The sequel to Day One of these notes from the New Organizing Institute, with Day Two spent ill abed.

Greg Green, Blue State Digital

Difference between CRM & CMS

Use CRM to track and contact campaign's supporter

Use CMS to edit web site w/o a lot of updating

Handy for
1. when there are a lot of people on the campaign updating things
2. when there are people in different locations who all need to access/update data
3. essential if there's a pretty large database of people you're contacting regularly and trying to track (e.g., you want to make sure you don't ask for money the day after they gave...)

CRM
*single online place for supporter tools
*use it for
-e-mailing
-fundraising & donation processing
-event planning, calendars, RSVPs
-petition signature drives, list growth
-letter writing to local reps & news outlets
-track sources of incoming supporters
-sometimes includes a CMS

CRM: "Exactly Who & What"
GetActive, Convio, DIA ... and CivicSpace, interestingly (... and no Kintera)

Typical tasks:
-adding members in bulk
-setting up web signup forms
-pulling lists
-fundraising reports
-tracking list growth & sources
-maintaining membership lists
-grouping members as volunteer constituencies, super-volunteers
-working online presences into field plan

"Goin to the Chapel..."

Convio + GetActive over toasting champagne glasses. Cute
GA web site already redirects to Convio
The urge to merge = ?

Interesting question from Charles Lenchner about whether there's a "path of integrity" that makes sure that e.g. petitions actually do do something meaningful as opposed to simply functioning to build a list for subsequent fundraising
-Greg suggests getting photographs of delivering petitions as a way of showing what was actually done
-He also suggests "breaking out of the mold of a traditional petition" -- something more interesting than "complain to your congressman"

Q about Kintera -- concern about stock price and whether they'll be there in the long term.

Q about comparing options that may not be immediately obvious
-Greg mentions CSOD, but hasn't tested it as a possible solution for smaller lists with basic

needs (audience endorsement for CiviCRM, handy plugins to Drupal/Joomla)

-Lots of evident concern about data integration, esp. btwn fundraising database (e.g. Raiser's

Edge) and online (Greg references Integration Proclamation but says basically, you're stuck

with a limitation right now)

-Uploading data about snail mail contributions? Limited functionality ...

Sample tool screenshots ... technical difficulties here.

CMS
-easy way of building new pages
-only use basic HTML
-keep page content separate from design
-content stored in a database
-automatically build an index of pages
-non-tech staff can make updates
-page templates run the show
-almost kinda sorta like a blog

The thing about CMSes ...
-it takes awhile to set them up and looking pretty
-be aware of your CMS before you design your site -- or, be ready to make compromises
-keep in mind the worst possible scenarios that can come from database-supplied content (long

titles, non-standard characters, etc.)
-helps to learn the basics of CSS
-the best sites mix some database content with some good old hand-coding

-lots of open-source options
-could be part of a CRM package
-one could build one's own
-one can also use blog software like wordpress or mt as your cms

Drupal, Joomla, MovableType, ExpressionEngine, Scoop (powerful and labor intensive; not an

entry-level system ... oriented around fostering community and requires a lot of back-end work)

... crowd endorsement for Wild Apricot

There's no such thing as a perfect solution

Pros of using these tools:
-complicated programming done by someone else, and maintenance of same
-proven software ("cough, cough")
-quickly handle reporting requests
-security
-all functionality and data in one place

Cons:
-can be expensive (DIA and CSOD mentioned as not as expensive)
-usually requires at least a few days' startup time
-can be tricky to merge some tools w/existing site design
-data integration w/existing campaign/donor databases
-all functionality and data in one place ... that's both a pro and a con

Next steps
(using the cover of "Oh, the Places You'll Go!")
-less time wrestling w/maintenance, more for strategy
-can start using site to build supporter list, boost fundraising
-can map out detailed strategy complete w/results targets

question about NGP and FEC reporting issues
-he doesn't know as much about NGP and doesn't have a great answer. does endorse DIA as a possible FEC solution and says he's had clients who've used a second CRM specifically for FEC reporting

someone troubled by having built a site before going to GetActive and said they had problems getting GA to play nicely with stylesheets and font categories
-Greg says he hasn't had fun times with GA's CMS

