Filed under: General Charity Musings | Tags: non profit fundraising, NTC, social media campaign, social media roi
I joined the Nonprofit Technology Conference’s “Confessions of a Social Media Campaigner” seminar yesterday and found it very interesting to hear the metrics that various charities are using to measure their social media fundraising campaigns.
Carie Lewis of the US Humane Society shared that the society raised $107,300 on social networks in 2008. They did so without spending any marketing dollars, but they did use staff hours; by my calculations they used roughly 1.7 FTEs. The strict, directly measurable ROI then depends on staff pay. A reasonable $40-50k salary would mean a rough 10% ROI, which is not bad. But once you consider the fact that the staff was obviously putting in a tremendous amount of time – Carie herself was mentioning the need to work on weekends and have 24/7 text alerts to monitor the brand – the ROI could easily be judged as negative.
But that would be a narrow minded view of ROI because it’s never just about fundraised dollars. It’s about awareness, community building, and generating interest that will bring in future returns. The other 2 organizations who presented, the National Wildlife Federation, and the American Cancer Society, mentioned some of their metrics which included website traffic, newsletter subscriptions, number of Facebook group users, etc. Which all are good indicators of campaign success, but in order to properly include them in the ROI formula you’d need to put a value (including future value) on each of the activities, which can get very tricky. In fact, if you try to apply traditional Internet Marketing ROI calculation methodologies, and try to assign dollar values to each user acquisition, each retention activity, and de-depe the effect of all your campaigns on any one user, you’d be needing a heck of a lot more than 1.7 FTEs to manage the program. I’m not even sure a tracking platform of the required sophistication (where users are tracked individually across campaigns) is available to nonprofits, let alone available for a good price. And even if it were available, is it worth using? Anybody know of one?
I believe that social media can work very effectively for nonprofits, but proving the case to traditional, strictly dollar ROI-minded individuals can be challenging, especially without solid data for support. I know that there are a lot of firms out there who consult in this area, so if you’re one of them, I would love to hear your thoughts.
A while back I wrote a post on my opinions on the Change the Web finalists and which ones were my personal favourites. Well the winners were announced today, and … drumroll… the first place winner is the Interactive Map by John Brennan! You can see the Social Actions post here. So my 2 personal favs didn’t win, BUT the first 2 place winners were ones that I had bucketed in the “no-brainer” section; as in they’re so great and simple that I don’t see why you wouldn’t put them into action.
Congrats to the winners!
Filed under: General Charity Musings | Tags: athlete for africa, auction for wishes, crashbar, gophilanthropic, salsa for charity, sta travel
Since Charity CHAMPS is about microphilanthropy, this blog has featured many ways for you to give back with a few spare minutes or dollars – from sending free e-cards to save 1 square footage of rainforest to playing trivia games to donate rice to the hungry. But once in a while I come across some non-micro ways to make a difference that are just as easy to get involved in as click-to-donate sites. So I thought I’d share some of them with you:
- Getting married? Crashbar photography will do your wedding photography, and all they ask for compensation is a donation to a charity of your choice. Afterward, if you’re willing to part with your dress, donate it to Brides Against Breast Cancer.
- Booking a vacation? Auction for Wishes auctions off luxury vacation packages as well as other items for the Children’s Wish Foundation. Auctions are hosted on eBay and start at 99 cents. Or, why not join a volunteer vacation trip? There’s lots of tour operators out there, from GoPhilanthropic to STA Travel.
- Are you an athlete? Be an athlete for Africa makes it easy for you to raise money for promoting and protecting human rights while doing whatever it is that you normally do for fun, whether it’s climbing a mountain, making a bike trip, or playing in a football league. Raise over $200 and you can become an official Athlete for Africa member.
- Looking for dance lessons? Some places, like Salsa for Charity in Toronto, offers lessons where 100% of the lesson fees go toward charity.
That’s just a few examples – more in a later post if there’s interest!
Filed under: General Charity Musings, Microphilanthropy | Tags: economist, MFIS, microfinance, microfinance in recession
I have an Economist subscription, and as most Economist readers know, the magazine is packed. Packed enough that I have a problem keeping up with the material even on not so busy weeks. And for the 2 months now I’ve hardly had time to keep up at all. So today, I started going through the March material, and found an interesting article on the impact of the credit crisis on microfinance.
