Joomla and Wordpress also have thermometer plugins. 

Charity widgets that include thermometers such as ChipIn and Just Give may also be an option for you.  These tools can be used to process your online gifts and will track your online giving in real time. These widgets can also be posted on blogs.
As you add thermometers to your site, keep in mind that nobody wants to be the first one and maybe not even the second one to donate toward your goal. There is psychology involved and once the ball gets rolling, the momentum builds.

Please share the tools that you use to create fundraising thermometers for your website.

I am currently raising money online for Lawrence Hall Youth Services. I will be bowling in a bowl-a-thon in early March. It was actually supposed to be tonight but we have a lot of snow here in Chicago so it was postponed. So – more time to raise money for it!

It only took about 5 seconds to create a badge to post on my blog. The personal fundraising page that went with it took a bit longer to create – maybe 5 minutes.

Early in my fundraising career I worked with an organization that had bowl-a-thons almost every weekend. It would have been great if we had a tool for personal fundraising pages and widgets back then. But personal fundraising pages and badges to promote them aren’t just for “a-thons” anymore. Create a page to encourage people to donate to your favorite charity in celebration of your birthday or ask your volunteers to each create a page that explains why they volunteer and encourages others to get involved too. Have fun with it! And if you feel inspired, donate to Lawrence Hall this month. It is a great organization.

Another organization I donate to and love is WWOZ public radio in New Orleans. They are revitalizing the music in New Orleans. I recently helped them create a celebrity badge using Six Degrees and Network for Good.

I often visit nonprofit websites where it takes multiple steps to get to the online donation page and then the online donation page takes multiple steps to fill out and I think back to that presentation and the donor under 40 who said “If your online donation page doesn’t load within 6 seconds and doesn’t work with Google autofill forget it, I’m not donating to your organization.” These donors are busy and because they grew up in the Amazon era, they expect technology to be easy to use and they expect a high degree of personalization.

Last week I was one of the speakers at a conference put on by the Arts and Business Council of Chicago. Gerald Yoshitomi was the keynote speaker. One of the topics Yoshitomi addressed was engaging younger arts patrons who are different from the older generation. He talked about how commercial firms develop sideline brands so they can continue to meet the needs of their older customers and at the same time develop a new customer base. An example was a makeup company that offers different lines for different customer segments. He said that arts organizations should be doing this too. For example, younger arts patrons may not want to sit through a 2 hour performance or they may be more interested in attending a 9 p.m. performance than a 7 p.m. performance.

Engage your stakeholders, donors, prospects, and patrons. Learn what is of interest to them and what annoys them. Develop new ways to serve them. Understand that they are busy and focus on WIFM (what’s in it for me — that’s them not you)

This included asking their audience what key words they would use in a search and adding key words and target phrases to their home page and to the meta title tag and meta keywords. Now potential audience members and class participants can find their website so they are much more likely to get engaged with the organization as a donor, e-newsletter subscriber etc…

Search on words that describe your organization and see how well you come up in a search. Optimizing your natural search results should be your first step in using search to raise money.

Other ways to raise money through search include:

Use Sponsored Ads such as Google AdWords and/or Yahoo Sponsored Ads
Type some keywords and target phrases that describe your organization’s mission into a search engine and see which organizations come up in the sponsored ads on the side of the search results page. For example, if you type in “International Relief” organizations like MercyCorps and World Vision will appear.

These ads are purchased on a cost per click basis. You can establish a maximum budget which ensures you don’t wind up spending more than you’ve budgeted for keyword search advertising if you run into the good problem of having a lot of clicks. You can also choose to just have your sponsored ads appear in your state, region, or city.

Through the Google Grants program nonprofit organizations can apply for a grant covering three months or more of in kind online search advertising.

Encourage Use of Nonprofit Friendly Search Engines
Techsoup wrote Goodsearch.com or to download the Goodsearch toolbar and then your organization earns money every time a search is performed there.

Another service which wasn’t mentioned in the Techsoup article and, based on my research, I’d recommend over Goodsearch is Prodege.

Prodege works the same way that Goodsearch does but I think it has two advantages.

1.) The percent of funds that goes to the charity is higher with Prodege

2.) The toolbar can be fully customized for the organization so in addition to including the Prodege powered search box, it can include your organization’s logo and several links to your organization’s website such as your “upcoming events page” or “donate now” page. What an awesome branding opportunity! Having your organization’s logo right at the top of your donor’s browser – what a great way to keep the organization top of mind for your donor!

Learn more about Prodege here
http://www.prodege.org/about.html

or feel free to contact me and I’ll put you in touch with one of their reps who will gladly answer any questions you have and show you a sample customized toolbar.

Use all of these strategies to raise more money for your organization via search! Good luck! Please share your comments about what’s working for you. If you have a success story to share I’m sure my blog readers would love to hear it.

At the recent Public Radio Marketing and Development Conference, two speakers gave excellent presentations that drove home the importance of focusing on your audience and developing messages that are relevant, timely and compelling.

Brian Reich, Senior Strategic Consultant at Mindshare Interactive Campaigns, started his presentation by reminding people to make it “relevant, timely and compelling” He said, “Consumers are exposed to 3,000 commercial messages every day. Your story needs to be captivating if it is to make it through the clutter.

Madeline Stanionis, author of Raising Thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars with E-mail, reminded us that “you must send the right message to the right person at the right time.” She talked about really focusing on who is reading your message. What is his or her day like? How are you going to cut through the clutter to reach this person with your message? She talked about how to make your message timely by tapping into current news and events and using real deadlines.

In my opinion being timely means thinking ahead and moving quickly. When I give presentations I often talk about the fact that I received a fundraising e-mail from America’s Second Harvest on the day that Hurricane Katrina hit. They obviously knew that it might hit hard and if it did they would need to mobilize quickly to get food into the area AND to raise money.

To be compelling you need to speak from the heart and be authentic. Brian Reich said “Build on an honest, authentic story that appeals to people’s personal values.” Madeline Stanionis said “You need to learn to connect with your readers / donors / subscribers…” She reminded us of the importance of making your readers really feel like they are a part of something that matters.

Read more notes from the excellent sessions presented by Brian Reich and Madeline Stanionis on the new DEI Blog. (DEI organizes the PRDMC) Youll find links to download their presentations too.