Sanky Blog

By Harry Lynch & Paul Habig

Are you worried about Wall Street’s woes? Fretting about your donors’ plunging portfolios? Wondering if your foundation funders can still make good on their pledges?

If you’re trying to figure out what sure-fire steps you can take to bolster your fundraising efforts in the coming weeks and months, have you considered … well … search engine optimization?

As one strategy for these times, it’s not nearly as off the wall as it sounds. Through all of the economic turbulence of the recent months, giving via the Internet has continued to be one of the brightest spots in fundraising and shows few signs of being affected by the crisis. But no matter how wonderful your website is (or you think it is), your best donors and potential donors can’t give to you online unless they find your website in the first place.

Search engines are the second biggest source of website traffic, second only to email (see the July 21 AFP eWire story on email appeals).

Search engine optimization (SEO) should be a key tool in your fundraising arsenal.

By now, most of us know the basics of SEO: Submitting our websites to major search engines, placing text on our homepages that’s rich with descriptive keywords and ensuring our website contains quality content that is frequently refreshed.

But the methodology used by Google and Yahoo is a constantly changing—a peculiar science with a fair bit of art thrown in. Keeping up with the latest trends in SEO can be difficult—and falling into traps and making common errors is hard to avoid. A few tips for these challenging times:

Site Architecture and Design. Technical minutia may put many fundraisers to sleep, but it is hugely significant when it comes to ensuring that your site is search-engine friendly. Utilizing up-to-date methods of coding and structuring your site is absolutely essential when it comes to SEO. If your website was designed more than three or four years back, chances are the technical structure is limiting how well the search engine “spiders” can find and read the information on your site.

Title Tags. Each web page on your site has a title tag, which is located in the “metadata” field. Adding strategic and relevant keywords or key phrases in this field is likely to gain you significant improvements in your search engine rankings. The text within the title tag is what appears in a search engine result.

Keyword Frequency. This is a fairly easy SEO technique. First, you need to decide what keyword or phrase is going to be optimized for a webpage (one or two per page). Second, make sure there is repetition of that keyword or phrase throughout that webpage. Last, add the same keyword or phrase in your website headings (text that is often larger and bolded, known to website designers as the <h17> tag). This will make a huge difference with SEO.

Friendly URLs. In the age of content management systems, pay attention not only to the SEO opportunities your system may provide, but to also some the roadblocks. For example, many content management systems (the program that allows you to build your website) generate URL web addresses that are comprised of numbers and lack a descriptive word or two that will make this key online component SEO-friendly.

Links. Have you considered methodically approaching websites that have related topics or content and asking them to provide a link to your own? What about submitting articles or press releases? These are all good ways to establish your site as an “authority” on issues, and this low-tech approach is highly effective but often overlooked. Incoming links from legitimate and apposite websites not only generate traffic, but tend to dramatically improve your rankings in Google and Yahoo.

Flash animations. Your beautiful animations may dazzle your boss and board members, but search engine spiders generally index only text that is in a particular computer code called HTML. The very elements causing those oohs and ahhs may also be limiting your traffic by making it difficult for crawlers to read your site. Consider imbedding flash “movies” into your HTML codes rather than designing your entire site in Flash.

Of course, it takes time for search engine rankings to improve. The steps above won’t provide you with instant gratification. But as you watch your website traffic gradually and steadily increase and your donations climb, the efforts will be well worth it—especially in these troubling times.

Gilda’s Club is named for comedian Gilda Radner, and was founded by Joanna Bull (along with Gene Wilder and Joel Siegel), who worked as a cancer psychotherapist during Ms. Radner’s illness. Gilda’s Club works to create welcoming communities of free support for everyone living with cancer – men, women, teens and children – along with their families and friends. Gilda’s Club believes that providing an emotional and social support community is an essential complement to medical treatment for people living with cancer.

SankyNet understands the importance of the work Gilda’s Club is doing for those learning to live with cancer. We look forward to working with Gilda’s Club during the coming months to redesign their website and expand their vital online resources. Thousands of people living with cancer have found Gilda’s Club to be a sanctuary during a very scary time. SankyNet is excited to find ways to craft their website to feel as warm and welcoming as Gilda’s Club itself.

Please take a moment to learn more about Gilda’s Club of New York.

When Greenwich House approached SankyNet with the opportunity to redesign their website, we were thrilled at the creative potential this project held.

For more than a century, Greenwich House has brought people together to overcome big-city isolation and the problems that go with it, making them feel at home in their communities. Operating 17 different social, medical, mental-health, educational and cultural programs, Greenwich House serves the needs of more than 9,000 New Yorkers annually.

