The 6th event felt like it began long before it did, with an outpouring of excitement via Twitter as people made their way to the venue and those who could not attend in person expressing their disappointment in 140 characters.

After the t-shirt competition winners, @PontoonDock, @amyrsward, @HaveFunDoGood and special prize winner @RochelleDancel received their t-shirts, the event carried on with three great presentations:

UNICEF: Charlie Simpson – A media sensation

UNICEF were looking for a positive, UK based, Haiti appeal fundraising story to engage with supporters through the media. After coming across Charlie Simpson’s tale, they promoted his story through the press. What UNICEF wasn’t expecting, was how the story would then grow into a worldwide phenomenon.

The ‘Charlie Simpson effect’:
•    Caused UNICEF UK’s web traffic to go off the charts after press coverage
•    Was responsible for 30% of UNICEF’s Haiti coverage
•    Galvanised people to support a 7-year old boy to an unprecedented degree, with donations amounting over £208,000 to date
•    Inspired many to come up with their own fundraising initiatives for Haiti – fundraising enquiries went from about 4 a day to 50 a day

Once they realised the scale of its impact, UNICEF made use of the opportunity to get other people fundraising. UNICEF attributed the viral success of Charlie’s story to its authenticity; although @citizensheep pointed out that such fundraising stories also need to tug at the heartstrings in the first place; being a cute kid on a bike certainly helped a lot.

UNICEF’s impressive graphs illustrated the tipping point where Charlie’s fundraiser transformed from local success into global phenomenon. However, the biggest lesson we took from the presentation is when opportunity strikes, be prepared to take advantage of it quickly. You can’t predict when your communication will go viral online, so be ready with all available resources to ride the momentum of a wonderful opportunity.

UNICEF was also kind enough to share that, of their top referring sites during the ‘peak Charlie Simpson period (20 – 30 Jan)’ was Facebook, which accounted for 17% of referrals.  Twitter accounted for just 0.3% of click-throughs – which is clearly not the whole picture in terms of the contribution it will have made.  It was certainly considerably overshadowed by Facebook though, which isn’t really surprising when you compare the difference between user numbers.

British Red Cross and Merlin: Impact of social media on fundraising for Haiti

This joint presentation by British Red Cross and Merlin demonstrated how a larger and smaller charity used social media in an emergency response.  They focused on their Twitter use to illustrate social media upsides and downsides in their Haiti fundraising communication.

According to both charities, social media allows for immediate, high reach, cost-effective and personal engagement. Because it can be done anywhere, people are able to receive updates from locals and aid workers on the ground. This instant spreading of emotional reaction and updates on their progress makes social media incredibly effective in an emergency appeal. Responding to positive and negative comments was essential in their social media use and they felt their use of social media had resulted in much greater levels of brand awareness.

For British Red Cross and Merlin, the downsides of social media engagement include the lack of direct control over what others say about their charities. To protect their brands, both charities view it necessary to monitor and manage comments, which made it time consuming. They also said that the fundraising income generated from social media channels is still minute compared to traditional channels, but that it was too early to expect more.

Some attendees like @calemox and @watfordgap saw the downsides not as weaknesses, but as opportunities. While charities can’t control what people say about them on social media, they are able to nip rumours in the bud at a speed that is very hard to do offline. Social media channels may not have produced spectacular results in terms of fundraising income – yet – but they are fantastic tools when it comes to driving traffic towards charities’ websites.

One of the final slides covered social media management within both charities. Essentially, who’s responsible for ‘doing’ social media is less about which department’s remit it falls under. More important is that whoever does it is actually communicating with people. The key word, as always, is engagement.

Whizz-Kidz: Measuring Social Media Metrics

Last but by no means least, Whizz-Kidz’s Rob Dyson combined honesty and humour for his presentation on social media metrics. Taking us through his journey exploring various free-to-use social media measurement tools, Rob encouraged us to take into account their pluses and minuses to help the other charities attending to figure out what might work for them. Other attendees chipped in with other measurement tools worth trying (also see JustGiving’s notes from the 6th NFPtweetup).

For Whizz-Kidz, Rob monitors social media mentions. This enabled him to identify case studies, as well as people to engage in conversation with – who may or may not be Whizz-Kidz supporters. He suggested spreading the conversations across different networks, and to generate interest for your cause by making the conversations relevant to different audiences in different places.

