Email and Fundraising

Sending email to thousands, indeed millions, of recipients has become common for for-profit business and non-profits organizations.  A few things to consider when deciding how important an email strategy is for your organization and its constituency follow:

1. How current are your records?  Do you have emails on 25% of your donors and prospects email addresses?  If so, you have a good starting point.  If you’re short on addresses in your database, you may want to consider email appending and other strategies to enhance your data.

2. How large is your audience?  Are you trying to reach a few hundred people or many thousands of prospects and past supporters?  With small counts, only email campaigns make the use of color and other exciting visuals possible. With larger audiences, the savings associated with email campaigns relative to direct mail campaigns are enormous.

3. How effective are you at reaching your base through direct mail, by phone and in person?  Should you use all mean available to cultivate and prospect and steward donors?  Because your constituents can receive email any time, and because its use is ubiquitous, effective use of email can only assist use of the more traditional methods.  Email campaigns can stand independently or lift response supporting other appeals.

4. How can direct mail, phonathons and personal visits help you enhance your efforts related to social networking?  Can all three techniques combined, do as much as either email or text messaging independently?  No, they cannot.  The immediacy of data and subscription links within email and text messages make these services stand above more traditional solicitation techniques because we can control and promote our social networks.  I will encourage text message marketing in future issues of this publication.

5. Email marketing can boost your existing efforts.  It likely deserves a higher percentage of your current resources than it receives.  Its relationship to social networking means that the longer you wait to fully engage in email marketing, the further behind you are relatively to your peers and competitors.

If you would like to talk about ideas you have regarding the use email in your work, please drop me at an email at brian@brianlacy.com or giving me a call at (860) 478-9291.  Lots of my best ideas are free for the taking.

Sincerely,

Brian

Rethinking Ways to Give Wisely

As a new generation of donors seeks greater accountability from not-for-profits, advisers are seeking new ways to gauge the good an organization accomplishes

By Amy Feldman

Individuals in the U.S. give away more than $200 billion a year, yet the vast majority of those decisions are made ad hoc.Few donors have any idea whether they are giving to the best organization in the area they want to improve, or even whether their giving is doing what they want it to do.A slew of nascent efforts to rate and grade charities, as well as the pending overhaul of the big kahuna of nonprofit ratings groups, Charity Navigator, may change all that.

At least a half-dozen groups have come up with different answers to the question of how to help donors make good decisions. In addition to Charity Navigator, these online efforts include GiveWell, Philanthropedia, and GreatNonprofits. In addition, GuideStar, which serves as a clearinghouse of data and information on nonprofits, has begun adding some of these rating efforts to its site.Offline, two new efforts—from Root Cause and Partners for Change Initiative—are working to get information into the hands of financial advisers as they struggle with how to help their clients make giving decisions.

Not all of these efforts are new, but philanthropy experts say that they have begun to reach critical mass, and that the proliferation of different approaches to the same question will ultimately be good for both donors and nonprofits. “There is a mindset shift going on in philanthropy,” says Sean Stannard-Stockton, chief executive of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors, an advisory firm to high-net-worth donors based in Burlingame, Calif. “People want to know that their money is actually making a difference.”

That’s especially true in the current economic downturn. Donors have less money to give, while charities need more cash to provide services to more people in need. The result is more donors who want to know that the money they do give makes a difference, and not-for-profits taking more steps to show their results. But the longer-term trend predates the recession. Baby boomers have become used to getting advice on their finances, yet there are few places to turn for philanthropic advice for those giving less than $1 million. While increasing numbers of people have set up donor-advised funds, which can be a smart financial-planning move, these vehicles don’t answer the question of where to give the money for greatest effect.

Washington is also playing a role in the mindset shift. The Internal Revenue Service did a massive overhaul of the Form 990 that not-for-profit organizations must file—the biggest such change to the form in three decades—requiring lots of new information on governance questions. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has set up the Social Innovation Fund, which is slated to invest $50 million this fiscal year in bringing innovative nonprofits up to scale.

