5 Ways Every Non-profit
Should Use the Internet
Mike Dean
Tipping Point Strategies
Steven Clift
E-democracy.Org
Chris Dunkin
Convio

Agenda for Today
• The Power of the Internet
• 5 Ways you should use the Internet
• Case Studies
• Engagement
• Advocacy
• Fundraising
• Tie it Together
• Q&A

Growing Power of the Internet

The Future is Now
• Americans spend more time on the Internet than
any other activity
Number of hours Americans spend on these media activities:
3.6 – Internet, 2.5 - TV, 1.3 – Radio, 1.3 - Telephone
OMD, a New York based media services company, November 2006
• An increasing number of people now believe that
the web can give them more political power;
USC Annenberg School, December 2005

Evolution of the Internet
• From one-way communication to a
conversation
• The 3 C’s
• Conversation
• Collaborations
• Community

How Technology Makes it Easy
• Improves the speed and efficiency that you can
get information out
• Your messages can spread to a wider audience
• Save time and money
• Advocates expect it
• Can evaluate and target impact

5 Ways Your Non-profit Should
Use the Internet
1. E-mail
2. Video
3. Micro-Organizing
4. Search
5. Social Networks

Key Principles of Success
1. Be Interactive and Empowering
2. Create Engagement Pathways
3. Develop and Nurture Evangelists
4. Integrate! Integrate! Integrate!
5. Create Community
6. Provide a Service

Things to Think About
• What sort of an impression are you making on the
Internet?
• How well are you leveraging your web site to
engage visitors vs simply giving information about
you?
• How can you create and empower your
evangelists?

Online Engagement–
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org

Online Engagement
Lessons from E-Democracy.Org
and similar initiatives
e-democracy.org

Function Over Form
e-democracy.org

Issues Forums
e-democracy.org

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Issues Forums
e-democracy.org

Project Blog
e-democracy.org

Participant Survey
e-democracy.org

Wiki
e-democracy.org

Wiki
e-democracy.org

E-Debates
e-democracy.org

More Examples
• Choose your tools and techniques
based on your goals.
• Don’t allow technology to determine
your course. Only works if you have
a clear course.
e-democracy.org

Online Surveys - Queensland
e-democracy.org

Online Communities of Practice
e-democracy.org

Online Events and Conferences
e-democracy.org

More Examples
• Presentations:
– http://publicus.net/speaker.html
• Articles, Best Practices:
– http://publicus.net/articles.html
e-democracy.org

Building a Successful
Advocacy Program –
Mike Dean
Tipping Point Strategies

Effective Advocacy Revolves Around
the Web
• It is where people go to get information
• Easy to participate
• More engaging
• Improves loyalty
• Proven that it works

Gopher Football Stadium – Challenge
• Gopher Stadium last on priority list at the
Legislature
• Strong opposition to public funding of stadiums
• Concern that the request would pull money
from academic requests
• Frustration from Memorial Stadium decision

Gopher Football Stadium – Strategy
• Build grassroots organization to educate
legislators about U’s proposal
– Use passion of alumni and boosters to
build support.
– Created contests to encourage people
to spread the message – free things.
• Spoke to them in their language
• Empowered them to become political

Gopher Football Stadium
Step 1
• Recruitment
Campaign
• Develop a theme
• Make it fun
• Give away free things

Gopher Football Stadium
Step 2
• Contact Legislators
• Create Urgency
• Make it easy
• Give them the tools

Gopher Football Stadium
• Victory
• After 2 ½ years
• We sent out over 40
e-mails to
supporters

Gopher Football Stadium – Results
• Quickly built a list of 15,000 advocates in six
months
• Sent thousands of letters to legislators
• Moved from last to first in legislators and the
publics mind
• Passed the stadium legislation
• Excited big and small donors

Gopher Football Stadium – Results
• \"I guess grass-roots advocacy really works.
This is something so close to our hearts,
bringing Gopher football back to campus.\"
- Margaret Sughrue Carlson,
Chief Executive Officer
University of Minnesota Alumni Association
Star Tribune Newspaper

