support of progressive causes.

What is your organization’s biggest fault?

Impatience.

What is your organization’s greatest expenditure of resources?

Staff energy.

What is your organization’s greatest expenditure of capital?

Staffing.

What qualities do you most admire/desire in a volunteer?

Willingness to stuff envelopes until 3 AM.  Lots of creative energy and ideas, but no mania.

What animal would your organization be if you had to choose one?

A sea otter.  Agile but solid,  playful but potentially fierce!

Who is your organization’s greatest hero of literature?

This was a hard one to agree on, but we are all quite admiring of the tenacious, moral rabbits in Watership Down.  Building a happy and functional community through hardship and adversity is something we really admire.

Who is your organization’s greatest hero in real life?

We have lots!

We truly are lucky to work with so many organizations that are heroic and inspiring to us.  Also teachers (hi, Mom!) and all committed advocates and activists for equality, peace and change.  Also, we think Mimi Silbert (and the Delancey Street Foundation) is freaking awesome.

What historical figure does your organization most strongly identify with?

 August Escoffier (1846-1935).  Everyone here is an avid foodie and we were all in agreement that Escoffier was a total badass whose spirit and verve we’d like to emulate.   He cooked inventive yet basic meals for both the nobility and the poor in London and improved kitchen basics in a revolutionary way (he invented the Soyer field stove for the Army, heightening the chances of embattled soldiers getting proper nutrition and created ovens with adjustable temperatures and refrigerators cooled by water).  He also created soup kitchens for the stricken public during the Irish potato famine and was a generally democratic and creative person.

Your most marked characteristic?

Energy, curiosity.

Where would your organization like to live?

We’d love to have offices in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and Austin.

What is your organization’s present state of mind?

Preoccupied with forward motion.

What is your motto?

Agility, affordability and adaptability FTW.

If your organization were to die today, what would you most want people to remember about you?

That we provided a terrific service, at a fair price point, and that we positively impacted the online fundraising trajectory of our client organizations.

Where do your see your organization in 5 years?

Giving Network for Good, PayPal, and Convio Blackbaud a run for their money.

If you’d like us to publish your organization’s Faux-Proust Questionnaire For Non-Profit’s on our blog, take a few minutes to fill it out and send it in to us at info@donationpay.org.  With your questionnaire, send in your a brief description of your organization’s mission and practical work and any other info you’d like us to print.

DonationPay Non-Profit Questionnaire

All photos taken from Chimp Haven’s website

The DonationPay office can be an emotional bunch and we have been known to get . . . worked up, over the awesome work our clients are doing.  We are moved, inspired and amazed at our clients great work, fortitude and brilliant fundraising strategies, every day.  That said, last month as we were setting up donation pages for a new client, suddenly all office work came to a screeching halt as one of our developers called us all over to experience a fantastic video on their site.  The organization is Chimp Haven and the video, no joke, moved me- and every member of our development team- to tears.  I’ve embedded it below, check it out at your own risk . . .

Aside from turning me into a blubbering mess (no easy feat), Chimp Haven is doing some truly incredible work. From their website:

Chimp Haven is The National Chimpanzee Sanctuary. We are an independent, nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide lifetime care for chimpanzees who have been retired from medical research, the entertainment industry, or no longer wanted as pets.

Chimp Haven provides:

• A permanent home where chimpanzees can live out their lives in large, naturalistic enclosures in complex social groups
• An organization managed by concerned individuals who specialize in chimpanzee care and management
• An inexpensive low-maintenance facility design
• Financial and organizational stability to provide lifelong care for each chimpanzee
• Opportunities for education and noninvasive behavioral studies

5 Things I Love About Chimp Haven’s Fundraising Pages

1.) Personality.  Both Chimp Haven DonationPay pages are carefully designed to be clean and user-friendly, but they are framed by photos, information and navigation that is bursting with the personality of the various animals that live in the 200-acre sanctuary.  There is a rotating ‘Meet The Chimps‘ portrait that showcases one of the chimps that live in the sanctuary.