In Rob’s conclusion, he talked about being selective about what you measure. Learn what’s important for your social media measurement as you go along.

We know that simply being able to measure something isn’t always the same as it being worthwhile, and that the real question is what, within the range of metrics, are the important ones to measure?  Without knowing what you’re trying to achieve, it’s difficult to identify what counts as success – so our advice is always to start with your charity’s or department’s strategic objectives when deciding which activities are important and always to refer measurement back to these objectives, to decide whether you are generating value for your organisation.

Rob also said he believes it’s important not to get hung up on ‘strategy’, since the fluid nature of social media makes communication an art more than an exact science (do you agree?).  For those who are trying to get management buy-in for using social media, Rob’s tip is to keep a record of your social media successes in order to evidence its impact to senior management – which sounded like good advice to us.

The evening came to a close with the launch of Becauseitsgood.org – a third sector community blog started by Enable Interactive, with the aim of encouraging those working in digital communication for the third sector to share ideas and insights to improve the way digital is being used.

Everyone at the 6th NFPtweetup took valuable lessons from the presentations with them and those who were able to stay longer extended their night at the Lord Nelson with conversations probably best left out of this blogpost!  We don’t think we’ve ever seen that many people from so many charities in one pub and it was a lot of fun.

I reckon the 6th NFPtweetup might have been the best one ever – despite a slightly more formal structure than usual.  It’s so successful because it’s so genuinely collaborative.  It takes the efforts of a lot of different people to make it work – the team at beautiful world, sponsorship from Just Giving and, for this event, Enable Interactive, too, Breast Cancer Care for providing the venue, the lovely speakers with their great presentations, as well as all of the attendees in person at the event and online, both sharing thoughts via Twitter. Together, the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.

Thanks to everyone who made the 6th NFPtweetup a fantastic event. We’re counting on all of you to help us make the 7th NFPtweetup even better – so, if you came along, or followed online, please let us know what you thought by completing our short survey.

Rebekah

P.S. Check out our Flickr gallery to see some photos from the night.

Among the things we talked about was a presentation Rebekah was doing on emergency fundraising using social media, as part of her MA, my recent panel at Media140 Third Sector event on 4 February, entitled ‘The Future of Giving’, and the agenda for the next NFPtweetup.

As is so often the case in life, things seemed to be coalescing around a theme, without us really having planned it: charities using social media for fundraising, measuring, quantifying and understanding success and the contributing factors (more of our favourite things). [Many ‘social media experts’ would start talking about ‘serendipity’ at this point, but I’m not going to because it’s adding nothing new to the conversation and the word’s always used incorrectly anyway ]

Anyhow…

I put my panel for Media140 together on fundraising because I wanted to explore social media’s place in fundraising and have an informed debate on our perspectives about such things as emergency fundraising, raising unrestricted funds sustainably, scalability and whether results from fundraising through social media would ever be replicable.

I made that the focus because I felt the sector has surely had it’s fill by now of generic presentations about how brilliant social media are and how charities should be making the most of them, and that there was a real need to elevate the conversation and grapple with some of the real strategic challenges and opportunities, based on quantitative data, and a genuine understanding of fundraising and the financial models of most charities, among other things!

Even on a more tactical level, don’t you agree that we should have moved beyond the ‘cool tools’ conversations by now and be at the point where we’re measuring success, creating benchmarks and at least be able to begin to quantify the value we can generate using social media and share some insights about how to optimise that? I’d hoped the conversation would only start there, before moving on to imagine what fundraising might look like in 5-10 years.

In retrospect, it was probably a bit ambitious for a 40 min session, including questions from the audience, so we didn’t even get halfway there and getting stuck into that is going to have to keep for another time.

What is really worth mentioning is that, in the run up to the event, I had asked representatives from British Red Cross and Merlin to join me on the panel to talk about the support they’d received for their Haiti fundraising appeals through social media – because they’d be able to share some genuine insights into how ‘social fundraising’ compared to the traditional channels they were using, as well as whether they raise funds via social media on any significant scale at times other than emergencies. Sadly, they couldn’t join me at Media140, but they have both agreed to come and speak about this at the next NFPtweetup on 4 March, instead.

