If you send bulk email to solicit donations, find volunteers, to keep your stakeholders up to date regarding how your agency is meeting your mission - then you should take a few minutes to review the update the Federal Trade Commission’s Can Spam Act.
The Can-Spam act is a set of regulations regarding sending unsolicited email. You’ll want to make sure that you are in compliance! Here at NPower - we recommend that you use a third party vendor such as Vertical Response to deliver your mail - vendors that specialize in delivering high quantity email messages generally can provide better deliverability AND tools that help you stay in compliance.
Here are some quick highlights regarding the update:
- Single Opt Out. You must provide a method for subscribers to opt out with one click - no “confirm you address” and so on. You MAY provide both a “manage my subscription page” and a global opt out message, though.
- You have to have a single “sender” in the “from” address that clearly identifies you - and that person is also responsible for including the unsubscribe link.
There’s a lot more in the Act, and you should read it to ensure that you and your agency are in compliance!
It’s easy to always be sure that we know what we know, right? A lot of the time, what we know actually IS true - and sometimes - we walk around with something that we “know” that isn’t true anymore, or maybe wasn’t true, ever. I remember when one of my nieces told me that dinosaurs were warm-blooded. I humored her for a bit, cornered my sister to ask what was going on at my niece’s school - and then found out later that my niece was mostly right - better science means that we get to change our mind, we get to “know” more about the dinosaurs. And it looks like warm blooded might be the better answer to know.
There are lessons here in the nonprofit world, particularly when it comes to measuring your successes and failures:
- Make the time to periodically review what you think you know, and check your assumptions.
- Who are your top donors?
- How much time do you lose when your team can’t update you website?
- What is the total cost of a new database?
- Does your e-newsletter get more hits when you send on a Wednesday or a Monday morning?
- Take a step back and ask if you’re measuring the right thing.
- Is the total number of records in your donor database tell you what you need to know?
- Perhaps you should be looking at the inactive folks in that database to determine why they are inactive.
- Is your database really as terrible as you think?
- Maybe it’s a training gap that you can fix quickly and easily.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for advice.
- We all can’t know everything, and we all make mistakes.
- Decision making by committee isn’t always a great idea - but I’ve rarely been disappointed with information gathering by committee.
- Cultivate people with a different point of view, set of experiences, belief set. You’ll learn something, and so will they.
I love to be right, don’t get me wrong. But you know what? I can change my mind to be right, and often times, that’s even better: I’ll have learned something, acquired new and better information, and will be better equipped to find “right” the next time -because I checked some assumptions, I measured the right stuff, and I asked for help!
The team at ONE/NW has done it again - a brief one page set of instructions that tell you what you need to know to prepare effective email alerts. It will take 5 minutes to read, and you should. To get you started, here’s the first rule:
Cut The Fat: Keep alerts short and think like a reporter: put the most important stuff up top. Get rid of the wordy, patronizing “happy talk” that we all tend to start articles with. See Jakob Nielsen’s article “Writing Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace” for more.
And you can read the rest here!
I just started using a Firefox add in called Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - it’s terrific - it lets me manage all of my bookmarks (or Favorites, if you’re used to Internet Explorer language) and have the synchronized on multiple machines. Since I spend some time working at home - that means that I always have the same links right at hand!
And I just started using an encryption tool for my USB thumb drive, courtesy many great recommendations from the Information Systems Forum. It is open source software that has powerful tools to protect that data. The software is called TrueCrypt, and you can read and download to your heart’s content!
And I’m also using a Getting Things Done plug-in for Outlook - it lets me manage small projects, create “waiting for” tasks, manages my next step items and more. It maps nicely to the GTD methodology and it’s been a sound investment!
My team is growing - I’ve just posted two job descriptions -I’m looking for a Senior Consultant - AND a Consultant to join our CRM/Salesforce practice!
We’ve been implementing Salesforce.com for nonprofit customers for two years now - and integrating with Plone (our website tool) as well as Vertical Response (an enewsletter tool). When we marry those three tools, we can offer nonprofits an exceptionally powerful suite of tools to manage their donors, volunteers, services, and communications needs.
Our mission sets our practice apart. We’re a nonprofit, and we provide services and tools to other nonprofits to help them better meet their mission. That means that we emphasize planning, we focus on immediate needs, we contain costs and we leverage our almost 10 years of expertise in the community, particularly in areas such as donor management, volunteer management, service and client tracking and more.
Some of our solutions for customers are a small, first step - helping them gather all of their key stakeholder information into one place for effective tracking. And others are larger, including creating custom objects, integrating with Plone, Google Maps, PayPal and more.
Our work is invigorating, too - we provide education, we constantly learn more about how nonprofits are making our community better, and we create effective solutions. If that describes the work you’d like to do - make sure you send in a resume and a cover letter!
