Marketing challenges faced by non profits and how social media could help: A case study

At a recent meetup in Washington D.C., our team had an opportunity to meet Greg Bloom from Bread for the City, a non profit in DC which helps thousands of vulnerable DC residents with food, shelter, legal assistance and many other essential services. The purpose of the meetup was to analyze the current web strategy for Bread for the City, and take it to the next level with suggestions from a great mix of crowd present at the meetup: non profit volunteers, designers, geeks and people who are a little ahead of the new media curve.

This blog post outlines some of the problems and their solutions that came up in the meeting, and hopefully other non profits will find this information useful.

In general, non-profits face some common challenges, some of which Greg outlined very clearly:

1.   Out of date websites: The primary purpose of websites for most of the non profits would be to enhance their outreach and reach out to the donors.  A website which is not designed towards this user group does not serve the purpose well. Case in point - signing up for a newsletter of Bread for the City is an arduous task.

2.  Old database technology: Hard to maintain and expensive to upgrade. Many non-profits simply lack the money or the resources to change this efficiently. Added to that, there is always some resistance to change from the management.

3.  Lack of proper analytics: Analytics could be very important when it comes to identifying the potential donors. Not having analytics and spending money on campaigns might land your non profit in pitching to the wrong audience.

4.  Lack of a dedicated staff to manage social media: Many organizations realize that “social media is free” and hence, many of them have a Twitter account, a Facebook page, a Youtube channel and presence of many other websites. Its free to signup for these websites, but it takes a LOT of time to maintain those accounts and actively engage the communities around your brands. Having a clear strategy on how to leverage these channels could be the single most powerful tool your organization could possess!

5.  Lack of sophisticated hardware (a.k.a., desktops that are capable of running run Tweetdeck and Office ‘07 simultaneously): Many non profits simply do not have the luxury  of using  high end Macs with 4 Gigs of RAM. While they want to use apps like TweetDeck or Seismic to find relevant stuff, lighter web apps are definitely welcome!

Suggestions from the particpants:

Upgrade your website: Find volunteers who are experts at web design, and get their help to implement some changes, small and big. A good way could be to reach out to students at local Universities studying web design, and have them take it as a class project. As an example, here at the University of Maryland , we have several courses related to web design and usability, at both, graduate and undergraduate levels, and almost all the students require project work. Given at least 50-70 students take such courses each semester, and the course is offered three times a year, non profits could have good success tapping such resources.

As someone at the meetup suggested, if its hard to change the entire website in one go, either due to technical constraints or administrative ones, slowly move parts of the website to a wordpress platform. One fine day, you would have a new stand alone website with better design and proper analytics. (Wordpress Rocks!).

At the minimum, make your existing website content sharable on social networks using widgets like “Addthis”. Having “Google Analytics” integrated with your website is as essential! Both these services take minutes to setup, and can pay high dividents in the long run

Be on Wikipedia: Even if your non profit’s website is not showing up in the top results of search engines, a wikipedia page will! Search engines love popular URLs like Wikipedia, Facebook and Squidoo. Make sure, your non profit is present at all of these, and have these pages direct traffic to your website. (A detailed post on how the new Facebook App for Diditz could enhance your non profit’s search ratings is coming soon!)

Empower your users and volunteers and leverage their social media precence: The biggest asset that all non –profits have is a community of very passionate people who come together for a cause. These people are everywhere on the social web: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and tons of other website. Make them your word of mouth ambassadors.

Many non-profits have a twitter account and a Facebook page, which are mostly used as a one way communication channel. Involve your fans and followers to talk to you. Get more fans or followers. Reach out to new people: They might be your next volunteers or donors!

Having trouble with huge twitter apps? You might just  find something useful in this exhaustive list.

AllFacebook has a great article on why your organisation needs to be on Facebook, and how you could attract more fans.

Many organizations already use the “Causes” application on Facebook to raise funds. The application might not help you reach your fundraising goals, but it defintely does a good job of getting the word out about your organization.

Our blog post on how to use the Facebook application for Diditz application to reach more audience is coming soon.

This, in no way is an exhaustive list of problems or suggestions. If you are a non profit, social media expert or simply love the web, please chip in your two cents. If we could get enough useful information, maybe we could turn this post into a wikipedia entry!

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