The First Week š¬
Hi there and happy Pride Month! Steve here. Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter.
Iām starting Giving Season as a sort of homage-slash-advice column for all things nonprofit and dedicated to all the multi-faceted, multi-talented folks that power the third sector.
If youāre reading this, youāre likely already pretty invested in the nonprofit world in some way. I hope you find some value here, some insights that could help your next campaign or help form your next big idea. But mostly, I hope you see yourself and your work in these weekly musings. Why? Because youāre awesome.
And weāre off!
āThere is no return to normalcy.ā
I visited my old office in New York City on Friday for the first time since March 2020 and, through my window, I could literally see entire empty floors in adjacent buildings. I also spoke with an office administrator who talked about all the new ways she was thinking about arranging the office to better facilitate collaboration, productivity and company culture in 2021. I know the future of the office (and of work as a whole) is a big topic among nonprofit organizations.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, a leader of a company with just a tad more resources than most nonprofits, gave this assessment of remote workās āserious weaknessesā in his annual letter to shareholders:
Performing jobs remotely is more successful when people know one another and already have a large body of existing work to do. It does not work as well when people donāt know one another.
Most professionals learn their job through an apprenticeship model, which is almost impossible to replicate in the Zoom world. Over time, this drawback could dramatically undermine the character and culture you want to promote in your company.
A heavy reliance on Zoom meetings actually slows down decision making because there is little immediate follow-up.
And remote work virtually eliminates spontaneous learning and creativity because you donāt run into people at the coffee machine, talk with clients in unplanned scenarios, or travel to meet with customers and employees for feedback on your products and services.
On the train back from the office, I was reading this book by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger which basically says, āWe actually donāt want everything to go back to normal after COVID because ānormalā wasnāt helping us all that much.ā (Now you donāt have to buy the book - youāre already getting real value from this newsletter!) He says that many companies and organizations had fallen into a trap of relying too much on conventional wisdom, getting squeezed into a limited number of choices for how to work, think, grow, etc.
Reading Mayer-Shonbergerās work reminded me that options are valuable. When you have a number of directions you could go depending on circumstances, you are often in a good position to succeed. But Dimonās observations also point to the fact that whichever option you choose, there will be tradeoffs and if those tradeoffs arenāt addressed, your flexibility and adaptability in strategy might run into trouble when you try to execute.
Itās the most wonderful time of the year.
The fact that my favorite time of year is when M+Rās annual Benchmarks Report comes out reveals both my intense interest in the nonprofit sector and that I am a huge nerd.
As you all probably know, the report is always chock full of compelling insights surrounding digital marketing and fundraising, but this year, weāve got the added bonus of comparing it to last yearās report to unearth any shifts in the data related to the pandemic. Here are a few quick observations:
Online revenue increased by 32% over 2019, where as 2019 only saw a 10% increase over 2018. Crisis after crisis rolled in and, despite often difficult circumstances, humans responded with compassion. Thatās inspiring.
Digital ad spend increased by 33% YoY vs only 16% from 2018 to 2019. Part of me gives an āI told you soā nod as more organizations realize the value in digital advertising and another part of me shivers as the big ad platforms extend their hegemony. Donāt @ me.
Average cost per new lead or contact was $2.60. While this is in line with past yearsā numbers, Iām amazed that this many nonprofits were able to effectively track cost per acquisition and that it was this low. Regardless, this provides organizations a good benchmark for what they should expect from their paid acquisition campaigns.
On a final note, in this yearās report, M+R asked if organizations considered fighting for racial justice an important priority. Many answered in the affirmative and their online fundraising performance in 2020 didnāt seem to be hurt or helped by this prioritization. While I would have loved to see huge increases for the nonprofits that dove headlong into racial justice, Iāve also heard a lot of nonprofit leaders frame efforts to increase diversity and move toward more equitable and inclusive workplaces as costs - absolutely critical and long-overdue costs organizations should be willing to pay, mind you - but costs nonetheless. Thanks to M+R, itās good to have another data point to show that these investments can be made and, even in the short term, shouldnāt come with any questions over the bottom line.
Pizzas for Tots
I have seen a few companies do this now andā¦they all feel like ways to grow their email lists or, even more cynically, to turn the customer base into a sales team.
In this example, Little Caesars uses some peer-to-peer backend software to help people and their friends sell pizza kits for a good cause. The thing is, these pizza kits cost $20.99 with $6 of that price going to the fundraiser. That means that youāre getting two 12ā pizzas (that you have to make) delivered to your house seven days after purchase for more than 20 bucks with Little Caesars getting $14.99.
Iām sure that there have been folks out there whoāve leveraged these types of fundraising mechanisms to raise much needed funds for individuals or groups doing important work. But the kudos should go to the fundraisers for their remarkable effort and not the companies. Since Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready pizzas are 14 inches and cost $7.00, Iām not sure the billion-dollar pizza company is doing everything it can to help nonprofits and their advocates by charging what they do for these pizza kits**.
**I emailed Little Caesars asking how much the company makes on every pizza kit. Stay tuned next week for their reply (I hope).
If youāre going to be on social, you need a strategy. Or not.
With all the GameStop craziness earlier this year, I wondered if any nonprofits had benefited from the windfalls of all the Redditors who initiated the insane stock valuations for the struggling company.
As it turns out, organizations working in conservation such as the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund saw donations spike, partly due to the sad story of Harambe still making rounds as an internet meme. But the other part of why money flooded to these organizations was that the folks who started the GameStop buying frenzy using the reach provided by social media used the same platforms to crowdsource ideas for where to donate.
Iāve sat through a number of excellent presentations on how to craft thoughtful social media strategies for new(ish) platforms like SnapChat, Reddit, TikTok, etc. But in this day and age, when so much capital can be driven by a few loud voices, sometimes it pays just to have a presence on a channel, regardless of how much thinking has gone into it or how much time is spent maintaining it.