2.)  Fundraising Integration.  The fundraising pages are very well enmeshed in the site aesthetic and functionality.  The Chimp Haven web designers have done a terrific job of making sure that every page has navigation that brings the donor directly to a page where they can either get more information about Chimp Haven (and it’s residents) or donate.  One of the biggest mistakes we see is organizations that have big ‘Donate!’ buttons all over their site that take the user to a page full of text, with another Donate button or link buried somewhere that takes the donor to the actual donation page- this is donor-alienating and simply too many steps to make an efficient donation process.  With Chimp Haven’s site, the fundraising component is built proudly and visibly into every page, letting donors know that the website is a preferred platform for giving.

3.) Specificity.  On both of Chimp Haven’s fundraising pages, they include specific numbers.  $75 will feed one chimpanzee for two weeks, $50 will provide essential medication for two chimps for one month- these numbers are specific, tangible and absolutely understandable to the donor.  They’re not spending time running down the various types of medications the chimps might need to take or exactly what their diet is comprised of (though that info is available and well laid-out in other areas of their site), but they’re giving enough detail to give the donor a solid idea of where their dollars will go.  The Chimp Haven ‘Best Friends’ page also wisely offers the option for donors to sponsor individual chimps, letting the donor feel personally connected to the health and well-being of one animal.

4.) Options for Giving.  I’ve already mentioned here how impressed I am by Chimp Haven’s carefully planned online fundraising strategy but they also present other opportunities for contribution.  The Chimpanzee Wish List, options for volunteering, a terrific store and information about corporate sponsorship- all these options give potential donors an idea of the full scope of ways to support Chimp Haven.  I personally most love the Wishlist because it gives, in and of itself, an idea of what the chimp’s lives are like and what they enjoy.  I’ll be putting together a care package of rubber boots, dog toys, nuts (not peanuts!), fleece blankets and the like as soon as the holidays are over to send to the sanctuary residents.

6.) The Chimps!  The greatest fundraising tool Chimp Haven has are it’s many colorful characters- the site and fundraising pages are full of information about the individual personalities, whims, and life stories of the chimpanzees and they are, every one, fascinating.  The comprehensive information, photos, and other media on the site is incredibly enriching, not distracting for site users, and really makes the website seem to be a vibrant part of the larger organization.  Making a website and fundraising pages that align with and share the stories of Jimoh, Midget, Queenie, Tracy and the rest is quite a feat indeed.

Chimp Haven is an amazing organization, with a dedicated staff, great sustaining donors and a mission that blows my mind- we’ve really enjoyed working with them so far and we look forward to helping them grow their already-great online fundraising presence.  Consider supporting Chimp Haven this holiday!  Also, for anyone interested in this organization or in chimpanzees in general, Chimp Haven will be having several open-house type visitor days over the course of the year, where they let the public check out the grounds and residents of their sanctuary- if we lived closer, we’d plan a full-office field trip to Chimp Haven to meet the amazing animals I feel I already know, from Chimp Haven’s dynamite website.  Keep up the great work, you guys!

-AJ

Support Chimp Haven

Learn More About Chimp Haven

Sponsor a Chimp

Support Elemental

Fertility Planit

Fertility Planit is the social network for people around the world who want to start families.  Founded by Karin Thayer after her own experience with fertility treatments and the process of having her (now 6 month old!) son; she’s created a supportive online network where people can support each other, share resources, write reviews on related goods and services and generally get connected to the community .  Fertility Planit supports the desire to have a family regardless of gender, relationship status, religious background or sexual orientation. . . which is, obviously, awesome!

Local Orbit

Is totally rad!  In their own words:

Local Orbit is a new way to buy food and other local goods direct from producers in your community. Our marketplaces offer a diverse selection of local produce, meat, fish, dairy products, eggs, baked goods, grains, prepared foods, personal care products and specialty items. 

Farmers manage both wholesale and retail sales through a simple business dashboard. They can sell their products in multiple markets from a central account.

Consumers pick up their orders from a central location, or hub. Wholesale orders are delivered to the business.

Hubs are run by farmers markets, entrepreneurs, farmers co-ops, community organizations, institutions and businesses who are working to expand access to local food in their communities. They manage each local marketplace, approve sellers, and work with Local Orbit’s marketing tools to promote sales.

Check them out immediately, if you love local food or if you’re closet hippies, like us.

Autitouch

Founded by the awesome Freena, Autitouch helps speed diagnoses of autism using intuitive software.  From their website:

We develop intuitive software (through a Natural User Interface a.k.a. NUI) on multitouch platforms. This software makes it possible for children starting the age of 3 to “make contact with” and “communicate through” hardware like e.g. the Microsoft Surface.  Per their website:

Our mission is to develop intuitive software to aid in diagnostics and treatment for children and adolescents with autism and/or related disorders, with help of hardware based on multitouch technology, e.g. Microsoft Surface. Our focus lies on improved diagnostics and new treatment methods for development of social and communication skills. In other words, stimulate (spontaneous) social behavior and communication skills (collaboration).

It’s the Autitouch vision to, in time, make mulitouch diagnostic and treatment methods usefull to a broather audience then is described in our mission statement. Other age groups, other disorders, supplemental techology and an ongoing expansion of our market. It’s the Autitouch vision to be one of the leading companies in the world to build intuitiv software for diagnostics and treatment of autism and related disorders using multitouch technology.

So awesome, right?

OllieMe

OllieMe is a new social network for teens looking to engage in a productive online space.  They are a teen-only mobile and online community, organized around networking and gaming concepts that kids can understand and get behind.  They’re in beta testing now, so if you know any interested teenagers, send them over to Ollie to become beta testers!

That about wraps it up: our experience with Astia was all-around amazing and it helped us feel much more connected to the business community, as well as providing a lighted path for us to follow as DonationPay grows up.  Back to regularly scheduled non-profit programming from here on out. . .

Happy Fundraising,

AJ

Taking myself out of day-to-day operations for a whole week was a shock to my work-addicted system and having the business-development part of my brain stimulated insistently and constantly for five days really helped me to visualize DonationPay’s future with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective.  Astia definitely provided a great platform for business development and the program week was chock full of incredibly valuable curriculum and info that I have no doubt will impact our businesses quality, longevity and growth in myraid ways.  Aside from that, though, what I was most impressed by is that the Astia community fosters genuine connections between entrepreneurs, investors, and other professionals in the industry.

The aim of the program is not only to create a forum for business leaders to advance their companies, but to build a network of individuals who can provide guidance and foundational support to each other.  When you’re running a growing company, the intersection between authentic human connection and business development can pass in the blink of an eye.  Astia gave me a whole week (!) to dwell in this miraculous space and seriously, folks, it felt revolutionary.

I was also constantly struck by the parallels that we, as small business owners, have to folks working in the non-profit industry.  Much of the ongoing business development required for a new company has to do with legitimizing your presence out in the market and making the consumers in your industry feel comfortable supporting your service or product, rather than putting their money behind established options.  For non-profits, the struggle is much the same: convincing your donor base to actually move from being generally in favor of your organizations work to being actual sustaining supporters (through ongoing financial support, volunteer work, service donation, etc.) has a lot to do with building credibility in the industry.  A major component of the workload of what we do and what our clients do is in eliminating the barriers to entry for the consumer/donor.  For us, we need to make sure that development directors in incoming client organizations have as much information on DonationPay as they need, that they’ve seen and liked examples of our work and that they feel comfortable working with us.  There’s a lot of suspicion and anxiety around credit-card processing and online fundraising systems, as the industry is flooded with services that are criminally overpriced, under-functioning (that’s a polite synonym and I’m looking at you, PayPal!) or so confusing to interact with and understand as to be rendered unusable.  Many of the folks that call us assume that, like their experiences with their previous service provider, they’ll be in an oppositional relationship with us and it often takes awhile before they believe that we’re on their side, not the bank’s.

Just saying, non-profits have had a lot of frustrating, confusing and enraging experiences with their service providers, so one of the major barriers to them migrating to our service is that they have trouble believing we’ll be any different to work with.  I think we, in fact, are and I hope our clients agree.  Astia gave me a lot of time and space to creatively envision the future of DonationPay and to really reflect on our founding principles, company philosophy and how we can move forward and grow without sacrificing the qualities of our service that are truly valuable to our clients.  I’ll be discussing our path forward and our company’s creation, as it relates to my experience at Astia during the next few days.

To be continued in Part II . . . .

-AJ

Reading the list of Women In Tech to follow on Twitter, I ran across a fabulous company which many of our readers may already know about- I absolutely hate being late the party, but boy is GirlDevelopIt! amazing!  Their mission is to foster a safe, productive and proactive environment for female software developers and programmers; well, not just ladies, their classes are available to everyone, but their company was founded specifically to create a comfortable learning environment where aspiring developers can bring their ideas to life.

In their own words, their mission and values are as follows:

Our Mission 

Girl Develop It works to make software development better.

Our Values 
We focus on software development (aka building).
We believe in supportive, judgment-free learning environments.
We welcome all students, though we are focused on reaching women and promoting diversity.
We solve problems by digging right in, trying a simple solution, and improving with feedback.

All of our curriculum is developed by and our courses are taught by experienced software developers.

Sounds great, right?  The industry is totally dominated by men and I really appreciate- as a woman who works in tech but isn’t an actual developer- that there’s an environment where folks of all skill levels can come together in a comfortable working space and benefit from the expertise of the teachers.  Their workshops look amazing and I will hopefully have some spare time to take one, one of these days.

Their co-founder, Sara Chipps, writes a pretty great blog, as well.  Bottom line, they’re totally awesome and a great resource not only for women in tech, but for everyone.

Happy Fundraising (and developing)!

-AJ

The Convio white paper is very detailed and well-written, per usual, but the overall message is at once disappointing and liberating: there really is no magic bullet when it comes to donation page formatting.  There’s no set of rules that, if you follow them to the letter, will ensure online fundraising success.  There’s a major upside to this, though, because while there’s no perfect donation page that all organizations could use to really rake in the donation dollars, there’s also no wrong way to go about figuring out what works for your organization.  For our company, the most efficient method we’ve found to improve our site’s conversion rate is through direct user testing.  This does not have to be expensive, or massively time consuming, or unpleasant.  For us, it yielded some amazing results without breaking the bank or requiring the focused attention of our whole staff.  It was also fascinating.

We recently went through a redesign of our own website- new logo, new materials, pricing changes, new add campaign, etc.  While we performed hours of testing in-house and drove ourselves crazy over what to add, what to leave out, how much information is too much and how much is not enough, we couldn’t really come to a resting point on what we wanted the final site to present.  We’d all reviewed the site so many times that we started to not even be able to see it, you know what I mean?  We didn’t have a ton of staff time or financial resources to devote to strenuous testing, but we wanted to make sure that visitors to our site were converting into clients, or at least contacting us if they had further questions.  There are many user testing companies to consider- we chose UserTesting.com and I can’t tell you how highly we recommend this totally reasonably-priced, super-gosh-wow-awesome service.

Here’s how it works:

Once you choose how many users will be in your testing round, you’ll choose the targeted demographic (you can select your users by age, income bracket, gender etc.) that you’d like to test your site or you can leave it up to the company you’ve chosen and keep it completely random.  With the service we’ve used, we were able to then assign the testers three tasks to complete on our website.  For one of our rounds of testing, these were the three tasks we set for our users to complete:

-find and complete the online application.

-find and use the contact information to contact us for more info on the service.

-learn about our service and describe in detail what our company does.

For us, the testing was intended to gather information on how the ‘funnel’ works on our website (i.e. if folks can move smoothly and easily through our site to our application and if they feel like they have the information they need to come on board immediately).  For a non-profit, the list of testable tasks they could create might include some of these options:

-find and use the donation form on our site.

-find information and describe in detail what our organization does.

-describe in detail what a donation will be used for.

-sign up to subscribe to our blog, newsletter and Twitter feed.

-Share an interesting piece of content from the site via social media.

-find and describe a particular project our organization is working on.

-find and use any usual or signature features our organization’s site has.

Once you set tasks for your testers to complete, the fun begins!  Watching videos of random users trying to navigate your site is alternately exciting, painful, revelatory and, most importantly, extremely informative.  The videos provided by the company we used actually showed the testers mouse moving around our site, along with a running commentary from the tester.

Seeing actual users with no previous experience of our site or our company was shocking- many of the assumptions we’d made about our site’s user-friendliness, appeal and information architecture went instantly out the window.   Of course, you can’t take every piece of each testers opinion to heart; everyone has different personal taste and a different experience level with standard practices on the web.  However, it became apparent, pretty much immediately, that there were trends with every user that tested our site.

