Nowadays, people will look up a phone number online rather than dragging out a paper telephone book. If you want to know more about a company that donates to you, you don’t call company headquarters; you look up the information online.

Your donors use the Internet as much as you do—maybe more! Yet many nonprofits today see social media, Internet marketing and online giving as a frill that they can’t afford, rather than as an essential component of their fundraising strategy.

Nine out of 10 nonprofit organizations said they don’t have successful online or Internet programs because they don’t have enough staff, according to a recent survey of 60 nonprofit organizations carried out by Convio, a nonprofit constituent relationship management software firm. Budget constraints and lack of online expertise were also cited.

The reality for most nonprofits today is having to make do with less, the report noted. The first step in getting the maximum results from the resources you have, you must have a plan and stick to it. ”Not having a plan is planning to fail,” the report said.

The report also suggests that having the right people is just as important as having more people.

The diverse set of skills a nonprofit organization needs may not exist entirely in-house. An employee well-versed in managing the nonprofit’s Web site may not have the vision to develop the online strategy and marketing plan, they noted.

As a result, some organizations simply don’t do these important tasks. Other organizations solved their staffing problem by turning to contractors and consultants outside of their organization to provide these key online skills.

To read the entire report, which also addresses organizational structure, go to http://my.convio.com/forms/download_structuringforsuccess?staff09=cr

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You’ve produced a great fundraising appeal letter. It tells an emotional story of someone who has been helped by your nonprofit organization. You’ve mailed the appeal letter out.

                But if you stop there, you’ve missed a free and easy way to get more readers— and possibly more donations.

                Simply post your appeal letter on your Web site.

                You could label the page “Success Stories” or “Your Donations at Work” or even “News.” On that page, you’ll type a headline or short summary of the story told in your appeal letter. Link that headline to another page that contains the full appeal letter or to a pdf of the appeal letter.

Every time you create a new appeal letter, add a new headline and link on your “Success Stories” page.  Always add the newest link at the top of your list.

                In addition to expanding the number of people who may read your fundraising appeal letter, this technique has other advantages:

• Search engines, such as Google, rank your site higher the bigger it is and the more frequently you update it (among other factors). Adding fundraising appeal letters to your Web site presents another opportunity for you to update your site and add pages.
• By posting a number of appeal letters about different kinds of individuals, you are able to show the range of the people you help. For example, you may want to show that you help adults as well as children, or single people as well as families, or people from different geographic locations or of different ethnicities. It’s much more powerful for a visitor to read stories and see photos of different individuals, rather than be told statistics about the kinds of people you help. It’s the old adage: Show, don’t tell.
• People are impressed by quantity. When they see story after story of people you have helped, visitors to your site realize in a more visceral way that your nonprofit has helped many people. Again, show, don’t tell.

One more tip: Post your newsletters on your Web site, too!

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Since this is the time of year when professional fundraisers are preparing their fall and their end-of-year appeals, we thought we should go back to the basics and look at the parts of a good fundraising appeal letter.

Some people will read your letter straight through, but many others will skim and skip around the page. Construct your fundraising appeal letter with the components that your readers will notice:

• Opening paragraph, closing paragraph and postscript. Many fundraisers forget to include a PS! Create strong, emotional paragraphs for these three key areas, and construct them so that they work together to form one cohesive message. (See example)
• Upper right hand corner. This is a great place to position a quote, photo or other emotionally compelling material. (See example)
• Captions or callout boxes. Again, make sure they appeal to the donor emotionally. (See example)
• The “ask.” You must come right out and ask your reader for a donation!
• Reply device. This might be a card that is separate from your appeal letter, but it’s a crucial part of your appeal package. Your letter is designed to move people to give, and the reply device must make it easy for them to give. Make sure it is clear and easy to understand. (See example.)

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Since this is Labor Day, we turn our thoughts to the labor force of nonprofit organizations and one of the hottest issues in this country today: health care coverage.

                Before you read on, I should let you know that I don’t have any answers. I don’t know whose proposal is best. I don’t know whether the Canadian system is better than ours. I don’t even know if my partners at Fundraising Assets agree with my stand on the issue.

                Given that, here is what I do believe: We should figure out some way for all Americans to have affordable health coverage. That doesn’t seem like a bold statement to me, but I know people who vehemently disagree with me.

                So what are your experiences with health care coverage?  Does your organization offer health care coverage to its staff? Do you know of good ways for small employers to offer coverage? How about freelance or part-time workers—how can they get coverage? Please share.

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Doctors Without Borders launched a short video to show in movie theaters in England. It’s trying to break new ground, but misses the mark.

The group (Médecins Sans Frontières as it is known elsewhere) said it decided to “make a deliberate move away from some traditional charity advertising which can tend to focus on images of starving children.”

The clip shows a desolate, war-ravaged home and the viewer can hear the pitiful sound of a child crying. “We have deliberately left the child nameless and not identified the country in order to protect his identity and to encourage viewers to realise that violence of this sort occurs beyond just the borders of a single country,” the group said on its site.

The video has a few written statements superimposed on the image of the house about the horrors that happened to the child’s family. The video is very emotional. Upsetting. Disturbing.

If that was the point of the video was to upset people, well done.

But the video ends with the statement, “We can’t operate without your help.” It sounds as if they want people to donate or take action in some way. That’s where this video misses the mark.

The few lines of text tell us very little about what Doctors Without Borders does. The first line tells us that the doctors are treating a five-year-old boy. The second line tells us his sisters were raped, and the third line tells us his parents were killed. The little boy is crying as doctors treat him, and crying at the end of the video.

His injuries, whatever they may be, seem minor in comparison to the devastation that has been inflicted on his personal world. There is nothing (as far as I can tell) that Doctors Without Borders can do to help his sisters, his dead parents, or the little boy now that he is an orphan.  If I give, what good will it do?

This is an example of a common mistake that fundraisers make. They tell the story of a service recipient, but they concentrate on the person’s problems while forgetting to explain how their organization helped the person overcome those problems.  I think people inside an organization are often too close to the situation. What they do everyday is obvious to them, but they forget it’s not obvious to the reader.

How your organization helps your clients should be the main part of every appeal message.

The Doctors Without Borders video protected the identity of the child and kept the location of the war zone general, which were two of its goals. It also had an emotional component. Unfortunately, it was off message.

What do you think?

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