I’m just back from the Vancouver Marathon - I ran with my brother Frank. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that my running watch was in the shop - and it didn’t arrive in time for me to take it to the race - so I ran the first 17 miles without a watch. My brother had been nursing an injury - and when he decided to stop, he immediately handed over his watch, and I ran that last nine miles with it - and I’m reminded:
Focusing on the important data (and knowing what data is important) is key to a successful venture!
I wasn’t wearing a heart rate strap, so I couldn’t measure my effort level with the watch - but I COULD keep track of how long it took me to run each of those nine miles - and that provided some key information:
- There wasn’t any way I’d crack a 3:30 marathon. This let me know that a steady, measured effort was in order, rather than a full on sprint to the finish.
- I was able to use that first mile time to re-evaluate my effort. I went out a tad fast for that first solo mile - and if I hadn’t had the watch - I probably would have faded in the last few miles.
- I was able to adjust to the hills because I knew that slowing some on the hills was a good idea -and without a watch - I couldn’t measure “slowing some”.
- After I passed mile 25 - I knew my pace so I knew when I’d see the finish line. That meant that I didn’t make a hasty sprint too early - or too late.
So - what is the right stuff that you should be measuring? The number of gifts you’ve solicited? Or the ones you’ve received? Maybe it’s the number of clients no longer needing your help that is the right stuff? If you can determine the important data, and use your tools to stay focused - your chances of success are great!
My colleagues at NonProfitCrm have a terrific post explaining many of the factors associated with using a CRM. Here at NPower Seattle, that CRM is most often Salesforce.com - the Salesforce Foundation provides 10 free licenses to nonprofits - and that means we can focus our energy on making crucial customizations that work for your nonprofit rather than on building from scratch!
You should read the posting - it’s pretty short - 10 minutes or less. Some of the items they mention may not match your nonprofit. For instance - on our smaller projects, we don’t invest in a series of “how does this look?’ with our customers, because that can be expensive - I call that “moving the house around the couch”. Some quick highlights - in no particular order!
- Data migration - getting you old data cleaned and in one spot for import. This can be the most expensive part of the process!
- Defining your business needs - how do YOU define a top donor? A certain amount of lifetime giving? A certain amount in the past 18 months? We need to know that answers to these questions before we start!
Here’s my two cents, though. Make sure you plan first. You can do a lot of homework on your own, and a small investment in planning before you implement will save you time and money and will result in a better outcome!
Great news today from the folks at Vertical Response - they offer an enewsletter delivery system that integrates with Salesforce.com -so if you are using Salesforce and Vertical Response, you can keep all of that key information in one place.
They’ve just announced a “Non-Profits Email for Free” program - all of the details you need are here - but here are some of the key items:
What you get
VerticalResponse for Non-Profits is a program that enables Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) to effectively communicate with their supporters via email. Once accepted into the program, NPOs will be able to leverage VerticalResponse’s email marketing to send up to 10,000 emails per month. All for free!
How it works
Once you’re enrolled in the program, you’ll get 10,000 free credits at the start of each month. It’s a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ system, so credits will expire at the end of that month. Not to worry – we’ll give you 10,000 more the following month. Simple, right?
Getting started
If your organization is a 501(c)(3), then you’re eligible. Simply fax us the application form, we’ll check to make sure that you’re not fibbing about your 501(c)(3) status, and flip the switch. You’re ready to start sending professional looking emails.
I’ve recently watched a lengthy exchange about this topic on a local nonprofit list. It’s pretty gripping, actually - there are a lot of thoughtful people asking great questions about profit, motive, business practice, tax status, efficiency, salary structure, board governance and more.
It’s a great conversation to have -and it can be polarizing - but it doesn’t have to be.
My colleague Jon at ONE/NW recently pointed out a pretty thoughtful essay on the subject by Paul Graham. You should read it - it will take just about ten minutes.
Here’s my take-away (and the title of the post, by the way): Be good. That’s right - be good - in the way you run your agency and treat your customers, in the way you develop your practice, consider creating programs. Paul suggests that this is more than just an attitude - but that it actually works.
One of the things I love about my work here at NPower Seattle is that if the tools and expertise we have to offer to the nonprofit community isn’t a great match for one of our customers - we do our level best to be the first to know and point that out! My team won’t be successful if we don’t keep our customers best interests at the top of our list!
Just a quick note - I had a terrific meeting with one of our customers on Tuesday - we helped them move most of their nonprofit data into Salesforce, and they’ve really done a great job of using the tool. We’ve added a few features here and there, and a bit of support, but they have really been committed to using the tool - and it shows.
They are getting a new website, and we met to talk about modifications to Salesforce so that they could provide more information via the web. And while we were talking about one possible feature, the customer asked how much it would cost.
When we said we thought we could build that feature for about $500, she said to skip it - it wouldn’t add enough value.
I was delighted - that is exactly the type of conversation I want to have with my customers - are we adding $500 (or more!) worth of value by implementing something? If not -we shouldn’t implement!
So - next time you need an addition, or a feature, or a modification - be sure to ask - and make sure you have an internal sense of how that feature or addition will return value to your agency!
