October online fundraising round-up

Another end of month round-up of assorted bits and pieces I spotted during the last few weeks and thought were interesting/handy, but haven’t had time to mention. Hope you find them useful…

Right at the start of the month, UK charity Arthritis Care went live with a new member recruitment campaign using email, direct mail, press, online advertising and an online video diary site. Great to see an organisation with a primarily older audience recognising the potential to engage with them online - and doing so in such an engaging way.

A handy post on Michael Stein’s Nonprofit Internet Strategy blog reminds us of the vital importance of online thank you pages and provides some tips to help make the most of them.

More great hints and tips, this time from Wild Apricot, relating to building a better blog.

A few more, from Seth Godin’s great blog, on how to create a great website (with thanks to my old Seattle colleague Jeff Brooks for mentioning that one).

And finally, some Web 2.0 best practice guidelines from Alex Samuel at Social Signal.

Ammado - interesting new social network for fundraisers, but not sure what’s in it for donors?

I had an especially busy time last week with a couple of big presentations to give at the same time as I was due to be attending the Resource Alliance’s International Fundraising Congress over in Holland.

Unfortunately, while the presentations went fine, this meant that I didn’t get to see many sessions at the Congress - which is a pity because it’s a unique opportunity to hear from fundraisers from all around the world. However, I did get to talk to some folks from Ammado about their new social network - which is currently in Beta phase.

The Resource Alliance had partnered with Ammado at the Congress, with invitations for all 900+ delegates from some 50 different countries to join the beta test membership, so I joined-up and visited their exhibition stand to learn a bit more about it.

From the publicity materials I had thought that the site was purely intended as a social network for fundraisers - providing an environment within which fundraisers around the world can share ideas, pose questions, and generally feel more connected. All in all, rather like a year-round online version of the International Fundraising Congress. What surprised me was that the Ammado team actually envisage it as also being a general social network for people interested in supporting charities.

I must admit that I’m not convinced that this is going to work for them on a mass market scale - at least not in those countries where online social networking is already becoming established (which is pretty well all developed markets).

The real hard core of a charity’s active supporters might be convinced to join-up - and I can see it perhaps being a good place to communicate with and equip keen volunteers. However, for general supporters there needs to be a very good reason for them to register and maintain a profile on this site as well as on any other social networks they’re already members of - whether that’s MySpace, Facebook, the newly launched over-50s Saga Zone, or whatever.

If people are already active within their own personal networks on sites like these, then that’s where fundraisers should be engaging with them - if they want to benefit from the peer-to-peer fundraising potential on offer. Perhaps Ammado is hoping to ride the growing wave of interest in social networking and catch late adopters who haven’t yet chosen a social network site - but in that case they’ll be up against some very high profile generic site competition.

Only time will tell whether they can achieve their vision of creating an online “community of people who care”. Meantime, however well it develops as a Web 2.0 charity portal, it’s certainly well worth fundraisers taking a look at Ammado as a potential resource for networking and sharing of best practice - which is a very worthy aim for the site in itself.

Christmas online corporate fundraising from Crisis

With Christmas just around the corner, we recently launched a fun online corporate fundraising campaign for UK homelessness charity Crisis - aiming to raise £1million by getting corporate sponsors to replace their traditional Christmas cards with a ’singing’ video e-card.

Depending on the company’s Christmas card budget, at the microsite sendasinger.com they can select a four, eight, or fourteen piece choir, made-up of people who have been helped through Crisis projects. Every video e-card card is personalised to the sponsoring company for distribution to their own address list, and all companies taking part will also be formally thanked through double-page advertisements in the Financial Times.

The fun, seasonal approach certainly seems to have struck a chord with companies preparing for Christmas, with a range of organisations already signed-up. So, here’s hoping the campaign reaches its £1million target by 25th December.

UPDATE… Great news - we hit the £1million well before the 25th!

Do The Green Thing

Do The Green Thing is a great site that launched earlier this month, aiming to help as many people as possible to do something to help protect the environment.

There are already a whole host of sites around aiming to do the same thing. But, what makes this one really different is the way it addresses the whole issue in a fun way - and its beautifully crafted style (no surprise, given that one the people behind it is Naresh Ramchandani, formerly of advertising agency St Lukes).

