{"id":7202,"date":"2011-03-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.causevox.com\/?p=320"},"modified":"2024-05-08T19:07:23","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T19:07:23","slug":"nonprofit-tech-is-like-ice-cream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/blog\/nonprofit-tech-is-like-ice-cream\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonprofit Tech Is Like Ice Cream"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest post by\u00a0Mazarine\u00a0Treyz, Author of The Wild Woman’s Guide to\u00a0Fundraising, Speaker, Consultant
\n<\/strong> Mazarine\u00a0helps people get money for the causes they care about. She\u00a0also helps businesses and people with their online reputations. Give\u00a0her a shout on twitter, or email her at\u00a0info@wildwomanfundraising.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

@wildwomanfund<\/a>
\nWildWomanFundraising.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

You have one lick, and then you want more and more! It’s so delicious\u00a0that you wonder why everyone isn’t eating it.<\/p>\n

You get totally inside of it, and then you remember, oh, snap, I can’t\u00a0create a whole fundraising meal out of this!<\/p>\n

It’s, like, fun, but, like, lacks nutritional value.<\/p>\n

And by nutritional value, I mean that you wouldn’t want to make every\u00a0meal out of ice cream. You’d want to include it once in awhile.<\/p>\n

What DOES have nutritional value? Appeals. Grants. Events. Major\u00a0Gifts. Phone-a-thons.<\/p>\n

Speaking as someone who has done just about everything you can do in a\u00a0fundraising office, everything from appeals to events, from grants to\u00a0e-newsletters, from volunteer management to phone-a-thons, I have\u00a0learned about the place that nonprofit tech has in the fundraising\u00a0world. It’s not a main dish. Not yet, anyway.<\/p>\n

At first, back in 2007, when I started to pester my old boss about\u00a0Myspace and Twitter and making a facebook page for our cause, she was\u00a0really not into it. At all. And yet. As I’ve worked at learning more\u00a0about online fundraising, I’ve realized how it’s becoming less like\u00a0ice cream, and more like a staple of the fundraisers meal.<\/p>\n

It’s becoming just as essential as direct mail. People check their\u00a0email more than they check their mailboxes. It’s becoming as essential\u00a0as grants. In 2010, people responded to the crisis in Haiti with\u00a0millions in text donations. Sure, the Red Cross was ready to take\u00a0those donations. But it’s not hard to find a company to help your\u00a0nonprofit accept text donations. But what if disaster relief is not\u00a0your cause? What if you don’t have the media focusing on your cause\u00a024-7 for several weeks?<\/p>\n

Last year, Beth Kanter<\/a> and Allison Fine<\/a> came out with a book\u00a0called \u201cThe Networked Nonprofit.\u201d This book goes into detail about how\u00a0nonprofits can use online fundraising to get lots more visits to their\u00a0websites and donations to their programs. \u00a0I bought this book and I’m\u00a0so glad that I did. I’d like to share one story in particular with\u00a0you. It’s from page 141, in case you’re curious.<\/p>\n

There’s a nonprofit called WildlifeDirect<\/a>. WildlifeDirect\u00a0was established by Richard Leakey in 2006 to provide support to\u00a0conservationists in Africa directly on the ground via the use of\u00a0blogs, which enables anybody, anywhere to play a direct and\u00a0interactive role in the survival of some of the world\u2019s most precious\u00a0species. They started seven blogs in 2007 for different kinds of\u00a0animals that they helped. In 2009, they had more than 70 blogs about\u00a0each different animal in each different area that they helped. The\u00a0visits to their website quadrupled, and SO DID their donations. Why? I\u00a0think it’s because they consistently helped people connect with\u00a0particular animals. They have made educating their donors their number\u00a0one priority. Once their donors get a clear and present picture of\u00a0what’s happening on the ground, they are much more likely to give.<\/p>\n

I don’t know many American nonprofits that do that for programs that\u00a0people could walk down the street and see. But imagine if you could do\u00a0this for each of your programs. Help people who care about a\u00a0particular thing that you do immediately find that thing, and then go\u00a0there and read or watch and give.<\/p>\n

If we had kept up our online fundraising efforts and blogging\u00a0efforts from 2007 to now, if we had treated online fundraising less\u00a0like ice cream and more like a staple, who knows how much money we\u00a0could have raised?<\/strong><\/p>\n

How much money are YOU leaving on the table by not getting involved\u00a0with online fundraising right now? I’ll tell you. A lot. If you can\u00a0get more people to come to your website, and connect with particular\u00a0pieces of who you help, you can get more donations. Even if you’ve got\u00a0a cause that is giving to animals far away from where the donors are.\u00a0Even if you’ve got a mission that is not as urgent as a natural\u00a0disaster.<\/p>\n

Now, I know you can’t create 70 blogs on your own, and nor should you\u00a0have to. Check out what CauseVox is doing<\/a>. They save you money, and\u00a0time, by helping you have a page that helps people get a clear\u00a0connection with your cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest post by\u00a0Mazarine\u00a0Treyz, Author of The Wild Woman’s Guide to\u00a0Fundraising, Speaker, Consultant Mazarine\u00a0helps people get money for the causes they care about. She\u00a0also helps businesses and people with their online reputations. Give\u00a0her a shout on twitter, or email her at\u00a0info@wildwomanfundraising.com. @wildwomanfund WildWomanFundraising.com \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 You have one lick, and then you want more and more! It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"acf":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rob Wu","author_link":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/author\/rob\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.causevox.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}