Best Practice in Digitizing Donor Relations
Date: February 1, 2017
Prepared By: Jonathan Brooks with Lynne Becker
Category: Donor Relations
Comments To: [email protected] (please include the Name of
Practice, above, in the subject line)
Comment Period: April 1, 2017 to June 31, 2017
Description of Practice:
Digital fundraising provides a powerful alternative to traditional fundraising
mediums. Though online giving outlets and platform companions to traditional
channels are no longer innovative, fully integrated digital fundraising in the field
of higher education is a relatively new phenomenon and is redefining many
possibilities.
Prospective Users of Practice:
• Advancement Services professionals
• Advancement system analysts, project managers, Central IT staff
Issue Addressed: The most notable example is digital stewardship, which is
already changing the design and strategy of annual giving communication. How
is digital stewardship fundamentally different from its traditional counterparts?
What new possibilities and characteristics is it adding to conventional notions of
stewardship? How are we realizing or failing to realize the full potential of digital
stewardship?
Desired Outcome: Technology trending would be better understood at the grass
roots level. A clear understanding about how these trends impact advancement
services and how annual giving can best collaborate to achieve success.
Process: Here is an outline of the process.
•
•
Define donor relations and stewardship for your organization
Familiarize the team with the evolution of digital stewardship
•
•
Plan social media channels and best practices which your organization will
adopt
Manage your social media program
AASP Recommendation:
Introduction
The recent emergence of digital fundraising in higher education provides a
powerful alternative to the existing fundraising mediums. Though online giving
outlets and platform companions to traditional channels are no longer innovative,
full-fledged online fundraising in the field of higher education is a relatively new
phenomenon and is redefining many possibilities. The most notable example is
digital stewardship, which is already changing the design and strategy of annual
giving programs. At the same time, much of these new digital initiatives remains
unknown. On the one hand, such outlets show great promise of transforming our
stewardship practices; on the other hand, some essential issues remain yet to be
explored so that the transformation will be sustainable. In what ways are digital
stewardship tools fundamentally different from their traditional counterparts?
Exactly what new possibilities and characteristics are they adding to our
conventional notions of stewardship? In what ways are we realizing or failing to
realize the full potential of digital stewardship?
In trying to deliver some answers to these questions, this best practice hopes to
define both the veracities and opportunities of digital stewardship. By examining
the major digital platforms currently available, the outcome of this best practice
will result in the following learning objectives: 1) to help us discover whether
current digital stewardship initiatives are designed in the most effective way to
serve our purposes, 2) whether our current stewardship strategies are taking full
advantage of these new tools, and 3) whether digital stewardship and our
practices are promoting or constraining each other.
Define donor relations and stewardship for your organization
Donor relations is the comprehensive effort of any nonprofit that seeks
philanthropic support to ensure that donors experience high-quality interactions
with the organization that foster long-term engagement and investment. This
effort is commonly thought to have four elements: Gift Acceptance and
Management, Acknowledgement, Donor Recognition and Reporting. (Association
of Donor Relations Professionals - ADRP.net)
Stewardship (internally) is commonly referred to as reporting elements.
Historically, it is defined as the safeguarding of the assets of others. Activities
associated with stewardship are focused on ensuring that the funds provided by
donors are utilized in the way intended as conveyed in gift agreements and fund
terms. (ADRP.net)
Stewardship in general then is the administration of gifts and the overseeing,
protection and care of the relationship with a donor to strengthen and preserve
that relationship overtime. (Higher Education Funding Council for England –
hefce.ac.uk)
Familiarize the team with the evolution of digital stewardship
The evolution of digital stewardship has changed the relative simplicity of this
traditional definition. Websites now have images, infographics and charts for a
very visual impact. However, actively involving donors in stewardship through
interactive and participatory activity creates a stronger and longer lasting impact.
Sharing stories is often highlighted and creates an emotional response in our
donors. An example of this well done is the University of Houston Giving Page.
