Meet Donordigital: Matt Burghdoff, Senior Account Executive

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Michael Stein

Matt Burghdoff is Donordigital’s newest Senior Account Executive. Matt joins the team with many years of experience in online fundraising. He previously worked at Grizzard serving a number of nonprofit clients. Prior to that he managed online fundraising activities at Operation Smile. Donordigital’s blogger-in-chief Michael Stein asked Matt a few questions.

Michael: You have a background in multi-channel integration strategies for nonprofits. What does multi-channel integration means for nonprofits in 2012?

Matt: Multi-channel integration boils down to one voice with multiple outlets and variations. Multi-channel strategy is about making sure you have a presence wherever constituents might be, and that presence conveys the spirit or brand of the organization. Regardless of whether I follow your efforts through email updates, print mail, or tweets, I should have the same sense of who you are as an organization, where you’re heading, and where I as a supporter or donor fit it.

For a nonprofit, or even for-profit company, audiences are consuming knowledge about you and your community through TV, Facebook, emails, online news stories, etc. It’s increasingly important to provide information in the medium they are most comfortable with. If you’re not where they are, they’ll never become your supporter and brand evangelist.

That said, it’s also critical to keep in mind the Return on Investment of these various efforts. There are LOTS of different channels available to get information to your audience, but nonprofits have limited resources – money and labor. Don’t spend your time focusing on a mobile giving campaign with only 5 people signed up when you’ve got 20,000 email addresses that can perform better. Put your resources into cultivating those 20,000 emails into a strong program, which will deliver a much better ROI, then use that ROI to cultivate the next most-important channel to your supporters.

Michael: For nonprofits that have both a Mail and an Online program, what are some key strategies for success?

Matt: Constituent tracking instead of channel tracking is more critical than ever. That is the single biggest hurdle nonprofits need to overcome if they’re going to succeed. Your audience doesn’t see themselves as “Mail Recipient” or “Digital Recipient,” and quite frankly they’re not going to stay pigeon-holed into those groups because you ask them. People move across channels at will and sub-consciously, and nonprofits need to be able to track their behavior to get real measurements on their programs’ effectiveness. Organizations which break out of the silo tracking will have a real edge in measuring – and improving – the true effectiveness of their programs.

Michael: What are a few standout highlights from Year-End fundraising 2011?

Matt: The real trend that I’ve seen, and you’re not going to like this, is a slight drop in response rates to traditional fundraising practices. What this means is that getting an actual donation from a standard traditional direct response device – such as an Annual Fund message – is having less and less impact with a digital audience.

The bright spot is that less traditional “asks” are having greater and greater impact. Donors seem to be responding better to programmatic success stories – in more of a conversational than marketing tone – which offer genuine proof of effective services. It’s probably a symptom of the general market trends towards measurable results that we’ve been seeing for years, but its impact is accelerating greatly. People don’t want to be marketed to, and donors are getting increasingly cynical, with the upcoming elections not helping the situation.

Michael: What does the coming year look like in terms of email programs for nonprofits? Will that channel grow, shrink or remain the same in terms of impact?

Matt: Think about it this way: your existing supporters should be finding their way to your website through emails you provide them, to ensure that they actually find you and not a competitor. Approximately 60-80% of direct mail donors will go to an organization’s website before being willing to cut a check, and that doesn’t factor in that email is – for most organizations – the single biggest online fundraising method. Online giving is also growing exponentially year over year. I’d consider a good email program pretty important.

Michael: With so many donors and supporters using their smartphones to read their email, what does that do to email messaging that is essentially designed for larger screens?

Matt: It’s more important than ever that we follow the general rules of email – short, sweet, and to the point. We have to remember the 3 second rule: If I can’t figure out what this is, what you want me to do, and why I should do it in 3 seconds or less, you didn’t do your job. We have a tendency to treat emails like a long, drawn out conversation when really an email is the doorway to a deeper conversation. With emails, we want to give the audience something to react to – a touching story, a compelling ask, an urgent advocacy need – and then let them react by donating, posting the stories on their Facebook accounts, or coming to our website to learn more. Long, drawn out emails not only are difficult for smart phones, but they slow the audience’s ability to react.

