Image by Angela Waye for BigStock

How to turn your nonprofit’s website into an engaging, high-traffic destination

Target audience Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, brands, Web publishers, Web programmers.

Guest post by Al Lunt for TechSoup

Holding the interest of new visitors and encouraging them to explore the website is important for nonprofits for a simple reason: They are an idea, an encapsulation of your nonprofit’s mission and goals. And that requires careful consideration of the visual factors that will keep users on your website long enough to absorb your intent.

According to award-winning multimedia designer and producer Mike Schmidt at mowhawkstreet.com, creating an “emotional connection is often the driving force behind these sites, but is also the driving force behind most marketing.” With limited financial resources and regular reliance on volunteer help to build and maintain websites, nonprofits face a daunting challenge in creating sites that can make those emotional connections with users.

Below are five basic tips to help nonprofit Web builders create visually enticing websites. Successfully implementing them could turn a mediocre but usable nonprofit website into an engaging, high-traffic site through enthusiastic word of mouth.

Create a clutter-free home page, encourage exploration

1 A cluttered home page that is overwhelmed with too much text or too many graphics may drive away prospective donors. The home page is often the first impression of a nonprofit that a user sees. It should never be thrown together haphazardly just to establish a Web presence. Network for Good, a nonprofit that provides fundraising ideas for other nonprofits, recommends striving “for simplicity and clarity in design. Your home page should be attractive and engaging, but uncluttered.”

Girleffect.org

Girleffect.org targets younger people sympathetic to the plight of young girls in developing nations. The home page above the fold has only four navigation choices: Home, Learn, Give, and Mobilize. Scrolling below the fold reveals the call to action “3 Things You Can Do Right Now” – Donate, Spread the Word, and Learn. Fewer choices encourage exploration.

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The difference between fundraising with Facebook and collecting donations with Facebook

Target audience: Nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, cause organizations.

Are nonprofits raising any money with Facebook? The answer really depends on how you define fundraising.

I recently appeared as a guest on Tony Martignetti’s NonProfit podcast. The topic of this particular podcast was how nonprofits can best use Facebook. One thing Tony and I talked about was the difference between fundraising with Facebook and collecting donations with Facebook — and how understanding the difference is absolutely critical.

Facebook stinks for collecting donations

Razoo recently published research showing that 33 percent of online donations come from e-mail appeals, while only 7 percent come from Facebook. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that Facebook is a waste of time.

Facebook is awesome for fundraising

Making a value judgment on Facebook based only on donations received completely overlooks the inherent value that Facebook offers. Facebook creates awareness for your campaign.

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Image by Eraxion on BigStockPhoto.com

Guest post by Julie Macalik
Greenlights for Nonprofit Success

The first step in starting to measure your impact is to identify the major outcomes that you want to examine. To be successful you’ll need full management support and a dedicated key project lead for your team. This person will take the helm on laying out tasks in a sequence, informing other staff of their roles and assignments, and providing assistance to people as they complete their parts of the evaluation.

The standard nonprofit data points come from fundraising, communications, programs, and finance, so consider these sources when gathering your team. For example, a representative from the fundraising department can make sure you consider when your funders’ reporting cycles are so that you are producing outcome measurement results at a time that aligns with their requests for information about your programs. Also, those most directly affected should provide meaningful participation, so don’t forget about your front-line staff directly involved in providing services.

Next, you’ll want to select the outcomes that you want to examine and prioritize them. For each outcome, specify what observable measures, or indicators, will suggest that you’re achieving that key outcome for impact. After you’ve made your selection, you can then identify what information is needed to show whether you’ve succeeded.

