Written by Michelle Jones | Filed under References | | Comment on this
If you made it out to our bootcamp for nonprofits last week (or looked at our slides from the event) you know that a couple different presenters references the work of Beth Kanter. Business Week has done a little feature on her and how she uses her social networking to do good. Very much of interest to nonprofit folks I would think.
Beth Kanter remembers it as the year that Yahoo ruined the holidays. In was late 2006. The Boston-based Kanter had already notched lots of successes in fundraising for her Cambodian charity, the Sharing Foundation. But when Yahoo (YHOO) offered $50,000 to the do-gooder who could enlist the most contributors, Kanter shifted into overdrive.
“I showed the people on the [charity's] board how to send the e-mails pointing people to the site. I made my husband go to work. I went totally nuts. We were starting to get gifts that were second or third degree out. (That’s social networking lingo for friends of friends.) On New Year’s Eve, we were watching the ball drop and suddenly donations went up $15,000 from someone we didn’t know. We raised $53,000 and won the $50,000. And we doubled our donor list.”
Written by Michelle Jones | Filed under References | | Comment on this
Wild Apricot has a roundup and explanation of some online payment processing options for nonprofits. This ties in very nicely to our Social Media Bootcamps for Nonprofits yesterday so I wanted to pass it along.
Perhaps the most important part of the post though is this:
Ease of use is a huge factor — if the payment process is a big hassle for you to set up and manage, there may be an investment in time and/or tech support that’s more than you can manage right now.
Further, a membership payment or donation may be abandoned before it’s completed if the process is not quick, simple, and relatively painless from the online donor’s perspective. Users will be quick to abandon a payment if they are uncertain about what they’re doing, for fear of making a costly mistake.
Sometimes, “trust” and “ease of use” come together to create a barrier to donation
Written by Michelle Jones | Filed under Events, References | | Comment on this
We had a great, interested and interesting group turn out for our Social Media Bootcamp for Nonprofits this morning. Thanks so much to everyone who attended. We sincerely hope you enjoyed the session and that you found value in it.
As promised here are the slides from the bootcamp. First is David Finch’s presentation on listening, then my presentations on Blogging and Personal Branding, then Brendan Jackson’s talk on RSS & Twitter. I’ll have Nick Huhn’s Facebook slides up as soon as I can as well. Nick Huhn’s slides have been added in now.
