Tài liệu Nonprofit internet strategies phần

202 SPECIAL EVENTS AND SPONSORSHIPS EXHIBIT 15.3 WWF Canada Personalization Form As the following e-mail analysis shows, participants opened the e-mail at a very high rate: 78 percent. Thank You E-mail Analysis Recipients Recipients who opened e-mail Recipients who clicked any link Click-throughs Recipients who replied to e-mail Recipients who unsubscribed Total 1212 942 39 51 4 1 % of Total Received N/A 78% 3% 4% 0% 0% A month later, the president sent another personalized e-mail, this time giving participants a sense of the impact that their fundraising was having on wildlife (see Exhibit 15.9). 203 Power of the Few EXHIBIT 15.4 Sponsor Acquisition Form EXHIBIT 15.5 Donor E-Receipt 204 SPECIAL EVENTS AND SPONSORSHIPS 4500 2003 Online Registrants 2003 Total Registrants 2002 Offline Registrants 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 event Weeks Prior to Event EXHIBIT 15.6 Registrants by Week Although the open rates were less for this e-mail (67 percent), it still demonstrated that the vast majority of participants would open e-mail from this organization: a privilege WWF Canada is careful not to overuse. Impact E-mail Analysis Recipients Recipients who opened e-mail Recipients who clicked any link Click-throughs Recipients who replied to e-mail Recipients who unsubscribed Total 1192 803 129 211 1 5 % of Total Received N/A 67% 11% 18% 0% 0% DEFINING THE DIGITAL DONOR ELITE The story of Janet and her thirtieth birthday is exceptional, but it isn’t unique. All around the world, the Internet is amplifying the impact that passionate people can have on a fundraising campaign. When we looked at our data we found many examples of the digital donor elite: One volunteer raised $9,010 from 139 donations. Another volunteer raised $15,059 from 98 donations. Still another raised $25,974 from 944 e-mails. Defining the Digital Donor Elite EXHIBIT 15.7 205 Online Measurement Tool Clearly these are exceptional individuals who have passion for their causes. The online tools allowed them to share their passion in numbers and geographies that otherwise would have been unthinkable with paper pledge forms. When we studied online campaigns we found that the aggregate data told a striking story: on average, the top 10 percent of online fundraisers accounted for more than 50 percent of all online dollars collected. When we shared these statistics with experienced offline fundraisers, the reaction we received was “Of course—we’ve known for a long time that it only takes a small percentage of people to account for most of our fundraising.” But this message hasn’t played a central role in online fundraising discussions. Too often, we find organizations with no plan, or insufficient plans, to follow up and communicate with this digital donor elite in a way that could be distinguished from plans for their general online donors. Think of how your organization would steward someone who wrote a check for $25,000. How about someone who e-mailed friends, family, and colleagues to collectively raise $25,000 online? 206 EXHIBIT 15.8 SPECIAL EVENTS AND SPONSORSHIPS Personalized Thank You PEOPLE GIVE TO PEOPLE High Tech and High Touch For years we’ve heard how the Internet will radically change the operations of nonprofit organizations in the future. But bear in mind that high tech without high touch won’t go very far. People Give to People EXHIBIT 15.9 207 Follow-Up E-Mail Recall the last time you made a contribution to a charity. Did you wake up one morning with the desire to give and then seek out a worthy organization to accept your generosity? Or were you prompted to give? If you’re like most of us, the reason you didn’t give to a cause is because you were never asked to give. If you were asked to give but didn’t give, then the wrong person is asking you. 208 SPECIAL EVENTS AND SPONSORSHIPS The Internet gives us the ability to take this simple concept—getting the right person to ask you to give—to tremendous scale. Imagine a charity that you care for deeply. Now imagine that charity asking you to ask two friends for a gift. You’d likely call them, or mention it to them the next time you met. But what if the charity needed you to ask 50 friends? At that point, you’d have to turn to e-mail. Getting Your E-Mails Read: The Power of “From” We’ve been fretting over e-mail newsletters for some time now. At first we were dazzled by the ability to personalize the e-mail “Dear Philip.” If we knew something about Philip (such as my past year’s gift), we could go even further: “Dear Philip, thank you so much for your gift last year of $100. . . .” We would also play with the subject line, trying to measure which phrase would increase the open rate of the e-mail. Some of us would apply