How to control your message - and how to have faith in your constituents and set your message free - were central issues at this week's 2006 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Seattle. Michael Stein organized a conversation on smart communications in relationship management, and Steve Anderson from ONE/Northwest kicked things off with a formal framework for constituent engagement:
- Indirect influence. Word-of-mouth is a good example. Your goals here are to sustain message fidelity, and to reach receptive audiences.
- Direct communication. Web sites and newsletters, are communications vehicles that you can control directly. The goal here is to get people to the next level. Segment your audience, figure out what your message needs to be in each segment, and give all the right incentives to participate. As Anderson puts it, "get the right bait for the right fish."
- Direct relationships. Personal e-mails, calls, or face-to-face conversations; any communication in which people feel that you are speaking directly to them. Goal: build a relationship in which you can discover affinities and get feedback. This part of the funnel is where a CRM system is extremely important - it supports scale, organizational transitions, and the creation of organizational knowledge. Use the info in your CRM system to drive personalized communications. Introduce the concept of reward; develop a benefit for your constituents in exchange for them deepening the relationship with you.
- Direct engagement. Civic action or volunteering. Develop calls to action and prioritize your requests so that you don't fatigue your constituents. Your goal is to maximize each person's level of engagement while not burning them out.
This formal framework seems to be effective in a controlled situation. But what about when you don't have total message control? Jen Frazier of Planned Parenthood Online shared an interesting case study of balancing control and faith in constituents.
Planned Parenthood provides national guidlines for online presence and interaction, but local chapters decide whether or not they will adopt projects. As a result, many issues of local vs. national arise, and the national must manage business rules that are increasingly complicated. Frazier's best example: the war of my names vs. your names, as constituents sign up for multiple Planned Parenthood lists, or even worse (gasp), move into another local affiliate's territory. Names are shared both up and down in the system. This grows the email lists, and allows concentration on areas of expertise, but it greatly complicates the business rules.
Frazier's biggest need is to merge online advocacy and fundraising into one platform. This would help Planned Parenthood to develop a fuller picture of the individual. For example: Why does one person donate, but not volunteer? How much has a donor contributed in total, and what dollars were contributed locally as vs. nationally? They've recently started using GetActive, and they've convinced 110 of their 120 affiliates to participate. Even so, the organization still struggles with the ownership of names, coordinated messaging, finding a single place to track online results, and handling online/offline integration. Even a simple workflow rule like "they sent a check last week, let's not solicit them via email this week" has been hard to implement.
Using one platform brings together a lot of data. Frazier has found that there's plenty to discover about effective messaging, the best times to contact people, and so forth. Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood doesn't have the extra resources to take advantage of this data and do proper analysis. As they eke through nonetheless, their next step is to learn from this data, so that members' actions inform communications.
As Frazier puts it, the technology is the easy part; it's the internal processes that are tough to change. She's trying to educate PP staff on how to be user-centric. Donors and activists don't see any differences between local affiliates and the national organization; they just see the one brand. So, although Frazier's team set up a consolidated web platform, only 48 of those 120 affiliates have bought into it so far.
The online team is redoing the site to bring in more of the content
that people are looking for - trying to learn from users' actions, and
evolve in
response. For example: before redesign, 60% of web site visitors were
looking for
health information, but only 20% of the site content was health
information. (This relates to Kawasaki's earlier talk.) Still, many
departments resist the removal of "their button" from the site, and
want to direct visitors to what they see as important, rather than
providing the content that visitors come looking for.
Moving to CRM systems is often part of an overall strategic move
from control to faith. Control says "this is my message, and don't use
my logo without my permission." Faith says "this is who I am and what I
do, please go out into the world and do good things with it." With some
faith, constituents can use what you provide in order to achieve their
own goals.
Tags: christine herron christine.net space jockeys 06ntc nonprofit best practices planned parenthood one/northwest nten