For us, it was that we weren’t offering enough information and not the right kind- it was making it difficult for site visitors to feel confident enough to sign up for our service.  The most significant change we made to the site was beginning to offer a live-chat feature so our staff could interact in real-time with users who were exploring the site and considering the sign up process.  In keeping with other trends we saw through all our tester videos, we also rearranged the information section of our website and made clear a few details about our service that we’d thought no-one would want to read the find print about (but which were making users feel confused about our service).

After implementing some website changes based on our user testing several months ago, we’ve already seen an enormous benefit to our company.  We are signing up about 35% more new clients per month, even though we’ve raised our pricing (slightly) and we’ve had nothing but positive feedback about the live-chat feature on our site (SnapEngage, check it out, y’all, seriously).  The reason I’m sharing the results of our user testing here on the blog is because it yielded a substantial result, with a minimal effort and financial investment on our part.  I think this type of testing will truly benefit non-profits looking to improve their online fundraising and it’s an option that’s scalable and affordable for organizations of all sizes and budgets.

The holiday season will be upon us in no time- though these have been some very tough years for the country, online giving is still growing yearly.  There are lots of ways to get your site in fighting form for the upcoming prime fundraising season, but I’d suggest considering a round of user testing before you send out your first call to action email to your donor base.  It’s an easy (and, weirdly, fun) way to give your donation process a tune-up and you might be surprised the results.

Happy Fundraising!

AJ

All right folks, DonationPay has now successfully moved to our new offices in Berkeley California- we’re thrilled to be a part of the Bay Area business community and we’re looking forward to working with more awesome non-profits in the area.  Farewell, Seattle, you will be missed- though, the weather. . . not so much.

Because we’re still getting caught up on the enormous backlog of work that piled up during the days we were closed (btw, thanks for being patient, wonderful clients!), I’m a little too burnt out to write an, um, actually interesting post this week but I will share a few things I’ve been really enjoying this week.

-Allyson Kapin on the social media savvy of various congress members.

-Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog has a really stellar guest post by Kyle Lacy from yesterday about some simple ways organizations can engage donors through social media.

-A slightly older (1 year, anyhow) slideshow about non-profit viral video storytelling, which I’m still thinking about from my last post.

Last but not least, two Joni Mitchell songs that are aural (and, in the former case, literal) love letters to the gorgeous state of California.  Rogue River, here we come!

Happy Fundraising,

-AJ

Viral videos, as a topic of conversation, can leave a bit of an unpleasant taste in my mouth.  It’s not that I’m not an avid watcher of all the hilarious, compellingly brief, time-wasting, occasionally heartwarming little snippets out there (because I definitely am), it’s just that the term ‘viral’ no longer seems appropriate.  ’Viral’ implies that these videos are something you could accidentally catch, like a cold, just by being in close proximity to them.  Viral means a force of unavoidable nature and that once we catch it, culturally, we’re all in this thing together.  Some of the ‘best’ viral videos have also generated the most upsetting cultural response- by this I mean that while, say, Rebecca Black and Antoine Dodson both have had a positively insane amount of video views (which, if we’re defining success strictly by viral standards, is outstanding), the response generated by the videos can hardly be construed as unconditionally positive (for unconditional positivity, I would counter Black’s ‘Friday’ with this one, for sanity’s sake).  On YouTube, Black and Dodson are stars- out here in reality, the negative kickback has ranged from hateful to overtly racist.  In the past, a part of a video being deemed ‘viral’ had to be that it’s creators had intended it for an alternate purpose.  In Black’s case, she was a kid whose parents had the money to buy her a day of faux stardom for her birthday- though she’s now released a new single and has to be enjoying some components of her newfound fame, it’s certain that she never intended to be a national laughingstock on such a grand scale.  Dodson’s success is slightly more troubling- his ‘starmaking’ video is of a newscast in which he rages about the attempted rape of his sister, after a man broke in through one of the windows in their apartment and attacked her.  Dodson is absolutely enjoying the celebrity that comes with viral success and doing an admirable job of extending his 15 minutes, but am I comfortable saying the video is a real crackup or dressing up like Dodson for Halloween?  Absolutely not- I feel pretty icky just thinking about it.