And saying “thank you” has become particularly effective through giving
Websites. Executive administrators, deans and provosts, significant alumni as
well as student recipients all participate in videos and messaging to convey
gratitude to donors. At Johns Hopkins University they produce a now famous
collaborative thank you video that also showcases the power of social media in
donor recognition.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=johns+hopkin+thank+you+video&&view=d
etail&mid=454ADC25876D73A43BA3454ADC25876D73A43BA3&FORM=VRDG
AR
At the University of Houston, “thank you” videos are rotated to reflect seasonal
themes, stakeholders, and are customized to each College.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxwIAybw9LQ
Social media includes the use of digital donor badges; electronic recognition of
real-life philanthropic support. This enables non-profits and universities to
leverage the predisposition of donors to put their philanthropy on display and
promote your cause. This has been very popular with organizations like the
American Red Cross. http://www.redcrossblood.org/donating-blood/blood-donorcommunity/avatars-and-badges The badges are placed on the donor’s user
profile pages by uploading it to compatible social media outlets, such as
Facebook.
Many giving platforms incorporate social media sharing to the giving experience.
The United Way demonstrates the impact that social media can have when a
donor promotes their personal philanthropy. The instruction states “Sharing your
donation with your network can increase its impact by as much as 18%. It’s like
adding an additional $0.90 to your donation [of $5].” The donor has the ability to
share their support via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and gives the
option to send a personal solicitation email on the organizations behalf.
Depending on your organization’s donation platform you can allow donors to
customize post-donation content or provide pre-populated content for them.
Below are quick guides to easily create Facebook and Twitter buttons that allow
for post-donation engagement.
Twitter allows you to pre-populate the entire content, including links.
(https:about.twitter.com/resources/buttons) Once you populate the link, text,
usernames, and hashtags, Twitter will privde a line of code that you can paste
into your confirmation page.
Facebook does not allow you to pre-populate the message itself, however, you
can create a new post that includes a link. Once the user clicks the link, they will
be able to write in their own message
(https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/share-button). Facebook will
generate two lines of code. The first line of code is to be used in WordPress or
any CMS, which you will have the ability to add it globally on your website or just
specific pages. The second line of code is to be linked to your donation
confirmation page.
Plan social media channels and best practices which your organization will
adopt
Social Media is a sustainable medium for engagement; it is the most dynamic
channel to engage constituents across all demographics, it supports donor
centric communication, and it promotes your institutional and philanthropic brand.
As mentioned earlier, showing and sharing video are connective social media.
Videos are viewed, liked, and shared more than other content. They need to be
120 seconds maximum. Ideally videos should be 30 to 60 seconds. Duke
University used the same video and edited the content to match the outlet used
for publication.
It is important to incorporate twitter tags in all outlets if possible. Social media is
about creating a conversation and engagement. Therefore, include your
constituency in the dialogue and in content creation. Also be interactive. Social
media is not about creating a newsfeed and talking only about yourself and your
achievements. Paramount is focusing on the content your constituents want to
digest, not on what you think they need to see. This means that regular analysis
of your constituent’s interaction with your content is required in order to remain
relevant and successful in social media.
The graphic below showcases all the different social media outlets your
organization can leverage to engage your constituents. You must assess which
platforms are most important to your demographic in order to maximize your
investment. Overall, the majority of your constituents are using Facebook,
Twitter, Thunderclap, LinkedIn, Instagram, and/or Snapchat.
Source: Lumina Partners
Twitter is great for organizing and creating instant awareness. Many platforms
will track engagement scores for you, such as retweets. Make sure hashtag is
clearly relevant and relatable. For example the University of North Carolina –
Wilmington uses #uncw24 for the “Give More in 24” Campaign.
https://giving.uncw.edu/home Also, make sure hashtag is not currently being
used for something else.
Facebook is effective for engaging the most users across all demographics.
However, digital natives and younger millennials are utilizing Facebook less to
actively engage than all other demographics largely due to the nature of post
being generated. Thankfully, Facebook Live is becoming a widely adopted tool
for personal interaction with a large audience and has increased traffic of this
illusive demographic.
Thunderclap has digital flash mob capabilities. More than 12 billion Thunderclap
messages have been seen by people across 238 countries and territories. It’s the
world’s first crowdspeaking platform, and over 7 million people have donated
their social reach for ideas and causes that matter. These campaigns turned
inspiration into impact. Examples include AmeriCorps who had 51 million people
celebrate their 20th birthday with the campaign: Happy Birthday AmeriCorps!
There was a social reach of 51,996,154. Planned Parenthood turned the internet
pink. Their campaign was PinkOut for Planned Parenthood and had a social
reach of 7,815,372. Thunderclap allows your constituents to share their social
media handles with your organization and allows you to access them to post
content on their behalf, as if they were posting it themselves.
