I spotted an interesting post by Shiv Singh at interactive agency Avenue A|Razorfish the other day, about the seven key attributes they have defined as characterising ‘digital brands’ (meaning brands best equipped for our new digital consumer world), and it occurred to me that the same criteria could be handy when examining charity brands and the way they engage online:
FRESH - does it inspire a feeling or emotion?
ADAPTIVE - does it respond to your involvement?
RELEVANT - Is it useful or appealing to you, specifically?
TRANSFORMATIVE - Does it raise expectations of the brand or the web?
SOCIAL - Is it worth borrowing, sharing, or contributing to?
IMMERSIVE - Do you lose track of time?
AUTHENTIC - Does it seem genuine?
The presentation above provides some examples of this as well as comparing top scoring ‘digital brands’ to Interbrand’s traditional top brands list. While in Shiv’s post he provides a handy interactive Excel ‘Brand Gene Scorecard’ with which you can have a go at comparing how your own online brand presence rates against your competitors in terms of digital engagement.
Last Saturday was an important anniversary in Social Networking terms, marking one year since Facebook launched Facebook Platform, the toolkit that enables the development of 3rd party Applications (Apps) that integrate directly with Facebook user data. The sudden explosion in Apps resulting from this was a significant driver of the site’s massive growth in popularity throughout 2007, and according to Facebook stats site Adonomics it has led to the release of almost 27,000 Apps to-date.
The same day was also the first anniversary of the biggest non-profit Facebook App, ‘Causes’ from Project Agape (now also available on MySpace).
A runaway success from launch in terms of installations, Project Agape marked the anniversary with the release of statistics on its first year’s activity. Apparently they now have a total of 12 million registered users (95,886 daily active users when I just checked) supporting over 80,000 US and Canadian non-profit organisations. Other countries are still being considered for inclusion, but in a post on the Causes discussion board earlier this month it was explained that “Supporting donations to UK-based charities is still a project we’re interested in, but we are strapped for resources and cannot provide a date”.
80,000 non-profits being represented on two of the world’s biggest Social Networking sites is undoubtedly great news, with the App clearly tapping into a widespread desire amongst site users to share their support for charitable causes.
However, when you look at the figures released in terms of hard cash it seems like Causes still has some way to go before it becomes a significant income generator for the organisations involved. Over the last 12 months, $2.5 million has been raised through Causes for 19,445 organisations - equating to an average of just $126 per organisation. No donations at all have been made to 75% of the 80,000 organisations being ’supported’.
Don’t get me wrong. I still think Causes is a great initiative and I do understand when other commentators have observed that this is $2.5 million that these organisations would not have had otherwise. However, I wholeheartedly believe that supporter engagement on Social Networking sites has the potential to deliver massively more in fundraising terms than what currently appears to be the equivalent of an online small change collection tin.
Perhaps it’s simply that the Causes ‘Digital Badge’ approach to supporter engagement just doesn’t lend itself to generating higher levels of financial engagement? Is it just too easy to install the App and choose a few organisations to support by putting their badge on your profile and that’s it - job done?
By contrast, those Apps which extend the tried-and-tested sponsored challenge fundraising approach to Social Networking sites seem to better illustrate the real Community Fundraising potential of sites like Facebook. For example, Justgiving.com (which enables individuals to set-up fundraising pages in support of their sponsored activities) has seen significant uptake of its Facebook App (see their latest stats here) and identified Facebook as its second biggest referrer after Google - a trend confirmed by Hitwise UK.
Anyone else got any examples of where organisations are managing to raise significant amounts on Social Networking sites?
There was some great feedback following my Community Fundraising 2.0 session at the Institute of Fundraising’s Direct Marketing Conference back in February. So I thought I’d post a quick plug for a couple more conference’s I’ll be speaking at later this year - not just as an invitation to anyone attending to come-along and say ‘hello’, but also to see if anyone has relevant case studies of online fundraising they’ve been involved in that they’d like to share. I do my best to keep-up with the latest fundraising campaigns, but there’s so much going-on these days that it’s easy to miss things!
If you’ve got any suggestions for online community fundraising campaigns that you think I should take a look at, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. Thanks!
Covering everything from click-through and conversion rates (by cause) to how much you might expect your email list to churn, it provides some really valuable data to help benchmark your own organisation’s performance. As an update of an equivalent report released back in 2006, it also provides insight into how performance against key metrics is changing over time.
The findings are based on the analysis of data from 21 US nonprofits involved in online fundraising and campaigning, but seem to tally well with the equivalent data I see for the range of UK charities I work with.
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).
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.
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.
There’s so much going on in the digital fundraising world and only so much time that I can find to blog about it. To help keep-up, I thought it would be useful to include a round-up of items that I’ve come across over the last month but haven’t been able to include full posts on. Hope you find it interesting - and useful…
1. News of two innovative approaches to get people engaged in online advocacy (including a Second Life Guantanamo) from Beth Kanter’s ever interesting blog in Tear It Down and Virtual Guantanamo
3. In Should Facebook have banished Ranger Rick?The Green Miles reported on the heated debate over Facebook’s refusal to let Ranger Rick, the beloved persona of the US National Wildlife Federation, keep his Facebook profile - on the basis that only a real person can have a profile. I’ve spotted at least one UK charity which still seems to have a profile in place (cancer care, girls name, no more clues..) - so why pick on Rick?
6. Finally, some very worthwhile reading and food for thought from London-based non-profit thinktank nfpSynergy, which made its great report on The 21st Century Donor available for free download.
