Verizon's new Mifi 4G LTE card. It sucks.

I’ve been in love with my Verizon 3G Mifi card since I first got it two years ago.  It was light years ahead of my previous roaming USB stick, was very dependable, and up to 5 people could use it at the same time.  It had one button, and it worked- all of the time. It is likely the best, most impressive piece of technology I have used since the invention of the cell phone.

Mifi cards allow you to carry the Internet in your pocket.  You simply turn it on, and presto!  You have an instant wifi spot where up to 5 computers, laptops, ipods, etc. can connect to the Internet.

So imagine my delight when I was contacted by Verizon and asked if I wanted a FREE 4G LTE mifi card!  Not only that, but they would LOWER my monthly billing to $50/month.  Too good to be true, right?  Nope, it was zero dollars and they shipped it to me for free too.

Up until yesterday, I used it for 4 weeks.  In one word – it sucks.  I can’t believe people use this device other than for a paperweight:

• It didn’t work out of the box.  After 4 calls to technical support (which I admit was fast), they shipped me a new SIM card, and then it worked. But not for long.  You see, it has to run off of the battery and you cannot use it simultaneously while being powered by your computer.  That means you can only get 2 hours out of it- max.  (The old 3G one does not have that limitation and works for as long as your laptop battery)
• It doesn’t hold a connection- at any speed.  About once every 5 minutes, it disconnects from the network, anywhere from 15 to 60 seconds.  While this is fine while you are surfing or responding to email, it’s absolutely worthless when trying to view a YouTube video or making a Skype call.
• 4G coverage is pathetic.  Yes, Verizon admits that they are building out their 4G network, but I found the coverage incredibly spotty in and around Philadelphia.
• One network bar in 4G is 10 times slower than full bars in 3G.  There were times it would try to hook into a 4G signal, but it was weak.  It would have been better to be at 3G speeds with full bars.  Of course, you can’t configure the card to force it into 3G mode.  This is a MAJOR problem and must be addressed.
• You can’t use it while moving.  I travel a lot, especially by train.  The card was useless on an Amtrak train from Philadelphia to DC.  My old 3G card worked everywhere along this route, except for the tunnels near Baltimore.  The 4G one would constantly lose a connection- for minutes at a time- making it impossible to use.  Amtrak Connect (Amtrak’s free wifi service), is not an alternative.  It too is painfully slow to the point that only using it for email is reasonable.

So in the end, I walked into my not so favorite Verizon store, and told them they could keep their 4G and reactivate my old 3G card.

And you know what?  I love it.

I always liked "Back to the Future!"

Again it’s been some time since I blogged.  The fact is, things have been so busy this year, it was hard to take time out and let people know.  Yes, this is a complete cop-out and I take responsibility for it, but like working out at the gym, I need to get back on the blogging treadmill.

Let’s see how long it lasts!

Work at DonorPerfect could not be better.  We are averaging our highest percent growth rate- year over year- since we launched DonorPerfect Online in 2001.  Yes- DonorPerfect Online turned 10 (along with my son, Michael), and who would have thought how far we have come.

Long before people talked about the ‘cloud’ or even SaaS (Software as a Service), we launched DonorPerfect as one of the first ASP’s (Application Service Provider).  As I have mentioned in the past, we only had a few online customers that first year.  We now have a thousand times that!  Likewise, we went from 25 people to over 100+ dedicated employees.  While much of our success is attributed to hard work, there was certainly a bit of luck involved and I know I am very grateful for being in the right place at the right time *and* be surrounded by a great group of people.

As for the last few months, we hosted our second annual DonorPerfect Community Network Conference.  We had over 30% more people attend this year then last, so we’re already making preparations for next year.  It was fantastic meeting so many new and old friends (aka clients), and learning a few things about how they use DonorPerfect to build their mission in ways we never imagined.  It was a great and humbling experience.

Finally, just in the last few weeks I had two opportunities to travel to Europe.  The first was a speaking engagement with the Charity IT Conference 2011 in London, UK, and I had the opportunity to share how segmentation and IT services can help organizations raise money more profitably.  Held in the center of London and hosted by the great people at CivilSociety, the conference was a fantastic experience to share and learn fundraising techniques from both continents.  From a logistics viewpoint, I was incredibly impressed with the organization and communication aspect- I think we may have a few things to learn for our own conferences in the States!

I also had the opportunity to visit Madrid, Spain, as well as Barcelona.  We continue to expand our relationship with a rather large multi-national organization, and once again it was a great opportunity to learn how fundraising in Spain is unique vs. other countries.  For example, one time gifts are virtually unheard of within Spain- most donations come in the form of monthly commitments.  If only the US would be this forward thinking, sigh.

