Want to participate? Here are three easy ways you can be part of the giving season kick-off:

Donate to the 2013 NTEN Challenge

We are so excited to celebrate the strength of this community, now 50,000 people stong! The 2013 NTEN Challenge will raise $50,000 to support expanded programs and continued accessibility for a diverse set of organizations in 2014. We have over 30 community champions help us celebrate – check out their fundraising pages and donate today!

Join Beth Kanter on Giving Tuesday to talk about collective philanthropy

I’m joining Beth on Tuesday, December 3rd, at 9 am Pacific for a special online video chat to talk about #GivingTuesday and collective philanthropy; I hope you’ll join us! Learn more about why Beth is supporting Giving Tuesday and RSVP to join the online chat on her blog.

Sign your organization up for Giving Tuesday

To be an official partner, you must be a registered non-profit [a 501(c)3 in the United States] with a specific #GivingTuesday initiative, or a for-profit business, school, religious or community group who commit to spearhead a project that will benefit at least one registered charity or non-profit. Families and individuals are encouraged to be generous in whatever ways matter to them, whether that means volunteering at a local charity or donating to a favorite cause. Learn more and sign up on the Giving Tuesday website.

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When was the last time you were approached by a stranger in the store asking for you to donate to a cause they cared about? Well, sure – it does happen. Especially around the holidays or for local events, but how often do you respond? For many people, the decision to give money is influenced by our peer networks and personal experiences. That’s why social media can be a valuable component of your online fundraising strategies. After all, it’s called “social” media for a reason!

You can think about online engagement as throwing a house party. Your website is your kitchen, where you can prepare the snacks, make the punch, and arrange all the utensils; in other words, that’s where you can create and store all your content. The social channels you set up are the various rooms in the house where guests gather, certain groups sticking together in certain rooms just as your community naturally segments across the web.

You can then offer up snacks and drinks or even start conversations or games based on who is in the room and what they might enjoy, just like you do when you share certain content on certain online profiles based on the sub-groups in your community engaging on each platform.

Social media, the place where you get to hang out with your party guests, is the social space where you not only connect with those you know, but you get to make introductions and meet new people. It’s your chance to have direct conversations with supporters, fans, and donors – conversations that happen in public so many more people can learn about and engage with you.

How does this support online fundraising? Social media is the place where you can change a donation ask from a stranger into a call to action from a friend. This is the space where you can equip your supporters with your message and help them carry your campaign to their own networks.

Here are three ways you can start using social media in your campaign today.

Find the Influencers: Social media is a great resource for identifying the champions in your community. For example, start following the common hashtags, watch for popular retweets on Twitter, and check out the commonly shared images and liked Pages on Facebook. You will start to see certain people and organizations rise to the top. Even if they don’t have big follower numbers, if they are the ones people in your community listen to and respond to, they are influencers. Invite them to participate in your campaign and share your call to donate.

Track the Flow: use social media to track how your campaign is being talked about and where the talking is taking place. Whether you’ve indicated a campaign- specific hashtag or not, use Bit.ly to check for those sharing your website or campaign uRl on Twitter and then see what the tweets say. check your website analytics to see which social platforms are sending traffic to your campaign page and follow the links to the people sharing your content.

Share the spotlight: Social media is an easy tool to use to say thank you to supporters and donors in public. By sharing recognition publicly, in real time, you can give people a feeling that you are excited for their contribution and see them standing out in the crowd. It also encourages others to participate when they see that the organization is there, interacting, and really engaging.

Those are just three ways to get started, but there are endless possibilities for building relationships, establishing trust, and truly engaging your community through social media to join your campaign.