Meet Donordigital: Anthony Blair-Borders, Senior Web Designer

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Michael Stein

Anthony Blair-Borders is Donordigital’s web designer, a role that is integral to many of the client projects throughout our agency. Anthony joins the team with many years of experience in advertising, digital design and art. Donordigital’s blogger-in-chief Michael Stein asked Anthony a few questions.

Michael: Describe your advertising background working as an art director and creative.

Anthony: I began my career in print design, illustration, and storyboards. My evolution into the digital space began when I decided to make my own online portfolio and I subsequently taught myself HTML. I quickly realized that knowing how to code added a brand new, marketable skill set that was in high demand. And, as I expanded my developer’s toolkit, I began to recognize that design for the web is a completely different beast from print design. Print is largely about working with static graphics that interact with an audience in very specific ways, but design for the web is dynamic; it moves, grows, shrinks and flows based on ever-changing content and ever-evolving technology. The web is also about user experience and interactivity. Needless to say, this was all very exciting stuff to learn about. And it continues to evolve and present new challenges all the time, which for me is pretty exciting.

Michael: Your bio says you’ve won some awards.

Anthony: In 2007, I was working on a series of enterprise-level direct mail pieces for a telecommunications giant. These were really expensive, complex pieces that were going to CEOs and corporate heads and featured all kinds of strange materials like vinyl and metal and were often folded together with the complexity of Origami. The particular piece in question was for walkie-talkie service. While concepting, I was inspired by Eric Carle’s children’s books The Very Quiet Cricket and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. When opened, the piece chirped like a walkie-talkie (and consistently startled everyone in the agency it was so loud) and worked as a flip book with a call-and-response on the left-and-right flip panels. No matter what panel you flipped to, the result was the same: there was a problem, but our client’s service got the job done.

Michael: What interests you about working at Donordigital,?

Anthony: Traditional advertising always left me feeling a little flat. I loved the work and making gorgeous things, but I hated that huge amounts of my time were spent selling products and services that I very rarely cared about. But I love working with non-profits, because at the end of the day I feel like I’m using my skills and talents for something worthwhile. So far, I can truthfully say that I love working with all of our clients — though I have to admit that PETA comes up with some really interesting projects, especially during the holidays. Secret Santa and PETA Presents were both big fun and big challenges

Michael: You bio says you often donate artwork and illustrations for various local charities and events.

Anthony: Years ago I had an opportunity to provide illustrations for a Couture for the Cure fashion show and sketch art gallery sale. I was asked to work for a milliner who made all of her hats on the fly without working from sketches, so I was basically tasked to make sketches of her hats for the art sale. But I was inspired by the quirkiness of her hats and so I drew them being worn by whimsical, faerie-like creatures. The hat designer was pretty perturbed that I didn’t make straight-up fashion sketches, but they turned out to be very popular and I sold all of them. The best part of the experience was getting to take part in the fashion show and the whole process. It was also my first gallery show, so that was exciting as well.

I’ve also worked multiple times making posters and T-shirt graphics for benefit concerts for OneAtmosphere and SF Climate Challenge. I’m a bit of a music nerd, and I’ve always had a fondness (well, obsession, really) with concert posters and album cover art, so getting to make posters is great fun.

Climatepalooza 2010 with CAKE Concert Poster

Michael: What other passions and hobbies inspire you?

Anthony: I’m a fine artist in my spare time. As an artist, I draw inspiration from a wide array of sources, from traditional painters like Paul Klee and Max Ernst to lowbrow artists like Joel Sorren and Jeff Soto. I also grew up with a big collection of comics by Jean “Moebius” Giraud, who was a huge influence. I also find inspiration in nature, architecture, fashion, music, science fiction and fantasy literature, comic books, pop culture, video games, personal experience… just about everything. I soak it all up, purée it in my subconscious, and pour it back out. I guess I’m the artistic equivalent of Jamba Juice.

The Guitarist, acrylic on watercolor paper, 2007

Right now, my big focus is on my family. My wife and I have a 1-year-old and I spend almost all of my free time with them. Watching my child grow and develop has to be one of the highlights of my life. I love music. I’m one of those guys that used to work in a record store and has big opinions about bands, producers, and composers… and I used to be real snotty about it, too. I’ve mellowed out quite a bit in my old age, thankfully, and I’m less cranky about which Beatles album is best (the correct answer is Revolver). Finally, I’m really into science fiction and fantasy literature and comic books. I’m also big into video games, though since I have a toddler at home, I don’t get as much time for them as I used to.