There are many types of technology and other management tools available to assist in this process, and now is the time to take stock of your technology and the tools you’re going to use to track your data. Decide how information can be efficiently and realistically gathered using the different methods that are best for your organization, including:

• Surveys: Consider what features you’ll need. If you’re just looking to get your feet wet with a quick survey, one of the many free or low cost online survey tools will do the trick. In fact, a more sophisticated survey package could be considerably more difficult to use. On the other hand, if you’re looking for survey software to support rigorous research, the more advanced packages are more likely to have the features you need.
• Interviews and focus groups: The desired outcome of this type of method is to solicit data without any influence or bias. This also allows you to develop a relationship with clients or other key stakeholders and get a full range of information. One benefit of focus groups is the ability for participants to feed off each other’s energy and bounce ideas off one another. Consider using an outside facilitator to help develop questions and protocol and to help identify themes from your data.

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Tips for how to toggle between your Facebook Page and personal profile

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

Facebook is a raging river most days. And that raging river can either feel like an exciting ride or a complete terror.

One thing that makes a huge difference is whether you can tie your tiny raft together with other rafts so that together, you achieve more than you could as individuals.

This video shows you how to Facebook (verb) as a Page:

• How to log in as a Page
• Viewing your notifications
• Viewing your most recent fans
• Viewing a summary of your Page stats
• Engaging with other Pages in your Page News Feed
• Re-posting updates from other Pages
• Tagging other Pages in updates

Are you using Facebook to nurture partnerships?

Target audience: NGOs, nonprofits, foundations, social enterprises, cause and advocacy organizations, educators, general public.

We’re still winding down after a whirlwind day Friday at the United Nations. At the invitation of Amine Lamrabat, Socialbrite sent Shonali Burke and myself to give a presentation on how NGOs (international nonprofits, chiefly) working with the UN can use social media to create impact and advance their causes.

This was one of the most rewarding and invigorating gatherings I’ve attended in quite some time, for both the knowledgeable give and take as well as the astonishing scope of the social good being done by the people in the room. Among those attending were representatives of Mercy International Association, Global Action to Prevent War and Armed Conflict, the Norway Mission to the UN, the American Cancer Society, representations from throughout the UN and many others.

Here’s a Flickr set of 32 photos I snapped. Some of the topics that came up during our talk included:

• How do we scale a campaign to 1 million signatures? Our answer: Set realistic goals. Approach the campaign in phases. Build up a community of support and deputize supporters to participate on your behalf. Learn from past mistakes. Depending on your budget, consider using a large advocacy platform like Care2.

• How should we deal with an autocratic regime? From China to Myanmar to Iran, we’ve seen examples of governments that won’t hesitate to crack down on pro-democracy dissidents. Advocacy groups like Witness have learned a great deal about protecting the identity of pro-democracy activists, so absorb their learnings. (See a Witness official’s guest post on Socialbrite on What are our ethical responsibilities when recording video of people under oppression?) Follow Rebecca MacKinnon on Twitter discussing China and cyber-activism. See the latest Netizen Report on Global Voices Advocacy. And also see the brilliant work-around Tunisian human rights activists undertook by geotagging stories of human rights abuses around the presidential palace using Google Earth, Google Maps and YouTube.

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Socialbrite presents at the United Nations today

Today my Socialbrite partner Shonali Burke and I are giving a presentation to NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) at the United Nations.

Back in November, an invitation flew into our laps from Amine Lamrabat of the Civil Society and Outreach Unit (CSOU), Division for Social Policy and Development (DSPD), Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). By gosh, when it comes to acronyms, nobody beats the UN!

The department is focusing in the new year on marshalling resources to combat poverty — quite a challenge, considering up to 80 percent of the world’s 7 billion people live in poverty or near-poverty conditions. (See stats from the World Bank.) So we tailored our presentation to highlight the work of some international nonprofits that are making an impact, especially in the developing world (or Global South, as some call it), including:

• Send a Cow, a UK-based nonprofit that is helping African farmers create a sustainable ecosystem and a process of paying it forward. Farmers who are helped, with training on how to grow crops in harsh climates, agree to pass that knowledge on to other farmers — along with a first-born calf. Send a Cow helps African farmers grow enough food to feed their families, sell their produce, start small businesses and rise out of poverty. They do a nice job with their website, produce high-quality videos and are growing a fan base on Twitter and Facebook, though we couldn’t spot any online fundraising or mobile efforts.