good direct-mail logic and create test cells to understand if the subject line “You can help today,” or “Today, you can help,” would be better. I’m sorry to break this news, but in e-mail much of this doesn’t matter! The real magic is in the “From” field. Your inbox likely resembles the image in Exhibit 15.10. We all have too much e-mail. As you read this chapter, you might experience a slight sense of stress that you’ve spent too much time away from your e-mail inbox, and that as the minutes tick by, it’s becoming more and more congested. EXHIBIT 15.10 Sample Inbox 209 Many Things Can Be an Online Special Event How do we sort through too much information in our inboxes? We look to see who sent it. If it’s from our boss, our friend, an important client or donor, we’ll open it first. If it’s from someone we don’t know, we might delete it without opening it for fear of a virus. In fact, I’ve found that there is a certain satisfaction in rapidly deleting any message that doesn’t appear at first glance to be important, thus pruning my overflowing inbox. This trend of deleting messages that aren’t “From” the right person will only increase in the future. If you’ve upgraded your Microsoft Outlook lately, you’ll notice that much effort has been put into the Junk E-mail and Trusted E-mail filters. With the click of a mouse, I can label someone—or some organization—as junk. As a nonprofit organization, you never want to be labeled as junk. And in the future, we might only be able to reach some people who have labeled us as “trusted.” People with the Right “From” Field Can Raise the Money You Need Given this situation online, organizations should rely on their connected supporters. Let’s say I am a supporter of Charity A, and Charity A wishes to find new donors and dollars. There are several big benefits for Charity A to ask me to leverage my online network. First, I know many people that Charity A does not. I also have abundant information about my personal network that Charity A does not (e.g., who would consider giving to Charity A, who just received a raise, etc.). Finally, I have the power of “from” that Charity A does not—my e-mail will be opened by my peers. If Charity A provides me with an easy way to help find donors (and possibly fun incentives for doing so), I’ll help (see Exhibit 15.11). This is not rocket science. We’re simply finding new ways to more efficiently execute old ideas. MANY THINGS CAN BE AN ONLINE SPECIAL EVENT When we refer to special events, nonprofits typically envision some type of -thon activity: a walk-a-thon, a bowl-a-thon, and so on. They tend to imagine large-scale activities that involve street-closures, T-shirts, and waiver forms. While these types of special events will continue to do well and will continue to generate a tremendous number of online donations for charities, the Internet has allowed many groups to reframe the online special events discussion. Brainstorming activity: Sit down on the floor, take off your shoes, and take a deep breath. Exhale slowly. Now, think of programs or activities that you currently manage, and write them down on a set of Post-Its. Use a different color of Post-Its and write online on each of them. Simply match up one of your activities with online and consider the result. BAKE SALE + ONLINE = ? DOOR-TO-DOOR CANVASSING + ONLINE = ? ETC. The following are just a few examples of how forward-thinking charities have begun to redefine online special events. 210 EXHIBIT 15.11 SPECIAL EVENTS AND SPONSORSHIPS Leveraging on Online Network Golf Tournaments A nonprofit named Kids Help Phone (http:// kidshelp.sympatico.ca) is dedicated to providing online and telephone counseling to teens in distress. It has become a leader in online campaigning. Its flagship special event is the Bell Walk for Kids, a national event in two languages that has been online for three years. In the spring of 2003, the nonprofit was interested to know if it could take some of its lessons learned in the Bell Walk for Kids and apply them to smaller-scale activities. Its focus was an annual golf tournament that attracted many of the city’s financial services community. The plan: Utilize its Internet-based event management technology and ask golfers to register and solicit pledges online. Although many doubted that an activity such as playing golf could generate pledge dollars (the common wisdom being that someone had to at least sweat a little to ask for a donation), Kids Help Phone proved them wrong. Golfers were asked to create a personal page explaining why they felt Kids Help Phone was a worthy cause, and e-mail personalized solicitations to their coworkers, suppliers, and clients (see Exhibit 15.12). Many Things Can Be an Online Special Event EXHIBIT 15.12 Online Golf 211