Excitement around donations by text message fades

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Michael Stein

I was intrigued by this story in The New York Times Bits Blog that reports on research recently conducted on donors who used text messages to send gifts to charities after the Haiti earthquake.

The finding of the study is that even though there was a surge in mobile giving for Haiti earthquake relief, that surge did not translate into either ongoing growth in mobile giving or into further giving through other channels.

This is a very important finding, and it confirms a belief that we have long suspected at Donordigital, which is that mobile giving is not a reliable ongoing fundraising source, and it potentially weakens other fundraising opportunities when it is not deployed in a manner that includes strong ongoing cultivation activities.

“The quixotic nature of text giving was further highlighted by the survey’s finding that 60 percent of the donors interviewed said they had paid little or no attention to the continuing recovery efforts in Haiti after making their contributions,” writes Stephanie Strom.

This highlights the need for strong and creative efforts to keep mobile donors informed about Haiti relief efforts, either through the mobile medium itself, or through email updates. The issue of converting mobile donors into email subscribers is a challenge in and of itself that requires experimentation and savvy to achieve.

The study also highlights that over 80 percent of those surveyed said they had not donated to Haiti in any other way and only one-third of them had made more than one contribution using their phones.

This highlights a growing concern among fundraising professionals that mobile giving may be reducing overall charitable giving. Average gifts via email and Web are usually north of $60. Average mobile giving is $10.

Clearly the challenge ahead is how to move mobile donors to become multi-channel donors. This is not an easy challenge to address. It starts with getting mobile donors to share their email and social media information, so that NGOs can conduct ongoing cultivation and ongoing fundraising that is not constricted by the mobile channel.

Read the full article Excitement Around Donations by Text Message Fades at The New York Times.

Michael Stein is a Senior Account Executive at Donordigital, the online fundraising, marketing, and advertising company. Contact: michael@donordigital.com or phone (510) 473-0364.

Convio founder tech & consumer predictions for 2012

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Michael Stein

Let the 2012 predictions begin. Vinay Bhagat, founder and chief strategy officer of Convio shares his thoughts on technology and consumer trends for 2012 in a guest post on the Guidestar blog.

Convio is an enterprise-class, cloud-based platform that many of Donordigital’s clients use for email messaging, constituent management, peer-to-peer fundraising, and online gift processing.

Here are Vinay’s top five predictions for the nonprofit sector in 2012:

Online and new media channels will continue to extend their influence
Peer-to-peer marketing will continue to be more important
Donor fatigue will get more pronounced
Supporters want to control their experience
Integrated marketing practices will mature

The way I read this is that email messaging will decline as an impactful way to raise money online, and other tools and channels will grow in influence. This is sure to add new challenges to nonprofits and the agencies that work for them to experiment with new techniques and tools to reach supporters and donors.

Vinay’s comment that donating decisions will be more guided by campaigns from friends, family and co-workers is an insightful prediction, as I observe a big desire by individuals of all walks of life to raise money online for the causes that are meaningful to them.

On that last point, I would challenge all software-as-a-service providers to evaluate the features and user experience of their own “friendraising” tools, and make a commitment to improve them in the year ahead. Having recently rolled them out for several clients, there is clearly some room for improvement.

Vinay’s other theme of consumers wanting to control their user experience is certainly a central challenge to nonprofits. There is too much one-size-fits-all publishing going on across the nonprofit world, which is holdover from direct mail. The online world calls out for us to invent ways to diversify content by all means necessary.

Please take a moment to read Vinay Bhagat’s insightful article.

Meet Donordigital: Amanda MacCullough

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Michael Stein

Amanda MacCullough is Donordigital’s newest Account Executive and is responsible for day-to-day operations with several of Donordigital’s nonprofit clients including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Amanda joined the Donordigital team with experience in nonprofit development and fundraising, ranging from grant writing, managing online software-as-a-service vendors, and working with volunteers on third party events. She recently worked at Breastcancer.org. Donordigital’s blogger-in-chief Michael Stein asked Amanda a few questions.

