EchoDitto

I’ve been listening to this song quite a bit recently. Not only is it the ideal mix of depressing lyrics/upbeat music that we all love so much, it echoes my thoughts on non-profit strategy.

Really? Really.

These days, I feel like too many non-profits are trying to rush me, and I really want them to take it easy, romance me, make me fall in love, aim for a long-term relationship.

How do I mean? This week, my friend, Jacque, sent me a MoveOn campaign to my gmail about Fox News and how they are being racist in their coverage of Obama. Okay. Because I love Jacque (+1 for leveraging social networks!), I went to the page, watched the video (+1 for interactive content that’s convincing!) and found it compelling enough to add my name (conversion—success!). So far, so good, right? Then, the minute I hit submit, a giant donate button appeared—-help MoveOn change media by giving us money.

This week, the Kucinich 2008 campaign tried a new tack at fundraising: asking for contributions to specifically finance campaign interns, so they can… well… eat.

Adopt an intern?

Maybe this is just intern solidarity, but I though their video was genuine. More importantly, these five interns actually caused me to reach for my wallet. To be perfectly honest, I’d never considered donating to Kucinich before!

I opened the fridge door and peered in. Alone on the second shelf (yes, I need to go grocery shopping) sat a small, flat brown paper bag. There was no logo, no corporate tag line, nothing to distinguish it from any other brown paper bag. At 6am Monday morning, the bag was given new meaning…

It was about that time that I heard the terrible news that Eastern Market, one of my favorite spots in all of DC, had been damaged by a fire that raged for several hours, late that night and into the morning. I've heard the building structure will remain, but its contents are a total loss...and the market may never be the same.

Being the early-adopting nerd that I am, I've gone through my share of widgets. I've tinkered with every site- and PC-based widget engine from Konfabulator to Yahoo Widgets to Google Desktop. At work I use a Mac, so I got to experiment with those guys, including an ill-fated Christmas Countdown widget. But as much as I love fun technology, the overwhelming uselessness of widgets thus far has tainted my expectations for the platforms that enable them. The fact is, I've never had any stocks to check. If something's really important, I'll place the RSS feed or bookmark somewhere prominent within Firefox. And don't get me started on how many different ways I can check the weather.

Which is why I owe Katya Andresen thanks for her Net Squared DC presentation last night for changing all of that and making me realize their potential again.

So, the election is a full 21 months away and there are already a number of campaigns in "full gear." Being the DC nerd that I am, I went searching for the cool, hip, new features and functionality that campaign sites have for the election.

I was surprised by some of the stuff out there so I ended up doing a review of campaign sites for the 2008 Presidential election. My chart makes it pretty easy to see which candidates recognize the importance of their web site, and have already committed to using the site as a tool to be elected.

With a little help from our Washington DC compatriots, the EchoDitto NY office headed over to the Personal Democracy Forum Conference, held last week, to check out some emerging trends in the political-technology space.

You may have noticed that we're a little mobile obsessed around here, so it's fitting that, for me, one of the more interesting break out sessions was TxtMessaging and Mobile Politics.

The session pretty quickly turned to discussing exactly how (and how not) to get a mobile campaign up and running. I knew you were wondering, so I compiled a few of the DOs and DON'Ts for you:

I caught this article in AdAge today:

The U.S. Postal Service last week canceled an old law that forbade businesses from placing ads or logos on any type of currency -- including postage -- relinquishing to marketers once-hallowed ground unsullied by commercialism. HP postage stamps feature images of the HP logo as well as its founders and the garage in which they started the company.

The effort is part of the USPS' push to stem a loss of income as consumers increasingly turn from so-called snail mail to Internet correspondence. First-class mailings have plunged since the mid-1990s from almost 55 billion pieces mailed in 1998 to just over 43 billion last year.

I've been spending some significant time making ringtones for clients over the last two weeks. We've seen this ringtone wave coming for a while now given that 23% of American mobile phone owners (30 million Americans) downloaded a ring tone between August 2004 and 2005. Internationally, mobile phones will soon outpace computers as the dominant way to access the internet, so customizing a ringtone will soon be common.

Don't just take my word for it. Seth Godin, famous author and top blogger of strategic marketing, thinks ringtones are going to explode:

Having spent the past 7 years working in the Internet space at a variety of for-profit and non-profit companies and organizations, I've noticed that the differences between the two become increasingly blurred. While the goals of each may be different--selling software and driving traffic to media outlets vs. raising money and promoting online advocacy--the methods and overall objectives are surprisingly similar.

In both cases, everyone wants to see some kind of measurable result--whether that means selling more Adobe Acrobat 7.0 versions than the other guy, or breaking fundraising records in a time of national crisis. The tools we use to accomplish these results are also quite similar--drive traffic to the site, offer compelling reasons to buy or donate, and make a case for why your site or cause is unique. In the end, it's all about marketing and message. The tools are simply the means to an end.

I attended a briefing on the eNonprofit Benchmarks Study two weeks ago. It is a must read for any nonprofit online professional because it provides a timely and robust analysis of online fundraising and advocacy programs for nonprofits. It even breaks down email and ROI metrics between nonprofits focused on civil rights, environmental protection, and international aid. With the study, nonprofit online professionals can measure their email marketing programs against the results of these 15 national nonprofit organizations.

There is one grand story to tell after reading the whole report: you have to invest, test, track and target for your online activities to pay off. Don't expect to flip the switch of an online fundraising program and miraculously fundraising will go through the roof. Of course, disasters and emergencies are a rare exception, but most of the organizations doing this work have had online programs for years now. Here is a summary of the key findings of the report: