2008 Bridge ConferenceWe just heard about an online scavenger hunt for the 2008 Bridge Conference, hosted by AFP and DMAW:

Play the Find the Clues to Your Success Game and win a Free Registration to the 2008 Bridge Conference!

Play the Find the Clues to Your Success contest by searching the Bridge Conference education tracks on the 2008 Bridge Conference website and identifying the 6 gold highlighted words that make up the clues to your success. Put the words together in the correct order to create the Secret Phrase and email the phrase to mystery@bridgeconf.org. The first entry submitted with the correct phrase will win a free, fully transferable registration to the 2008 Bridge Conference.

If you don't win the contest, don't worry: if you're a member of NTEN, you get to register at the lowest rate for the conference! Contact me to find out how to register with your NTEN rate.

Let's see how many social media metaphors I can cram into one post, shall we? :)

Jeremiah Owyang has a piece today about trust. I don't know if you've felt this lately, but I certainly have: we're head over heels for trust in the sector these days. I wrote a bit about it back in November. Katya Andresen and Mark Rovner think it's one of the seven things everyone wants. Search for "trust" on Beth's Blog and you'll come up with myriad posts. Search for trust on the NTEN website and you'll get dozens of job listings where "building trust" is in the job description.

But back to Jeremiah's post. Want to guess what the number one source of trusted information is for most Americans?

2008 Bridge ConferenceThose of you in Fundraising know it's all about communicating your mission and building relationships.

Those of you in Communications share the goal of growing your constituencies while increasing support for your cause.

Wouldn't you love to get together and share tips, strategies, resources, and contacts?

You got it! Brought to you by AFP and DMAW, the 2008 Bridge Conference will have over 75 sessions, more than a thousand of your colleagues, inspiring keynote speakers, plenty of networking opportunities, and the "very best of insider tips and trade secrets."

But wait, there's more! If you're an NTEN member, you have the golden ticket. NTEN Members can register for the conference at the low member rates -- and if you register before June 1st, you get to go for the best rate available!

Get in touch with me to get your golden-ticket registration details.

What's that? You're not a member of NTEN yet? Take advantage of this and other benefits of membership by joining NTEN today!

There's nothing like a little peer pressure when you need someone to do something. Combine it with instant gratification and total transparency and you have the fundraising triumvirate!

Google Checkout has a great little campaign going on in honor of Earth Day that gives you all three:

• You make a donation to an enviro org on someone's behalf.
• That certain someone gets an email and asks them to do the same.
• As the donations tally up, you get a personalized map showing all the people you inspired to donate, illustrating your network effect.

So, who wants to see if their friends are more generous then my friends?

I came across a blog post today that made me smile (and not just because of thejustgiving.com great vocabulary used across the Pond). It's a simple and straight-forward example of how easy it is for someone to use free, fast, online tools to raise money for his or her favorite cause. Here's an excerpt:

"I've just had a rather intense week of trying to use social media to raise funds and by and large succeeding. Inevitably this story involves blogging and tweeting and people I don't know very well being incredibly generous...."

David Harte, Digital Central project manager at Birmingham City University and contributor to the Birmingham Post's Business Blog, decided to try a spur-of-the-moment fundraising campaign one week before he ran in the London Marathon. He didn't have to raise money for a charity, but he decided he wanted to try to help his favorite, St. Mary's Hospice. His goal was £495, and he ended up raising over £300 (and he's still raising money for his cause online).

Flickr Photo: booskittyThe late, great Mr. Rogers has been asking us this question for decades now: "Who is in your neighborhood?" Though we have learned a great many lessons from our avuncular, becardiganed friend, the nonprofit sector is still struggling to master this one.

I think we all know, intuitively, that all donors are not the same. They engage with us for extremely personal reasons, and are inspired to continue their engagement for equally personal and diverse reasons.

Technology has come a long way in letting us customize our relationships with donors. Our donors can tell us what issues they care about, and how often they want to be contacted. With social media, we can let super-engaged donors participate in a variety of ways. We can provide financial and other administrative information easily to donors who value transparency and accountability.

But doing all of this, in any way, has always felt like finding that pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. If every single donor has unique needs and expectations, how can we possibly keep up?

This week, Convio released a new white paper with Sea Change Strategies and Edge Research that provides a nice tidy framework for thinking about personalizing donor experiences.In " The Wired Wealthy: Using the Internet to Connect with Your Middle and Major Donors," the authors surveyed more than 3,000 donors who gave $1,000 or more in an 18th month period and had valid email addresses.

There are lots of really useful tidbits in the report, but I thought the most interesting piece was the result of the cluster analysis.

PayPal has released the PayPal Kit for Non-Profits, with the claim that qualified organizations -- essentially, you have to have 501(C)(3) status -- can set themselves up to accept donations through a PayPal Donate button in just 45 minutes.

They're also offering $50 to the first 1,000 eligible nonprofits that use the kit to generate $500 in donations by March 31st.

The "kit" isn't so much a kit as a page with links to:

1. Set up your PayPal account
2. Download the instructions for adding the donate button to your site
3. Sign up for the $50 challenge

Their aim seems to be to get smaller organizations and individuals who are starting out with online fundraising campaigns started in a fast and simple way.

So, are their claims true? Can someone with just basic computer knowledge set up the donation widget in less than 45 minutes? If you've had the experience, tell us in comments, below.

Flickr Photo: mwboeckmannThe Chronicle of Philanthropy ran a provocatively titled piece last Friday: Is Direct Mail Dead? Kudos to them for two things:

1. They correctly identify that simply switching to email fundraising isn't much of a strategy shift. Email IS direct mail in all but name and processed trees.

2. They quote Seth Godin in the story.  Seth's one of my favorite daily reads. He hits it out of the park when he says that the times have changed and nonprofits need to rethink how they raise funds:

“It means opening yourself up to volunteers, encouraging them to network, to connect with each other, and yes, even to mutiny. It means giving every one of your professionals a blog and the freedom to use it. It means mixing it up with volunteers, so they have something truly at stake,” Mr. Godin writes. “This is understandably scary for many nonprofits, but I’m not so sure you have a choice.”

I like to hang out where the cool kids are: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. And, of course, the Google Checkout Blog! This is how I learned that Google has put together a nice holiday page for those of you looking to spend a few bucks on a good cause. If you already have a Google account, the giving is that much easier!

Integration. The word comes up again and again when we talk about social media strategies: Your email campaign needs to integrate with your direct mail campaign which needs to integrate with your web site which needs to integrate with your Facebook group.

That's why it's so interesting that the little social networking site that could -- Change.org -- and Network for Good are partnering up. Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 will live side by side in perfect harmony.

This could be great for Change.org, Network for Good, and the sector at large. Here's why: