I'd never been to Seth's site before, but I'm glad I did because we share some similar thoughts. I'm pretty sure we didn't work together to get Ronald Reagan elected, but we just may have crossed paths through charitable non-profits. In the worlds of foundations and campaigns there is a constant; if it worked before it works now. Unfortunately, as Seth's blog shows, it no longer is the reality of non-profits. It is also no longer the reality of today's campaigning.
I gave at the office
Mark Rovner has an insightful post about the current state of fundraising and non-profits.
The short version: most big charities are based on direct mail fundraising, and as you're read here before, direct mail is dying. What to do?
I'll start with the bad news: I despair for most of the top 50 non-profits in the US. These are the big guys, and they're stuck. Unlike the Fortune 100, not known for being cutting edge in themselves, the top charities rarely change... if you're big, you're used to being big and you expect to stay big. That means that generation after generation of staff has been hired to keep doing what's working. Big risks and crazy schemes are certainly frowned upon.
The good news is this: the Internet is not a replacement for direct mail fundraising. It is, in fact, something much bigger than that for just about every non-profit.
As soon as commerce started online, many non-profits discovered lots of income from their websites. This was mistakenly chalked up to brilliant conversion and smart marketing. In fact, it was just technologically advanced donors using a more convenient method to send in money they would have sent in anyway.
The big win is in changing the very nature of what it means to support a charity. The idea of "I gave at the office" and of giving money in the last week in December speaks to obligation. Many people donate to satisfy a guilty feeling, or to please a friend. This doesn't scale. Not one bit. It's super easy to ignore a direct mail solicitation when all you have to do is hit delete and no one notices.
The big win is in turning donors into patrons and activists and participants. The biggest donors are the ones who not only give, but do the work. The ones who make the soup or feed the hungry or hang the art. My mom was a volunteer for years at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, and there's no doubt at all that we gave more money to the museum than we would have if they'd sent us a flyer once a month.
The internet allows some organizations to embrace long-distance involvement. It lets charities flip the funnel, not through some simple hand waving, but by reorganizing around the idea of engagement online. It means opening yourself up to volunteers, encouraging them to network, to connect with each other, and yes, even to mutiny. It means giving every one of your professionals a blog and the freedom to use it. It means mixing it up with volunteers, so they have something truly at stake. This is understandably scary for many non-profits, but I'm not so sure you have a choice.
Do you have to abandon the old ways today? Of course not. But responsible stewardship requires that you find and empower the mavericks and give them the flexibility to build something new, not to try to force the internet to act like direct mail with free stamps.
Fundraising is the major force behind campaigns and Ron Paul has shown, for example, how the Internet can be utilized as an easier and faster tool to not just raise funds, but get headlines. That fellow in Nigeria that keeps notifying me of the $25o Million he wants to give me is another example of raising funds over the Internet. As Seth points out this isn't new thinking, it is just new technology and a technology that all campaigns will eventually use.
Good ideas can spread into campaigns. Campaigns can domino into a larger effort capable of winning. Funding is only the start. Networking, thinking outside of the box, ignoring time and distance,and allowing volunteers to become local experts and to disseminate the message locally, statewide and nationally. These are the are ways to build a campaign. More importantly, it is a way for the campaign to retain and utilize volunteers to win.
Every campaign needs funding and every volunteer effort needs some ability to fund itself. When these ingredients are put together campaigns become viable. Just as small business is the lifeblood of the economy, volunteers are the lifeblood of winning campaigns. If the product is good.
Any thoughts?