By conventional wisdom microfinance should be cushioned against the drivers of the financial crisis – behind every loan is something concrete (eg. a cow or a chicken), not just a piece of paper. And the fact that the loans are funding local businesses means that the repayment rate should hold up. However, the Economist points out, there are two things that putting the squeeze on microfinance institutions (MFIS):
- MFIS depend on international aid budgets for funding, and those sources are drying up, even as global banks are pulling out of their involvement with microfinance due to the current climate.
- MFIS are having trouble re-financing existing loans; the refinancing gap could be as high as $1.8B over the next 18 months.
Some also question the microfinance model; there is evidence that borrowers are using loans from one institution to pay off loans from another. Based on this, there is an argument for MFIS to start taking deposits like your local bank, instead of purely relying on institutions and donors for funding.
My take on it all? Lend away. The borrower delinquency rate has only risen from 1.2% to 2%-3% in recent times, which means that microfinance is still a very dependable way to lend your money. And really, I view some of these MFIS (Kiva, Garmeen Bank, etc.) as charitable, and like any charity in need of some financial help in tough times, donor dollars can go a long way. MFIS have already proven to be stronger than some other financial institutions in this credit crunch; their failure now or in the future would only prove that this economy affects everything, and not that microfinance doesn’t work.
Filed under: Microphilanthropy | Tags: microphilanthropy vote, online microphilanthropy
I’ve featured a lot of microphilanthropy sites now on this blog, from Kiva to DonorsChoose. In general there are so many sites that it’s hard to keep track of them all, so Charity CHAMPS has started to compile an online microphilanthropy organization list. The list is great for reference but what we’d really like to know is which ones are your favourites. Which organization do you think is making the most impact, engaging the most people, or doing the most innovative projects? Go to our poll and vote! The results will help Charity CHAMPS to make some informed decisions about our partnerships and priorities moving forward.
Filed under: Microphilanthropy | Tags: carbonzero, earth day, eco commons, ecoaction, kaboose
Happy Earth Day! I couldn’t let today go by without promoting some micro-actions that you can do to celebrate the occasion. Earth Day should be about going outside, but seeing as it’s freezing today where I am, I’m going to stick to actions that you can do easily from your computer:
- Go to CarbonZero and use their emissions calculator to find how much carbon you’re emitting in your daily routine. If you’re up for it, purchase the carbon offset for whatever damage you’ve done.
- Educate yourself with Google Earth Gallery – see what would happen to Vancouver if the sea level rose 6m, which country consumes the most oil on the world map, the conservation work the African Wildlife Foundation is doing in the African Heartlands, and much more!
- Join an EcoAction team and commit yourself to the following over the next year: reducing 200 kg of garbage output, saving 36k litres of water, and using 21% less electricity. Think that sounds like a lot? It isn’t – it can all be done by committing to small actions like setting your fridge to a certain temperature and dumping scraps into a backyard composter. US residents – sorry, as far as I can tell the site is for Canadians only.
- Play some fun, educational, green-themed games with your kids at Kaboose.
- Are you a Second Life user? Eco Commons is launching today. Check it out!
Filed under: General Charity Musings | Tags: facebook volunteer, techsoup, volunteer toronto
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how to find volunteers in Toronto. It’s been a fairly popular post, but while I was at a TechSoup event yesterday I realized that I had missed mentioning something big – Volunteer Toronto. If you haven’t visited the Volunteer Toronto site yet, you should; the organization is very active in the volunteer space in the city.
One thing that’s deterred me from using them so far (for Charity CHAMPS, Wired Woman, or otherwise) is that unfortunately they require a membership fee for organizations to join and post listings. It’s not much – just $50/ year ( that’s for nonprofits with budgets < $100k a year, see the full rates here ) – and from what I can tell the fee is probably worth it. But given the extremely tight budgets of nonprofits, I always look for other avenues, and at the TechSoup event the Volunteer Toronto rep announced something very useful: Volunteer Toronto is now on Facebook (and it’s been endorsed by the Canadian government)! There’s a group that you can join, and members seem fairly active in posting on the wall / discussion pages, which means that voila, there’s a free way to reach the community after all. But you didn’t hear that from me.
