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In a previous post, I discussed some of the highlights from recent reports about the impact of celebrities and data on Millennial donors. The conclusion was that building trust with your constituents is the closest you can come to a silver bullet for fundraising – not slick online tools or celebrity endorsements. But, how do you go about building that trust? It doesn’t just happen with the flip of a switch, but you can start today by changing small things, and even big things, to make your organization a trusted part of the community.

Passive Ways to Build Trust

There are many different ways to build trust, but some of them are passive, or in other words, they become the foundation for more active trust-building communications or engagement.

Share your data

Sites like GuideStar and GreatNonprofits make it easy for people that are interested in learning about your organization’s data and history to find it. Do not assume that if a potential donor or volunteer wants to learn about your work, impact, and financial situation that they will download (if you even post the file) a massive annual report and read that in their free time. Instead, make your information – both qualitative and quantitative – easy to find and digest on your website. Share stories of your impact, but make the numbers just as accessible, too.

Connect your presence

It doesn’t take many clicks for someone to get lost on the web – we’ve all experienced that! So make it easy for people to find out more about you wherever they come across your presence online. Ensure that your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and any other online profile you have includes a link back to your organization’s website. Or even better, a welcome page designed for people who find you in social media and may not know about your work (often, the home page is a generic introduction). For example, my Twitter bio links to https://amysampleward.org/welcome instead of my website’s home page. This can build trust, but can also increase engagement by providing relevant calls to action on the very first click.

Allow for feedback

I’m sure you have a Contact Us page. But does it just list the info@ email? Does it only include an email web form? What about your Staff page – does it actually list the email addresses or phone numbers of individual staff? Further, how about program information on your website – does it include mention of which staff actually work on those programs and how to connect with them? These are all opportunities to gather feedback and build transparency!

Active Ways to Build Trust

Empower community advisors

Form a community advisory team that can provide feedback, ideas, direction and even leadership or organizing support. This doesn’t have to be something that creates more work for your staff, but instead if it is a group of people who are already giving feedback often, or that you or your staff send updates to or check in with, simply formalize the role and connect them with each other. Try inviting them all into the office once per quarter for a lunch to discuss new ideas or respond to possible new initiatives or programs. Create an email list for them and your staff or leadership so that connecting and discussing new ideas can be as easy as possible.

Hold open discussions

Releasing your annual report? Did you just secure some new funding? Launching a new program or campaign? Announce it to the community with an invitation to join an open conference call where you will provide information, allow people to ask questions, and so on. Even if there isn’t a huge turn out on the call, you can record it and provide it on the website for others to listen to in the future. Showing that you are available and transparent about your operations will build trust in real time on that call, but also going forward.

Connect program staff with community

As much as it helps build trust by making your organization’s leadership accessible, it’s even more important that the program staff – those driving and building the day to day impact of your programs and services – are connected directly with the community. It can take many shapes: monthly community calls, regular open house events, staff interviews and blog posts (be sure you allow for comments!), or regular program updates. As just one example, Meyer Memorial Trust has an ongoing series called “Two Way Street Tour” where program officers from the foundation travel to different parts of the state and meet with the nonprofit community (both grantees, and those that are not funded by the foundation) to share Meyer’s work and vision and also (the two way street part) learn all they can about what groups are doing locally.

How has your organization become more transparent, open, and trustworthy? Do you have tips or suggestions to share with others? I’d love to hear your feedback!

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).

• SignOn.org Beta – Have you seen the new petition tool from MoveOn.org? "SignOn is a service provided by MoveOn.org Civic Action to allow anyone to set up their own online petition, share it with friends, and stay in touch with the signers of their petition using email." What do you think? Have you tried it yet?
• 30 Super Useful Nonprofit Hashtags – Twitter Chats, Too! « Company K Media – Kerri has an excellent round up of some of the most popular hashtags on Twitter related to the nonprofit and social impact sectors, as well as hashtags to follow to join in regular Twitter chats. Check it out and add yours to the list!
• Women Deliver » Updates » Winners Announced for the Women Bloggers Deliver Competition – Congratulations to my friend Toyin Ajao! Check out this very cool initiative and follow the stories of the three women selected to blog for Carbon for Water! "We are so excited to announce the winners of the “Women Bloggers Deliver” competition! Over the past few weeks, we received over 250 applications from bloggers around the world – from California to Kenya, and from Mexico to Iraq. The competition, a partnership between Women Deliver and Vestergaard Frandsen, was held to draw focus and attention to the just launched Carbon for Water project, a public health intervention that will contribute significantly to health and development efforts that are transforming the lives of families and communities hard hit by the lack of clean water. The three winning bloggers will accompany community workers as they distribute LifeStraw® Family water filters to almost a million households in Kakamega, Kenya."
• What We Lose if We Lose Data.gov | Freedom to Tinker – "In its latest 2011 budget proposal, Congress makes deep cuts to the Electronic Government Fund. This fund supports the continued development and upkeep of several key open government websites, including Data.gov, USASpending.gov and the IT Dashboard. An earlier proposal would have cut the funding from $34 million to $2 million this year, although the current proposal would allocate $17 million to the fund. Reports say that major cuts to the e-government fund would force OMB to shut down these transparency sites. This would strike a significant blow to the open government movement, and I think it’s important to emphasize exactly why shuttering a site like Data.gov would be so detrimental to transparency."
• Social Actions Transition: Introducing the GuideStar Team – My Social Actions – As Peter and Christine announced in March, Social Actions has a new home in Guidestar – here's an update of where the transition is at and introductions of the two Guidestar staff who will be instrumental in pushing Social Actions into the future!