We’ll also be joined by UNICEF, who will share how they helped to turn Charlie Simpson’s sponsored bike ride into a fundraising phenomenon, so it should be a great night – and it’s all come together quite nicely around a theme of ‘Generating, and Measuring, Value’, or something like that (it’s still a bit of a working title!).

This seems to be a good point to mention Rebekah’s presentation again, as it was inspired by a press release the DEC released about the role social media played in their Haiti earthquake appeal. I have to say, I thought the presentation so good it would be a shame not to share it more widely, so here it is and over to Rebekah for her perspective:

This presentation was for a class of 15 MA students who didn’t know much about charities and their use of social media. I chose the DEC Haiti earthquake appeal as a case study because the class were familiar with both the disaster and widely publicised appeal. Focusing on DEC’s mobile giving campaign via Twitter, there were examples of how they engaged and encouraged supporters to donate, ending with lessons learnt from the appeal, personal thoughts on the topic and a few questions to kick start class discussion.

I knew it would be hard enough for my classmates to absorb all the new information they were going to be exposed to (most of them don’t have any fundraising experience), but they made a good attempt at giving me considered comments about the questions on the last slide. The final question was left unanswered though:

“Which benchmarks are best to gauge whether or not social media channels make good fundraising tools?”

Maybe the words ‘benchmarks’ and ‘gauge’ made it too scary for my class to approach. Maybe they didn’t feel qualified to offer an opinion on fundraising – which would be quite fair enough. But then I’m not sure the charity sector has managed to answer these questions satisfactorily yet either.

If you’ve got any thoughts to share, please do, and if you’re from a charity and would like to come along to the next NFPtweetup on 4 March and have a good old debate about all of this, tweet me @rebekahhah. We have a few places left, but you’d better be quick!

Rachel and Rebekah

Current

• Account Executive, beautiful world

Past

• Telefundraiser, 2Evolve Australia
  
• Project Leader, Thare Machi Education
  
• Psychology Research Assistant, University of Warwick
  

What she’s good at:

Analysing. Creating. Problem-solving. Getting things done. Forgetting her lunch.

In July 2008, Louise graduated from the University of Warwick with a BSc Hons in Psychology. She then decided to explore the world a bit; highlights included India, Nepal, South Africa, Bolivia and Peru. Having raised enough money for a voluntary three-month placement with the Himalayan Children Care Home, she later spent some time in Australia fundraising for charities including Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières and the World Wildlife Fund.

Having worked for over ten years with several different charities, as a volunteer, she is now turning her passion into a career with beautiful world.

Connect with louise:

louise on Twitter

louise on Linkedin

Current

• Account Manager, beautiful world

Past

• Community Fundraiser – Breast Cancer Care
• Fundraising Officer – Australian Red Cross
• Media Coordinator – BKYADesign
• BA Communications – Edith Cowan University

What she’s good at:

Anna has worked agency and client side in two continents.  Hailing originally from Perth, Australia she joins us from Breast Cancer Care where she was the community fundraising and marketing coordinator for the pink fridays campaign.

Connect with Anna King:

Anna on Twitter

Anna on LinkedIn

There is of course going to be an election (finally!).  Some say it will be as early as March, others that Brown will push it until the last minute in May.

But here’s the thing… it barely matters which party gets elected, they are all going to have to do the same: CUT public spending. Sorry did I say cut? It won’t be called it that.  A phrase like “a radical overhaul of public expenditure” will be used to gloss over it.

Of the multiple, unpleasant effects that this will have, one will be to put more pressure on the third sector to try and deliver the services that government has unofficially washed its hands of.
 
Our fragile economy has been on life-support for the past twelve months. This is about to be switched off and, if it doesn’t just give up the ghost there and then, one of the early consequences is likely to be a rise in unemployment.

Simultaneously taxation, on those lucky enough to have a job, is going to rise steeply.

Net effect: fewer donors with less money in their pockets.

The great challenge to our sector this year will be to meet ever-increasing demands for resources with a falling income.

We are going to have to work incredibly hard to do that.  And we’re going to have to be open to the idea of working differently. The old way of doing things may simply no longer work.

We are entering a period of huge, dinosaur-toppling change.

