Which charity will be first to make use of YouTube Annotations interactivity?

Earlier this week YouTube released a new feature called ‘Annotations’ that allows you not only to annotate your uploaded video with captions, but also to create links within the video to other video clips or to your YouTube channel.

Easy captioning is a handy function, but it is the interactivity offered by the embedded links that makes this new feature particularly interesting. There are several simple demonstrations of what’s possible already on the site, including one involving the good old ‘pick a card trick’ shown above (which jumped from 300k to well over 2m views in a day - showing the level of interest in the feature) and a ‘find the shell’ game (keep going to the ‘hard’ video and just see where it leads you;-).

Interestingly, the annotations seem only work on YouTube and not when the videos are embedded elsewhere - which is unfortunate (and presumably why embedding on the ‘pick a card’ video has been ‘disabled by request’).

Ever since YouTube took-off I’ve had countless discussions about how best to use videos on the site to engage with consumers beyond simple viewings, comments and ratings- other than just including a URL for them to type into their browser. While still restricted to links within YouTube, this new feature does offer a new level of interaction which has the potential to be used in interesting ways by non-profits. For example as the basis for a personally guided, interactive video presentation of your work or support opportunities.

Thinking ahead, if links out of YouTube are added then the potential becomes even greater. Allen Stern at CentreNetworks suggests that external links could offer a new way for YouTube to monetize - through a small fee being paid to link products in videos to the product owner’s site or ecommerce sites.

Many non-profits are already making use of YouTube - so who will be the first to get into YouTube interactivity?

Causes App celebrates first birthday - but surely there is more potential for Facebook fundraising?

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?

Age Concern launches online personal information storage

Age Concern, one of the UK’s leading charities working on behalf of older people, launched a new online service last month. Called LifeBook, the service is intended to help users more easily manage their affairs, by providing online storage for all of those details that tend to go missing just when you need them - from renewal dates for insurance to friends’ birthdays. There is also a section that records the user’s final wishes, and promotion for the site notes that the information held could be invaluable to a family member or friend in case of an emergency.

This is not dissimilar to a commercial service I blogged about back in July 2007, although in that case the company - YouDeparted - was rather more up-front about the ‘case of emergency’ benefits of their service, which they described as “a personal organiser with a death benefit”.

While the opt-out boxes that form part of the LifeBook registration process make it clear that the charity hopes to use the service as the basis for cross-selling, they are undoubtedly responding to a very real need experienced by their constituents - which makes this a good example of the type of value exchange that is increasingly proving effective in engaging with potential supporters.

It’ll be interesting to see how they develop the service over time - perhaps to include the opportunity to upload video messages for loved ones as a more contemporary way to share final wishes?

Online fundraising benchmarking study - how well is your email activity performing?

The 2008 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study has just been released by M+R Strategic Services and the Nonprofit Technology Network, and contains a wealth of data which will be of real interest to you if you’re involved in online fundraising or campaigning.

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.

The report is free to download here.

Anyone know of an equivalent report for any other countries - or interested in contributing data to a broader benchmarking study? Let me know.

Giving in a digital world listed on Alltop Nonprofits

I just heard yesterday that this blog is now included in the Alltop Nonprofits listing at nonprofits.alltop.com - a very handy directory of all sorts of blogs relating to nonprofits, philanthropy, online fundraising, charities using social networks, etc. etc… with RSS feeds of their latest posts.

Take a look - it’s a nice easy way to catch-up with some really interesting content.

Online Toddler or Virtual Veteran - what’s your internet age?

A bit of fun from telecoms company Orange, who have set-up a survey-based site that uses your responses to questions on internet use to calculate your ‘Internet Age’ - from ‘Online Toddler’ to ‘Virtual Vetran’.

I ended-up with 11 out of 16, making me ‘Dot Competent’ - which feels about right (having zeroed-out on the online dating questions - my dating days being back in a pre-internet age;-).

While undoubtedly intended as the basis for some future ‘research’-based PR activity, the range of questions asked is actually quite interesting as reference if you’re planning your own online research to determine levels of supporter internet use.