Your nonprofit’s website gets tens of thousands of hits every month.
Thousands support your Cause on Facebook, and you’ve mapped out a
killer Twitter strategy to attract a hundred new followers weekly. So what?
“Those are impressive numbers on the surface,” says Jayne Craven of Coyote Communications, but it’s vital to evaluate your organization’s online activities
in terms of offline actions: “If they don’t translate into more
volunteers, repeat volunteers, new and repeat donors, new and repeat
clients, greater onsite event attendance, legislation, or public
pressure, they are just that: numbers.”
For online activities to translate into something tangible, online action must create and support offline action.
That desired offline action will vary, of course, depending on your
organization and on your current priorities. Perhaps you want your
website visitors to read a special report, to make a donation, to buy a
T-shirt, to become a member of your organization, to sponsor a team, to
sell a book of raffle tickets to their co-workers, to adopt a puppy —
the possibilities for real-world action are endless. Whatever the goal, it’s a matter of connecting your online and offline activities to get maximum results.
The strength of a website is the limitless amount of space
you’ve got to tell your story — and the possibilities for compelling
story-telling through a combination of photographs, audio and video as
well words, in ways that would be cost-prohibitive, offline, for most
small nonprofits.
The strength of social media lies in the ability it gives you
to communicate one-to-one with your supporters, to gain feedback about
your programs and services, and to attract new supporters to your cause.
And the strength of online fundraising is in the relatively
low overhead cost combined with a very broad reach, and more and more
donors are finding it more convenient to make their donations online,
even in response to a direct mail appeal.
How can you leverage those strengths to support your overall goals?
Integrate your offline and online fundraising activities,
suggests Groundspring / Network for Good. For example, you might follow
up with prospective donors by email to boost the response to a direct
mail campaign, or repeat the appeal in your email newsletter. Give your
donors the convenience of online giving options via your website, and
add it to the list of payment options in your direct mail appeals.
Your newsletters, direct mail pieces, and other print communications represent an opportunity to market your website as
vigorously offline as you do online. But don’t stop with the printer —
Jayne Craven notes that many nonprofits still don’t include their
website address on event signage, for example; or if the web address
does appear on a sign, it’s often too small to be read easily and at a
distance. Letterhead, business cards, advertising in other media, all
offer new ways to bring a new audience to your website — where visitors
can gain a deeper understanding of the issues, sign up for membership,
make a donation, or otherwise be guided in greater detail toward the
action you’d like to see happen.
But what about all those Twitter followers and Facebook friends? Social media can help you to reach people who don’t use social media,
Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb) says, and offers tips and tools for
bridging that gap. For example, you might use social media to develop
relationships with people who can help you gain the ear of others who
are not so easy to reach online:
You may want to target senior executives, older people or others
who just aren’t very likely to read your blog posts, Twitter messages,
etc. but chances are — those people have co-workers, family and others
in their lives who would. By adding value to the lives of less senior
people inside organizations, you can gain mind-share with the people in
whose interest it is to make good recommendations to their superiors at
work.
Mainstream journalists, as Kirkpatrick points out, are tending to
use social media as a research tool, so there’s an opportunity here to
establish your organization and/or your leading policy people as expert
resources for the newspapers and broadcast news.
Anything a nonprofit can do in the way of encouraging a two-way flow
between online and offline activities can only serve to expand your
reach — and the greater chance of presenting your audience with a call
to action they’re ready, willing, and able to answer.
How does your organization plan to turn online activities into offline actions?