Multichannel

Fundraisers from all walks of life are encountering many challenges these days, but what do the C-level executives see as the most important issues facing the sector? At the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation’s 2010 New York Nonprofit Conference, three top nonprofit executives joined moderator Tom Harrison, president and CEO of Russ Reid, to discuss these issues in a two-part session, “Cracking the Shell: Open Dialogue & Discussion With America’s Top Nonprofit C-Level Executives on the Sector’s Most Pressing Issues."

When the Haiti earthquake hit back in January, the outcry and response were swift and plentiful. In this new era of the iPhone and other mobile devices, the biggest buzz in the fundraising sector was generated from the mobile-giving explosion following the disaster. But the biggest takeaway for fundraisers — all of them, not just disaster-relief organizations — is that donors have certain, higher expectations these days, and your organization must meet them.

This month I want to discuss a troubling digital divide — and it's not the kind you think. I'm not talking about the fact that some people are wired while others lack access to technology — though that's certainly true, and it's a real divide. I'm talking about a phenomenon within our own organizations: the fact that the people who do online outreach often are separated from those who do offline fundraising. It's not unusual for online and offline efforts to take place in parallel universes, with virtually no integration.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, established in 1983 to promote understanding between members of two major, often at-odds religions and build broad 
support for Israel, was one of the first nonprofit organizations to devote a full-time position to social media.

In the past 15 years, the number of public charities has increased from 600,000 to nearly 1 million. This increased competition, coupled with changing demographics, has resulted in declining acquisition rates, rising acquisition costs and declining retention rates.

In order to truly maximize fundraising dollars, organizations must use a multichannel approach, combining online and offline communications for maximum engagement. During the inaugural FundRaising Success Virtual Conference & Expo held on May 20 (and available on-demand until Aug. 24), three fundraising professionals — Jenny Kellum Lee, creative director of Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation; Kate Millea, interactive consultant at Convio; and Jessica Fraser Sotelo, manager of online marketing at World Wildlife Fund — tackled the multichannel integration process in the session “Get It Together!”

NEW YORK, JUNE 2, 2010  – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the VII Photo agency today launched “Starved for Attention,” a global multimedia campaign presenting a unique and new perspective of childhood malnutrition, a preventable and treatable condition that nonetheless claims the lives of millions of children each year.  

The collaboration challenges established notions of malnutrition through a seven-part mini-documentary series; clichéd images are substituted with those of parents and health workers struggling to meet the nutritional needs of young, growing children.  Starved for Attention highlights how increased childhood sickness and early death can be prevented with effective nutritional interventions. The campaign launch coincides with the onset of a particularly harsh “hunger gap” season in Africa’s Sahel region, the period when staple food crops run out before the next harvest and malnutrition typically increases. 

One thousand, six hundred and twenty-five. That's the number I blurted out months ago, off the top of my head, when folks on the ad side of things here at FundRaising Success asked me how many people I thought would sign up for our first-ever daylong virtual conference and trade show.

Tom Harrison: Many people talk about integrated marketing or multichannel 
marketing, but when you dig deeper you find out they mean direct mail and outbound telemarketing.

Kyla Shawyer: There was a time when Operation Smile was using very few channels to communicate with our donors. We had to acknowledge that people wanted diversity and demanded choices. The more ways we communicated with them, the more likely they were to receive our message and respond.

Some of the best online fundraising campaigns have a strong offline component. Often when people "go digital," they believe they need to direct all of their efforts to the online world. We find this is not always the best way to maximize fundraising revenues.