In their original site, each of Greenwich House’s diverse programs stood alone with their own independent looks and feels. SankyNet recommended a dramatic site re-design to bring each Greenwich House program together under one cohesive design, allowing each program to remain distinct while still connecting to the overall theme. Now the children’s education program and the senior services program each reflect their own personalities while still fitting within the Greenwich House theme. The arts program and the health/social services program feel separate, yet still connected to the Greenwich House site.

After SankyNet’s redesign, the Greenwich House site looks great and is much more user-friendly!

Greenwich House was so pleased with our site redesign and branding work that they signed on with SankyNet for an ongoing marketing and communications plan. We are excited to continue this partnership with Greenwich House and look forward to working with them well into the future!

Please take a moment to look at their new website.

By Harry Lynch
Published on AFP site on July 21st, 2008

It’s been a while since a nonprofit executive asked me that question, but it still makes me smile. And groan a little too.

The myths and confusion engulfing email only seem to proliferate with each passing year. So here we are in 2008. A cool $10 billion or so is now being raised annually online. But what is the truth about email?

Is it the best way to reach a mass audience of potential online donors? Or is the highly publicized plunge in open rates just the latest sign of overuse and dwindling effectiveness? Are social networking and other new tools overtaking it as the top online fundraising medium? Or is email really the best way to engage donors – especially the younger ones – yearned for by so many nonprofit executives?

The bottom line is that email has emerged as a mature, predictable, and cost-effective fundraising medium – raising exponentially more money online (with far fewer resources) than social networking, search engine marketing, or any other vehicle than the all-important website itself.

But even in 2008, confusion about the medium and best practices still reign – and limit the success of far too many non-profits. So what are some of the most common myths? How can they be countered?

Myth #1: Declining open rates are a sign of “email fatigue.”

The truth is that “open-rates” just aren’t that meaningful anymore. Most recipient email programs now employ “image blockers” that skew open rates and give false negative readings. And aggregate statistics often cited in surveys are skewed because so many nonprofits now “append” email addresses from their land lists – and these are opened at lower rates, dramatically suppressing the overall average.

Emailers who segment their lists and tracks results according to donors, prospects, and append groups not only find that donor and prospect open rates are holding up, but they can better tailor their strategies and messages to improve overall results.

Myth #2: You can never send too much email.

With email just so darn cheap, the tendency for many nonprofits is just to blast away. What’s the harm, after all? The “harm” is that the recipient audiences will start to tune out your messages; click-through rates will fall rapidly, and opt-outs surge.

Online fundraisers can excel by taking the time to craft a thoughtful email segmentation plan and schedule. Friends who sign up to be “online advocates” might not mind getting one or two or even three “action alert” emails every week. But donors who ask for a monthly enewsletter will be turned off if their inbox starts to get cluttered with e-missives every other day. One final word: Opt-outs are easy – just the click of a button – and forever! It’s not like having your direct mail solicitation thrown away … so you can send another one the next month. When it comes to email, an opt-out is forever – there are no second chances!

Myth #3: Ask and ye shall receive.

The golden rule for offline fundraising is terribly tarnished advice when it comes to email. Online donors and prospects want information and a relationship before they’re even asked for money – let alone would consider giving. If you ask too soon, or too often, your list will stop opening your emails – or opt-out altogether.

Some marketing experts recommend a firm 80/20 rule – four informational emails for every one that is “ask” focused. While some experts suggest that a simple link to your donation page in non-fundraising e-newsletters and alerts doesn’t have any negative impact , others recommend avoiding any hint of fundraising until the email cycle reaches an appropriate point for the ask. Everyone agrees: asking for money too soon and/or too often on the Internet has serious, immediate, and irreversible consequences.

Myth #4: There’s no such thing as email acquisition.

True … but false too. Unlike traditional direct mail, where thousands of lists are available for rental at any given moment, few legitimate email lists available for rental seem to hold much promise for fundraising … and the ones we’ve tested yield negligible results.

That said, email acquisition is a vital – but too often overlooked – part of any online program. It involves a very distinct two-step process that first includes building your organization’s own email prospect list. Assuming you can offer a compelling e-newsletter, action alert, or other valuable information, you can methodically use your website … append technology … and even search engine marketing to promote email opt-ins – and then very carefully cultivate these new friends to give.

Myth #5: Timing is everything.

Many fundraisers now know that the obsession with precisely timing the day and even hour to send email solicitations is a bit overdone. The “best” moment to send an email tends to be a moving target depending on a whole host of factors and variables.

Rather than obsess about the advantages of, say, Tuesday morning vs. Thursday afternoon email deliveries, online marketers can more productively expend energy ensuring they are ready to leverage the tremendous opportunities that emerge because of the speed and precision of the medium. We all know that email offers one of the most effective ways to capture donations after a natural disaster or media event – but this is only possible when the systems and people are in place who can respond when there is such an opportunity. And many charities are learning that email is a way to get a “year end giving reminder” into the hands of your donors on, say, exactly the morning of December 30.

Myth #6: Email is the best way to reach a young audience.

These days you’re more likely to reach grandma than grandson via email. Study after study confirms that email is increasingly a medium of choice for people over 50 … and even over 65!

If you’re looking to motivate and tap the enthusiasm of our youngest citizens – say those under 25 – a text message or MySpace page will likely serve you better. If you’re looking for a donation from the audience with most of the money and inclination to give, traditional direct mail and email – if not a complicated combination of the two – are the way to go.

Reports of the death of email, as a useful fundraising tool, have been greatly exaggerated. But the sooner we recognize that email is truly a unique medium with its own set of rules and best practices, the sooner we can all put its power to better use – and raise more money for the causes we cherish.

NonProfitMarketingGuide.com, a marketing resource for nonprofit professionals, recently published an excellent article detailing ways for nonprofit organizations to make their websites more user-friendly. They report that many nonprofits make the mistake of organizing their sites so that they read like old-fashioned brochures, never drawing people into their mission.

But the article cites Citymeals-on-Wheels as an exception to the rule. It explains that the Citymeals website, which was design by SankyNet, is expertly organized to meet the needs of the people who are coming to the site.

Citmeals-on-Wheels “has three tabs right across the top: Get Meals, Volunteer and Support Us. That about sums it up, doesn’t it? The left side menu includes additional information, but those three tabs right at the top stand out and show me that they know exactly why people are coming to their website.”

SankyNet listened to the needs of our client and we are proud to have produced a website worthy of such praise. We invite you to read the entire article to learn how to “Make Your Website About Visitors, Not About You”.

By Paul Habig

MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn… Should these sites be a part of nonprofits’ online fundraising strategies? How do nonprofits raise funds from social networks? Are they really raising money?

The Washington Post recently published an article about the total funds raised from Facebook’s Cause application, which allows Facebook users to fundraise for their favorite charity with the support of other users and friends.

Nearly 20,000 nonprofit organizations collectively raised a whopping $2.5 million in the application’s first year. Breaking this down, this averages $128.50 per organization. Don’t get me wrong, this is an exciting moment in online fundraising, but these numbers require us to put the medium in perspective.

So, should nonprofits be investing time, energy, and resources into social networks?

Yes… but as part of a long-term online strategic plan, not as a short-term online fundraising plan. Why? Social networks have become the latest communication medium for the next generation of future donors, a generation that generally doesn’t respond to direct mail and uses email less and less.

Why reach out to these constituents now? We know this demographic are many years away from entering the ideal age for online donors. Nonprofits, such as Amnesty International, canvassed college campuses in the 60s and 70s, creating their present-day donor base. Similarly, nonprofits with a large presence on social networks will be in an ideal position to mobilize a future generation.

The pillar of online fundraising is built on the foundation of long-term cultivation and stewardship.

In conclusion, demographics for social network sites are changing everyday as more people, young and old, flock to these sites. Fundraisers need to be utilizing the social networks as part of their online communications strategy. Additionally, campaigns need to be integrated with all mediums–including direct mail, email, websites, and social networks.

By Harry Lynch
Published on AFP site on April 14, 2008

Back in ancient times—say around 1998—we all knew that the Internet was going to take over the world. Remember that? How obsolete and uncool was everything else, including every other fundraising medium and method, about to become?

It wasn’t to be, of course. Not even close, in fact. Yet even the naysayers, who have a decade’s worth of history and hindsight on their side, would do well to stop and take note of just how far we have come in just 10 short years.

The approximately 50-fold increase in the amount of money being raised online over the last decade is eye-popping. While the Internet may still represent less than 4 percent of the nearly $300 billion being donated annually in the United States, if the rates of growth hold up, well, you do the math.

Of course, there’s also the often-overlooked fact of who is now online. Fully one-third of people over 65 (READ: those most philanthropically inclined) are now active on the Internet. Plus, nearly three-quarters of those in the 50–64 age group (i.e. the folks making the most money) are going online regularly. That degree of Internet penetration among older adults is wildly ahead of what was projected just a few years ago.

