Boomer Ronin

Don’t believe the hype about social media. Really, you know better.
Social media is about giving your supporters a platform to connect online and not about raising money. Yes, really. Take a look at your online donations. How many new donors are you really getting from your Twitter and Facebook accounts? Be honest. Yes, it may be that you aren’t doing it right, Kivi Leroux Miller has published some good blog articles about that. But not doing social media right means you are not getting more listeners to cultivate into donors. Although this may eventually translate into donations, it should not be your primary focus.

Prospects
When it comes to social media, what you are getting is prospects – an interested audience to pitch your message to and potentially cultivate as donors. This is undoubtedly extremely valuable.

So here’s the gist. Find more ways to really connect prospects to your story by offering webinar open houses, one-on-one Skype meetings, g-chats, or bring them in for an informal but transformative visit if they live in your city. This is the step in which you get to play nonprofit innovator, or what Seth Godin would call a “linchpin”.

Old Friends
Don’t forget your current donors. They are giving online because they are already bought in to your mission. Appreciate them, invite them to connect in person at your organization. Even mix current donors with new online friends for peer-to-peer cultivation in those new and awesome cultivation webinars or web conferences. Think of current social media donors as your frontline army, leading your social media campaign, fully equipped with the tools they need to indoctrinate others to join your cause.

Take Responsibility
Remember online fundraising is gaining speed and donors have more information than ever before. You cannot afford to stay behind or watch from the sidelines. But you also cannot afford to follow blindly as a social media strategist (with little fundraising knowledge) convinces you that they will raise a lot of money for you just by making your Facebook page pretty.

You must find creative and effective ways to spread your organization’s message and using that leverage to decrease the degrees of separation between you and online prospects. If you focus on educating current donors and teach them the art of cultivating prospects they will help you spread your organization’s fire online and get you closer to your prospects. You will be able to develop authentic relationships between your online friends and your organization and then translate friends and followers into donors.
Now, isn’t that a Facebook status to twit about, you digg?

Yaromil Fong-Olivares is a consultant with Hans Hageman & Associates. She is also a creativity coach who can be found here.

Don’t let the information superhighway bite your marketing efforts in the rear end. Recently, I read a blog post about grammar from a well-known writing blogger. Of course, as with many bloggers, at the end of her post she made a sales pitch for her writing consultation services.

The title of the post was great. It definitely drew me in and made me want to read more. She also had a decent list of grammar errors that I would say we can all benefit from revisiting from time to time.

Not So Fast
Sounds fine, right? Wrong. The most crucial aspect of her post – her explanation of how to unlearn these grammar errors – was actually difficult to understand. I read it a few times; I even asked for others’ opinions and everyone I asked found it equally confusing. From reading the post I can tell the blogger is very knowledgeable but I certainly wouldn’t hire her to teach me.

How does this apply to your marketing? Blogging is the new selling. That means your blog is the bridge between you and your donors. Your blog is under scrutiny and thus you must pay attention not just to what you are writing about (content), but also style (how) audience (who), and schedule (when).

Get Out In Front
Here are some questions to help you increase donations with your blog:

o Does your blog design reflect the organization’s culture, values, brand, finances?
o Is your blog overly technical and full of nonprofit jargon?
o Can your average donor’s children (regardless of age) connect with the blog?
o Does your blog include audio, video and written posts?
o Is your blog’s font too small and potentially alienating older folks?
o Do you encourage readers to leave comments, ask questions, and post additional information related to the topic of your blog?
o Do you have a set time and day when you post new entries?
o Does your blog have a sign-up feature and is it prominently displayed on both the blog and your website?

Send this to a nonprofit that’s doing god work but may only be treading water in the social media ocean.

One of the biggest challenges of small nonprofits is getting attention and becoming known beyond our immediate niche or community. With a little help from your donor database and a $7 pack of post-its you can change that in one day. Think of it as “take your post-it to work day.” Get donors involved in a fun and easy marketing activity that engages current donors, gets you new ones and definitely gives your website traffic a boost.

Start by choosing a segment of your donor base that is easy to reach via snail mail and email. Since this is a new and interactive friend raising campaign and the ability to easily reach donors is key to its success, I recommend limiting the mailing list to 500 individuals.

