I'm chairing the Institute of Fundraising's New Media Conference on September 26th for the second time, and also jointly hosting the pre-lunch debate with Ariel Spigelman of nfpSynergy.
The topic is "Is new media worth investing in?" Of course, we all shout a resounding yes. But do we secretly mean something else...? Do we mean we can't avoid having to invest in it? To keep up with the Jones', because it's a sign of the times, because using the Internet at work has made our jobs more interesting, because we're paid a salary to.
I'm playing devil's advocate but at the same time I've got some serious concerns about how, what and why charities may be investing in new media. And a lot of them are born out by research... as I'll try to show on the day. I'm worried charities aren't finding new audiences online, I'm freaked that most of them by their own admission can't measure the effectiveness of their web presence or separate online voluntary income from other sources. I feel many are more into gadgetry than goals, and content than communication. And I'm most perturbed by the fact that most of the top dogs within charities haven't a clue what's going on in their web teams, because the whole activity is unaccountable, or unaccounted for, and because they don't understand IT and lump digital with it.
Help!!!! I wouldn't be so het up if there wasn't a reasonable body of research (nfpSynergy, CAF, iConcertina, e-Consultancy, WCIT...) demonstrating how charities (the many rather than the few) are missing so many boats when it comes to really exploiting new channels to market. The charities I have worked with or work with now are finding or a short way along the right path so it's a little too early to use their return on investment, or engagement.
So will someone out there pleease tell me your reasons why new media really is worth investing in? And can you back your argument? You don't need to have hard data, qualitative measures are great. And if I have your permission, I'll gladly use your example to infuse the audience with fresh hope and vision.
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Re : Help! Is new media worth investing in?
Blog from The Donkey Sanctuary, based in Sidmouth, Devon...
Essentially a donkey was being used as a 'target' in a Spanish bullfight. We launched a petition via our newsletter and via our website. We had a banner running across our web pages highlighting the campaign and issued press releases. We loaded a ready-made petition letter onto our website for people to print out and send to the mayor of the town involved.
As a result of the letters and emails generated by the campaign the town has stopped using donkeys in their bullfights. A real success that we're really proud of.
Please see following press release:
DONKEY BULLFIGHT SUCESSFULLY STOPPED BY CAMPAIGNERS
The Donkey Sanctuary and El Refugio del Burrito have successfully helped to stop a donkey being used in a recent Spanish bullfight.
The Donkey Sanctuary, based in Sidmouth, first discovered a donkey had been used in a bullfight through its Spanish counterpart El Refugio del Burrito, based near Malaga.
El Refugio's welfare officer had found evidence of the event taking place in the town of Navaluenga, to the west of Madrid, last November and both organisations have been campaigning for the use of a donkey to be stopped ever since.
An extensive legal case was compiled by El Refugio del Burrito in Spain condemning the event as illegal, and thousands of supporters of the Sanctuary were encouraged to send a petition letter directly to the Mayor's office in Navaluenga.
Paul Svendsen, Director of European Operations says: 'Because of the efforts of El Refugio del Burrito in taking legal action, and the major appeal launched through The Donkey Sanctuary, which flooded the Mayor's office with emails of protest, Navaluegna Town have withdrawn the donkey from the event.
'Our welfare officer was told by the police that no donkey would be used and when he attended the event on the 11th September, it was confirmed! Our hard efforts both in Spain and the UK have paid off - it is the result we wanted.'
A further bullfight is due to take place in the nearby town of Burgohondo next week, where similar problems existed last year; the two organisations are hoping the campaign's success will result in no donkey being used in Burgohondo.
Re : Help! Is new media worth investing in?
Thanks for all the compliments! The fact is that we recognised that the internet was here to stay, and that for a small organisation it was a very simple way of increasing outreach. Things like these blogs, far from wasting time, are an ideal way of clarifying thinking, and also ensuring strategic thinking. In the same way I tell trainees and interns, that if they go on a training course, and get one really good idea in the course of a day, it's worth it. If spending 15-20 minutes a day on creative thinking -- which is how one can regardtrhese sorts of blogs that you and I indulge in -- produces new lines of thought, or stimulates good PR, then it's worth it.
A good example of this would be when I started sounding off about Goats as Christmas presents (a pet concern of environmentalists) last year -- we got a huge amount of very positive PR and a dramatic increase in support.
As far as your requests for information are concerned, they will have to wait until our web manager returns from her sabbatical in Paraguay -- where I hope she is getting some first hand experience of all the wildlife her website has helped to save.
Re : Help! Is new media worth investing in?
John, a quickie - just something I spotted on your site..
Your donation ask is well positoned and primed on the home page and it leads to its own section - http://www.worldlandtrust.org/supporting/index.htm ..
But that section isn't linked from your main navigation even though it does work as a landing page ie. you can enter the site directly on 'supporting' and it presents an overview of all support options.
As the other sections are linked from main nav, it's as if this simply may have been missed?
Btw, do you know the % split of your online income by method? I'd be interested to know how sms compares with one-off and regular gifts in particular. Also, who are you using for sms?
Sarah
Re : Help! Is new media worth investing in?
John - I've just been appreciating your site and enjoying your blog. (It's nice to read someone who is prepared to speak very plainly and to speak out. In fact, with so much smokescreen, sales and spin, it's probably going to become one of the few sure methods of recognising true passion and authenticity, but that's a different topic...)
Of course, what you say/recommend should be blindingly obvious, but I think the point behind my playing devil's advocate - in asking whether it is worthwhile at all, is that so many people are ignoring the obvious. Why?
We can be guilty of beating about the bush with terms I can think of such as relationship marketing, customer intimacy, engagement, enrichment - but if most charity websites still don't offer transparency (eg your point about annual reports), access to real people, activity and purpose/benefit then what is the point of a web presence at all and what is there to enrich? My last online charity donation was worse than an Amazon transaction (which after all now is old hat) and I didn't even receive a very warm thank you.
So many charity sites seem passive. I look for a sense of the charity in action/at work, their vibe, values, results but they can be few and far between. Content is over-abundant (see my blog on hoarding / navel gazing - http://www.fundraising.co.uk/blogs/sarahhughes/2007/05/09/web-socialite-...), donate button are larger than life whilst appeals and calls to action are buried, and even news oftentimes seems to focus on the dry and dreary such as AGMs and such like. It's a bit staggering! I just wonder if there is too much tick-boxing out there.
iConcertina are the latest I think to produce research which shows that even the dab hands with the web such as Oxfam miss glaringly obvious points about transparency and accessibility (as above). Perhaps they don't feel they need to establish credibility and honesty. No, it's probably just another oversight.
Alas not every charity thinks as down to earth (is there a pun in that?!) as you do John. And you're even on hand to answer phones at busy times (I googled).
Thank you for agreeing to the quote!
Sarah
Re : Help! Is new media worth investing in?
Thanks for your comments
Fine with me to quote. Hardly wisdom -- the blindingly obvious I would describe it as!
You will see on our website, that we take this a stage further, by having biogs and photos of nearly all staff and trustees.
Re : Help! Is new media worth investing in?
John, thank you so much for this post. It's uplifting! Do you mind if I quote you at the New Media Conference? I agree with all your points, but this I find particularly poignant / eloquent and would like to share with the audience:
"As the globalised world becomes more imppersonal, it is even more important for charities to provide opportunities for direct engagement".
It resonates with me, as does the comment about large charities often behaving more impersonally. I have found this with many of the large charities I have worked with as a consultant, alas. Whilst the envangelist is willing to get close to both the medium, the message and its receivers, the rest of the organisation often seem to want things to work by themselves. By contrast, the few small to medium sized clients I have worked have been a much more receptive and engaged audience..
Actually, I am about to do an analysis of Virtual Promise 2006 concentrating on what the different bandings of charities by turnover are achieving through the Internet and fundraising specifically, so I will have to post / let you know if the small to medium sized organisations are indeed reaping greater returns and benefits than the large ones..
Thanks again and do say if I can pass on your wisdom!
Sarah
Re : Help! Is new media worth investing in?
In answer to the original question. I cannot see how the Charity I run (the World Land Trust) would have survived had we not invested in the internet. And I cannot see how it can survive into the future unless we continue to try and be as near the cutting edge as possible. It is by far the most cost effective way of recruiting new donors, and keeping them informed as to the results of their support.
I thinka common mistake made by many charities is having information for the sake of information. Information should always be relevant to the purpose of the site. One of the fundamentals for most (all?) charity websites is that it should assist with fundraising. This means that the site should inspire viewers to donate -- and that is not done, as others have pointed out -- by having big donate buttons. Feedback from donors suggests that one very important factor is transparency and ease of contact. Far too many websites do not have phone numebers or even emails of relevant staff to be contacted, and there are still some charities that don't put their annual accounts on the internet. As the globalised world becomes more imppersonal, it is even more important for charities to provide opportunities for direct engagement. Curiously, it is often the larger charities with more numerous staff, that are the most impersonal and difficult to contact. By investing in our internet presence, we nearly doubled income last year, and are set to do so again.