Get the full ebook at: https://www.blackbaud.com/npexperts

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• How to Prepare Your Community for a Major Change « The Community Manager – "Change: it’s the one constant in life. Whether you’re introducing a change in ownership, new staff, policy change, technical update, or something else, community members sometimes resist change. Usually, they’re afraid of repercussions that could affect the community they care so much about—so, it comes from a “good place.” That being said, their fears and frustrations can create chaos, and part of your job as community manager is to make transitions as smooth and drama-free as possible. Follow these steps to turn your announcement from a sign of the apocalypse into a community-building win they thank you for."
• Interactive: How America Gives – How America Gives – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – The Chronicle of Philanthropy has launched a great new tool: an interactive map of giving data in the US. You can look at total contributions, contributions by household, discretionary income by household, and percentage of income given by household at the national, state, county, and local level.
• Survey says: Most noprofiteers blend their personal/professional brands | Big Duck – "Last week I had the joy of presenting a workshop with the fabulous Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation at the 7th Annual Bridge to Integrated Marketing & Fundraising Conference in Washington, DC. To gear up for our session on "Mixing Business and Pleasure: Managing Your Personal Brand in Social Media," we asked nonprofiteers (readers like you!) to respond to a quick survey about their own behaviors. We heard from 209 nonprofit staff, consultants, and the people who love us–and some of the results suprised us. While not scientific, the survey offers some interesting insights and we highlighted the key findings in our presentation (included in the slides below and online here). Here are some of those insights…"
• e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics » How a Twitter Rapid Response Campaign Helped Susan Sarandon ‘Get’ Paid Sick Days – "A coalition of diverse organizations in New York City has banded together to escalate the conversation regarding paid sick days for workers, with an emphasis on getting the NY City Council to pass legislation mandating paid sick days. So far, Council Speaker Christine Quinn has not called for a vote on this issue. But now, it just may happen — after the coaltion (with a little help from their friends) gave us an impromptu course in how to run online rapid response."
• Direct Energy | Direct Energy Contest | Reduce Your Use for GoodReduce Your Use – "Nonprofits, you know it: small changes can make a big difference. At Direct Energy, we’re committed to using our energy expertise to make a difference in people’s lives — so we’re donating up to $100,000 to nonprofits like you to help reduce energy use. Just make a short video of two minutes or less showing us the good work you do in your community. Acceptable submission formats include Windows Media, Quick Time and MPEG (files ending in .wmv, .avi, .mov, .mpg or .mp4). Be passionate. Be creative. Be concise. Tell us about your organization and its vision, how the small things you do make a big difference and why it’s so important that you continue your mission."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• The Co-operate App | Co-operatives UK – Co-operate is the first mobile application I've seen focused on enabling people to find co-operatives for all their needs, wherever they are (based in the UK). "We are encouraging everyone with a passion for co-operative and ethical business across the country to download the app and push it up the listings. Together we can bring the co-operative economy, during the International Year of Co-operatives, to a wider audience." I'll be keeping my eye on it to see how people use it and how it evolves over time. Great idea!
• The Feast Presents : The World’s Fare – "For four years, The Feast has gathered remarkable people bringing their talents to the table to make the world work better. In addition to rethinking our annual conference, we’re opening up the dialogue this year to move people to action like never before. Join in on The World's Fare and host a dinner for six or more friends at 7pm local time on October 5, 2012 (last day of the Conference). Break bread and by the end of your Feast, collectively decide on one thing to collaborate on that’ll improve the world. We’ll compile all of the ideas online, and akin to the original World’s Fair, it'll all be capped off with a giant celebration of innovation at a public pavilion in NYC the next day."
• A Meet & Greet with Your Favorite Social Archetypes [Infographic] | NetWitsThinkTank.com – "The question today is not whether you should use social media (the 901 million Facebook users answered that for us), but how you should use social media to engage with your supporters, advance your mission and make your fundraising efforts more successful. The answer to the question lies in understanding your  nonprofit social media supporters and identifying which ones are the most well-connected, influential, and, in a word, social. It’s a tricky task, but someone has to do it!"