The Building Blocks for
Successful Use of Technology
1. Develop a plan
2. Collect email addresses
3. Establish regular interactions
4. Personalize and customize messages
5. Create a theme
6. Make people act, participate
7. Integrate online and offline activities
8. Test and follow what works

Email Marketing Schedule
JAN. FEB. MAR. APR. MAY JUNE JULY AUG. SEPT. OCT. NOV. DEC.
2 2 2 0 1 1 2 3 3 1 0 0
Appeals
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
e-News
Renewal
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1
Upgrade

Collect Email Addresses

Pyramid of Engagement
Supporter
Organization
eNewsletters Receiving eNews
Action Alerts Visiting Advocacy website
Interactive/Informative Learning about issues
Advocacy website
Petitions
Tier 4
Tier 3
Tier 2
Tier 1

Pyramid of Engagement
Organization Supporter
Targeted and Visiting advocacy website
personalized emails with purpose
based on Writing letter to legislator
participation,
Letting their voice be
legislative district,
heard
etc.
Additional
Tier 4
information about
possible events for
advocates to
Tier 3
participate in
Tier 2
Tier 1

Pyramid of Engagement
Organization Supporter
Continued targeted Continued Advocacy on
and personalized University’s behalf
emails based on
Event participation
participation,
Calling a legislator
legislative district,
Very engaged advocate at
etc.
this point
Asking advocates to
Tier 4
join you for a
legislative event
Asking them to place
Tier 3
a call on the
organizations’s behalf
Tier 2
Tier 1

Pyramid of Engagement
Organization Supporter
Continued targeted Continued Advocacy on
and personalized organization’s behalf
emails based on
Further Event
participation,
participation
legislative district, etc.
Calling a legislator
Hosting events and
Visiting with a legislator
going on trips to the
Advocate feels that they
Tier 4
Capitol
are making a difference in
Sending advocates on
the organization’s efforts
missions; e.g., meet
Tier 3
with Senator
Anderson and discuss
this issue
Tier 2
Tier 1

Establish Regular, Personal
Interactions
8,000 140,000
120,000
6,000
100,000
New Members by Day
Total New Members
80,000
4,000
60,000
40,000
2,000
20,000
0 0
6/1/2003 6/15/2003 6/29/2003 7/13/2003 7/27/2003 8/10/2003 8/24/2003 9/7/2003 9/21/2003
New Members by Day Email message sent Total New Members

Personalize and Customize
• Send your message
from an individual, not
from an organization
• Address the person by
name
• Include personal data
and legislator contact
information in the
body of the email
• Sign the message with
your name and
organization

Create a Theme
UMN’s Successful
“Bring Gopher
Football Back to
Campus” Victory!!
Campaign
Sample
emails from
their 3 year
campaign

Integrate Online and Offline

Fundraising–
Chris Dunkin
Convio

The New Internet Requirement
• • Growing impact of Social Media –
Intensifying Nonprofit internet
strategy & sites
competition
– > 60M users on Facebook*
– 87K US NPOs, > $1M
– 44% of users return daily
revenue
– 34% are professionals
– Increasing online spending
4X faster than traditional
Your website
Constituents
Nonprofits are recognizing that their website is
only part of their mission’s online strategy
*Source: Forrester Research & Facebook

The Impact
• Online Results:
– > 40% increase in # of online gifts
– > 10% increase in average gift amount
• Lifetime Value Results:
– Nearly a 3X increase
$877
Lifetime Donor Value
$1,000
$800
$694
$600
$314
$400
$200
$0
Offline Donations Offline Donations Offline and Online
Only No Convio Only W/ eNews Donations
Offline revenue Online revenue
Source: Strategic One Study / Benchmark / Convio CSS customers

Online Advocacy Can Drive Online
Fundraising Success
Orgs with Online No Online
Advocacy Program Advocacy Program
Average Annual
Online Fundraising
Total
$343,000 $113,000
• On average, orgs with an online advocacy program and an online
fundraising program raise 303% more money online than orgs that are
only doing online fundraising
• Results from an online survey of the broader nonprofit community (to
which 85 organizations responded)

Activists are also Donors
• 42.4% of activists were also donors
Activists Donors
• And donors make more engaged activists:
– The average lifetime response count for the donors is
2.86 advocacy actions.
– The average lifetime response count for the non-donors
is 1.87 advocacy actions.