Michael: Tell us about your recent work at Breastcancer.org.

Amanda: Breastcancer.org is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing the most reliable, complete, and up-to-date information about breast cancer and breast health as well as an active and supportive online community.

I had various roles at Breastcancer.org but they all fell under development and fundraising. Half of my time was spent managing traditional fundraising activities such as writing and editing grant applications and coordinating fundraising events.

The other half of my time was working on our online operations. I managed content focused on fundraising, implemented various email programs, modified donation forms, and collaborated with supporters who wanted to create their own fundraising page.

Michael: It sounds like you’ve done a lot of work on email messaging.

Amanda: I managed the email calendar for the organization, helping to plan out the communication schedule with its growing audiences. I would write the copy for the development emails, and for all emails (development & otherwise) would update the monthly communications with all the new content and images to feature, then test and send them! We used the Convio platform for our email messaging.

Michael: Other than email messaging, what Convio tools have you used?

Amanda: I’ve worked with several other components of Convio including TeamRaiser, PageBuilder, and donation forms.

I was the contact for anyone around the world who wanted to utilize the TeamRaiser tool for their event benefitting Breastcancer.org. I connected them to event planning resources, provided info about the organization, and helped them set up their own fundraising page in Convio.

TeamRaiser was also used for a large corporate-sponsored bowling event the organization benefitted from. I worked with a Convio contact to set up customized pages for this, and TeamRaiser was utilized to allow the various company teams to compete in fundraising for this bowling event.

Michael: What’s the most interesting fundraising campaign you’ve worked on?

Amanda: I’ve helped to organize a bra decorating contest. It was a friend-raiser/fundraiser with a local store. People decorated bras and paid $5 to have it “entered”. They were displayed in the store during the event and judges selected winners to receive gift certificates. We used the bras for several events after that as unique decorations!

What is the real value of social media for nonprofits?

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Michael Stein

David Matthew of Software Advice has authored a good blog post about how to get the most out of social media. He offers some sage advice about not diving in too fast to staff up in this area without first understanding the return on investment (ROI) of this activity. David correctly asserts that it’s hard to connect the dots between an increased social media presence and improved donations. Most nonprofits have come to accept that Facebook and Twitter are not donation platforms, although they are functioning effectively as useful buzz-building tools during fundraising campaigns of all kinds, reinforcing and repeating campaign goals, tying in with email and direct mail, or promoting events. Tools on Facebook such as Causes have unfortunately done little to support fundraising goals.

David asserts correctly with good examples such as Lance Armstrong Foundation that social media platforms have become fundamental for cultivating brand awareness and audience engagement. This has undoubtedly been the biggest learning for the past few years of the growth of social media. Facebook and Twitter have been steadily rising as traffic sources to nonprofit websites, and nonprofits have gotten the message that every staff hour spent on social media content and recruitment returns some value to the organization, even if that value can be hard to quantify.

This question of what is the value of a Facebook fan keeps rolling on. Having a new fan on Facebook is not necessarily the same as having a new donor or volunteer. Nonprofits are betting that a new Facebook fan may (one day) be worth as much as a new email subscriber. Time will tell.

With email open rates, click through rates and engagement completion rates at the lowest historical level they’ve ever been, nonprofits are understandably scrambling for new online platforms and territories to explore. Especially now that it’s pretty conclusive that young people under 20 are favoring Facebook, Twitter and text messaging over email.

Email as a fundraising channel is limited by the fact that open rates and response rates are now so low, and the homogenization of email fundraising is running the risk of numbing prospective donors into a stupor. Like email spam and mail fundraising appeals, recipients are scanning their in-boxes for clutter to delete. As a result, email fundraising has become a pure numbers game, like its direct mail predecessor. Getting good value from an email fundraising strategy relies on an increasingly growing email acquisition strategy. In other words, you have to relentlessly grow your email list to raise money through email. Many nonprofits are clinging to the hope that social media can help strengthen donor engagement online — let’s hope it does.

Read David Matthew’s article What is the Real Value of Social Media for Nonprofits?