Here is the golden nugget: send each of your donors a post-it note along with a letter requesting that she serve as the official ambassador for your organization for one day by wearing the post-it note. The sticky note should be simple, easy to read and it should only include the following information:

My name is _____________________
I HEART XYZ Organization (for the more traditional folks: I proudly support XYZ Organization)
Website

2. Choose a meaningful date & prevent your sticky note from ending up in the recycle bin by doing these 2 things:
1) Limit the time between the arrival of the sticky note and the wearing of the sticky note. My suggestion is to allot for 1 week for mail delivery and 1 week for “safety.” For instance if you send out your sticky note on the 1st of February, schedule wearing the sticky note for the 15th of February.
2) Choose a date that matters. Depending on the culture of your organization it can be the date the organization was founded, a related holiday, even the birthday of the organization’s founder or current Executive Director.

3. Make sure the request to wear the post-it letter includes the date and its meaning, how many people will be wearing the sticky note (i.e. how many supporters you are sending it to), 3 concisely written recent program accomplishments, and a photo of a program participant wearing the post it.

THEN (and this is just as important as the sticky note)

4. Send 3 simple and brief E-blast reminders to your supporters. The first E-blast should arrive in your donors’ inbox 5 days before the post-it wearing day and it should be about making sure that the post-it arrived. The second should arrive the day before and it should be about reminding supporters about the big day. The third E-blast should arrive early morning on the actual post-it wearing day. All E-blasts should include the exact language used in the original post-it along with encouragement to recreate the sticky note in the case that the one you sent is missing.

Next post: Follow up: how to raise the most money out of your “take your post-it to work” day.

Yaromil Fong-Olivares is a nonprofit communications and development consultant with Hans Hageman & Associates. Find out more by clicking on her tab or our “Services” tab.

4 life lessons I learned from Tony Award winner Sarah Jones

When you are doing something you love it shows. That’s what you’ll notice when you see Sarah Jones’ newest stage “laboratory” (Sarah’s terminology) New Year, Nuyorican. It took me some time, but about an hour into the show I started to realize what she meant when she referred to the experience of putting together this particular show as “scary.” I was surprised to hear of her fear since last time I saw her she stood on a huge Broadway stage performing her hit one-woman masterpiece, Bridge & Tunnel and she was fearlessly brilliant.

In addition to lots of laughter, political brilliance and a trenta-sized dose of kick ass black feminism, here are 4 life lessons I learned from Sarah’s New Year, Nuyorican performance:

1. Always push your talents. Sarah had notes within reach but did not refer to them during her performance. She chose to improvise the lineup of characters and randomly chose appropriate jackets from her stage wardrobe as the show progressed. From the Chinese woman sharing the experience of having a lesbian daughter and even challenging the notion that “Chinese mothers are superior” to the Indian humanitarian/doctor all her impersonations are flawless.

2. Push your values. Sarah turns existential arguments in favor of culturally based stereotypes on their heads just by her brilliant ability to perform each of her characters. She enters each character as if entering a different realm of her subconscious. It’s like watching past life regression live on stage. Yet, Sarah’s characters never offend the audience. Her performance is a nuanced and compassionate critique of forced segregation passed down through generations of miscommunication, collective trauma and arbitrary geopolitical lines. In her show she achieves utopia because she brings all of us together, literally.

3. Go back home. Sarah Jones started her career at the now famous Nuyorican Poet’s Café. She is back and she loves it; so do her fans. Last night, she made sure to give credit for “shipping” her show to her special guest and fan, marketing rock star Seth Godin. Even though she was nervous, excited, scared…she was home. The value of home is that it feels like home despite all the other scary feelings we may be experiencing. As her homeless usher persona Ms. Lady says at the beginning of the show, many people have houses but few have homes.

4. Go back to basics. I believe this is a scary process for Sarah because it is a lesson in humility and a test of her courage and commitment to her craft. She was on Broadway, she won a Tony and she is back to a small venue in the Lower East Side. I suspect there’s definitely a little bit of ego bruising that can go into psychologically processing “comebacks” as an award-winning artist. However, anyone who appreciates watching creativity, innovation and love radiating and converging into a performance will undoubtedly find Sarah’s show valuable, inspiring and thought provoking. Sarah can rest assured that her work is crucial and that the insights of her imaginary friends follow us after the show. Gratefully we follow Sarah anywhere and everywhere she goes.

To learn more about Sarah Jones and her show at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe click here.

