June 18, 2013

10 top online survey tools for your nonprofit

Survey Tools

Inexpensive tools to gain insight from your constituents

Guest post by Eric Leland

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, Web publishers, general public.

ericleland Online surveys can be a huge help in understanding what your constituents think and how successful your programs are, without breaking your budget. We spoke to five nonprofit staff members to understand how existing online survey tools compare, from features to pricing.

Ever wonder how well received your annual dinner event is? Looking to evaluate a new program? Need to collect data for a big research project? Surveys can be a huge help in understanding what your constituents think and how successful your programs are.

Good tools can be a big part of that. Online survey tools can be a cost-effective way for delivering surveys and collecting and analyzing results through one central system. While they’re not going to be the right fit for every research need — for instance, a paper survey is likely to get a much higher response rate at an in-person event, and provide more accurate data among populations that are not as comfortable with computers — online surveys are great for gathering informal data quickly and easily. Continue reading →

June 17, 2013

Building a loyal Facebook fan base

The key differences between nonprofits and for-profits

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, small businesses, general public.

My good friend Jon Loomer and I chatted the other day for the Social Media Pubcast. Check out the video above to glean some insights on some of the topics we discussed.

You’ll find out more about:

The key advantage nonprofits have over for-profits
Differences and similarities in approach to and struggles with Facebook between nonprofits and for-profits
Facebook Insights and the stats that matter (Demographics, Talking About This, Frequency)
Tips for Promoted Posts

Check out the video from our chat and share your thoughts in the comments below!

June 12, 2013

Content marketing: We’re all media publishers now

bigstock-Web-Traffic640

Why nonprofits need to tell their stories by creating new content

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, marketers, journalists, general public.

I‘ve been to dozens of nonprofits’ offices, but there’s a phrase I’ve never heard uttered even once: content marketing.

Sounds kind of mysterious, doesn’t it? But when you strip it down to its essence, content marketing is just a way for organizations to tell their stories.

I was interviewed, along with marketer Greg Jordan, about content marketing for nonprofits at a new podcast from the Content Marketing Examiner moderated by publisher Martin van der Roest. Here’s our conversation:

Continue reading →

June 11, 2013

The impact of mobile on peer-to-peer fundraising

mobiletools

Why mobile matters for nonprofit fundraising

Guest post by Claire Kerr
Director of Digital Philanthropy, Artez Interactive

ClaireKerr If you’re one of the 84% of people worldwide who claim they “couldn’t go a day” without a mobile phone in hand, you are clearly not alone! We’ve never been more passionate users of mobile devices than we are right now.

At my company, Artez Interactive, we clearly can see the rising importance of smartphones and tablets by looking at the traffic to fundraising and donation pages on our North American platform. Of the millions of unique visitors to our system every month, over 15% are visiting on mobile devices. Continue reading →

June 10, 2013

How to turn email content into blog posts

Conversion

8 simple tips to leverage email for your blog

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, small businesses, general public.

So you’ve finally decided to start blogging for your nonprofit.

You’ve done the research about different blogging platforms, and had even outlined a strategy for topics that are based on what your supporters want and how people search for you on Google.

But you’ve got one small problem: Who’s going to write all of these blog posts? Continue reading →

June 5, 2013

Advocacy videos: Digital storytelling on a budget

Canon-video

Tell your nonprofit’s story with budget-friendly tools

Editor’s note: Lauren Major of Socialbrite just completed a three-part webinar series on video storytelling for the Alliance for Children and Families.

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, video producers, digital marketers, educators, storytellers, general public.

Everyone agrees about the increasing importance of multimedia storytelling and getting the nonprofit message across.

There are many choices today for nonprofits when deciding how to tackle advocacy videos for online fundraising campaigns.

If a budget allows, the experts always recommend hiring a professional media company with the experience of producing with high quality video equipment and distributing in a way that gets the nonprofit’s message heard.

Using DSLR cameras, the film technology that offers a more cinematic look, we created a video for The Midnight Circus, a Chicago nonprofit that rebuilds parks in underdeveloped neighborhoods.

However, for smaller nonprofit projects such as thanking volunteers, creating quick updates of activities on social media and creating a portfolio of video clips for a digital library, nonprofits may decide to produce multimedia stories on their own. Continue reading →