Michael Ward, M+R on e-mail metrics

Discussion goals
-tools for measuring effectiveness of online
-tools for comparing success
-uh, something

Talking about the eNonprofit Benchmarks Study

Also incorporates Convio's new eOnline Marketing Benchmark Index
(very similar to the M+R study)
and, donorCentrics Internet Giving Benchmark Analysis (by DonorDigital & Target Analysis)
(more on the demographics of online vs. off)

3 sources of data:
15 national nonprofits
aggregate data from Convio, GA & Kintera
Online survey of broader np community (85 respondents)

Their benchmarks:
25% open rate
9% click-thru for advocacy
1.5% click-thru for fundraising
10% response rate for advocacy
.3% response rate for fundraising

Q from Colin about why the response rate for advocacy is higher than click-thru
-confuses Michael
-it's not b/c of forwarding
-it's to do with a different denominator and some math thing that he's not coming up with right now

Show improved numbers for geo-targeting (not really that greatly improved, really)
-Royelen from Public Citizen finds this totally contrary to her experience, but others find it similar

Messaging performance by day -- Fridays do okay
Alan Rosenblatt says he'd had a chance to look at CapWiz data and found that things did well on Friday b/c though the rates were lower, people would open them throughout the weekend

He thinks day of the week is a moving target b/c spammers gravitate around good times and drive them down ... but hour of day can be relevant. They suggest sending 8-10 a.m. Royelen says they're successful sending even earlier than that -- midnight, 6 a.m., etc. (Royelen never sleeps)

How long is too long? How short is too short?
Msgs w/<250 words had on average 2.5% lower response rate
High performers varied in message length
Chart of data points shows almost no correlation
-Real determining factor is *where the link is* (is it in a call-out box at the top, visible right at the beginning, etc.? the link should be very high in the message)

Fundraising data
Very similar on fundraising messaging showsing in each case about .3% response rate

E-mail messaging metrics

Their rule of thumb is that they should offset the unsubs from t-a-fs and new subscribes generated by the message. They worry about the unsub rate if they hit .5% on a single message

28% of lists are going bad every year

Recruitment metrics -- careful not to read too much into this
-Cost per new subscriber:
$1.89 for e-mail marketing -- this also shows the best numbers for actions/$1k and funds raised per $1k (for one year, $784 raised per $1k spent ... you're doing very well if you pay it back w/in one year. usually the acquisitions take longer to spend on themselves)
$2.40 banner ads
$1.99 co-reg/opt-ins

-almost nobody raises hand when asking how many people do paid advertising

Who are those online subscribers anyway?

List composition shows more activists than donors across the board, unsurprisingly. Int'l aid has huge donor numbers @ 37% activists vs. 17% donors. Others are 6% or less donors.

He said across the board, highly disproportionately women

How long have they been on the list?
1/3 less than 1 year
1/3 1-2 years
1/6 2-3 years
1/6 3+ years

More actions in the first 3 mos, he says. I'm not sure the data displayed fully supports this, but may relate to changes in the landscape over time.

Groups raised about 40% more money in 04-05 than 03-04. More recent other two studies continue that trend. Online is going up, up, up the ziggeraut.

Average gift -- nearly $100 for all groups; median -- $70

Widely varies by org type -- int'l aid $121, enviro $62
(this is all per gift, not per person)

<5% of gift count were gifts over $250, but this is almost 40% of total money raised online

Median revenue per donor for the Target Analysis study
-online: $114 per donor, $57 per gift
-offline: $82 per donor, $33 per gift
(more loot from the online people)

Discussion
*Matching gifts totally rock
*A goal, a date that things end, etc., also help
-also, something like this sets up in the recipient's mind that there will be multiple

fundraising asks and that's okay ... so sometimes they get multiple gifts from a person, or later messages having better response rates than earlier ones. he says m+r never says single stand-alone messages; they *always* use a sequence

Some best practices
-carefully track recruitment efforts
-carefully target & segment e-mail
-act quickly for timely issues (for breaking things, the actions come in the first two days -- have an understanding in the org for a rapid response protocol for situations like this)
(I missed a few here)

Discussion
-One- or two-word subject lines perform much better

Zack Exley, closing remarks

"I don't want to be another naive, annoying, Internet-fetishizing broken record"