“There is a lot of energy around this right now,” says Laura Callanan, a philanthropy expert at McKinsey & Co. “Social impact assessment is the holy grail for people doing philanthropy and nonprofit work. How do you know what works and why? And how do you know that money is making a difference in people’s lives?”
Calculating Social Impact

As with any new benchmarking effort, figuring out whether a charity is effective at what it does is not so simple.

After all, a homeless shelter, international relief organization, or other philanthropy is not a business; its social impact needs to be evaluated on different criteria than profit and loss and the true impact of its programs may not be clear for years to come. Plus, doing an in-depth analysis may be too expensive for many small not-for-profits that are already stretched for funds.

The recent devastating earthquake in Haiti, and the outpouring of requests for help, shows many of the difficulties facing donors in making a philanthropic decision. Would it be better to give to the American Red Cross, which lets you text a small donation? Or to Doctors Without Borders, which is working to help those injured in the quake despite damage to its own medical facilities? Or to a smaller group on the ground that has less name recognition here? Which group will make the most difference in that impoverished country over the long term?

“We as Americans like to do things immediately,” says GuideStar President Bob Ottenhoff. “But a lot of the problems in Haiti, they have been experiencing for years or for decades. We learned this from Hurricane Katrina—the initial surge of support isn’t sufficient.”

For donors, then, the best approach is to think about your philanthropic giving more along the lines of how you view your investment portfolio. That means thinking through the big questions first (what matters to you?), and then drilling down to those groups that are doing the best work. The new rating efforts take different approaches to answering the second part of that.

GiveWell, launched in 2007, offers rigorous Wall Street-like research on nearly 400 charities, in which it tries to determine how effective they are. Few charities have enough data or analysis to provide such proof, and GiveWell only recommends those that can. “The charity needs to do a lot of analysis on its own,” says GiveWell co-founder Holden Karnofsky. “It sounds like common sense, but it is also the most difficult question to answer.” The upshot: GiveWell recommends just nine charities.

Root Cause has begun doing similar research reports, though geared toward financial advisers. Its first batch of research covers educational groups in Massachusetts. GreatNonprofits, also started in 2007, allows donors, volunteers, and social-service recipients to write reviews à la TripAdvisor or Yelp; it currently has reviews of some 3,000 not-for-profits.
Portfolios of Not-for-Profits

Philanthropedia, which recently launched, garners the opinions of experts in different sectors and creates what it calls “expert mutual funds,” portfolios of not-for-profits in areas such as climate change or microfinance with a dozen or so holdings in each. Partners for Change is also working up a mutual-fund-like approach, though its concept will mimic the portfolios of successful foundations in certain areas. Executive Director Jim Litwin says that he expects to launch in the summer, so that advisers will be prepared to roll out the offerings to clients in the fall giving season. Litwin hopes that by targeting advisers, rather than individuals directly, he will be able to reach donors with $10,000 or more to give, rather than the smaller amounts that many give online. As Litwin says: “These foundations have already done all the work on what the most effective organizations are, so why can’t you leverage that knowledge of where to give?”

Consider how Charity Navigator is rethinking its star rating system under the direction of Ken Berger, its executive director since June 2008. With star ratings on 5,500 charities and some 4 million hits to the site each year, Charity Navigator is the biggest of the online philanthropy rating agencies, and sets the tone for how individuals think about their giving. From its 2001 founding until recently, however, it had rated charities largely on financial benchmarks—and given them high marks for low overhead, a metric that academic research now shows is not that helpful in evaluating a nonprofit’s work. The new star system, which will still go from zero to four stars, will include measures of financial strength, accountability, and effectiveness. Berger says he hopes to roll out the new ratings in the spring of 2011, with additional information appearing between now and then. “The core concept is to look at this as a social investment, like a stock with a certain level of risk,” Berger says. “So the rating we are looking to develop revolves around risk—what is the level of risk that you as a donor are willing to take on?”

