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Using Volunteers to help with Social Networking?

Photo by openDemocracy

The Idealware.org blog recently posed the question: Should a nonprofit organization task their Social Media responsibilities with a young volunteer or intern? It's something that I've wondered myself. Clearly, nonprofit staff members do not have the time to keep on top of all of the latest social media tools. And there are many people out there who "live on" Facebook and YouTube and Twitter who would be glad to help out your organization.

However, there are some obvious drawbacks to "outsourcing" these activities to an intern or volunteer. First, do they truly understand your mission and values? Will they communicate with your constituents and prospects in an appropriate manner? Secondly, the social media strategy of an organization should really be integrated with the overall marketing/outreach strategy of the organization. If traditional messaging and outreach are maintained by in-house staff, why not social media conversations, which are even more personal and direct? Finally, what happens when that volunteer or intern decides they no longer have the time to participate?

My take? Organizations should definitely leverage interested volunteers and interns to help them learn about social networking tools. Have them come in and train your staff on what tools are out there and how people use them. I believe volunteers could also help the staff get started: Set up a facebook page, create a YouTube channel, etc. But they must train a staff member to maintain their profile on these sites and join the conversation with their constituents. And obviously, the organization must first determine if/how social media is part of their overall marketing/outreach strategy.

If you DO decide to utilize an intern to help you with your Social Media efforts, the Nonprofit Communications Blog recently posted some tips for doing so effectively.

By the way, if you are interested in using volunteers more effectively in ANY capacity in your organization, Idealist.org has a page full of resources for Volunteer Management.

Have you had any luck utilizing volunteers or interns with social media or other technologies? Let us know in the comments below.

Online Event Registration Options

Image by pasotraspaso

In the past, event registration could become a real hassle for a non-profit organization. Staff would have to take lots of phone calls and mailed-in registration forms, and manually enter the information into a central event attendance list. The process was manually intensive and could introduce lots of errors. For the attendees, there wasn't much information available to them about which friends and acquaintances would also be at the event. The process was flawed.

Now there are many online event registration tools available to improve this process for both the organization and the participants. If your organization's web provider offers online registration that is integrated with your constituent database, you are ready to go. For everyone else, we reviewed a few of the tools available online with the following criteria in mind:

1) Price
2) Ability to customize the data requested
3) Ability to accept payments for the event registration
4) Ability to easily share the registered attendees list online (with or without extra comments)
5) Integration with your existing database
6) Ability to integrate the online form with your website
7) Other functionality offered by the service

With this criteria in mind, here are some tools a nonprofit might consider for processing registrations online for their next event:

eVite
eVite is a free event registration tool that is very popular for birthday parties and other individual get-togethers.

Pros: Most people have used eVite and feel comfortable with its interface; Attendees can add comments and view who has been invited, who is attending, and who can not attend; Free.

Cons: The form doesn't allow the processing of payments for the registrations (although a link to an online donation form from PayPal or other services could be included in the invitation); Data can not easily be integrated into existing databases; the form cannot be integrated into an organization's website; there is limited reporting functionality

Eventbrite
Eventbrite is a more full-featured online event registration service. It offers its services for free if no payments are processed through the form. However, payments processed through the form (using Paypal or Google Checkout) are charged at 2.5% of the transaction price (from Eventbrite) PLUS the fee from Paypal or Google Checkout.

Pros: Offers lots of functionality: Can embed the form in your website; Can customize the form to accept additional information; Attendees can view who is attending as well as customized information they provide in the form; Offers many reports and even check-in functionality; Offers options for further promoting the event online.

Cons: No direct integration with databases, although the reporting function will allow users to download the information for import; Must pay both Eventbrite and PayPal/Google Checkout a portion of every "ticket" sold.

Brown Paper Tickets
Brown Paper Tickets is an online "fair-trade" ticketing service. It is meant more for selling tickets to a large event such as a concert or conference. It offers the ability to sell the tickets online OR by phone; either option costs 2.5% + $0.99/ticket.

Pros: Tickets can be sold to an event online or via phone for a reasonable price; Offers the ability to ask customized questions of registrants; Can report on attendees and export data; The buyer actually pays the relatively low fee for purchasing tickets to the event, not the organization.

