Nonprofit Constituent Experience

The challenge is that donors don’t always give year after year – OK, so donor retention isn’t part of your job description. Your boss probably doesn’t religiously count how many donors were retained and how many were lost every year. You just have to get money in, by any means necessary. Meanwhile, that grant needs to get written, that trade show with potential sponsors is next week and you’ve got to craft your pitch, and your big event is coming up in two months and there’s still so much to do! Read more …

Digital goals are lagging indicators – Lagging indicators is a concept used a lot in the economic world. For the digital nonprofit executive, it is important to know that most business goals are lagging indicators as well. Lagging indicators confirm long-term trends, but they do not predict them. In the economic world, some examples are unemployment, corporate profits and labor cost per unit of output. Interest rates are another good lagging economic indicator; rates change after severe market changes. In a business sense, increasing revenue, year over year or month over month, is a lagging indicator. In a digital business, increasing the number of unique visitors to your website is a lagging indicator.  Goals that are lagging indicators are  the result but certainly not a predictor of the result. Well written strategies are usually leading indicators. Lagging indicators always report the outcome but it is too late to do anything about it. Strategy (leading indicators) should predict the goal, i.e. the outcome.  Read more …

Social networks are very mobile friendly. What does mean for your nonprofit content? – We all know that mobile has become a huge part of being a digital nonprofit. We may not be aware of how fast it is moving in the social networking world. So if your constituents are seeing your posts in social media, what happens when they click on the link? How good is that experience? How mobile friendly is your content? Read more …

Create SMART goals before developing strategy – Goals are very important to the digital nonprofit. They provide the direction on where to go and it is not just anywhere. It is to somewhere specific. It is measurable. It is fixed in time. If you want something that isn’t measureable, create a mission statement or think up your vision. Goals should be concrete. Goals come before strategy. Strategy focuses on how to reach the goal. On their own, strategy absent a goal, is useless. Read more …

Build a digital Nonprofit Ecosystem – Building a digital nonprofit  is about building an ecosystem, not just a few isolated initiatives that have no impact on each other, the business as a whole or your external networks. So, in a digital nonprofit  ecosystem that is focused on amazing constituent experiences, both living (people) and non living (strategy, process and technology) interact as a system along with external networks of suppliers, vendors and constituents. In essence, as a digital nonprofit, you are building a system. Leave an essential part out, and the system is not complete. Read more …

What kind of business technology scorecard do you use? – Do you have a scorecard that translates your key goals and strategies in a way that drives performance? Have you created a framework for what it looks like? Here is a framework for a balanced scorecard that is a little different from many I’ve seen. Do you have one you could share? Metrics are very important to both lead and lag indicators. Being clear what goals and strategies will make a difference is leadership’s responsibility. Read more …

Lack of Accountability: Is it the enemy within? – Are we our own worst enemy? As we build a digital nonprofit, what is a very important people issue not to ignore? Accountability. We must build accountability into how we and our teams function. Accountability starts with ourselves as leaders. Are we holding ourselves accountable? Once we are there, we can focus on our team. Read more …

Rules of Nonprofit Employee Engagement – More and more, we are beginning to recognize that a key to the constituent experience is highly engaged employees. Gallup has lots of data on the correlation. Building a digital business will require strategies and initiatives to improve employee engagement. It should also be a key lagging indicator for the constituent experience. People are central to all we do. Goals are important but engaged people make it happen. Read more …

Is your online fundraising suffering from fomo? Apparently there’s a social disorder sweeping the world’s Internet users  It goes by the snappy acronym FOMO – standing for Fear Of Missing Out – and is the underlying malaise blamed for countless millions of people around the world being glued to their Email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. – due to the concern that if they drop temporarily offline then they might just miss out on something important (or at the very least pretty neat). Read more …

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