Online will be more important than ever as charities search for ways to open up new income streams. 
We’re all aware of an explosion in the use of social media (watch out for the  inevitable cack-handed attempts of political parties to do an Obama with it as we head into election fever.)

Many charities have been cocking a suspicious eye towards Twitter and Facebook, and some (Dogs Trust, Adopt-a-Word, Childs-i, Oxfam, RSPB, Amnesty to name but a few) have grasped these new media with both hands.

Some of the more far-sighted charities have been preparing during 2009 by establishing new digital departments. Good move. While the rest of the sector puts a committee together to agree the wording of their first tweet, they will be well placed to start connecting with new supporters online and to begin developing their digital brand identities.

As well as an election there is another tired old contest about to be re-run this year: the World Cup.   Of slightly more interest, if you’re a techie, is the fact that there are apparently millions of 3D TV sets stock-piled for the event.

2010 is definitely going to be a 3D year.  So here’s another prediction: the first 3D TV ad for a charity. (Heck we might even make it ourselves – any takers?)

To summarize, here’s the whole post in one Twitter-sized bite:  CUTS, unemployment up; income down; online v big; huge change; dead dinosaurs; 3D World Cup: England loses.

YouTube, now the world’s second largest search engine, runs an excellent service for non-profits – with the ability to put links in your video that go directly to your website.  It should definitely be considered as part of an effective SEO strategy – rather than just somewhere to shove old DRTV ads and odds and sods of old footage.  Check out Michael Hoffman’s post on the subject to find out why.

One of the most vocal new promoters of video is See The Difference.  If you haven’t sat through one of their infectiously enthusiastic presentations this year – where have you been?  See The Difference, when it goes live sometime this winter, will be a spectacularly shiny environment, with all sorts of bells and whistles, where you can display your charity’s fundraising videos.

It represents what the web is about: fluid communication that allows you to move intuitively from one interesting thing to another, following your whims and hunches, donating a bit here, a bit there?  The only question that keeps nagging at me is whether donors will bother to go there and look.  I really hope they will, because the demo site is seriously cool.

But – and there is a big ‘BUT’ – people won’t watch your video unless it is emotionally engaging.  No-one will give to your cause as a result of your film unless you have made a persuasive case.  And no-one will want to watch any video online, no matter how worthy, if it’s long, meandering and doesn’t make an interesting point – and fast.

Doing this is simply not as easy as it looks.

If people have got short attention spans nowadays, there’s nowhere they’re shorter than online. (By the way, the optimum length for an online video is between 3 and 4 minutes.)

A while back I met with some lovely people from a medium-sized charity who had just made a See The Difference do-it-yourself-style film.  They opened the laptop and pressed play.  I watched footage, which ran for several minutes, without any voiceover, then stopped abruptly.

Apart from the missing branding and lack of logo (you might easily be left wondering which charity it featured), the missing case for support (who knows what they were actually going to do with your money?), and the fact that in their film everyone seemed pretty happy and healthy (you do have to illustrate some need when you’re fundraising) – it wasn’t too bad a piece (a bit worthy and dull, but not, you know, awful).

Perhaps these were basic errors that many charities would avoid?  I’m not so sure.

The thing is, charities are often so passionate about the change they create, and so convinced of the need, it often makes them incapable of taking a critical view of their fundraising and realising potential donors might need a bit more persuasion.

But consider this: technology has brought production costs down so much now that making a video is within the reach of just about anybody.  This means more and more people churning out their own mini productions (hence the phenomenal growth of YouTube).

Although that’s great for charities, it’s also going to make it harder and harder for your cause to stand out and be noticed.  And it’s also going to get more and more difficult to persuade the average person to give up three minutes of their life to watch your film, instead of someone else’s – not to mention to watch it and donate.

What’s the solution?  An old one I’m afraid.  Unless you’re an expert yourself, find someone who is.  As media channels have proliferated beyond all recognition, certain things have never gone out of fashion: ideas and craft.

No, you don’t have to spend a fortune on film any longer; a home video camera will do (or even a mobile phone).  But you still have to work damned hard to get someone’s attention.  You still have to think.  You still have to use your imagination.

Frustratingly, this can’t be done with a checklist.  Making a film like that is a bit like painting by numbers – it looks like a painting, but it doesn’t make you feel anything.