Cons: Money isn't sent to organization until a week after the event; No way to show a list of attendees automatically; Embedding the form into your website is possible, but will take some programming expertise.

RegOnline
RegOnline offers lots of functionality to help manage an event, including check-in, detailed reporting, nametag creation, attendee lists, conditional attendee questions, etc. All of this functionality comes at a price: $150 per event PLUS $3.50 for each registrant PLUS 3.95%/credit card transaction. This service is great for very large special events.

Pros: As mentioned above, RegOnline offers lots of functionality for maintaining the event registration information, reporting on that information, and preparing for the event.

Cons: Price.

Acteva

Acteva offers two separate registration options: Acteva Plus and Acteva Express. Acteva Plus offers advanced registration functionality such as Promo Codes, Post-event surveys, and Wait Lists. It can also accept payments via all major credit cards, phone, fax, and mail. Acteva Plus charges a fee per event (up to $100) plus per registration fees ($1.50 plus 2.5% or 3.5% (AMEX) credit card fees; $2 for free events).

Acteva Express offers basic event registration functionality on a customizable form. It can accept payment via MasterCard and Visa. Acteva Express only charges per registration fees ($1 plus 2.5% credit card fees; $1.50 for free events).

Note that TechSoup Stock is currently offering Acteva Plus at a highly discounted rate for nonprofits.

Pros: Acteva Plus offers advanced event registration tools. Costs are reasonable for large, paid events.

Cons: Costs are relatively high for free events. Registration page is not integrated within organization's website. Does not currently offer a page listing all registered attendees (Acteva plans this functionality to be available in 2009).

Google Docs
Google Docs offers the ability to create a free online form that gathers information into a Google spreadsheet. Users can gather any information they would like, although the look and feel is very bland with limited customization options. This is a quick and easy way to gather information.

Pros: Free; Easy to setup

Cons: Has no specific event registration functionality - no automated list of attendees, no integrated payment options; Bland presentation.

Facebook

Facebook allows organizations to create and promote events. Events can be posted to an organization group or page. Within the events, users can RSVP as attending, maybe, or not attending, and users can see who is planning to attend (including their profile picture). Users can also discuss the event on the event discussion boards. (Thanks to Heather for the tip!)

Pros: For Facebook users, easy to RSVP and see everyone who has RSVP'd; Can join discussion about the event; Free.

Cons: Must be a Facebook user to RSVP; Organization cannot accept payments or download contact information from attendees.

Our recommendation? It depends on the type of event and your particular needs, but we found Eventbrite to be the most fully featured option. If the event is free, all of the functionality is free. For paid events, Eventbrite's costs are a bit on the high side, but the fact that the purchasing functionality is integrated is a big plus.

Did we miss any great tools for online event registration? Have you used other tools with success (or less success?). Let us know in the comments below.

Online Giving - What to Consider

Photo by d70focus

As we've discussed before, it's very important that all nonprofits offer an online giving option on their website. Simply put, many donors expect to be able to give online...and some may decide not to give if there isn't a simple donation form available to quickly donate with a credit card online.

Now that you've agreed that you need online giving, the next question is "How do I implement it?" I received a really good breakdown of what nonprofits should consider when deciding how they want their online donations to work in my inbox the other day. This email was from Mission Research, the maker of GiftWorks Fundraising Software (full disclosure: GiftWorks offers their own online giving module that is integrated with the base donation management software). You can find this information on their eNewsletter here.

The key decisions they discuss include:

1) Integrated or standalone? Integration with your donor management system is preferred, as the donation information is automatically entered instead of requiring manual entry of the gift data into the system. However, some donor management systems do not have this option. And this type of solution is often more expensive to implement. Integrated online giving makes the most sense when the nonprofit's donation management system offers the functionality and the nonprofit expects to receive a large number of online donations.

2) Merchant account or aggregator? Aggregrators (like NetworkforGood or Justgive) is easier to set up and often has no (or lower) monthly fees. However, aggregators may not allow you to customize your donation page, they often have higher per transaction costs, and you don't get the money immediately. Probably most importantly, a donor can choose to give anonymously through an aggregator, so the nonprofit may not be able to adequately thank the donor and connect with them in the future. Merchant accounts often require more effort to set up, but can offer lower per transaction fees and more customization on the donation page.

