Smallbrain Solutions

I was reading the draft of Sea Change Strategies’ latest paper, “A Procrastinator’s Guide to Year-End Fundraising” and was inspired to try something that I haven’t done in ages, which is fire up a test paid search campaign. The twist this time was that I have never tried it for fundraising before. Only lead-generation for when I was freelancing back in the day and more recently to promote petition campaigns. Since we are kicking it year-end style, like most every other non-profit, it seemed like a great chance to see if we are leaving any money on the table.

I talked to our Director of Online Fundraising and got $500 bucks and a week and a half. I promptly squandered three or four days over the holidays and kicked it off in earnest today from Chicago O’Hare (since my flight was crazy delayed). Anyhoo, more specifics later, but it is up and running and we are getting click-throughs (no donations yet).

More to come.

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While I can understand that folks in our community may not be thrilled with Capitol Advantage’s new “birthday email/fax for Members of Congress” feature (Judy Sohn says it best) and I tend to agree, my contrary nature requires me to emerge from my perpetual blog-bernation to say this:

Yes, the volume of email that gets (fine, I will say it) spammed to the Hill makes it more difficult for us to get our jobs done. However, it really isn’t the vendor’s fault. It is ours. I am not a client of theirs, we use GetActive, but are they any or less to blame than Kintera, Convio, or DIA? We are the ones that (please excuse the reference) pull the trigger. We are the ones who need to take responsibility and hold back now and again so that our friends on the Hill can learn about other crucial things like where to get the best natural viagra. Believe me, the forms they are using now on the hill are a much bigger problem - and that has more to do with SPAM than advocacy messages. Either way, while I appreciate that the big vendors are trying to work proactively to solve the problem, you didn’t see any of them turning off their “send an email to your member of congress” tools, did you? Do any of them recommend to their clients that they decrease the volume of email to the hill? Not that I have heard. We need to police ourselves - and each other.

If anything, I was much more freaked out about the Capitol Advantage emails I was getting begging me to buy email lists of voters… Just sayin’.

Via [Jason Z. at Democracy in Action]

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I just read this on Wired News… and find it fascinating. Basically, Dropping Knowledge, a non-profit based in Germany working for “international understanding and the promotion of art and culture”, are taking web and SMS submitted questions and having over 100 intellectuals answer them on video - simultaneously. They will then archive/transcribe the responses and use that for the base of their new social networking site. That, and having it all happening live in Berlin will be a great earned-media event. Brilliant.

Unlike most policy round tables, this won’t be a debate. The participants won’t even be speaking to each other. Moderators, in this case actor Willem Dafoe and Nigerian activist Hafsat Abiola, will read a series of 100 web-submitted questions on issues such as climate change, war and peace and the effects of technological progress.

The participants, who include philosopher Cornel West, Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy, “Peace Mom” Cindy Sheehan, human rights activist Bianca Jagger, Chinese Tiananmen Square veteran Wang Dan and scores of others, will answer the questions simultaneously.

Full story here

My thinking is that it would be a really neat way to do some surrogate advocacy. How about taking a ton of questions for your high-profile (and normal everyday people) to answer and store that in a section of your site. Sort of like an online town hall - without the candidate. And, since it is “real” it should look more authentic and have more power. Just make sure you don’t select nutjobs to answer the questions.

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In addition to not writing here, I haven’t been checking my email list account very much. When I did look at it this evening, I noticed that there were a couple different groups that had used a “fake forward” email format in an attempt to increase open rates. This is still an uncommon strategy based on my unscientific collection of emails from various campaigns, groups and companies - but I am curious as to what the results have been. I suspect that they do raise open rates and conversion rates somewhat based on my experience with this format - but we didn’t A/B test it, so I don’t have conclusive evidence. Here are the two most recent examples in my gmail:

From: Ken Mehlman, RNC Chairman (kenmehlman @gop.com)
Subject: FW: Getting It Done
Sent: Aug 25, 2006 7:44 PM

Click here for a PDF of the RNC email

From: Ellen Moran, Executive Director (information @emilyslist.org)
Subject: FW: Time’s up for EMILY’s List
Sent: Aug 7, 2006 2:15 PM

Click here for a PDF of the EMILY’s List email

As you can see, they both claim to just be forwarding on a message from one of their political staffers. The RNC email doesn’t really even try to hide it (would you imagine that an email from the political director to your chair would include a live link to your donation page?). Anyway - I definitely recommend testing it out - you may be surprised at the results.

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Pigeons blogging pollution?

Well, at least they aren’t human-pigeon hybrids…

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