Moving images are still the most instantly emotive way to connect with people.  Cleverly used they can make you cry, laugh, gasp with amazement and have you diving for your wallet.

So, remember, while you’re cutting costs, that you still need to invest in the skills required to make this medium sing sweetly.  They’re worth their weight in gold (or pounds sterling!).

Current

• Account Executive, beautiful world

Past

• Social secretary for the University of Nottingham Hispanic Society (2006/07)
• Social secretary and peer mentor for the University of Nottingham American Studies Society (2008/09)

What she’s good at:

Teri recently graduated from the University of Nottingham with a BA Hons in American Studies (with international study).

Whilst at Nottingham, she volunteered for numerous student awareness campaigns – the majority of which involved dressing up as a superhero/ tiger/ robber and bribing students with lollipops and stickers.   She was also kept busy organising social events for Hispanic and American studies students, as well as studying, of course.

Since graduating Teri has been trying to forget the ‘dissertation’ word and, more importantly, trying to find work.

Enter beautiful world.  Growing up with the ‘naïve idea’ that she was ‘going to save the whole world’, she has joined us to help save some of it – or at least try.

So, now Teri is learning more about what makes people give to good causes.  She’s honing her social media skills and putting her love of working with people to good use at the agency with the most famous sofa in the sector (us).

She says she’s also hoping ‘to win over beautiful world team with her cake baking skills’.  What’s not to like?

Connect with Teri Doubtfire:

Teri on Twitter

Teri on LinkedIn

Our internship programme provides graduates with invaluable experience in fundraising, marketing and communications in the charity sector, with opportunities to specialise in data analysis and planning, account management, creative, online content creation, social media management and much more besides.

We’d love to hear from you if you’re passionate about pursuing a career in any of these areas.

It would be great if you have some of the following:

Experience of working in fundraising/ marketing/ communications
Experience of working in an agency environment
Experience of working with charities or not for profit organisations.

But the kind of people we really like are:

Good at more than one thing
Natural, creative problem solvers
Inspired by what’s happening online – particularly social media
Passionate about raising money for good causes
Serious about their careers but don’t take life too seriously.

If you’re interested: 
Get in touch. You’ll find us on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook – all over the web.

There’s nothing quite like a letter.  It makes you feel special.  It sounds as if it knows you, about things you’ve done, places you may have been, things you care about.  It feels authentic, civilised and stirs up warm feelings deep within.

Years ago, when the postman arrived first thing, I used to be genuinely excited to see what he’d brought.  No surprise that a whole industry sprang up with letter writing at its heart: direct mail.

As a schoolboy I learned the power of writing when I, grudgingly, penned my grandmother an inky-fingered thank you letter for her birthday fiver.  The more thank yous I sent, and the more detail I went into about what I’d used her money for, the more fivers she would send back.  Pretty soon I was milking her like a professional.  It’s no wonder that I ended up as a fundraiser.

Now, the post arrives lethargically, around midday, way after I’ve left for work, and I couldn’t be less interested.

So what’s happened?

For one thing, almost nobody under the age of 80 actually writes letters any more.  Instead we prefer email, or the blipvert style of Twitter and Facebook. The envelopes I get are filled mainly with bills, reminders, catalogues and, of course, professionally written begging letters from charities.  Far from being a personal form of communication, the letter has become about as impersonal as you can get.  Little wonder the phrase ‘junk mail’ was coined.

Oh, and those professionally written letters – well (I’m exaggerating to make the point), they all look and sound the same.  The ‘ask’ is always lodged somewhere near the top and repeated at me throughout the letter, lest I should forget what I’ve just read.  There is always a P.S. which reiterates the ‘ask’.  The cause is always urgent (and in bold).  The paper is always unpleasantly cheap and nasty to the touch (ah, the heady days of Basildon Bond).  That term ‘junk’ has been well and truly earned. As for feeling personal and authentic – do me a favour.

So why on earth do we persist in sending mail like this?

Because, surprisingly, it still works. As a method of fundraising there is nothing to beat it – save some kind of once-in-blue-moon TV extravaganza along the lines of Children in Need or Comic Relief.  I saw a mailing from the RSPCA raise over a million pounds earlier this year.  Despite the fact that online is widely understood to be killing print and that the number of letters being posted is plummeting year on year, we are still largely reliant on them as a way of raising funds.

