CTEP
members and their supervisors were offered the opportunity to attend
the NonProfit Technology Conference, a three day affair being held in
Minneapolis, for free if they would volunteer a minimum of 3 hours
throughout the conference. Needless to say, we jumped at the chance.
Many
of the CTEPs did their volunteer hours prior to the start of the
conference, stuffing conference bags with goodies and programs, etc. I
acted as room monitor for several sessions on both Thursday and Friday.
I’m glad I had the chance to participate, but after seeing what was on
offer, it became obvious that this conference was mostly geared towards
IT people and fundraisers. There were also tracks dedicated to
leadership, communication and connection (whatever that means…here it
appeared to refer to consultation and networking). And, there was a fair
bit of stuff that made the privacy lovers among us shudder
uncontrollably…but we’ll get to that.
Fittingly,
the first session I attended was the First Timer session—an
introduction to NTC. They told us about the website (to which I never
did manage to connect) and the collaborative note-taking that was taking
place via the web (also not fully realized due to lack of bandwidth).
They spent a good deal of time explaining the tech end, explaining that
the program had been printed mid-month and that much of it had been
changed. The only accurate program listing was online. And only a few of
the truly tech savvy (or those blessed with much better equipment than
the rest of us) were able to access it. Needless to say, mistakes were
made, sessions were missed, and a certain amount of frustration that
should have been avoided became the norm for this conference.
I
then took part in the Social Media Police session, which was a lively
look back at the hits and misses in marketing and advertising over the
last year. The session was well done and well attended. The presenters
chose to emulate one of their favorite TV shows, Fashion Police, in
order to present the best and worst of marketing in 2012. One of the
highlights mentioned was the way certain companies reacted swiftly to
the blackout during the Superbowl. One of the worst cases cited was the
NRA’s response to Sandy Hook. Here’s the link to their slide deck:
The
rest of the afternoon was spent touring the exhibits (what they
referred to as the Science Fair), getting a look at some interesting new
titles coming out soon and talking to some vendors who have created
some truly awesome volunteer management software.
Friday,
the Plenary speaker was Dan Pallotta, a name that was much in the news
in the early part of this decade. His group, Pallotta TeamWorks, was
responsible for making the Susan G Komen 3 day walk and others such a
resounding success in their early years. His group was also very
publicly fired when it came out that their “overhead” costs amounted to
almost 40% of the money brought in on those walks. His contention (in
a nutshell) is that if you don’t put the money into overhead, funding
will never increase past a certain point and growth is effectively
stymied by the rules that govern non-profits. He is starting up a new
group which would act as a legal defense fund for charitable
organizations. Interesting, but suspect as to his motivations…given his
past history. If you’re interested, here is a transcript of his talk:
and
for a good critique of his newest title “ Uncharitable”, which gives a
rather cogent and well reasoned response to his ideas:
The
next session I attended was “Secrets of Content Marketing Sorcerers”,
an intriguing mix of how to attract volunteers and engage them with how
to hook contributors with relevant content in your publications (i.e.
newsletters, circulars, ads, etc.)
One
of the marketers for “VolunteerMatch”, a website which connects
volunteers to opportunities, while getting its funding from corporate
America told of the dichotomy which comes from trying to find the right
fit for the volunteer with enticing the corporations to foot the bill
for this service. Their answer was to do niche marketing and tailor
their content to each of their contributing corporations, while keeping
their public website segmented to the volunteers only. Seems to be
working for them…they are, hands down, one of the best volunteer match
firms out there. NTEN’s advertising guru brought up the old broccoli
(what we want them to know) and cheese (what they want to know) idea.
How do you slip the broccoli in? By knowing what your readers consider
to be cheese---look to analytics…which tell you what people are looking
at and what subjects are causing people to click through to another page
for more information. Once you know that, you know where you can put
just enough broccoli to engage people with your cause. What becomes
rather problematic for us as librarians is the way they collect their
information. By using analytics that track what you are doing on your
computer, these marketers are getting an amazing (and somewhat scary)
totality of information about their website visitors! But the best part
of this session came with Kivi Leroux Miller who has a new book out on this subject. Her contention is that you should be paying close
attention to your website and marketing. Break your content into
evergreen, annual and perennial content:Evergreen Content: that’s broccoli or cheese that you don’t have to update often. Directories, how-to’s, etc. Maybe you change twice a year. Perennial Content: Appears year after year based on cycles like seasons. Often appears in e-newsletters. You will probably repurpose. Annual Color: Appears mostly in social media. Has a very short life-span but can create a lot of interest in your work.
Her
contention is that you need to find core topics that you want to be
known for, and then strategize to figure out how to fill in different
types of content related to these core areas. Basically, this 90
minutes was a crash course in effective (if intrusive) marketing
technique on the web.
Unfortunately,
the next session I attended “Is Success just in the Numbers?” on
quantitative vs qualitative measurement of impact was far less
successful. Let’s just say that the best line I took away from this
session was “ If you can't draw a direct line from your metric to your
mission, then you're measuring the wrong thing”.
The
last session of the day for me was called “The New Normal: Shifting
Organization Resources to Thrive and Survive”, which turned out to be a
primer for (in these cases) IT professionals within a charitable
organization to learn to see what changes needed to be made and how to
go about creating those changes. The panel members were young,
enthusiastic and not very well organized. Notes from other attendees
are here:
--Doris @Central