The bigger question—and ultimately the bigger opportunity—is how these new efforts to rate charities and to influence donors’ decisions will impact the way that philanthropies themselves operate. The hope among those who are launching these efforts is that if not-for-profits knew that their programs weren’t working that well, they would revamp them based on that information. Also, if more of that $200 billion ends up going to the most effective charities, it could push the least effective ones to rethink what they’re doing. “We’re starting to see a shakeout now,” says Nancy Kelly, an accountant at the Metis Group, who has focused on not-for-profits for 25 years. “You’re seeing more competition for dollars and more merger activity than in the past 15 years. It is forcing nonprofits to look at their operations like a business.”

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Pockets of Philanthropy

by Terry Burton

2009 will be a memorable year in nonprofit history. The national trends according to most media sources suggested that giving was down everywhere and that the sector was suffering a collective tragedy.

Not so.

Pockets of philanthropy thrived in a number of communities as if immune to the financial troubles. As the pages of history for 2009 came and went, the good news, the outstanding news of philanthropic joy burst through the curtain of despair and shone brightly.

The national trends I followed suggested that the number of gifts were down but the dollar amount of the gifts received was higher than in recent years. Isn’t that interesting?

Here are some examples of the Good News headlines I noticed in 2009:

Western Kentucky University announced record breaking giving
for the second half of 2009

New York Opera gala event tallied the largest giving ever to the event

Milwaukee United Way surpassed fundraising goal

North Carolina nonprofits doing well despite recession

Boys Scouts USA receive largest gift ever, $50 million

University of California, Santa Barbara $40 million in fundraising

University of Indiana raised a record $221.4 million in latest fiscal year

St. Paul’s School for Girls in Baltimore, reported $1 million gift, largest ever

Community Health Network, Indiana, received largest gift ever, $1 million

University of Minnesota reported the second best ever year on record for giving

Condell Hospital, Chicago, received largest gift ever, $1 million

University of Kansas set record in number of gifts and pledges

Cazenovia College received largest gift ever, $2 million

University of Michigan, Dearborn received largest alumni gift ever of $2 million

Higher education remains the key sector of the nonprofit community. The notion of the Pockets of Philanthropy can be seen in the collection of GOOD NEWS announcements. And these do not include the surprise gifts and estate announcements that brought smiles to many fundraising teams.

2009 was a difficult year. Economic indicators just published in the last week of January 2010 report GNP was up over 4.75% for the last quarter of 2009, far ahead of projections. Momentum is building, more people are working and more jobs are being created. 2010 is already buzzing with big gifts.

This report is a part of my new publication: Survey of Major Gifts & Philanthropy – 2009, coming in February 2010.

For more information please contact Terry Burton at Dig In Research
Web site: http://diginresearch.biz Telephone:  248-438-8064  Email: tburton@diginresearch.biz

25 Ways to Improve Your Direct Mail

1. Write the call to action before you do anything else. It’s very un-Zen to say it, but fundraising is more about the destination than the journey. You’re going to arrive a lot more successfully when you know exactly where you’re going.

2. Think of 25 reasons why a donor should give to you. Then, get rid of all the reasons that are about you and not the donor.

3. Ask, “How would The National Enquirer write this?” The Enquirer knows the value of the amazing, the lurid, the outrageous, the unexpected — and it milks it. Are you doing that, or are you imitating “respectable” journalism, purposely keeping it as colorless and purely factual as possible? Guess which approach gets more readership — and raises more funds.

4. Ignore your brand guidelines. Your brand guidelines are meant to sharpen and define your message and make it consistent. But there’s a fatal flaw: The guidelines are all about you, not about your donors. They’re all about self-?focused communication, and that will hurt your fundraising. How can I say that, never having seen your brand guidelines? I’ve read a lot of nonprofit brand documents and not yet have seen one that’s nontoxic to fundraising.

5. Show, don’t tell. You’ve heard this in every creative-writing class you’ve ever taken. It’s good advice. It’s easy to assert that something is sad, or great, or special, or cutting-edge. It’s more persuasive to give the facts that add up to those things.

6. Overdo it. Be too dramatic. Too emotional. Too strong. Eight times out of 10, you’ll realize later that you didn’t overdo it at all. The other two times — well, it’s a lot easier to tone it down than it is to pump up weak and underdone copy.

7. Use your data. You know quite a bit about the people you’re writing to — their names, their cities, what and when they’ve given, and more. Use these facts to make your copy more personal and relevant. Just make sure you don’t sound awkward and robotic.

8. Flunk your English teachers. They meant well and taught you many useful things, but not everything they taught was useful. Paragraphs don’t have to start with topic sentences. Passive voice is not all that bad. Neither are sentence fragments.

9. Repeat yourself. Whatever it is that you want people to do, tell them that thing again and again and again. Repeat yourself because you don’t know if they ?understood or even noticed it the first and second ?times. Repeat yourself because hardly anyone ?starts at the beginning and reads straight through to the end.

10. Annoy yourself. You are not your donor. That’s one of the most important truths you can know, and it has a dramatic side effect: Messages that motivate donors very often will turn you off. Learn to make your own distaste a good barometer for effective fundraising.

11. Use a cliché or two. There’s a reason clichés catch on. They express things that people often want to express — in short (and sweet) ways that are easy (as pie) to remember. Fundraising isn’t creative-writing class; you aren’t going to lose points for lack of ?originality. However, you will get extra credit for motivating more people to give.

12. Use fewer adjectives and adverbs. If your nouns and verbs aren’t doing the job, adjectives and adverbs are not going to pick up the slack. Well-placed ?modifiers can add zing. But most of the time, they just make the copy harder to read — and make you sound like a huckster.

13. Omit huge numbers. Donors don’t want to solve a problem because it’s big. They want to solve it because it’s solvable. Yes, 24,000 children die from hunger-?related causes every day. That’s a mind-boggling fact. The fact that it’s mind-boggling is exactly why it’s a poor fundraising platform. Give donors the opportunity to save one life, and then another and another.

14. Use wrong grammar. I’m not suggesting you be churlish and deliberately make stupid mistakes. But sometimes getting it right makes you come across as a schoolmarm, which, unless you’re an actual schoolmarm, is pretty unsympathetic. For instance, correct use of “whom” doesn’t sound natural to most people (and it’s probably dropping out of English). Any correct grammar that people don’t commonly use in speech is a candidate for flouting. And if that’s too painful, just revise so you avoid the issue.

15. Replace at least one paragraph that’s about you. Instead, make it one that is about your reader.

16. Limit paragraphs to seven lines. Long paragraphs are forbidden territory. Anything more than seven lines is long. Most paragraphs should be one to four lines.

17. Break up long sentences. Long sentences are the main cause of thick, unreadable prose. Any sentence more than 20 words is probably too long. Keep ?sentences closer to 10 words. Or less. Really.

18. Read your copy out loud. This is one of the best ways to make sure your copy is clear, colloquial and easy to read. If you stumble while reading, sound pompous or arrogant, or just come across as an idiot, your copy needs more work.

19. Cut your first paragraph. I’m not kidding. It’s like magic. Most likely, your first paragraph is a warm-up — and your real lead is your second or even third paragraph. Give it a try. It’s one of the quickest and most surefire copy revisions I know.

20. Make the letter longer. I know you wouldn’t read a long letter. Neither would I. For all we know, nobody reads long letters anymore. But we do know long letters work. Every time I’ve tested this (except once a few years ago), longer letters worked better than shorter ones. Add another page, and you’ll almost surely get more response.

21. Use photos sparingly — but use them. They say a picture is worth a thousand words (personally, I think it’s more like 600). So use those pictures carefully. Too often we use photos that might as well be saying ?”lobster” a thousand times. Make sure the photos you use tell the same story as the words you write.