There’s just no doubt about it: The future of online fundraising is clearly very bright—and very, very complicated.

Rapid shifts in what people do online and how they do it, as well as the growing tendency for older users to jump back and forth between new and traditional media, make best practices for online fundraising a rapidly moving target.

When it comes to new media, there’s simply no such thing as timeless lessons. The best anyone can claim to do is offer a few observations that might serve as guideposts in these extraordinary—and extraordinarily challenging—times. Here are a few:

• Keep up with, and invest in if you can, the newest thing. Pay close attention to trends and shifts. However, don’t bet the house—at least not yet—on social networking or text messaging campaigns. These are vital and exciting ways to engage mostly younger audiences. There are a few important exceptions, but the majority of nonprofit organizations have yet to raise truly significant funds through these channels.
• Pay more than lip service to synchronizing online and offline fundraising and communication channels. “Integration” should be more than just a buzzword. More and more online donors—and in all likelihood your most important ones—are likely to move offline at some point and mail you a check, or vice versa. Keep track of them and engage them in the right way, in the best medium, at the right time.
• Listen (of course!) when the 40-year-old chair of your board tells you to post a video to your website or insists that you add some Flash animation. At the same time, don’t have the entire strength of your online appeal depend on any feature that might be a barrier for anyone who might have a slow Internet connection or an older computer, or who simply may be less comfortable with downloads and new software. (Fact: 53 percent of Americans used dialup Internet at home in 2007!)
• Don’t skip the basics: building a great website, getting people to your great website and using email to engage and ultimately solicit your constituency. The vast majority of donations online are still generated by websites that make a compelling case, in both words and photographs, and succeed in getting people to visit them. (Another fact: a recent survey found that 62 percent of Americans visit an organization’s website before donating!)
• Don’t pay too much attention to how America’s kids communicate. While our text-message-happy youngsters may tell us that email is not cool (“so my parents” was the last quote I heard), that’s exactly the point. Email is now the preferred means of communication by many parents, along with aunts, uncles and grandparents. The last time I checked, those are still the very people who give money to nonprofit organizations.

Perhaps the next generation of donors will want to send their donations via text message, be motivated by clips on Google’s YouTube channels or respond to some unimagined method that we’ll be talking about in future articles.

We need to be ready. We need to keep our eyes open and be sure not to blink. The future is flying at us a whole lot faster than it used to.

We also need to be excruciatingly careful not to take our eyes off what we do know in the present: who gives online, why they give and what we know we can do today to raise more money online.

How do you get people from all over the world to attend Freedom from Hunger Day in Davis, California? You use the power of the Internet to bring the festivities to them! This year, SankyNet helped turn this official day of awareness into a worldwide interactive virtual event.

SankyNet’s team of designers, writers, coders and developers came together to create Freedom from Hunger Day — a truly imaginative virtual event which the San Francisco Chronicle called a “first” in the non-profit world.

On September 28th, people from around the world took part by joining a series of interactive events that connected them with everyday heroes — women who have helped end hunger and poverty for their families.

Participants watched video clips taken by staff in the field…downloaded sound bites of women sharing dreams for themselves and their families…participated in a live conversation with Freedom from Hunger’s President, Chris Dunford, and received answers to their most pressing questions about solutions that will end global hunger and poverty.

SankyNet also developed an interactive “World Traveler” game for children, an online petition, a flash e-card and a Hunger Blog to further engage visitors. Furthermore, SankyNet’s team of marketing and communication specialists created a fully-integrated promotional campaign to help raise awareness of Freedom from Hunger Day. Take a look at a few of the features now.

By the end of the day, thousands around the world had joined this special event and learned for themselves why there’s good reason for hope in the fight against world hunger.

SankyNet is constantly striving for new and innovative ways to bring the success of offline fundraising events to the online medium. And with the support of our client, Covenant House, we were given the opportunity to stretch the limits of our creative and technological imagination.Each year, Covenant House’s annual candlelight vigils gather thousands of supporters from around the world and we saw a unique opportunity to help recreate this energy through a virtual event.

SankyNet’s team went to work and created a fully interactive venue where people could gather online in support of homeless kids. The virtual candlelight vigil site included a vibrant and compelling look that was creatively branded to Covenant House’s offline marketing materials.

Another facet of this year’s campaign called on our marketing experts to expand Covenant House’s online audience for the event. New target audiences included hundreds of colleges, churches, civil groups and other caring communities around the World.

The outcome? This year’s event was even more successful than last year and continues to attract new visitors every day! Visit the vigil site today and see what kind of possibilities a virtual event can offer your organization.