26. So what can I do Tomorrow? Make sure your story is clear Make sure a supporter can “join” your organization Pick a platform—don’t build this yourself Make sure your ask is significant and clear Make sure your give is meaningful and clear Don’t be shy LAUNCH! “Contract”
27.
28. Good Luck! Text “Fundly” to 77948 For a promotional code good for 60 days free
29. Good Luck! Text “Fundly” to 77948 For a promotional code good for 60 days free
Editor's Notes
Founded my first non-profit in 1991 and second in 1992—music organizations that still exist today and have won national recognition & awardsHave built and sold for-profit companies, the latest to OracleI currently sit on 3 non-profit boards and 2 for-profit boardsLeft Oracle to help found Fundly, the leader in social fundraising platforms for non-profitsToday we are talking about engagement, and I want to start off with a question. A “would you rather?” question:
Which of these would you rather have? A donor ready to give you his money, or a supporter ready to introduce his friends?It’s a rhetorical question. And a trick question We would all like both. The real answer is that we would like a donor who is ready to introduce his friends. But here’s a real question: Think about your website. Are we clear about what we want when we interact with our audience over our website? Can our supporters clearly figure out how todonate, and join? And when I say clear, I mean with one click—I don’t mean “is is possible to navigate your way around and read through enough of the site until I find the opportunity” to do one of these things.Generally when I ask this question, even when sitting in front of a non-profit’s homepage, some of the reasons I hear for that *not* being the case include:We have so many valuable programsWe can’t leave anyone outWe need to give people a choiceThe result of this is often a website that looks like a portal into the library of congress. Speaking of which, let’s take a look at a website for one of the most complex, information-rich non-profit organizations in the world, the United States of America, and see what we think about President Obama’s website:
So if you agree that each of these websites is clear in its invitation to engage supporters, what is engagement?
Engagement is a contract.“A reciprocal contract between two entities whereby each gives and receives over time”I give you something, then you give me something. Then I give you something back. Then you give me something back. It’s the principle of reciprocity, and it works. It’s key to all relationships on the internet.So that begs one very important question:
Why do your supporters want to engage with you?What do they get? What can you give?And what are you going to ask of them?
In their book Made to Stick, Dan and Chip Heath share a fascinating story about tappers and listeners.In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: "tappers" or "listeners."
Tappers received a list of twenty-five well-known songs, such as "Happy Birthday to You" and "The Star- Spangled Banner." Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener (by knocking on a table).
The listener's job was to guess the song, based on the rhythm being tapped. (This is fun to try at home if you can round up a good "listener" candidate) As you can imagine, the listener's job in this game is quite difficult.But here's what made the game worthy of a dissertation in psychology. Before the listeners guessed the name of the song, Newton asked the tappers to predict the odds that the listeners would guess correctly. They predicted that the odds were 50 percent. Over the course of Newton's experiment, 120 songs were tapped out. How many of those did the listeners guess correctly?
Only 33 out of 120, which equals 2.5 percent of the songsIn other words, the tappers got their message across 1 time in 40, but they thought they were getting their message across 1 time in 2. Why?
When a tapper taps, he is hearing the song in his head. Go ahead and try it for yourself - tap out "The Star-Spangled Banner." It's impossible to avoid hearing the tune in your head. Meanwhile, the listeners can't hear that tune - all they can hear is a bunch of disconnected taps, like a kind of bizarre Morse Code.In the experiment, tappers are mystified at how hard the listeners seem to be working to pick up the tune. The song is so obvious? How can you have not guessed it by now. The tappers' expressions, when a listener guesses "Happy Birthday to You" for "The Star-Spangled Banner," are priceless: How could you be so stupid?Let’s tap that out for a minute. “Happy Birthday to You” “Oh say can you see”. The taps are remarkably similar. So although it’s hard to be a listener, it's hard to be a tapper too. When tappers are tapping, they can't imagine what it's like for the listeners to hear isolated taps rather than a song. They hear the song so loudly in their head that they assume the listener can too.
Back to our question. Q.Whydo our supporters want to engage with us? A. They like what we are doingAnd what can we give them that will be meaningful to them?Tell them about what we are doing. Tell them about how they are making a difference through our organization.
The Houston Ballet tells their story through a series of behind-the-scenes photos on their Flickr account
Charity Water tells their story through infographics, Google Maps tagged with images of the projects they’re working on, etc.
The World Food Programme tells their stories through videos. There’s an interesting phenomenon here – the first video has 41 comments (and is also the shortest). The second video has 6. Placement matters.
And now for the counter-intuitive part. You have to ask for something significant.The psychology of engagement doesn’t work unless your supporters are giving something that feels significant to them.Another study coming out of Stanford looked at this phenomenon. Wendy Liu and Jennifer Aaken studied engagement at Stanford University. Their hypothesis was that if people feel more engaged, they will give more. This turned out to be true, but not new.
So you have to make your ask significant. Because people WANT to give. They want to give THROUGH you. And when they do, they know they will be happier.But your side of the contract holds too… If people are giving into a black hole, getting nothing back, it breaks the contract. So you have to give something meaningful to them in return to keep the cycle going.I ask something significant of you, you give.In return I give something meaningful to you: reciprocityNow you are grateful to me, and you can do more.That’s how engagement works.