22. Underline stuff. And use bold. And italics. Emphasis and variation are great for readability. Just don’t overdo it, because too much emphasis turns out to be no emphasis at all.

23. Use black serif type over a white background. Any variation from this — sans-serif type, white type over color, even black type over a tint, colored type — will degrade the reading comprehension of your donors. This advice will make some designers very unhappy, but it’s a simple reality.

24. Use 13-point type for body copy. Hey, your donors wear bifocals. Almost every one of them. Would you rather be part of their daily struggle to read small type or a strain-free oasis in their day? Which choice do you think will make them more likely to respond?

25. Bypass most of your reviewers. Committees kill fundraising, systematically draining life and power from anything they touch, while bulking up the ?message with irrelevancies and worse. That’s just ?the way committees are. Work without committees, and you’ll see improvements — to your copy and ?your revenue.

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Silent Auction Planning

Careful Planning Ensures Silent Auction Success
By Valarie Minetos

A silent auction’s success hinges on organized, thoughtful planning balanced with an organization’s available resources. In organizing a silent auction, it is critical to assess and determine specific goals from top to bottom.

Have a road map
If you previously held a silent auction, review your results to identify the areas you would like to improve. It this is your first silent auction, be realistic in setting your goals. Once financial goals are defined, consider the ‘soft’ goals. How can your organization’s prestige and profile be enhanced? Are you using staff and volunteers appropriately? How will you recognize donors? Human resource allocation, data, project and time management are all key elements in making your event a success.

Managing volunteers
The chairperson’s role should be that of a manager, focusing on the overall process and delegating resposibilities. Individual strengths and talents should be assessed to recruit the right volunteer for each job. Computer skills, creativity and project management experience are a few of the talents you might look for in your staff and volunteer pool. Ideally, your key volunteers will groom an eventual replacement, so that each person taking an important job will already be familiar with it and with your organization.

Technology tip
A variety of great auction software is now available that can help organize and centralize many tasks and even reduce the number of volunteers needed. Some software packages will enable you to create event materials such as item display signs, live auction bid paddles, an auction catalo, and certificates. Other capabilities might include table assignments, management of ticket sales, reports for event statistics and automated printing of mailing lists, mailing labels and nametags. Do your homework to find out which auction software is best for you and your organization.

Avoiding common pitfalls
Typically, there are two points during a silent auction that will make or break its success. Both points involve information management and processing.

Registration- Effective communication is the key to a smooth registration process. Guests should be told ahead of time about the check-in procedure: Is it by the guest’s last name? By host’s name? Bye the name of their company? You’ll need to establish your policy on ticket purchases at the door and communicate it to potential attendees in your pre-event materials. You should clearly communicate when the auction closes and how the closing will be announced. Be sure to gather credit cared and contact information during registration, otherwise it may be impossible to track down winning bidders who leave the event without checking out.

Checkout- Too often, a chaotic checkout process can spoil what had been an otherwise flawless event. Be sure to schedule plenty of time between the close of the auction and the checkout so you can identify high bidders and prepare invoices for pick-up. Use plenty of volunteers to process guests efficiently and match them with their items. Remember, the checkout is the last impression that guests will have of your silent auction and of your organization!

Valarie Minetos manages sales and marketing for AuctionStar® software package.  For information, visit website www.BarcodedAuctions.com , or call (713) 665-1231.

February Webinars

Feb. 2    Running Your Annual Fund with Less Resources

Brian Kish, Asst. VP for Advancement at Salve Regina University

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/763776683

Feb. 10   Direct Mail – Get what you ask for!