• The Internet has become a spontaneous, grassroots fundraising tool – Small Act – "Philanthropy has turned on its ear. Where previously people mainly donated to reputable charities who sent them donation requests, or in response to a disaster, now people are spontaneously giving to ad-hoc fundraisers online. Why is this happening? People give because they have an emotional response to a story, and because they’re asked to give."
• Facebook Reporting Guide Shows How Site Is Policed (INFOGRAPHIC) – "Facebook Inc offered a rare peek on Tuesday at one facet of the elaborate system it uses to police its 900 million-user social network, as it attempts to keep it free of content it deems offensive, illegal or just plain inappropriate. The company said it employs "hundreds" of staffers in several offices around the world to handle the millions of user reports it receives every week about everything from spam to threats of violence. A detailed, and somewhat confusing, chart published by Facebook on its website on Tuesday depicts how reports of various infractions are routed through the company and lays out all the potential outcomes, which can range from an account being disabled to Facebook alerting law enforcement."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Semphonic Web Analytics Consulting: The X Change Non-Profit Analytics Challenge – "The Non-Profit Analytics Challenge is a rare opportunity for the brightest analysts in the digital measurement field to collaborate & assist non-profit organizations to optimize their websites. The Analytics Challenge is a ½ day event at X Change conference on September 13th. Semphonic President and Conference Founder Gary Angel says " What a gift to have the best minds in the industry to work together and the big bonus is helping 2 chosen non-profit organizations."" Apply today!
• Twive and Receive Reveals the Top 20 Most Generous Cities & Who Would Win In A Fight Between the Hulk and a Kitten | Razoo Media Room – "Julie Nations, the Executive Director of The Ellie Fund said “It’s been the best communications outreach program we’ve ever done. Like every nonprofit, we wanted that prize money, but this was a bigger opportunity. It got us using social media in a way we hadn’t before, and our supporters loved it. This was a real chance to harness social media across all platforms. We reached out to people we’ve never met and got them onboard. Martin Luther King Jr. said ‘Everybody can be great because everybody can give.’ I say everybody can be great because everybody can Twive!”"
• What Are We Accomplishing and How Do We Know? | NTEN – Here's a great run-down from Amy Luckey of the process to use in exploring and evaluating your organization's impact. And she uses NTEN as an example so you can see all the work we've been doing to figure this out for our strategic plan, too: "What does your organization do?" That is a question most nonprofit folks can answer pretty easily. We have our elevator pitches ready to go. "What is your organization accomplishing?" Now that's a different question, one that's not as simple to answer for most of us. It's also one that is increasingly being asked by potential donors big and small.
• 7 Social Media experiments we tried with the 99% Power Coalition | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Joe Solomon does a great job sharing the tools, tactics, and mini-campaigns used in the recent 99% Power Campaign. I don't necessarily agree with all the tactics, but I SO appreciate him sharing their work! What do you think? Would love to hear your thoughts.
• 75% of Young Adults Gave to Charity Last Year, Study Finds – News – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – The new Millennial Donor Survey is out! "Charities rarely make deliberate efforts to solicit young adults because they think people in their 20s and early 30s are unlikely to give. But a new survey of more than 6,500 people ages 20 to 35 shows they are inclined to give—and are more than willing to ask their friends and relatives to do the same—when they feel passionately about a cause. About 75 percent of young people who provided data for the 2012 Millennial Impact Report said they gave money to a nonprofit in 2011, while 70 percent said they have helped solicit donations by encouraging colleagues and others to support a cause."
• Case Study: Feeding America and the Spark Generator | Call2Action – Great case study about Feeding America's recent multi-channel campaign: "Feeding America is the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity. They work in tandem with a nationwide network of member food banks in the fight to end hunger. Their annual September campaign, Hunger Action Month, is a massive effort to educate communities on the scope of hunger issues in the United States and empower them to take action. Feeding America has utilized numerous Call2Action Sparks. This time, they had a variety of videos featuring well-known celebrities like Matt Damon, Taye Diggs, and Ana Ortiz. They were looking to harness the power of all the local food banks' (over 200) online communities."