The cultural terminology we use to describe viral videos must now be radically revised: because these videos are more and more now being created by individuals simply to achieve inherently short-term celebrity status or by corporations to attempt to access new markets, the surprise element is missing. If Rebecca Black had made Friday as a joke, it would not have been a very funny one, but because she intended it seriously, it created a tide of public mania.   Viral videos have proven themselves to be useful in thrusting individuals or concepts into the cultural dialogue, there is a rush on these days by corporations to tap into the new ethos around celebrity, ubiquity and how technology is used to grow a business or set of ideals.  Making a video with the specific intent of it going viral (i.e. reaching multiple thousands or millions of people it would not normally have) kind of takes the fun out of the thing for me: it’s totally uncool to laugh at a man describing his outrage at his sisters attacker, but at least that video is evidence of something spontaneous and genuine.  With videos created more in the corporate mold (like the Will It Blend attempt from Apple, which has racked up quite a few views by any standards, and which leaves me totally cold),  the element of surprise and transformation is eliminated.  Apple made Will It Blend to pique interest in the IPad and, well, that’s what it did- the video was made and used for the intended advertising purpose.  Of course, there are gems that come out of the corporate mold of viral video designs, but no matter what, the Old Spice Guy , however marvelous, is no match for Charlie Bit My Finger.

There was some recent chatter on Progressive Exchange (which, BTW, if you haven’t joined yet, you totally should) about the best viral videos made by non-profits or in promotion of a particular cause and it made me think of how much I think video marketing/viral videos are a perfect medium for the non-profit sector.  For one thing, it’s a great way to put your cause front and center and give it a creative spin that will really stick out in your viewers memory.  The other reason I’m a fan of non-profit video outreach is that it eliminates the salesy corporate pall that permeates ‘viral’ videos designed by a fully staffed marketing department- even when a video is designed by a whole creative team at a non-profit, it can still feel more impassioned, genuine and creative then those that are actually marketing a product or person.  The sincerity of these videos is an almost intangible quality, but I believe it makes a real, measurable difference- I’ve already briefly written about It Gets Better.  Videos are a great method of reaching the distracted masses and leaving them with a lasting impression of the importance of your cause and a lingering call to action they can pass along to their friends and social networks.

One of my favorite examples of a successful viral video made by a non-profit is this one from Greenpeace, last year.  It’s intended use is to rally supporters to advocate for Facebook (as a major energy consumer) to use cleaner energy sources and I think it’s pretty much perfect in every way.  Check it out and then I’ll tell you why:

Adorable, no?  I like Greenpeace’s use of the medium for many reasons, but here some of the primary ones:

-The message is scalable. The video itself is focusing on one large company changing their business practices to improve the environmental conditions and do their part, but the message is easily applicable to a much larger or small scale.  Anyone can easily infer that Facebook is just a starting point.

-It’s funny and weird.  Most truly hilarious viral videos are made by a couple people with a strange idea or affect; for videos promoting a cause or a call to action, it’s hard to get that message across without seeming off-puttingly serious.  Presenting information on your cause in a humorous way can go a long way toward engaging viewers and giving your video that push that it needs to attain ‘viral’ status.  Having a fresh perspective on an ongoing issue can be really invigorating for your constituents.

-It’s appropriate for all ages.  I definitely don’t believe that everything has to be family friendly or SFW(obviously, to those of you who know me or read my blog), but in this case, it can never hurt to make your message as approachable and relatable as possible, for a wide range of ages and maturity levels.

-It includes a clear call to action. My opinion is that for most viral videos, a donation solicitation is not a great idea.  It works a lot better if you’re using your viral video to motivate your viewers to become more educated on your chosen issue or to complete a desired task, but a call for contributions can work as well, in certain cases.

-It’s linked into social networking processes and online environments.  The Greenpeace video includes not only ways you can immediately join the conversation on this issue (join the Facebook page), but it uses language in keeping with the concept (‘Unfriend Coal’).

-It’s timely.  This video was released a few months before The Social Network came out in theaters and takes advantage of the fact that the whole Mark Zuckerberg story was just beginning to really permeate the social consciousness.