• USA for UNHCR’s Blue Key campaign, which Shonali is overseeing, has built a nice community over the past year, with occasional tweet-a-thons to raise funds, $5 per key, and awareness about the plight of refugees.

• In my view, charity: water has made the most astonishing use of social media and new media, with breathtakingly good videos, multimedia, photography and smart ways to mobilize social networks. Check out the story of charity: water video they did for their 5-year anniversary as well as the new WaterForward campaign. Also, see the video How charity: water changes lives through multimedia and find your charity: water project on a map — I’ve been using on that in my presentations for years.

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By now you’re probably aware that your personal Facebook profile has been upgraded to the new timeline layout, which features a large image, or cover, at the very top.

Nonprofits and organizations don’t yet have the ability to create their own timeline or use the new layout features — but their supporters can. Many organizations, like the Best Friends Animal Society, or Ocean Conservancy, are creating covers that supporters can use on their timeline on behalf of the nonprofit. See the example Beth Kanter is using above; she was touting the Ocean Conservancy last week.

Notice that there is no hard-sell pitch for donations (which could violate Facebook’s Terms of Use). Rather, the covers are “lightly branded” beautiful photographs of animals, ocean life or related causes.

How to create a custom Facebook cover for your nonprofit

The easiest way to create a custom Facebook cover for your supporters to use is to get a designer to create one using Photoshop.

Have your designer use the dimensions shown below, or download this Photoshop template (zip file),

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Image by marting for Big Stock

Improve your marketing strategy with free insights generated by Google

Target audience: Nonprofits, businesses, NGOs, social enterprises, socially responsible brands, marketing professionals, cause organizations, social media managers, bloggers, individuals.

Guest post by Frank Anderson
GreenMarketing.tv

You’ve started a blog for your nonprofit, NGO, social enterprise or green business and included examples of your organization’s sustainability initiatives. You’ve highlighted your efforts to reduce your carbon footprint and green your supply chain in your marketing collateral. You’ve created guides for your customers of how to be environmentally conscious with your product.

You’ve laid the groundwork for your green marketing. But things are changing and news is happening fast and furious. There are always new things to be trying and new green ideas you can be writing about to show that your organization is on the front lines of the green movement.

What is Google Insights?

The tagline for the popular movie The Watchmen was “Who watches the Watchmen?” With Google, if you’ve ever wondered, “Who searches the searchers?,” the answer is Google Insights.

Google Insights gives people access to what people are searching for on Google. And before you start to cry privacy foul, this data is on a very high level and no personal data is being shared there. In other words, you can see what groups of people are searching for, but not individuals.

What can I do with Google Insights?

Google Insights is best used for three things:

• Seeing the general interest in the topics you are focusing on
• Seeing popular related news articles to give you an idea of what is going on within your focus
• Ideas for what other areas you could be focusing on

But first, you need to go to the site and start searching for something you are focusing your business on regarding green issues.

Let’s say you run a furniture store. Perhaps you’d want to search for “eco friendly furniture” or “eco furniture” (“green furniture” would obviously pull up some unwanted data). We want to start broadly as Insights works with very high level data.

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They say a picture paints a thousand words, and that may be the case. But if they cost the earth or you don’t have permission to use them, they end up painting nothing much at all.

When my mobile “career” kicked off in 2003 with multiple research trips to South Africa and Mozambique, I took the opportunity to start taking and collecting mobile- and technology-related photos. Back then people were beginning to take an interest in the impact of mobile phones on the African continent, and NGOs were looking to use photos on websites or in project proposals, newsletters and presentations. On top of that, people were just generally curious about what was going on.

That collection now stands at over 150 photos, and covers everything from people around the world texting or making calls to pictures of shops, signs, mobiles themselves and other interesting examples of mobile entrepreneurship in action.

The images are free to use – with attribution – by nonprofits or any other organization seeking to profile the social impact of mobile technology. Visit the kiwanja Mobile Gallery for the full gallery of images, and for details on how to credit their use.