Scott VanDeusen, Exec. Director of Advancement Programs at St. John’s University

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/944683523

Feb. 11    Twitter Your Way to Contributiions

Don Philabaum, President at Internet Strategies Group

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/828464634

Feb. 16    Understanding Annual Giving’s Role as a Funnel for Major Gifts

Brian Kish, Asst. VP for Advancement at Salve Regina University

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/112520459

Feb. 17   Maximizing the Impact of Your Phonathon

Brian Kish, Asst. VP for Advancement at Salve Regina University

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/352016499

Feb. 23   International Prospect Identification and Research

Debbie Miller, Consultant and Presenter at Debbie Miller and Associates

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/915037291

Feb. 24    Integrating Alumni and Annual Giving Messaging

Scott VanDeusen, Exec. Director of Advancement Programs at St. John’s University

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/738749642

Feb. 25    Increase in Registrations in Your Online Community

Don Philabaum, President at Internet Strategies Group

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/850157034

Eight Lessons for Working with Female Prospects and Donors

Six Tips for Collecting and Writing Better Testimonials

Nonprofit communications consultant Merritt Engel says there’s nothing better than a personal, heartfelt story to put a face on a charitable cause. The best stories are testimonials told from the viewpoint and in the words of someone whose life your organization has changed.

It’s not easy to get an effective story, and it must be handled with great respect for the client’s dignity and privacy. But when it works, it’s more compelling than almost anything the organization can say on its own behalf. Here are some of Engel’s techniques for making the most of your chances for great testimonials.

Start with the end in mind

Talk to the program manager first and make sure you understand the context. What is the point, the goal of the story you want to write? Think of the final narrative and then work backwards to the questions.

Don’t call it an “interview”

You’ll make people nervous. Instead, Engel advises, ask the client if you can “chat for a few minutes about the assistance he/she received.”

Let the client talk

Begin by thanking the interviewee and putting him/her at ease. “After that,” says Engel, “zip your lips.” Keep your questions open-ended; for example, “what did the help mean to you?” Give people all the time they need to think about the question and respond to it, and don’t be afraid of silence.

Set the script aside

That list of questions mentioned in the first tip is a starting point, not a binding requirement. As you listen to the interview, be ready to change direction, probe and explore.

Get approvals

Give the interviewee a chance to review your draft for accuracy. In Engel’s experience, most make no changes. If there are any problems, you’ll have a chance to work them out before publishing the story. Keeping a paper trail will show that you’ve sought approval and discussed concerns.

Be prepared for anything

Engel cautions that you may encounter hostility, tears and other emotions if you’re interviewing someone who’s recently gone through a crisis. Stay calm, listen and be empathetic, she advises, but never say, “I know what you’re going through.”

Fundraiser’s Atwitter Over New Cash Stream

The money to be raised through social networking has some nonprofits seeing green. 

 By Clare Trapasso

“At least three-quarters of what people donated to my fundraising fund came from Facebook, easily,” said Fogarty, whose 57-year-old father is battling colon cancer. “The Facebook application made it a lot easier to get the word out, because people could see it centrally located on my Facebook [page.]”

In this rough economy, every dollar counts. Nonprofits of all sizes are learning that social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are inexpensive ways to tap into new audiences – and new revenue streams. And although efforts to raise money through these types of sites are still in the early stages, some in the nonprofit world believe that social networks will eventually become key sources of charitable donations.

“It’s a growing trend, but it’s still in its infancy,” said Craig Weinrich, outreach coordinator for the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York, about the social media fundraising phenomenon. “This is very similar to when the Internet first came on and e-mail really boomed.”

The majority of the almost 1,800 nonprofit organizations that the committee represents in New York City, Long Island and Westchester are beginning to use sites like Facebook and Twitter, Weinrich said. He believes they are good ways for organizations to reach new people and develop relationships with them. This can eventually lead to donations in the future.

“It will not replace fundraising letters and person-to-person solicitations,” Weinrich said of raising money through social media. But “in the next couple years, nonprofits will figure out ways to make social media a viable fundraising tool for their organizations.”

The American Cancer Society has already begun to explore this idea. It began using the Boundless Fundraising application that Fogarty had put on her Facebook page about a year ago, said Melissa Lee, the society’s Eastern Division Director of eRevenue. The application was successful, because it capitalized on people’s existing social networks, she said. This exposed her group to new audiences.

Most of the donations the society received through Facebook were from first-time givers, Lee said. But the average gift was less than $5.

“It can’t make up the difference in the dollar gap [due to the economy],” Lee said. “But what it can do is help us stay in people’s minds. … The more people who see us, the more impact we’re going to have, and that will eventually translate into dollars down the line.”

That’s what Daniel Buckley, the online communications manager at the Food Bank for New York City, has come to believe.

His organization set up a Causes page on Facebook where people can make charitable donations to his group online. Overall, Causes has raised about $18 million since it was launched in May 2007, Causes’ director of nonprofit relations Matthew Mahan wrote in an e-mail. About 65,000 nonprofits currently use it to fundraise, Mahan said.

In the two years the Food Bank has used it, the group has raised almost $2,600 through the application – without having to do a thing, Buckley said. But that’s not very much cash. “I absolutely believe social networks will become a significant source of charitable donations over time, but they’re not there yet,” he said. “In fact, they’re not even close.”

He’s more excited about how sites like Twitter, and YouTube videos, have increased traffic to the Food Bank’s website. “We almost exclusively use social media as an awareness-building tool and a community-building tool,” Buckley said. “It’s a great place to develop relationships with individuals that hopefully will translate into donor or volunteer relationships down the line.”

Deanna Lee, vice president for communications and marketing at the New York Public Library, would agree that social media is a good way to get people involved in an organization.

Last summer, the library launched an online advertising campaign to combat a looming $28 million city budget cut. The library put a giant red pop-up box on its web page asking people to take action by contacting their local officials and donating to the library, Lee said. At the same time, the nonprofit started a YouTube campaign featuring celebrities speaking about what libraries meant to them.

Almost 10,000 e-mails were sent to city officials during the campaign and about $23 million of city funding was restored. The library also received more than $50,000 in gifts from more than 1,100 donors. About 80 percent of those donors were first-time library donors, Lee said.

“The whole point in using different social media platforms is to tie them together to push them back to the point of action,” Lee said. “Young people don’t want you to just throw information at them. … They want a call to action.”

But not every organization is looking at social media as a way to raise money. A group called Takes All Types is trying to help organizations and institutions like the Coney Island Hospital collect blood donations.

The Brooklyn-based nonprofit builds technology that organizations can use to recruit new blood donors in an area. When that region runs low on a certain blood type, prospective donors receive messages on where to donate on whichever technology they signed up for, said organization executive director Ben Bergman. That technology can include Facebook and MySpace applications or even Twitter and text messages.

“This is the most important new medium on the Internet for nonprofits,” said Sree Sreenivasan, the dean of student affairs at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, who speaks to nonprofits several times a month about how to utilize social media. “I can guarantee you it’s going to continue to grow as an important way in which nonprofits connect with the world around them.”

But he cautioned groups against only using social media to fundraise. “It’s not a broadcast channel, it’s an engagement channel,” Sreenivasan said. “It’s for connecting with your audience, seeing what they’re interested in and answering when they ask a question.”

- Clare Trapasso

A Personal Request for Haitian Relief

I have personally attended mission trips to Haiti and to visit Haitian slaves who harvest American-bound sugar in the Dominican Republic.  Last year a crushing hurricane reduced the poorest country in the western hemisphere to even lower living conditions.  Ten of thousand were reduced to eating mud-cakes, which they continue to consume due to insufficient food supplies.  Now, Haitians have experienced the strongest earthquake in the history of the island they share with the Dominican Republic.  The American Red Cross says 3 million people are affected.  If can make a contribution to any of the charities offering aid at this time, please do so.  I have included a link to UNICEF’s relief donation page.   You can also call 1-800-4UNICEF.

Brian Lacy