There’s a vast amount of fun content (the videos in particular are fantastic) and to encourage you to keep on doing the green thing you can sign-up to receive regular videos with ideas of more green things to do.

(This post is part of Blog Action Day - 15,000 blogs of all shapes, sizes and specialisms uniting for one day by publishing posts about the environment).

Eco charity Google Maps mashup

Today is Blog Action Day - with some 15,000 blogs of all shapes, sizes and specialisms (including this one) uniting by publishing posts about the environment. So, it’s the ideal day to mention the latest charity Google Maps mash-up I’ve spotted (you can read about some UK examples here).

Called Who on Earth Cares, it comes from the Australian Conservation Foundation and gives Australians an opportunity to flag exactly where they live and attach to their flag details of how they pledge to help cut greenhouse gas emissions - as well as see who else in their local area is doing the same. The site also includes an environmental impact calculator and automatically generates a personalised letter the user can send to their local political representative asking them to take steps to address climate change.

It’s a great example of how Google Maps can be used to build a real world community of people and engage them very personally with a cause.

New opportunity for MySpace fundraising

Rumours are bouncing around the web that social network site MySpace is preparing to launch its 3rd party developer platform at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco next week.

Creatively called ‘MySpace Platform’, it is expected to comprise a set of APIs and a new markup language that will allow any developer to produce advanced applications with the ability to access member information (profile data, friend list, activity history, etc.) - rather than just sit on the surface of the site as a plethora of MySpace profile pimping options currently do.

This launch has been expected ever since Facebook opened itself up to 3rd party applications in the same way back in May - in a move that has contributed significantly to that site’s astonishing growth since then.

For online fundraisers, MySpace Platform will offer opportunities to engage with the MySpace member audience in a far more sophisticated way than ever before. So, look out for the launch of new MySpace fundraising apps similar to the range of Facebook apps that have appeared over recent months.

Blog Action Day next Monday

Apparently there are now over 9,000 blogs (including this one) signed-up to take part in the first ever Blog Action Day, next Monday 15th October.

All participating bloggers will be dedicating that day’s posts to things related to the environment. So, if you know of any great online fundraising or campaigning work for environmental organisations that you think should be given a mention then do let me know.

Handy Facebook research for fundraisers

Charlene Li of Forrester Research has just posted an interesting presentation about Facebook on SlideShare.

As well as some commercial best practice case studies, it also includes a breakdown of the demographics of Facebook users for the UK, US, Canada and Australia - based on Facebook internal data.

Particularly interesting for anyone considering using Facebook for fundraising is the evidence for ageing of the user base - which I commented on a while ago. Canada shows the oldest profile, followed by Australia and then the UK. The US remains skewed massively to the under-24s, presumably reflecting the site’s origins in the US academic community.

Movember online fundraising campaign grows to include six countries

Movember, was started back in 2003 when a couple of Australians decided to support the Australian Prostate Cancer Charity by getting sponsored to grow their Mo-s (as in Moustaches) for the whole of November - subsequently named ‘Movember’.

In 2006 the idea was exported to New Zealand and in total more than 56,000 Movember fundraisers (or Mo Bros) took part. Not content with that, this year the event is growing even further with moustache lovers in the UK, US, Canada, and Spain (website not yet live) also getting involved - each in support of their own national prostate cancer charity.

Country-specific information, downloadable blog and MySpace widgets (wot - no Facebook app?), and local event details are available through the main Republic of Movember site. There’s also a wealth of fun Mo-related stuff around the site, although I found the navigation a bit opaque and fear that a lot of casual users won’t get the most out of it.

However, it’s certainly an excellent example of how the internet can enable a great fundraising idea to go international, sharing learnings and resources to help maximise the net income raised by the charities involved.

SMS fundraising ideas

If you’re interested in SMS fundraising then take a look at mobileactive.org, which promotes the use of mobile phones for all forms of civic action.

As well as providing lots of data relating to worldwide mobile phone use (usefully split by country) and a very active blog, you can also download a number of strategy guides - including one on using mobile phones in fundraising campaigns.

You need to register to use the site and download the guides, but it’s completely free and well worth a look if you’re thinking of adding mobile communications to your fundraising or advocacy programmes.

You might also have a think about the potential of t-shirts that text back - which I spotted a while ago.