“Nonprofit marketers say their key messages are failing to connect with the people who need to hear them and that is a serious problem.  The way nonprofits talk about themselves to the public is a core competency critical to any organization’s success. The bad news is that most nonprofits admittedly are doing a very poor job, despite a great deal of effort. The good news is that fixing the problem is highly do-able and promises vastly greater success than they are experiencing now.”

The survey results included:

Most Nonprofit Messages Don’t Connect Strongly with Key Audiences:
Eighty-four percent of 915 nonprofit leaders who completed the survey last month said their messages connect with their target audiences only somewhat or not at all. Respondents represented organizations of all size, issue focus and geographical location.

Behind the Disconnect—86% of Nonprofits Characterize Their Messages as Difficult to Remember:
Most nonprofits report that their messaging suffers from lack of inspiration (73%) and poor targeting to audience wants and needs (70%), and is difficult to remember (86%). Few communicators laud their messaging for its strengths: Only 13% of organizations characterize messaging as cogent while 8% describe their messaging as potent.

Here are some comments from survey participants explaining why their messages fail to connect:

• “Our messages need to be more succinct to communicate how effective we really are.”
• “We don’t move our base to action.”
• “We have individual elements that are OK solo, but no unified path.”
• “Our messages aren’t hard-hitting or targeted enough. So they fall flat.”
• “We need to shape messages that are simple enough for staff to remember and feel comfortable in repeating it to others.”
• “Too much jargon. I can’t even understand what we’re saying.”

Inconsistency Reigns, Leaving Confusion and Annoyance in Its Path:
Less than 50% of nonprofits report consistent use of their positioning (organizational tagline, positioning statement and talking points). That means that even though most organizations have taken the effort to craft messages, those messages aren’t used consistently across channels (website, direct mail, email), audiences or programs.

More information and complete survey results, plus specific recommendations on how nonprofits can start to immediately improve key messaging, are available at:
http://nancyschwartz.com/articles/index.php/messaging-crisis-for-nonprofits/

I recently wrote about Tu Diabetes’ use of Twitter and the strategies the online community has employed to find and engage with new people. Today, I want to take a look at another social media tool Tu Diabetes is using successfully: YouTube.

YouTube is an online video tool “allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.”

Tu Diabetes has a YouTube channel with over 60 videos and over 70 subscriptions. Manny Hernandez, community founder, explained the group’s YouTube strategies to me recently.

I asked Manny what the original idea or example was that got Tu Diabetes using YouTube for fundraising. Manny said that Tu Diabetes adopted video as a tool to communicate with members since the very beginning. Early on, before they were even a non-profit (2007) they produced weekly podcasts to summarize the highlights in the community and do a member update. (You can see an example here.) All the videos included on YouTube have previously been posted in the video section on TuDiabetes.com (or EsTuDiabetes.com, if they are in Spanish).

I think the power and success of fundraising with video is one of the most interesting aspects of Tu Diabetes’ use of YouTube. Manny said that, so far, ALL the funds raised through the members (close to $3,500) since they started the fundraising campaign have been tied to video-based-asks. We have had three videos during the campaign so far, which started in June, with each one getting more and more on target:

• First: http://tudiabetes.com/video/video/show?id=583967%3AVideo%3A170824 (284 views)
• Second: http://tudiabetes.com/video/video/show?id=583967%3AVideo%3A180516 (254 views)
• Most recently: http://tudiabetes.com/video/video/show?id=583967%3AVideo%3A228578 (128 views)

One of the most frequently asked questions I come across when organizations are considering using videos on organizational websites or places like YouTube is the burden of resources, costs, etc. For Tu Diabetes, the only technical resources used are Mac-based. Manny shot the first two using the built-in iSight camera on his MacBook. The most recent one was done on his wife’s Mac Pro, combining images posted by our members in the community. All videos were edited using iMovie. The most recent one had music donated by the duo Hammock (one of his favorite bands – http://hammockmusic.com).

It is important to keep in mind the goals an organization has when considering the use/adoption of social media tools, because there are just so many to choose from. One of the goals of the Diabetes Hands Foundation is to raise diabetes awareness. Based on that, you have to look at video views. The most viewed videos to date are here: the Drawing Diabetes video with close to 27,000 views, and the Word In Your Hand video with close to 2,500 views + several thousand more views through TuDiabetes and other outlets.

Social media tools are ultimately about building community and making connections between the organization and new members. With YouTube, Tu Diabetes reaches out to new members. They do periodic searches for “diabetes” on YouTube and leave relevant comments to people who also share their diabetes stories on YT. It is very important that the comments be contextual and valuable. We take the opportunity to tell people about the community. Normally invitations to join result in people joining.

Besides YouTube, Tu Diabetes has used:

• Vimeo
• Current.TV
  Flickr
• ICYou (specific to healthcare)
• DoGooder
• GoodTube
• and a few others.

So, what are the future plans for Tu Diabetes’ use of YouTube? They are currently waiting on the approval of 501c3 status. Once approved, they will be able to take full advantage of the YouTube for Nonprofits program. Tu Diabetes will continue to publish video content, which they do on the YouTube channel, because they feel it is a great means to accomplish the goal of raising diabetes awareness.

What do you think about Tu Diabetes’ use of YouTube? Has your organization considered using videos on your website or on a public channel like YouTube? What goals would you want to address with the help of video?  Comment with the Net Squared community, too!