As 2011 comes to a close, we’re also watching our clients on-line fundraising with a keen eye.  Our WebLink component will be processing thousands of donations a day from now until the end of the year, with New Year’s Eve easily being the busiest day of the year for online giving.  If you haven’t done so already, make sure to remind your donors that it’s not too late to donate, especially on the last day of the year.

As 2011 comes to a close, I wish everyone happiness, less stress, and more major gifts in the coming New Year!

But in addition to so called “normal” fundraising, it turns out that online friend-to-friend fundraising really has it’s own special niche which is growing by leaps and bounds. I think of it as “self-funded” fundraising, where an individual or group raises funds to support their own mission or project. Here are a few examples (Please note that these site were active at the time of this posting, but may be deactivated when an associated event or campaign is over):

Mercy Ships is an international organization that uses their fleet of ships to send doctors, nurses, educators and other volunteer specialist, along with medical and developmental aid, to areas of the world that need them most. Their volunteer crew members self-fund their multi-month missions with personal DonorPages:

Mercy Ships Canada: mercyships.donorpages.com/MERCYGIFTS

Mercy Ships USA: mercyships-us.donorpages.com/crewmates 

The Lambda Literary Foundation supports LGBT writers and causes by offering an annual Writer’s Retreat. They provide a site where up-and-coming writers can create personal pages to raise funds for tuition, travel and housing costs:

lambdaliterary.donorpages.com/EmergingWritersRetreat

Flower City Habitat for Humanity (read more about their successes here) creates a DonorPages site for each housing build. Volunteer builders self-fund their build sites by creating personal and team fundraising pages:

Volunteer habitat builders self-fund with personal fundraising pages.

rochesterhabitat.donorpages.com/WomenBuild11

rochesterhabitat.donorpages.com/VeteranBuild2011

And MS Cure Fund was able to provide personal fundraising pages for MS and Parkinson’s Disease to self fund their team expedition to climb Mt. Kilamanjaro*:

mscurefund.donorpages.com/ClimbingExpedition

These examples all have one thing in common – the purpose of the fundraising is not to raise funds for research, cover operational expenses or directly advance the cause of the organization (though there was certainly an indirect awareness-raising element).  The purpose is to empower and enable the participants and fundraisers to achieve their own personal mission or goal.

And not surprisingly, the personal fundraising projects of these self-funders dovetail nicely with the stated missions of these organizations (helping emerging writers, providing medical care, building homes). Self-funding is a rising trend that helps marry someone who has a personal cause with the tools, backing and guidance of professional nonprofits. This helps build relationships and awareness for organizations that recognize the opportunity this trend presents.

*The Kilamanjaro Climb was led by Lori Schneider, an amazing person who was keynote speaker at our just-completed DonorPerfect Community Network Conference. You can read more about Lori and her inspiring adventures on her website, Empowermentthoughadventure.com.

We learned about different kinds of people you might see in a major gift visit, specifically strategic versus relational/intimate people. This was really interesting. I have never heard of approaching major donors this way.

For example, apparently people operate in two primary modes, strategic and relational or intimate.

Strategic people:

• Goal and task attainment oriented
• Having your view prevail, without mutuality
• Use of hierarchical differences
• You need to be judgmental and evaluate others, to pick up cues and react to someone else.

Relational People:

• Enhance connectedness with another person
• Make contact and building relationships for their own sake
• A sense of mutuality
• Minimal fixed hierarchy

You might go into a donor meeting and not know if the person is going to try to get to know you, or if they just want to get the meeting done. And you should know yourself, as well, and figure out what your most dominant aspect is, and try to get out of “the hula hoop” of your comfort zone sometimes.

A way to discover which kind of person you’re dealing with is, for example, ask: How much time do you have?

If they say, “I can give you 10 minutes” then you know you’re dealing with a strategic person.
If they say, “I have plenty of time” then probably you’re dealing with an intimate person.

What about you? Have you noticed different ways people interact when they go out to solicit donors for money?

Are you at the conference? What did YOU get out of this workshop?

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Article from Mazarine Treyz, consultant at WildWomanFundraising.com, author of The Wild Woman’s Guide to Fundraising.

I first learned about personal fundraising pages from MercyCorps several years ago. They helped people create their own fundraising pages for different initiatives that they were doing. And they are still doing this. I don’t know about YOU, but in a small fundraising office, I LONG for a fundraising army to help me fundraise. This could be a way to help people fundraise for your cause and be that fundraising army.

Why would people be personal fundraisers for your cause, and why should you ask them to be? Well, people tend to listen to other people that they know more than anything else.

Proof? Gladly.

People who might do this more are people who are doing walk-a-thons, bike-a-thons, or people who are traveling around the world on rescue missions, like Mercy Ships.

As Beth Kanter says, P2P or Friend to Friend fundraising is on the rise.