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).

• Oxfam in Haiti – Google Maps – This is a great example of how you can use a tool like Google Maps to tell a story and provide easy access to information – great job Oxfam! "Oxfam is responding to the biggest earthquake for 200 years in Haiti. This map shows some of the sites where Oxfam is providing water and sanitation, as well as employment through the cash-for-work program. Oxfam has reached 100,000 people across multiple sites and is aiming to reach 500,000 total over the next six months."
• Download the 2009 Data Ecosystem Survey Report | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – NTEN just released a report on the data ecosystem in nonprofit organizations – it's free for members, but $50 for non-NTEN members. "The data ecosystem is the collection of tools we use to manage all the ways we interact with donors, volunteers, activists, and supporters. We wanted to find out how happy organizations are with each of the tools they use, but also what tools make up their ecosystems, and how happy they are with those ecosystems as well."
• 5 Ways to “Emerge” as a Nonprofit Leader | Rosetta Thurman – "Many young nonprofit professionals are waiting until they get the title of “Director” to lead. They are waiting until their older colleagues deem them “ready” to lead instead of emerging as leaders in the here and now. But what we have to understand is that this behavior doesn’t benefit our organizations nor the communities we seek to serve. What we have to understand is that we need as many young people as possible to emerge as nonprofit leaders, even if they don’t have a title. The future of the nonprofit sector depends on it."
• 5 Real Challenges For Non-Profit Texting Campaigns – "Given the many aspects of texting, from technology to communications, non-profits need to consider SMS with their eyes wide open. Causes may even want to consider alternative mobile channels for communications and fundraising. Here are five things non-profits should consider before pursuing texting."
• A Consumers Guide To Low-Cost Data Visualization Tools – Check out this great, free report from Idealware! "You've got data. How do you transform it into charts, graphs, and maps that will help your audience understand the data and move them to take action? This 30-page independent Idealware report provides an overview of the types of graphic formats that might work for you, and then compares eight low-cost tools that can help you create them."
• Glasspockets – Check out this new resource from the Foundation Center:
  "With Glasspockets, the Foundation Center and its partners hope to:

  * Inspire private foundations to greater openness in their communications.
  * Increase understanding of best practices in foundation transparency and accountability in an online world.
  * Illustrate how institutional philanthropy is relevant to the critical issues of our time.
  * Highlight the many stories of philanthropy that show how private wealth is serving the public good.
  * Illuminate successes, failures, and ongoing experimentation so foundations can build on each other's ideas to increase impact."

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).

• 2009 Year-End Fundraising Guide – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – “Is your nonprofit sending out 8-10 online fundraising appeals this holiday season? According to Mark Rovner and Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies who led the recent webinar Procrastinator’s Guide to Year-End Fundraising with Kathryn Powers of Conservation International and moderated by Eric Rardin of Care2 and Rebecca Higman of Network of Good, this tactic has been helping organizations raise a lot of money. Nonprofits can expect 60% of their donations to come in between Christmas and New Year’s.”
• Public ‘want to know how money is spent’ – Third Sector – “More than half of the general public would donate more money to charity if they knew exactly how it was spent, a new survey of 2,000 people indicates. The research was carried out for donation website See the Difference, which will be launched next year. The data shows that 51 per cent of people would give more if they knew how their money was spent and 40 per cent would do so if they could actually see the difference their money was making.”
• Facebook Will Be Google-able (If Your Profile is Set to Public) – “At Google’s event today announcing a number of fantastic new features, including real-time search, a new partnership was announced: real-time search of public Facebook status updates. A Google/Twitter partnership was announced months ago but we assumed that Facebook wouldn’t be allowing Google to index many details of its site because the two are fast becoming big rivals. Thus today’s announcement is a very big surprise.”
• Does Directgov Deliver? – “Directgov (www.direct.gov.uk) is the Government’s official website for the general public. This discussion paper analyses how well Directgov delivers on its promise to consumers to ‘provide information and online services for the public all in one place’. The analysis is approached from a user’s perspective, and highlights the types of problems consumers frequently encounter with the service. It is intended to promote a debate, and at the end of each chapter, suggestions are made for rethinking key areas so that they can deliver more effective online public services. We want to hear your thoughts and ideas on this discussion paper so please add your comments in the ‘Your feedback’ section that appears on each page. The paper will be open to comment til the end of January 2010.”
• 20 Questions To Start a Social Media Discussion | Brand Elevation Through Social Media and Social Business | Altitude Branding – “Let’s make something clear: you can be the person that starts asking the questions and initiating the conversations that move social media forward. You. Sitting right there. Yes, you. I don’t care if you’re the marketing assistant, the PR coordinator, the customer service manager, the HR director, or the mailroom clerk. What it takes is the intent to be part of the progress, the bravery to start an open conversation, the maturity and patience to not make it personal, and the investment in the outcomes to take it a step further.”