Today’s a special day for nonprofits. It started at midnight on the Pacific, when over 200 nonprofits flipped the switch and started racing to see which of them will be one of the three organizations to raise the most donations and win a share of $30,000. They only have 24 hours, when the switch is turned off at midnight tonight.

To get to this point, Twive and Receive nonprofits worked their tails off for weeks building a community and strategizing fundraising tactics. Their goal is to help supporters understand and memorize the simple call-to-action: donate to us on June 14^th.

The Importance of a Strong Community

Building a community takes time and effort. Ideally, you want to get to the point where supporters quickly respond to your calls.

Since the Twive contest kicked off a couple months ago, these nonprofits got to work. They did keyword searches on Twitter to talk to people they have something in common with, began engaging people on Facebook with conversation topics, and pinning images on Pinterest to get the sharing going.

Today, they have people Tweeting links to their fundraising page, supporters strutting the Twibbon and most importantly, donors making their donation. This can only be done with the backing of a strong online community.

The Importance of a Strong Strategy

There isn’t a cookie cutter fundraising strategy that works for every nonprofit across the board. Here’s a collection of what some Twive and Receive participants have done to promote their fundraiser:

The Importance of Doing Good

At the end of the day, these communities win because nonprofits that offer important services benefited. A great side effect is that people are going to feel good about their actions.

If you want to help make an impact, find your favorite cause or city and support them with a donation today on TwiveAndReceive.org. You have until midnight to help that nonprofit be a step closer towards winning an additional cash prize. You’ll be proud of yourself, trust me.

Ifdy Perez is the community manager at Razoo, an online fundraising platform that empowers individuals and nonprofits to meet their fundraising goals through online giving campaigns. She’s also editor of Inspiring Generosity, a blog that gives nonprofits helpful resources on online community management and social media tools.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Salesforce Acquires Buddy Media for $689 Million – “Salesforce has entered an agreement to acquire social media marketing platform Buddy Media for approximately $689 million, the company has announced. The price is lower than the recently reported $800 million figure, but still a formidable investment from the enterprise software giant, which is on a seemingly never-ending acquisition spree. Salesforce had acquired collaboration tool company Stypi in May 2012, as well as social media monitoring platform Radian6 in March 2011.”
• 4 Results from Crowdsource Experiment at #12NTC: Nerd, Geek and Gear Herding « Sage Words – “At the 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference (#12NTC) in San Francisco, California, we led a session called Nerd, Geek, and Gear Herding 2.0. Building on last year’s session, we were pleased that this year we had the opportunity to introduce the “crowdsourcing” experiment to collectively solve our nonprofit technology problems.”
• Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings | Official Google Blog – “Search is a lot about discovery—the basic human need to learn and broaden your horizons. But searching still requires a lot of hard work by you, the user. So today I’m really excited to launch the Knowledge Graph, which will help you discover new information quickly and easily. Take a query like [taj mahal]. For more than four decades, search has essentially been about matching keywords to queries. To a search engine the words [taj mahal] have been just that—two words. But we all know that [taj mahal] has a much richer meaning. You might think of one of the world’s most beautiful monuments, or a Grammy Award-winning musician, or possibly even a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Or, depending on when you last ate, the nearest Indian restaurant. It’s why we’ve been working on an intelligent model—in geek-speak, a “graph”—that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings.”
• The Identity Spectrum – Identity Woman – I love this spectrum map of the various kinds of online identity! Such a great resource for understanding and planning for community engagement. “The Identity Spectrum gives a understanding of the different kinds of identity that are possible in digital systems. They are not exclusive – you can mix and match. I will define the terms below and discuss mixing and matching below.”
• Current.org | Evaluating social media efforts, May 2012 – “Now that most public media stations have become active on social networks — with some combination of Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, blogs and YouTube channels — staff members at many stations are struggling with the question: Are we getting the most bang for our social-media buck? After all, building and maintaining a meaningful social media presence requires a significant investment of time — and it’s not always easy to measure the return on that investment. What does social media success look like, anyway?”
• New Study: Donations Decline for Nonprofits – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – – “Of the different trend-spotting and benchmarking resources, few are as important and authoritative as the “donorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance” published quarterly by Target Analytics, a division of Blackbaud. Yesterday in Washington, DC, Target’s senior fundraising analyst Paige Grainger gave a terrific “state of the nonprofit industry” talk, which summarized key findings from Target’s latest, 2011 Index. The full report is here.  Paige spoke at a luncheon that Care2 sponsored of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW). Target’s data this year was drawn from 80 different nonprofit organizations, 38 million donors, 79 million gifts and $2.5 billion worth of donations revenue (although it excluded any donations worth $10,000 or more). Channels covered included online, direct mail, telemarketing and canvassing.”