But because of the very nature of the internet, a charity will increasingly needs to demonstrate that it is the best and most effective in its field. It is now compartively easy to check out the track records and CVs even of senior staff, Trustees and others involved with the management of a charity. And finallycomparison sites are becoming more widespread, and the donors more sophisticated. Hence issues such as good navigation, become paramount, together with transparancy etc mentioned above.
As far as I am concerned the big NO is a flashy, all singing and dancing site, full of grahics, overdesigned and not targetted at a specific audience.
We still have many problems with our web presence, but none are insurmountable, and meanwhile, in my mind, there is no question that around 80-90% of our income is dependent on us have websites.
Re : Help! Is new media worth investing in?
I agree wholeheartedly.
Actually thinking about it a bit more - perhaps the key thing is more easily summed up in having a "data driven decision making culture". Unfortunately that whole concept isn't my idea, but it really works for me, and has been sadly lacking in many of the organisations I've worked in (charity or not).
On that note, I do think it's fairly ridiculous that there are still a number of charities who are not using google analytics. Given that it's free, and with the new interface being so useful, I fail to understand why a charity would not choose to use it. The other side of that is that I'm not whether many charities are sophisticated enough to use any the major players that have a significant cost attached.
Perhaps it's a case of going back to the 90/10 rule - spend 90% of your money on your people and 10% on the tools and they'll be able to do more for you than if you spend the other way around. That's courtesy of Avinash.
Re : Help! Is new media worth investing in?
Hi Lucy,
Getting things out quickly is the current syndrome I think. I suffer from it too!
Thank you for making more detailed points; I really second them all.
Proliferating campaign sites are a real bug bear of mine (more content narcissm than creativity or marketing) along with the prominent to larger than life donate button as a replacement for creating integrated fundraising asks and giving pathways.
In terms of knowledge gathering, I emphasise self-knowledge (understand your own site, your offer/s, benefits, construction) followed by know thy customer. I commonly find that charities have a poor understanding of the actual usage (what visitors are doing not how many are visiting), performance and conversion values of their site. Once I am able to help them see the picture painted by any data they have, it becomes easier to agree to prioritise issues and fundamentals before skipping off with exciting ideas for new features. Using benchmarks and competitor comparisons is another good one, although it's difficult to have and to share many of those. Then its objectives / performance criteria setting, and onwards into communications, market research, and marketing plans, and only then do the agreed plans get translated into site developments. Traditionally, webbies and agencies have got their audiences interested by selling them the shiny whistles and coins and I'm afraid that has persisted. It's a tougher but altogether more productive discipline to insist on an analysis and planning process, including market research, before a product design process...
You're right too about most charities having a web presence (I think it's up close to the business sector now, at around two thirds) and most have had their sites for some time. Virtual Promise 05 showed that most charities had had their sites for over 5 years, and had an average of 4 sites, double that of the year before.
So yes, sensible decisions based on sensible evidence is absolutely the only way to go forwards!
I look forward to reading some more of your posts Lucy, and sorry I forgot to link to you earlier - http://www.underthenavbar.com/wp/ - Advice on managing web teams and websites for people who actually manage websites and web teams.
Re : Help! Is new media worth investing in?
Hi Sarah,
I'm sorry if I came across as irked - I didn't mean to. I think I was just trying to get something out quickly, so sorry if I was a bit abrupt.
I guess the angle I was coming from is that it is not a question of whether or not to invest, because most charities have some sort of web presence so have invested in new media to some extent already. Perhaps more important, and I think this is a point your making, is what to invest in.
Following from that would be my recommendation that the one thing people should invest in is the acquisition of knowledge. I guess that was my key frustration when I worked in the NGO sector - a lot of the time money wasn't being spent particularly sensibly.
The sort of things I repeatedly came across were:
* requests to build community forums because some other charity had one (not understanding the overhead of stimulating and maintaining an online communities)
* look at viral marketing campaigns to get more visitors to a site when no one was looking at SEO (not understanding sustainable acquisition).
* to repeatedly build one off campaign sites that would be ignored after launch and only attract minimal traffic (no one looked at whether they were successful or not before commissioning the next one).
* repeated expectations that making the donate button bigger on the homepage to equate with more people donating (not realising customer intentions, etc)
These are just examples of where I have seen money and time invested without a clear understanding of what is required to either make the project a success or where a different project could be far more effective at reaching the organisations goals. Underlying that was a lack of understanding in the busness benefits of what could and couldn't be achieved online. So for me, if any organisation wants to invest in online they should be looking at how they can gain and retain the skills and knowledge they need to ensure sensible decisions are being made.