Break Up Ls – Part I

Break ups are rough. Not rough like the tongue of a cute little kitty cat. I am talking sandpaper on a recent razor scrape rough. I know you have been, are, or will be there (and if you haven’t, you should because it is a beautiful thing to be that deep within love).

I offer you part 1 of a 4 part transition talk series about break ups (hey…break ups take time). I am calling the series Break Up Ls. Why? The Letter L has one right angle (mine, JK) but potential for more.

Lean into “it”
Do not withdraw. Face that demon with your game face on. IT is that fear of abandonment, that insecurity about your butt being too big, too small, too squared, and too similar to your mother’s. It’s your ego wondering if there was cheating and blaming yourself for not being beautiful enough, sexy enough, attentive enough, or lucrative enough. By this point you are even blaming yourself for having too big of a forehead. It’s the cliché phrase “what did I do to deserve this?” – but on crack times a thousand.

Once you are leaning in, you take your armor out and fight back like your life depends on it, because frankly it does. Each partner is equally at fault, and you weren’t happy either. You are not the right match for each other and you will both be happier with other lovers. It’s not love if you have to force it or if only one person is committed to working on the relationship. You are self-sufficient and if you aren’t, you will learn. Love, money, hugs; shoulders to cry on, partners to dance with (or whatever you feel you’ll miss) are in abundance around you and you may access them now.

Now is the time when you can allow yourself to enjoy that facial, manicure, massage or all of the above. Go ahead and purchase the most flattering dress you have ever worn, regardless of price. Then wearing that dress you chop off that demon’s head. Then its legs so you know it can’t come back. Then show your gratitude for the good times and give that demon’s heart a kiss, the memory a hug, and yourself a reassuring smile. Wearing your favorite shoes you walk away and move on. After all that internal work you’ll need a nap, but waking up will be yours again.

Next post: Break Up Ls Part II – Learn from it

*For my heart workers more interested in career/life talk, don’t fret; Welcome to the Dollhouse- Lessons on Rebooting Your Life is coming right after this series.

Are You a Heart Worker? The Value of Being a Quitter.

Yes, I quit. I didn’t resign, and I wasn’t moving on to a better position. Well, in retrospect, that last part did turn out to be true.

At the end of 2010, I felt tired, not because I was working 60 hours a week or because the work was challenging. I was engaged in a battle of someone else’s making – a 70-year battle for the minds and hearts of the children of Harlem. Like many other good ideas gone wrong, this one is masked under a mission statement of “helping children achieve their full potential”. I was doomed, as I was there to do my usual heart work – and not to be a hero or a savior.

Looking back, this being the end of the year and all, some lessons have become self-evident. For example, there is the issue of values and value alignment.

If you are a heart worker and your values don’t match the values of the organization then it is inevitable that a break up will ensue. Sound familiar? Like it kind of sounds like a bad romance (thanks, Lady Gaga!).

Yup. Your 9-to-5 is like a lover. Do you follow? Most importantly, are you still in love or are you there because of routine, have to pay the bills, don’t believe you deserve better, feel guilty about initiating the break up, afraid you are making the wrong call if you leave? What will they do without you? The reasons to stay are endless but there’s only one way out…out!

I admit, before leaving I felt a twilight zone-type fear of unproductivity. After quitting, I soon realized the reason I did not want to go into my office was not because I was “burned out” as some folks in the nonprofit world call it. It was the feeling of energy being sucked out of my body by complacent, bitter and miserable colleagues, discouraging board members and an organizational culture so resistant to change that it’s leadership wouldn’t even change the conference room wallpaper without going into 10 executive sessions.

The break-up was inevitable. It/us just couldn’t work.

But yet there we were, Hans Hageman, Executive Director at the time, and myself trying to rationalize staying because of the kids.

Then came the final realization – yes, worse than facing the twilight zone or energy suckers. The right choice is incredibly hard to make.

If you quit you are a quitter. But if you stay you are useless. You compromise your values, risk depression; creativity dies a slow, painful death.

So, I ask YOU: what’s it going to be?

Before answering, think about this:

“We have to be able to walk forward with faith into a world that is chaotic and abstract and allow the opportunities to present themselves. And we need to be so aligned, so true to what we believe, that we are in a position to seize these opportunities when they occur. Our example is our reputation.
– Sue Knight, NLP at Work

I am proud to be a quitter. I recognize and accept my own value/values and better yet, I know my heart work is priceless. Do you? Allow yourself to answer honestly, and in 2011 proceed accordingly.