The average Facebook user has 130 Facebook friends, and a DonorPage can help them connect their network to your nonprofit. So imagine connecting exponentially to more and more people.

DonorPages can help you get people who are not comfortable with fundraising to fundraise for you. Probably best to go into this with the mentality of “Every little bit helps.”

Problems? I’m sure you can see hundreds. People are too busy. People have this anxiety about asking for money. They have too many distractions. They are too shy. Or they just are not tech savvy enough to make this work.

DonorPerfect proposes to solve this problem by making it simple.

They say that a donor fundraising page takes away the “face to face” ask. They help people donate with their credit cards, so they don’t have to manage the money. And they can personalize their message too.

Furthermore, a DonorPage will help people post to facebook and twitter about their initiative, It will give a donation thermometer for each page, as well as little widgets for the side of their blogs, and give talking points for people to tell others about your cause. They can also help you see stats and who visits your site.

When people give though, should you add them directly to your donor database?

Kivi Leroux Miller says, “No, ask them if they’d like to be on your e-newsletter. They don’t have loyalty to your cause, they have loyalty to your fan, and they should not be treated like other donors.”

Well, I haven’t used DonorPages, personally, but this seems really interesting and I would like to learn more.

Mazarine Treyz: Nonprofit Management and Fundraising Consultant and Blogger on WildWomanFundraising.com, blogging for the first time here on DonorPerfect about the DonorPerfect conference!

It’s been 2 hours since I got here, and I already met some pretty special people at the Donorperfect Conference!

We started with all of the Donorperfect people are SINGING hee hee hee. To the tune of “You make me feel like a natural woman” they sang about Donorperfect and how much they appreciated all of us! Good show!

Sam Goldenberg, Mike Sernoff, and Bob Evans all made me feel so welcome.

And I met Kim Hessler, Advancement Assistant of the Penn Foundation, whose boss, Jennifer King, got an award for a free conference pass, was SO fun to talk with!

I just did a post over on my blog about Bob Evan’s first session on GivingUSA’s 2010 report. It is FASCINATING and it will give you some strategies for what to focus on in your fundraising office this coming year.

If you are here too, hashtag is #DPCNC, I’m wearing a black and green dress, come and say hi!

During the Q&A, a DonorPerfect client pointed out that the examples I’d been using were primarily causes related to illness care and research, health, or social issues/advocacy services. His was a cultural organization, and he wanted to know whether a friend-to-friend fundraising program would work as well for them as it did for the examples I was using.

A very valid question. All things being equal regarding a nonprofit staff’s experience with running fundraising campaigns, events and other online fundraising, there are certain types of causes that have a deep emotional connection with people. Since the conference, I did a “breakdown by type of cause” for DonorPages clients (see pie chart). Over 91% of the organizations were related to causes that have a deep emotional context, based on helping people in need, faith-based causes, or animal  shelters and welfare.*

Types of organizations using DonorPages

It’s no secret that emotion plays a vital part in fundraising success. When someone tells the story of why they’re personally raising funds to cure cancer, to help impoverished children in Asia, to spread awareness of their faith, or to help animals, it’s not hard to see that emotionally-charged causes increase fundraising returns.

By comparison, causes such as theatre or community arts programs, museums, libraries or education do not carry the same inherent emotion. I’m not saying they’re not very important causes with their own emotional connection, but the fact that the cultural organization client raised the question showed he’s well aware of these challenges.

But that’s where a tool like DonorPages comes in. Friend-to-friend fundraising is all about your supporter personally making the ask on your behalf. No matter how many solicitations or communications a potential donor may get, if that email is from their friend, their son, daughter, brother, sister or work colleague, that email is going to be opened over 90% of the time. That’s over 4 times better than the national average open rate for fundraising emails.

And since the ask is is made by someone they know, trust, and who they want to help, the likelihood of a donation increases. Plus the average campaign donation amount tends to double when the fundraiser is known to the donor.

Why would a friend-to-friend appeal be so much more successful? My theory is your fundraising supporter supplies their own emotional context. Instead of “Help protect our Environment!”, the message becomes “I (friend, son, daughter, brother, sister, colleague) care about protecting our environment. Please help me reach my goal!” Because of the donor’s relationship with your supporter, the emotional connection is made. And if your supporter is able to communicate their emotions and passion for your cause, all the better.

So it’s a fair question to ask whether your type of cause can leverage friend-to-friend fundraising. But with the right tools to empower them and some guidance from you, your committed constituents will provide the emotion and passion to fund your cause!

Here are just a few DonorPages clients raising funds for arts, environmental, literary or similar causes. Please note that these site were active at the time of this posting, but may be deactivated when an associated event or campaign is over:

• Arts/Cultural: 18th Street Arts Center
• Literary:  Lambda Literary Foundation
• Environmental: Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association

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* Shameless plug: See Sherpa Strickler’s personal page for Last Chance Ranch, for an example of a shelter fundraising page.