But (there always is one!), although direct mail works, it’s working less and less well.  ROI is down year on year.  Does this mean there’s something fundamentally wrong with the letter?  Is it just because everybody is going online these days?  I don’t think so.  I think it’s us (yes, I take some responsibility).  I think the overall standard of direct mail is getting worse.  And this is driven by an industry-wide belief that the definition of success is doing things as cheaply as possible.

But (good Lord there’s another one!) isn’t Direct Mail by its very nature cheap and cheesy? Jeff Brooks, creative director at Merkle, points out in a post on the Donor Power blog: It’s a near-fatal error in your thinking when your starting point is direct mail is crappy and I wish it would go away. He points out: There’s amazing, empowering, authentic stuff happening in snail-mail every day. Millions of pieces of it. And it’s working. It’s working a lot better than the crappy stuff.

Online evangelists (and I am one) confidently predict that online fundraising will take over – but it’s not going to be a smooth transition.  Charities are going to have to fundamentally revise the way they communicate with their donors.  The whole idea that they somehow ‘own’ donors is likely to fall by the wayside eventually.

In this age of micro-attention spans, the printed word is still hanging in there.  Evidently there is still enough excitement to be gleaned from tearing open an envelope and seeing what’s inside.  Perhaps even just the few moments of peace while you take time to read it.

There’s a real dilemma in all this.  The day is approaching when people will be asked to opt in to receive the unsolicited letters we send them.  If we continue to offer our readers a rubbish diet of the same standard begging letter plus leaflet – how many will bother?

As an industry, we should be trying much harder to stir the imagination, to surprise, to move and to inform people with what we write. We need to dispose of the word ‘junk’ once and for all.  We need to be open to the possibility that spending a bit more to produce something brilliant might be worth it; genuinely worth it – because the ROI will be better, which is the real point.

We should be doing everything we can to invest our letters with pulse-quickening ideas, a sense of poetry and love of language that will make them a real joy to read, as well as trying to cadge a donation.  By the way, shouldn’t we write a little more often without asking for money (it worked wonders with my Grandma)?

Is this a strange point of view for an online zealot like me?  Shouldn’t print just be allowed to die?  I don’t think so.  Not for a second.  It would be a bleak future if there were room for only one form of communication.  After all, variety is the spice of life.

Goodpitch is an inspired idea to bring together what they describe as ‘social-purpose film projects’ (i.e. documentaries) with charities or other organisations whose interests lie in the same area as those explored by each film.

It’s a partnership between Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program in collaboration with Working Films UK.

During the course of the evening, we witnessed a number of case studies including the recent documentary End Of The Line, which has been spectacularly successful in drawing people’s attention to the plight of Bluefin tuna.  The filmmakers had found support, both financial and in kind, from WWF, Greenpeace, and Waitrose among others.

It is a wonderful example of the persuasive power of film. It has spawned a campaign that urges responsible fishing. It posits the serious possibility of an ocean without fish. Why? Because if we don’t take care, we will simply have eaten them all. The film is still in the early days of its release, but it has already prompted Pret a Manger and a number of supermarkets, and restaurants (with the notable exception of Nobu) to completely revise their fish-buying policies in favour of sustainable species.  It has also attracted the attention of political leaders across the world.

The charities that went out on a limb to support the film in its early days of pre-production, at the same time resisting the temptation to try and stamp their polices all over it, deserve huge congratulations for their far-sightedness.  It looks as though it’s already paying off.

At beautiful world we need no convincing that film (and video) can be a hugely effective way to get your message across.  It’s why we consider it an essential part of our offering.  It is no longer prohibitively expensive.  It’s also something I love.  Indeed I’ve been making films and commercials for longer than I’d like to admit (Fancy a 10 minute break? Have a look at my award-winning short: The Mood.)

There is something visceral about the documentary format. It touches people on a deeply emotional level. To borrow a quote from Maya Angelou: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

If you want to change the world, maybe you should consider making a film about it first – or rather finding someone who already has and riding on the back of that. Or if you’re interested in using video to engage with supporters – give me a call on 0207 739 6136.