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Attention Data Nerds: Nonprofits Miss Out on the Power of LinkedIn: Learn How to Tap It | Beth’s Blog – Geri Stengel has a great guest post on Beth's blog. "Whether connected or cold calling, you can build long-term, valuable relationships using LinkedIn. Find out how easy it is. LinkedIn isn’t some stodgy place where people post their resumes. It’s a no- to low-cost database that is a rich source of information about potential major donors, board members, employees, and strategic allies." Would love to hear what you're doing on LinkedIn and how your organization has or has not found LinkedIn valuable!
• Blackbaud and Convio Now One Company – "Blackbaud, Inc. (NASDAQ: BLKB) today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Convio, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand constituent engagement solutions. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Blackbaud paid an aggregate purchase price of approximately $325 million. Blackbaud financed the deal through a combination of cash and borrowings from its credit facility. “This is an exciting day for the Blackbaud and Convio teams. Together, we can build better solutions for nonprofits, and that’s what drives us,” said Marc Chardon, Blackbaud’s chief executive officer. “Convio’s strengths in online and social marketing, and subscription and cloud-based offerings complement ours, and will accelerate our ability to deliver more to the nonprofit sector.”"
• Charities May Soon Get a Way to Seek Bigger Text Gifts – Prospecting – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – "Donors who give through mobile text messages could soon have the options of giving a larger donation and setting up repeat text gifts, say the leaders of two of the organizations that oversee text giving in the U.S. and Canada. Jim Manis, chief executive of the Mobile Giving Foundation, and Bernard Lord, chairman of the Mobile Giving Foundation Canada, said in an interview that they are working with some cellular service providers to allow $20 donations—double the current $10 limit—and recurring donations, though they gave no timeline on when those features would be available."
• Get more donors with free fundraising lessons and ideas – I love this new free series from Causevox – get a video a week filled with great information and actionable tips to help improve your fundraising right away. I don't even primarily focus on fundraising and I'm finding it really valuable!
• The A/B Test: Inside the Technology That’s Changing the Rules of Business | Epicenter | Wired.com – This is a terrific case study in the power of a/b testing on your websites – be it organization site, microsite, campaign pages, or even fundraising pages – to question everything and find what really works. Every time I do testing, I see the same thing that they note here: my instincts are wrong. We over-think things and the best way to stop is by testing!

Gem #1 – Put fundraising in your mission.

In this book, Larry starts at the beginning (that’s even how he describes it!) with the mission of the organization. You have to figure this out first! Your board has to know the mission, and keep it in mind in their role forming the strategic vision of the organization. Fundraising should have a clear role in helping you meet that mission. If it is something separate, your doomed. Larry very rightly points out: If you position fundraising as separate from meeting your mission, donors won’t see why their donations are creating the impact they are interest in.

Gem #2 – Work from the inside out.

This is a great concept and one I often see organization willing to internalize, but not for fundraising. I am often asked by organizations about how they can get their staff to adopt a new tool or platform. You have to start inside the organization. Treat your colleagues like the most important community segment. That means you give them direct training and support, show them how it helps the organization and their own work, etc. When the external community sees your staff using a community platform, a knowledge management resource, or another shared online space it says to them that the organization actually cares and is invested in both collaboration and the resource itself. And that is the best tone you can set! So why would it be any different with fundraising!

Gem #3 – I have an extra copy for you!

That’s right! Larry was kind enough to send me an extra copy that I could give away to a lucky commenter. Please share in the comments below either what your current struggle is or your latest lesson learned with fundraising for your organization. All comments will be entered to win and I’ll draw a name at random this Friday, May 11th, at 5 pm EST.

Looking forward to hearing what you’re working on!