I referred to this as the Democratization of Media, and made the point that, due to all these new media tools, your constituents have become more valuable than ever to your organization.

These same tools have also democratized fundraising. Small, fledgling organizations can tap into FaceBook and Twitter’s nearly 1 billion users, just like large ones. And those who support nonprofits are more and more becoming “free agents” who have many tools readily available to help them promote any cause they choose. It’s up to each nonprofit to make it easy to choose their cause.

How can you make it easy to do that? If you do nothing else, create a FaceBook page for your organization, then add a posting to it twice a week. Promote your FaceBook page, and ask (or beg) people to Like you. Ask your supporters to post on your page, or visit your page often and comment. This all helps get your organization’s name out in front of potentially 700 million people, or at least the 150 or so that the average FaceBook user connects with.

Now there’s an ongoing debate about whether using social networks alone provides any financial return. So, when you have your supporters using their own personal influence and reaching out to their social networks, give them the tools to close the deal and make the ask themselves, using a friend-to-friend online fundraising tool like DonorPages. When the person making the ask is known and trusted by the donor, and when that known and trusted person communicates their passion for your cause on their own personal fundraising page, the likelihood of a donation goes way up. Plus, the average amounts per donation are likely to double.

The Democratization of Fundraising can be a bit of a brave new world, but that’s what was said about the Internet itself 15 years ago. Can you imagine not having a website today? I encourage you to harness these tools to help your “free agent” fundraisers work their magic for your cause!

My advice to all non-profits is to check the list for their State.    The IRS has a process to apply to retroactively reinstate your tax exempt status.  There is a fee of as much as $850, but the fee can be reduced for smaller organizations that can prove they had good reason to not comply.

Another useful link is for an IRS website with guidance on Staying Exempt

Recently, I was asked by Laura Quinn (Director at Idealware) my opinions about “Social CRM”- the definition (I believe) is that it’s a process of knowing all the social interactions (as well as the more tradional CRM data points) of your constituency base.  Here’s what I wrote to her:

Hi Laura,

No problem.

The current “Social CRM” thought process is very much in its infancy.  In fact, I would compare it to the same period about 12-15 years ago when people/constituents first started using the Internet and email.

The real problem right now is the overwhelming vast majority of the constituents of your average non profit are not active members of any social network.  This is especially true of what most people consider their most important constituency- major donors.  By their very nature, major donors are much older, and adopt new technology much slower.  While this may be the ‘fastest growing segment’ on Facebook, Twitter, or Linked-In, this important group is still very under represented on any electronic social network.

As for DonorPerfect, right now we do have the ability to track and link to the constituent’s identifying social network (Facebook id, Linked-in id, Twitter name, even MySpace    ).  In addition, through our very close relationship with Constant Contact, we can track how people are following, liking, and tweeting a particular non profit’s cause or even specific campaign.

While I can’t go into too much detail, we do have plans for broadening the data non-profits track for their constituents, including the depth of their social networks and the ability to monitor their constituents’ interactions with the organization.

Even today, online donations only account for less than 5% of total giving, and most of that is driven by disasters, email appeals, and ‘traditional’ friends/family asking friends events (Think Walkathons, Races, etc.).  Facebook and Twitter account for just a fraction of that total as well, and it’s not surprising- the average active Facebook user is simply too young and not in the same demographic as your average donor.

Clearly, this is going to change- just like email adoption started very small and grew over time (and according to this article has reached 94%+ ( http://www.magillreport.com/email-dead-nope-not-even-gasping/)) Social networks will have the same or similar growth curve.  I just looked on-line, and there are a ton of various studies that show social-network use among older adults is still less than 50%, and drops to only about 25% for those 65 or older. (See http://www.wlfi.com/dpp/news/local/more-older-adults-using-facebook)

To be candid, I cringe when I read the various stories explaining how a non-profit spends 20 hours a week for months at a time trying to get the most votes to win some $5000 prize when at the same time they do not have a fundamental annual or major donor campaign plan.

Social CRM is just going to be one of the many tools nonprofits will be able to use to grow and sustain their organization, and the time spent on it should be proportionate to both the near and long term returns.  Right now those returns are tiny- but growing.

I hope this helps- feel free to bounce back with any questions you may have.

-Jon

So I guess I will need to amend the subject of this post to “Why Social CRM is a Terrible Idea…”, if that is your only focus at the moment.  Combined with a solid plan for Annual and Major Donor Giving (among others), it will likely drive your organization’s success.

Never forget about the fundamentals- it doesn’t matter if your organization is liked by 7,658 people if no one donates.