LinkedIn has a more professional audience and your organization should keep in
mind that communication should be more formal. In you are in Higher Education,
an advantage to using LinkedIn in your digital stewardship and overall strategy is
that it created an entire division focused on Higher Education with its Utilize
Groups showing how to run an active and valuable LinkedIn group. It also allows
for one-on-one high touch engagement opportunities.
Instagram can be creatively utilized as a reporting tool. As Gonzaga University’s
Instagram site shows, it has the capability of demonstrating impact through
pictures (click right). Always tag your photos, just like a tweet, as you want to
make it easy for constituents to find and interact with your Instagram. It is
important to analyze Instagram posts regularly to insure you are giving people
access to the things that interest them the most. Is it behind-the-scenes
operations or compelling images of people you help?
Snapchat is effective for thank you videos and to create stories such as a day in
the life of a donor or student. As Snapchat promotes, “Life's more fun when you
live in the moment! :) Download Snapchat for iOS and Android, and start
Snapping with friends today.” Snap chat allows you to connect with your younger
demographics. Your organization will significantly increase its relevance by
adopting this platform. The New York Times said about Snapchat, “People aren’t
fishing for likes and follows and reshares…they’re trying to be real.” It is
imperative that your content is fun, lighthearted, approachable, and most
importantly, relatable. Charity: Water uses Snapchat to offer insight into their
office life, human interaction, and non-mission driven action, such as photos from
the organization’s Halloween party. Do not simply use Snapchat to share images
of your Instagram and Facebook and ask people to follow you. This strategy will
fail. Recently, Snap Chat has partnered with Square, allowing users to exchange
money with those in their contact list. How can your organization leverage this
potential?
Manage your social media program
Your organization must create a repository and guidelines. The University of
Michigan maintains a remarkable resource page with strategy and guidelines, a
special section for students, downloads, a social directory and blog included. The
University of Houston has also created a comprehensive social media directory
(http://www.uh.edu/social/ ; http://www.uh.edu/policies/social-media/). This will
keep order in the wild west of digital media. Your organization must keep a
comprehensive calendar of all social media content being generated by the
institution. For example, if your organization has more than one Facebook page,
do not post the same content individually. Instead, like or repost the content. It
will make it more easily digestible for your constituents and build your credibility.
Your organization must invest resources into measuring your social media
success and recognize it as invaluable for understanding the intricacies of your
constituents. There are many tools available to capture social media activity.
Google Alerts is the most basic means of collecting data, and, in fact, doesn’t
capture social media posts, but it does let you know when your organization has
been mentioned, which your organization could then turn into something
actionable through its own social media outlets. Hootsuite tracks many KPI’s
across multiple social platforms, however, its most valuable function is that it
scans Twitter in real time and will alert you even if your tag isn’t being used.
Icerocket specializes in blog searches, but will also capture activity on Facebook,
Twitter, and Flickr. Socialmention collects aggregated data across multiple
platforms including, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, photobucket, etc. and will
determine if the sentiment is positive or negative. While there is not an allinclusive tool and the tools I have mentioned are not the only ones available
(there are 37 social media listening tools I know of), find one or two that suit your
business purposes. Also, make a habit for searching and listening. Run searches
on Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, etc. daily (more frequently if you can). You
should be searching for your brand name and its multiple variations, slogans,
mottos, key messages, misspellings of your brand name, key words related to
your cause or mission. Listen tools aren’t just useful for tracking activity, but
sometimes it is good for the organization to let people know they are listening
and join in on the conversation themselves, find a way to interact with people and
engage them. Do not overly worry if people become negative, use some humor
or use it as constructive criticism, again, follow up and interact. People will
respond to your transparency. If at all possible, keep pdf records of all things you
find online. You never know when you may want to reference it again. Ultimately,
social listening will provide five valuable outcomes: 1) track social media activity,
2) identify trending topics or phrases, 3) detail constituent sentiment, 4) organize
constituent information, 5) identify thought leaders and social influencers. Finally,
you should ask yourself eight simple questions before posting content or
launching a social media campaign.
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Who is your audience?
What information are you presenting?
Why should your audience care?
What action do you want your audience to take?
What platform are you utilizing?
Is your copy brief?
Do you have graphics or video?
How are you tagging and tracking?