Filed under: General Charity Musings, Microphilanthropy | Tags: Microphilanthropy, ripple, rypple
Social media is all about capitalizing on a network effect to make an impact, so it seems appropriate to use a water ripple as an analogy for the concept. Not surprisingly then, there are organizations incorporated using the name ripple. One is Ripple.org, a click to donate site, and another is Rypple.com, a site where you can solicit and receive feedback.
One of the co-founders of Rypple is Dan Debow, who I worked with several years ago. In talking to him about the premise of Rypple (you can read more at the Economist), I realized that what his organization is trying to do isn’t so different from many of the microphilanthropy sites that I’ve talked about on this blog. The fact is, smaller more frequent actions increases engagement, or a least is an indicator of increased engagement. I would much rather receive feedback from my boss weekly than once a year. And if I had $5 to donate online, donating $1 five times instead of donating $5 once means I’m engaging with the charity website five times as much, so I’m more likely to read updated news, or interact with others involved with the charity. Sure there’s increased transaction costs, but you can argue that the increased engagement more than makes up for it.
Ripple.org I just stumbled upon today, and instantly loved it. It’s one of the simplest and clearest click-to-donate sites I’ve seen so far, in that you know up front exactly what each click will do. Each click gives 6 days of access to clean water, or 2 days of access to education, etc. You can’t miss where to click either, which is key, because I’ve been to tons of sites where you can’t tell whether you’ve made the click that counts or not.
So Ripple (or Rypple) away – both sites are still in Beta so try it out and give the founders some feedback.
Filed under: General Charity Musings, Microphilanthropy | Tags: beer causes, facebook, facebook causes, Microphilanthropy, race to end cancer
One can aruge that Facebook Causes encapsulates the very essence of using social media for microphilanthropy. The whole application is really just about two things – supporting causes, and spreading the word about causes. If you’re on Facebook, I encourage you to check it out. There are 9 categories of causes to choose from, and once you’ve picked, you can feature your favourite causes on your profile and send updates directly to your status to spread the word.
Once thing that’s neat about the application is that it allows you to see what the most popular causes are. For Charity CHAMPS or any other non-profits out there I think this could be a very useful market research tool. Not only does it tell you what people care about, it tells you WHY, if you care to read into the supporting wall posts. Right now the top cause is the Race to End Cancer, followed closely by Supporting the O Campaign for Cancer Prevention. The first has had $49k in donations already, and the second, $85k. Not bad for micro-donations!
If you can’t find your cause on there, you can create it, and that feature adds a very humourous aspect to an otherwise serious application. Because right between Saving Darfur and Stop Child Pornography is the Foundation for the protection of Swedish underwear models. Not to mention over 3 pages of beer causes. I’m sure that no matter what your cause is, you’ll find it. Now to see if the beer and models ever hit the top causes chart.
Filed under: General Charity Musings | Tags: charity evaluations, charity ratings, charityintelligence.ca, charitynavigator, guidestar
One of the most popular posts on this blog is the one about how Canada needs a version of CharityNavigator (or another equivalent site such as GuideStar, SamaritanGuide, CharityWatch, etc. that remains US-centric). I see this as proof that other Canadians are also feeling my pain about lack of easily accessible information on charities, even if the information is basic and can’t be expected to give you a full picture of what’s going on.
According to GuideStar, roughly 43% of US non-profits post their annual reports online. Given the similarity in our markets I would hazard a guess that the Canadian metric is about the same, which means it’s very unlikely that a Canadian donor would chance upon efficiency or other information without making a dedicated effort to find out. Then there’s lovely newspaper articles blaming the federal government for not protecting donors from fraudulent charities – no wonder my mother-in-law is paranoid about opening her wallet!
So it was with renewed vigor that I scoured the net yesterday for a site for something – anything – that has Canadian charity reviews / ratings / efficiency information. And I did actually find something that I haven’t found before – Charity Intelligence. Unlike the US sites it doesn’t have a massive database of charity evaluations, but it does do in-depth research that digs in way more than just the financials. They publish a list of recommended charities to donate to, in the three categories of social service, healthcare, and education. You can pull out full PDF reports on recommended charities, something you can’t really find on any of the US sites. It’d be awesome to see Charity Intelligence scale its operations further – I for one would love it.
Makes me think that Charity CHAMPS should put together some info on Canadian charities – we’ve already done a good deal of research. For the Canadians out there – let me know what you might find helpful.
And to the US charity rating sites out there – please considering opening up to Canadians!
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