These decisions will also require considering what giving options you want to offer (recurring gifts?), how much management time is available to process online gifts, and how many online gifts you expect to receive.

Are you offering online giving? If so, how have you implemented? What have you learned from your experience? Let us know in the comments!

Facebook - Pages or Groups?

Now that many camps are utilizing Facebook to reconnect with their alumni and other constituents, many are asking, "Should I create a Facebook Page or a Facebook Group...or both for my camp?" Lots of nonprofits are asking the same question, so you can find a lot of discussion on this topic online. In particular, I found this blog post on the Why Facebook blog to be useful. In this post, Mari Smith has broken down the pros and cons of Facebook Pages and Groups. In particular, I found these nuggets to be the most useful:

Facebook Groups:

The Good:
- All activity on a group goes into your constituents' news feeds in Facebook. This is how you stay top of mind with your existing group members and also find new people to join the group.
- Messages go to the constituents' Facebook Inboxes

The Bad:
- You cannot add any of the great applications in Facebook to a Group (more on this below)
- If for some reason you don't want the group any more, it can be tough to delete. Luckily, you can get help from Facebook in turning the group into a page.

Facebook Pages:

The Good:
- Pages are indexed, so search engines like Google can find the page
- You can add applications to your Page to offer additional functionality. For example, you can add the Causes application and show current fundraising campaigns. And Camp Gilboa added a Google Calendar application to show their calendar of events right in their Facebook Page.
- You can work on parts of the Page offline until they are ready to be published.

The Bad:
- Not much activity goes into your constituents' new feeds; this limits the viral marketing of your Page.
- Messages sent out to your "fans" are not found in their Facebook Inboxes (as they are in Groups). Instead, they show up in a less viewed area of Facebook.

The conclusion? Unfortunately, there is no right answer for everyone. Do a little research on both. Figure out what your goals are for the community on Facebook. And then, no matter which you choose, listen to your constituents and interact. That's the power of these social media tools.

Have you created a Facebook Page, Group, or both? What have you found to work well? Not so well?

What can we learn from Obama?

Photo by makelessnoise on Flickr.com

Regardless of your political leanings, you can learn a lot from the fundraising and outreach success of the Barack Obama Presidential Campaign. They managed to raise millions of dollars and reach over three million individual (mostly small) donors. How did they do it? And what can we learn from them?

SofterWare (the company that offers the Donor Perfect Online donor management software service) has a Nonprofit Technology and Operational Advice Blog that recently posted about fundraising lessons from the Obama Campaign. I recommend checking it out. In many ways, the Obama Campaign utilized known best practices for constituent outreach and engagement. Any nonprofit can take advantage of these best practices, such as employing a compelling message, offering great online content, effectively building email lists, and leveraging supporters to reach out to additional prospects.

Do you think you can use any of the lessons from the Obama Campaign? Have you changed anything based on what you've seen this Presidential Campaign cycle?

Posting and Sharing Photos online

As we've discussed before, the internet offers lots of great opportunities to share your nonprofit's personal stories, including text, video, and photographs. Flickr.com has become one of the most popular photo sharing sites online. It allows anyone to upload their pictures for free, and it also has lots of great tools for sharing and displaying those photos.

The most important feature in Flickr and similar sites is the tag. Tags allow users to attach keywords to their photos so they can easily be searched by anyone. Flickr also offers the option to create and share a slideshow of photos based on selected tags. For example, I searched the tags "URJ Eisner" and clicked the "Slideshow" link to create a slideshow in Flickr; a number of pictures from their recent 50th Anniversary celebration can be found there. Then, I clicked the "Share" link to automatically create a link to the slideshow or even special code that can be used to embed the slidshow on any website or blog. If you scroll down this blog, you'll see the resulting slideshow on the right side of the page.

Nonprofits can ask their constituents to post pictures to Flickr with specific tags on all of them (like "URJ Eisner" or "Tamarack Camps Alumni Day 2008") so that they can easily be searched and aggregated. Also, a nonprofit can create a Flickr photo Group that constituents can add their photos to. Camps can upload their own photos to the group as well. This may include old archived photos from the camp or from camp yearbooks that have been scanned.

Are you using Flickr or another Photo Sharing site? If so, how?