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Category Archives: Web Strategy
January 28, 2013, 9:27 am
Survey Aims to Measure Effectiveness of Nonprofit Online Videos
YouTube and two marketing companies are collecting data about how people interact with nonprofit videos online.
YouTube is working with See3 Communications, a company that advises charities on creating videos and other materials, and the Edelman public-relations firm to conduct a survey to measure the success rates of videos in North America. The results of that survey will be combined with data from YouTube’s nonprofit program to create a report expected for publication this May, according to See3.
That report will include information on nonprofits’ video budgets, how they distribute videos, and how effective videos are as a marketing tool.
The survey is available online now, and participants will be entered to win a $400 donation to their organization and other prizes. All survey results will be anonymous in the final report.
What questions do you have about video use in…
December 14, 2012, 12:46 am
How Social Media Helped Livestrong Weather a Tough Time
As online community manager at the Livestrong Foundation, Brooke McMillan has been the social-media face for an organization that has spent months at the center of an unrelenting crisis.
Last month the organization announced that its founder, Lance Armstrong, was stepping away from the group’s board and that his name would no longer be part of the organization’s official identity. That decision came after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency issued a detailed report about Mr. Armstrong’s use of performance-enhancement drugs and the Tour de France stripped him of medals he won.
Ms. McMillan says the constant storm of criticism of Mr. Armstrong meant she was spending time on social networks like Twitter and Facebook almost around the clock—largely working to nurture and protect an online community that still cared about the organization, despite its founder’s transgressions.
“We’re…
November 21, 2012, 4:17 pm
Donald Trump’s Tweets About Nonprofit Executives Prompt Outrage
Donald Trump, the real-estate mogul and television personality, has taken aim at two high-profile charity leaders, criticizing them on Twitter for collecting too much in salaries and not spending enough on programs.
The tweets pointed to “reports” about the financial practices of the United States Fund for Unicef and the American Red Cross and have been widely shared by some of Mr. Trump’s 1.9-million followers.
The problem is that the figures are false.
Snopes, a site that checks the validity of Internet-based rumors, labeled the information included in Mr. Trump’s tweets as ”mostly outdated and inaccurate,” saying that the information may have come from a chain e-mail that was first sent in 2005.
Reports are out there that many CEO’s of charities are getting overpaid, while their causes are seeing very little…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2012
…
October 24, 2012, 11:15 am
Online Fundraising and the Meaning of Life
When Marc Erlbaum was trying to raise $150,000 to finance a series of short films on the meaning of life, he turned to Indiegogo, a site that makes it easy for people and organization to advertise and raise money for projects.
He learned as much about what’s meaningful to people from fundraising as he has from his filming project. When people give through a site like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, “they’re contributing because they believe in something and they know it will come around, ultimately. That’s what’s really refreshing.”
But successful campaigns on mass fundraising sites aren’t easy to run. They often require building relationships with a group of dedicated supporters who are willing go beyond their donations and collaborate on a project.
In the most recent episode of Social Good, The Chronicle’s podcast about social media for nonprofits, Mr. Erlbaum shares what he’s…
October 4, 2012, 10:13 am
Why Nonprofits Need to Do More to Reach People on the Go
If your nonprofit hasn’t found a way to reach people on mobile devices such as iPads and smartphones, a new study suggests that it’s time to start.
More than 13 percent of all Web-page visits in August were made on a tablet or a mobile phone, according to the online measurement company comScore.
That figure is almost double the percentage of Web traffic that came from mobile devices a year ago, the company says.
Tablets accounted for 4.3 percent of all Web traffic and phones for about 9 percent. Even with the growth, desktop or laptop computers remain the most popular devices to view the Internet, providing 86.7 percent of all page views.
Dig deeper: Learn how nonprofits are redesigning their Web sites to appeal to supporters using phones and tablets in this recent Chronicle report.
October 3, 2012, 5:51 pm
Foundation Grants Aim to Boost Civic Engagement
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation on Tuesday announced $1.3-million in grants to technology projects aimed at getting people more involved in improving their communities and issued a report designed to encourage more money and attention for such efforts.
The four grants announced were:
• $590,000 to Change by Us, a project of CEOs for Cities, that gives citizens an easy place to suggest ideas to make their hometowns more livable. The grant money will help expand the site so it can accept donations, integrate with Facebook, and make the application available for other cities to adopt. The site already has versions for New York, Philadelphia, and Phoenix.
• $250,000 to Good360, an online product-donation site, to create a marketplace where nonprofits can post their needs, find products, and communicate with individual and corporate donors.
• $236,000 to
September 10, 2012, 6:24 pm
Chase Online Contest Draws Ire for Technical Glitches
The prospect of winning a grant from the annual Chase Community Giving contest prompts many small nonprofits to aggressively encourage their supporters to vote in the online competition. Small charities that get the most votes from their online supporters are eligible to win up to $250,000, and a total of $5-million will be awarded through the competition.
But when some of those supporters attempted to cast their votes, they were turned aside.
A swell of visitors to the JPMorgan Chase’s contest on Facebook Thursday, the first day of the competition, slowed the system and made it difficult for some to vote for their favorite nonprofits.
By Monday, those issues had been resolved, said Erich Timmerman, a Chase spokesman. But many nonprofits are nonetheless using the contest’s Facebook page to post complaints about the competition and raise questions about its fairness, which has…
September 5, 2012, 3:06 pm
Tweaking E-Mail for the Mobile Age
Ever since e-mail programs gave users the option of blocking images, many organizations have added short notes to the top of their messages—variations on “Trouble viewing this e-mail? Click here”—to direct recipients to online versions of the e-mails, images and all.
But while the notes make sense for people who read their e-mail on desktop computers, they can reduce the number of people who open the message when checking e-mail on mobile devices, says Holly Ross, executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network.
She says that if someone is checking e-mail in a preview pane on a computer, they’ll usually be able to see enough of the message to know what it’s about.
“But on a mobile device, often all you see is a name, some part of the subject line, and then you see, ‘E-mail not displaying correctly?’ and that’s about it,” says Ms. Ross. “It doesn’t give…
July 24, 2012, 5:35 pm
Y of N.Y. Uses Social Media to Collect Stories—and Donors
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A story from the YMCA of Greater New York’s timeline project
To celebrate its 160th anniversary, the YMCA of Greater New York is offering free T-shirts to people willing to share their stories of how the Y has made a difference in their lives.
Within 48 hours of issuing the appeal by e-mail and social media, the organization received nearly 300 stories recounting childhood swimming lessons, triathlon training, exercise programs started after injuries, and long-ago summer camps.
The YMCA has organized the stories—some submitted with photographs—by decade and posted them on a digital timeline. All of the stories that are collected will also be buried in a time capsule beneath the organization’s new Coney Island branch, which is under construction and scheduled to open next spring.
From…
June 13, 2012, 10:58 am
How Young People Learn About Nonprofits Online
To reach people in their 20s and early 30s, the most important thing nonprofits can do is to make sure their Web sites are easy to read on a mobile device and not overly cluttered, says a survey of more than 6,500 young people released Tuesday.
About 65 percent of respondents said they liked to learn about a nonprofit through its Web site, compared with 55 percent who said they turned to social networks, e-mail newsletters (47 percent), print (18 percent), and face-to-face conversations (17 percent).
Other findings from the survey, conducted by two consulting companies, Achieve and Johnson, Grossnickle, and Associates:
Keep e-mail newsletters short and to the point. Members of focus groups conducted with the survey said they were more likely to read short, focused e-mails than long messages. About 65 percent of young people said they wanted e-mails to give them news about the…
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