The Approach
• Understand Internet’s strategic value
– Fundamentally advance organization’s mission
• Follow the ARC
– Acquisition Outreach
– Relationship Pathways
– Constituent Empowerment

Acquisition: Email Capture Techniques
• The overlooked step after generating website traffic…
• Homepage optimization
• Capture techniques
– Petitions
– Pledges
– eCards
– Surveys
– News letters
– Downloads
Organizations embrasing
ECRM see > 50%
increase in email file
size, with smaller
organizations growing
even faster!

Acquisition: Leverage Your
Current Base
• Viral campaigns vs. passive tell-a-friend
link
1) Promote campaign in 2) Call to action - forward 3) Landing page: call to action
stand alone email to to a friend pledge / petition / gift /
current constituents survey / eCard / etc
“Viral marketing strategies have given us the opportunity to expand our donor base. We’re
seeing that in terms of growth in contributions and the amount of involvement in JNF.”

Relationship Pathways: On-Boarding
No No
Email Email
$ $
#1 #3
Yes Yes
Yes
Reg+1 Day Reg+14 Days Reg+28 Days Reg+56 Days
Removed from conversion flow,
suppressed from remaining prospect conversion emails
• Constituents automatically identified, moved through
• Focused relationship effort increases conversion
– Basis for future relationship campaigns
• Supports many pathways to many ends or actions

Relationship Pathways: Content
Relevance
“More than 10% of our
page views are
generated by related
links on the site”
– Join Together
• Site “stickiness”
allows visitors to
remain engaged Links are dynamic based on
what the visitor selects
• Connecting actions
to content increases Each item appears based on
conversions its relationship to other
content

Constituent Empowerment
■ Empower constituents to market for your cause
Friends and Family
NPO
Personal pages
Social networks
Tributes
Constituent
Personal events
enablement
Widgets
Social Network plug-ins
Social Media campaigns
• Marketers are realizing great success by:
– Empowering constituents with online tools on your site
– Attracting empowerment-minded influencers off your site

Constituent Empowerment: On
Your Site
• Create an online toolkit
– Constituents create personal
Help Me go to Israel…
Web pages
• Tell a story
• Share images
• Give online
• Host an event
• All money raised tracked to
individual fundraisers
– Individual donors becomes
online constituents
“We gave them tools where they can
• Increase house file ask on our behalf in an easy, non-
threatening way, making it as personal
• Empowerment includes Tributes, of an experience as possible” JNF
Personal Pages, Personal Events

Constituent Empowerment: Off your Site
• Maximize the growing opportunity through an
open approach and deep experience
Enable Constituent’s social sites via real-time
content and portable progress widgets
Encourage Constituent creativity, driving traffic to you
Inform Keep constituents current with RSS
“…enable a group's most passionate supporters to become even more connected
with an organization and conduct proactive outreach.“ Defenders of Wildlife

Widgets
• Enable constituents
to display widgets
promoting the event
• Help supporters
solicit more
donations and
personal fundraising
goals/progress
• Generate grass
roots advocacy
support using
widgets to promote
advocacy
campaigns

Wrapping It Up
• Integrate Engagement, Advocacy, and
Fundraising
• A Preview of what’s next

Integration is Key
Integrate Engagement, Advocacy, and
Fundraising
– Supporters only see one organization
– Have a consistent brand
– Messages should be coordinated
– Develop a complete relationship

The Future of Online Engagement
• Mobile
• Widgets

More Information
Visit – www.TippingPointStrategies.org
Mike@TippingPointStrategies.org