-It tells a story.  In the past, viral videos were more ‘slice of life’ than narrative structure, but for videos made to promote a cause or idea, I think it’s extremely important to have a relatable focal point that you can follow from point A to point B, like you would in a compelling film or book.

My final point (and I know this has been a long one, thanks for bearing with me) is that there is nothing anyone can do to guarantee viral video success.  The Greenpeace video I’ve used as an example in this post has about half a million views on YouTube currently.  By YouTube standards this is meager, compared to the 100 some million views Rebecca Black’s eardrum-shattering, lobotomy-now-please little ditty has racked up.  Blind luck and lightening-in-a-bottle has a lot to do with fluke viral success and it didn’t really happen for ‘Unfriend Coal’ in an earth-shattering way.  But, again, out here in the real world, half a million people checking out your video is a pretty sweet deal, really, especially if you’re using the video as a rallying point for something you really believe in.   I think non-profits can claim this medium as a perfect vehicle to communicate, educate, mobilize and, yes, entertain a much larger swath of potential contributors, volunteers or advocates.

Happy fundraising!

-AJ

Since last week, I’ve been meaning to write a long post about our experience at Netroots Nation last weekend in Minneapolis.  And while it’s been edifying to- instead of writing this long and thoughtful blog post- slog through the backlog of work I left behind to attend the conference, I had trouble deciding how to cogently summarize 127 hours of panels, parties, workshops, speeches and other strange events (Hal Sparks et al. in the Sexy Liberal Tour, I’m looking at you!).  Basically, what I’ve come down to is this thing my mother used to say to me and my siblings any time we saw her doing something that she’d have been horrified to see us do- drinking milk straight from the carton, swearing, acting disgusted (rightfully) by brussel sprouts.  Any time she accidentally put on display some behavior that she was, as an excellent parent (hi Mom!), trying vigorously to train us out of, she’d say: “Do as I say, not as I do.”

I’m sure you’ve all heard this expression on occasion, probably in similar circumstances to the ones I just described.  I’ve thought about this homily often the last couple of months as DonationPay has been expanding and getting ready to relocate our office to Berkeley.  The past six months have been so filled with the chaos of rapid growth that I’ve scarcely had time to cover the bases of the most basic advice I used to give our clients when we were non-profit web developers.    During this rather hectic time, as the co-founder and primary office/client interface manager, I’ve said the word ‘should’ a whole lot, in this blog and to clients.  You ‘should’ be focusing on your blog to engage with your readers and donors, you ‘should’ be taking advantage of the wonderful mobile and social networking tools that are now blessedly at all of our fingertips, you ‘should’ be putting a lot of effort into reaching out to other organzations and allies. . . all these ‘should’s’ are things I really believe in and know to be effective communication and marketing tools for non-profit organizations and business.

And yet. . . DonationPay has not until now had a Twitter account. I’ve put about- oh, I don’t know- zero hours into connecting with other folks who are interested in what we do or what our clients are doing on Facebook. All in all, after attending a great panel on social networking for change at Netroots Nation (led by the great Deanna Zandt, with four other brilliant and awesome ladies- an all female tech panel, totally refreshing!), I was feeling unhappy about DonationPay’s lack of online contribution and very guilty about not practicing what I preach.

In Deanna’s opening remarks, she said the most powerful thing to remember about social networking, as it pertains to non-profits, advocates for change and just about everybody else, too: if you don’t join in, the conversation will just take place without you. Knowing better than most that this conversation is not only sparkling, but absolutely essential at this point to DonationPay’s growth and expression as an ethical, progressive company, has given me a sense of online social anxiety and malaise. I’ve been writing tutorials about how to become engaged using these tools but have been neglecting to use them myself, to connect with our clients and other organizations we support- Do As I Say, Not As I Do, you know?

Anyhow, thanks to the inspiring panel and a general sense of my growing and overwhelming hypocrisy, DonationPay has officially joined the conversation! Check us out on Twitter and look for lots of great updates to our Facebook page, coming soon and look for updates about new features, as well as news from our client’s great fundraising efforts across the country and the world.

Happy Fundraising and in progressive social networking solidarity,

AJ