Michael Stein is a Senior Account Executive at Donordigital, the online fundraising, marketing, and advertising company. Contact: michael@donordigital.com or phone (510) 473-0364.

The Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Michael Stein

Gene Austin wrote in the June 2011 issue of Mal Warwick’s Newsletter that Convio recently released its fifth annual Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index™ Study designed to help nonprofit professionals understand beneficial online marketing metrics, evaluate the effectiveness of their organization compared to similar organizations and determine strategies for future success.

Key findings of the 2011 study include:

Online fundraising continues to grow. Overall, 79% of organizations included in the report raised more in 2010 than 2009.
Advocacy continues to play an important role. Total number of advocates on file increased by 20%, and 6.4% of advocates on file were also donors, up from 5.9% in 2009.
An increase in gift count and average gift size primarily drove fundraising gains. This indicates more people are moving online to give even if inspired through other channels.
Email files continued to grow strongly. The median total email file grew 22% to 48,700 constituents. The increase in people engaging online means organizations need to ensure their communications and fundraising asks match the channel preferences for their constituents if they hope to maximize the value of each relationship.
Haiti relief played a strong role in growing aggregate online fundraising. The vertical most impacted by the Haiti event was the Disaster & Relief vertical, growing 38% from 2009 to 2010. Independent of the Haiti event, however, Disaster & Relief still grew at a healthy 23% from 2009 to 2010.

The entire report as a PDF can be downloaded here.

Habitat for Humanity fundraising campaign features March Madness

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Michael Stein

Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Back to School, Thanksgiving, Christmas/Hanukkah are the most common holidays that work for many online fundraising programs. This year, we added the March Madness college basketball tournament into the mix for Habitat for Humanity International. Habitat usually does a big “match” fundraising campaign every March, and this year we decided to connect the theme to the basketball tournament to see if we could garner some additional interest from Habitat supporters.

Email messages, website promotions, donation pages, web remarketing banners and Facebook content all featured a common basketball theme and catchy calls to action connected to the basketball tournament. Donors were invited to vote for their favorite team after making a donation, and social media drew extra attention to the appeal.

The fighting in Libya and then the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan all probably impacted Habitat’s March Match fundraising campaign, but you can’t plan for those events! What you can plan is to get a match, create a consistent theme and message, adopt a deadline for giving, and repeat the ask.

Michael Stein is a Senior Account Executive at Donordigital, the online fundraising, marketing, and advertising company. Contact: michael@donordigital.com or phone (510) 473-0364.

Donordigital expands strategic and creative leadership and opens Washington, DC office

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Michael Stein

Donordigital announced on June 1, 2011, the hiring of online fundraising veterans Eric Overman and Adam Ruff. Eric joins the agency as Vice President for Digital Strategy and Integrated Services, and Adam as Vice President, opening Donordigital’s new Washington, DC office.

Eric Overman comes to Donordigital from Grizzard Communications, where he built their current digital and interactive practice for nonprofit clients. Previously, Eric led online marketing at Operation Smile, where he launched the organization’s first interactive department, drove direct marketing integration, and initiated its social marketing program. During his tenure, Operation Smile won the Nonprofit of the Year Award from the Direct Marketing Association for excellence in direct marketing creativity and strategy. In 2009, Eric won the American Marketing Association’s Nonprofit Marketer of the Year Award.

Adam Ruff has broad expertise in integrated nonprofit fundraising and political campaigns. He was formerly Vice President of Blueprint Interactive, Vice President of Interactive Marketing at MSHC Partners, and Political Business Manager at Blue State Digital. Most recently his work won a 2011 American Association of Political Consultants “Pollie Award” for the “NO on 23” campaign in California, and in 2010 he was named to the Aristotle Democratic Campaign “Dream Team.”

“Eric and Adam have proven track records in innovative fundraising for nonprofits and political campaigns,” said Dan Doyle, President & CEO of Donordigital. “We are excited that the creative and strategic expertise they bring will enhance our clients’ leadership in the online space.”

“It is a tremendous opportunity to join Donordigital at this time, when online integration and new media fundraising has emerged as a critical component to engaging donors,” Overman said. “Donordigital is committed to presenting innovative creative and strategic online fundraising solutions to their clients, and I look forward to working with the great team already in place and an exciting group of clients.”

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