The Best Thing You Can Do TODAY
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown…
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown…
It’s true. It’s harder and harder to navigate and stay above water (and to raise a buck). Accept the fact that it’s difficult. Move on.
Because we have more choices of mediums, it’s tempting to declare one or more strategies ‘dead’; therefore, no longer worthy of our limited resources. This, however, is a mistake. Because the very nature of the multi-channel world we’re in means that what we do in one medium affects what we do in another. And we don’t always know what really prompted our donors to give.
EXAMPLE: Last holiday season I worked with a nonprofit that saw a HUGE increase in online giving. Was it because we’d significantly stepped up online appeals and newsletters? Maybe. But we’d also considerably altered the direct mail strategy by hiring a specialized firm, sending more appeals, and making segmented ask strings. Direct mail donors had the opportunity to go to the website to give; so, how many of them contributed to the upswing in online donations?
Let’s beware of premature predictions of doom for any particular fundraising strategy. Jeff Brooks talks about this phenomenon in Direct mail is dying. Again.. Yes, direct mail is less cost-effective than in the past. Frankly, everything is. When we only had mail to contend with, it was easy. Now we’ve mail plus dozens of choices of digital and social media. So we spread ourselves thinly.
What’s a better approach? Laying all our butter on thick on one piece of bread, or spreading it across all the slices in the loaf? The latter strategy feeds more people; the former strategy is less work for us.
We must guard against becoming adverse to the work that’s required in today’s digital world. We may not like it, yet it’s dangerous to pronounce the media we know dead (until it essentially no longer exists (e.g., UPS goes out of business), just because resource allocation then becomes an easier equation. It’s equally risky to ignore new media coming onto the scene.
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand…
What you can’t understand…
We never know what the next new, best strategy may be. We ignore emerging technologies at our peril. Ignorance is not bliss. It’s, well, lack of information and knowledge. And we all know the saying: Information is power.
I’m not suggesting we go after every bright shiny object. There’s definitely not enough butter to spread it on all the slices in two loaves. But we should adopt an attitude that every tool at our disposal has potential. Our knife is double-edged; a tool that must be wielded precisely and carefully. This requires at least a rudimentary understanding of the technology at our disposal and its potential impact on our organization.
We cannot know the potential of any medium until we test it. Surely if we ignore it, the potential will never be realized. Is it possible that a lot of the reasons SM strategies do not realize measurable results are because: (1) we don’t employ SM strategically; (2) we don’t measure SM strategically, and (3) we don’t do these things because our leaders don’t fully embrace SM and do consider it a big time suck?
…The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past…
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past…
Many still consider social media disruptive. All tools will have early adopters and not-so-early adopters. At some point, however, we’re going to have to embrace the good tools. I’ve no doubt that there will be a tipping point when the technology will no longer be considered disruptive. In fact, it almost seems a generational thing; my younger colleagues simply do business this way. They find newspapers and mail disruptive. In fact, they don’t ‘get’ us not getting it.
…Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
