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If direct mail isn't working for you, then you'd better get online. If you're online, you'd better be driving traffic to your site. If you're driving traffic to your site, you'd better be getting visitors to become online donors.
Hey, nobody ever said the life of a nonprofit is easy. But one way to make it easier is to they have a solid Web presence, and that all starts with a Web site.
The NonProfit Times solicited suggestions from the nonprofit and technology sectors for "hot" Web sites, cyber-locations that have a record of boosting Web traffic, growing email lists, raising dollars online or those that are simply visually stimulating.
When it comes to the Internet, size doesn't matter. In fact, smaller organizations can compete with behemoths. You don't need 1 million visits when 150 might get the job done.
Great Turtle Race, Conservation International
www.greatturtlerace.com
Conservation International (CI) in Arlington, Va., partnered with the Pacific Leatherback Trust and Tagging of Pacific Predators (TOPP) to create the Great Turtle Race. Funds raised went directly to Leatherback conservation while TOPP helped with tagging and tracking the turtles.
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The site tracked the migration of the Pacific Leatherback turtle from Costa Rica to the Galapagos Islands. The idea to tag the turtles and track them online, creating a "race" of sorts, first came about almost two years ago from Rod Mast, CI's vice president of sea turtle conservation.
Conservation International was able to get a variety of different sponsors for each turtle, including Breyer's Ice Cream, Drexel University and Travelocity.com. while Yahoo.com promoted the race.
"It's one of the most surprising campaigns I've ever run," said Vinnie Wishrad, senior director for community and membership at Conservation International. "It was so much fun to do. It was really terrific."
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Two weeks prior to the start of the race last April, CI launched a splash page where visitors could cheer on the turtles and sign up to receive updates on specific turtles. Media coverage resulted in an almost immediate spike in traffic.
Web traffic exploded after the site was featured on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." One of the turtles ("Stephanie Colburtle;" she finished second) was named for the show's host Stephen Colbert.
The race lasted two weeks with 670,000 unique visitors to the Web site and 50,000 people signing up to receive updates. Users signed up with the understanding that they opted into CI's online community, said Wishrad. In addition, 20,000 people signed a pledge to reduce their plastic bag use. Plastic bags can be a threat to Leatherback Turtles because they can be mistaken for jellyfish, the turtle's primary diet.
The Great Turtle Race raised almost $300,000 from sponsorships and individual donations. Wishrad estimated that the campaign cost about $30,000 to produce, with some in-kind support and volunteers. With the logistics involved in putting together the campaign, Wishrad said the organizations plan to make it a biannual event.
The organization received emails from teachers who were looking for a "teachable moment," Wishrad said, adding that the campaign translated well for kids and had an easy message to digest and follow online.
A MySpace campaign coincided with the Great Turtle Race. Mr. Leatherback--a CI employee who dresses up in a replica costume of a Leatherback turtle--has more than 5,000 friends on his MySpace page, which also includes photos at various landmarks around the world.
Tear It Down, Amnesty International
www.tearitdown.org
Amnesty International (AI) hopes to tear down Guantanamo Bay prison facilities, not with picks or bull-dozers but virtually--"one pixel at a time."
The global human rights nonprofit launched its online pledge and petition to end U.S. detentions last August with an ambitious goal of obtaining 500,000 signatures. The effort is part of its Counter Terror With Justice campaign.
"Each pixel represents our individual power to end the lawlessness and the human rights violations inherent in this system," according to the site. "We are asking individuals, one person at a time, to own their pixel, and show their commitment to ending this human rights scandal."
The main picture on tearitdown.org--hooded detainees seated against a wall with an armed guard watching over them--is a staged image from the film "Road to Guantanamo." After being asked to input their name and email address, users are offered an option to receive email updates. With each name, a pixel is removed from the image. After the information is submitted, the original image comes back, this time with the pixels missing and word balloons popping up to indicate who "owns" the pixel.
Other sites have employed similar counters where visitors can place their name on an object or pixel, such as fillthesky.com (name on a kite) and annefranktree.com (name on a leaf).
"We wanted to present the issue in a compelling and informative way," while making it engaging enough for visitors, said Steve Daigneault, managing director, Internet communications, for Amnesty International USA in Washington, D.C.
The AI campaign focused on list growth and awareness with a goal to sign up 500,000 new activists for Amnesty International, first in the United States and then worldwide. Starting with 40,000 names at its launch, the petition reached 90,000 names as of Jan. 11, the sixth anniversary of the terrorism-related re-opening of Guantanamo Bay facilities. By the end of February there were another 25,000, with the total nearing 120,000.
Amnesty International had a budget of $10,000 to find a design firm, and proposed a cutting-edge, cool concept to be done at cost or as a donation for putting their name on it, Daigneault said. Brooklyn, N.Y.-based H.U.G.E. accepted the project, estimating about 500 hours spent on research, strategy and design.
The site started as just a concept in January 2007 before going through the design phase and launching publicly in early August. It was translated into other languages and launched worldwide in January 2008. The pledge and petition was made much broader and international in nature after being translated into other languages, including Spanish, French and German.
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Trisomy 18 Foundation
www.trisomy18.org
What started out on an online community bulletin board less than five years ago has turned into an international nonprofit organization raising six figures annually.
The Trisomy 18 Foundation has its beginnings in a collection of parents seeking peer support at trisomy18support.org, which still exists and links to the foundation site.
Trisomy 18 is a "genetic accident" that occurs at conception, a similar phenomenon that creates Down Syndrome. Rarely do infants live more than a few days. It affects one in 3,000 live births and one in 1,500 pregnancies.
The founder and executive director of the foundation, Victoria Miller envisioned much of the site and content from the experience of losing her own son to Trisomy 18. "Lots of it was based on a mother's instinct of what a mother needed," Miller said, finding needed resources, recognizing their value to others and seeking a way to sustain them over time.
A family can feel isolated after receiving a diagnosis, Miller said, so "the ability to find each other online ... catalyzes a community that otherwise wouldn't be able to engage in each other." At that point, the foundation focuses on service, support, education and peer access, she said.
The support site was started in October 2003 and in February 2006 the foundation launched its current Convio-hosted Web site. Miller is the only full-time staff member, along with about nine part-time staff and contractors, who, like the organization's donors, are scattered around the country.
Working from her home, Miller said the organization spends about a third of its budget, and on average about 20 hours a month, maintaining its Web site. When the foundation site launched, it had a house file of 2,000, raising about $50,000 annually. Today, the organization has topped $200,000 in annual giving and boosted its house file to more than 10,000.
Much of the funds raised during the first five years have gone into the infrastructure to build virtually as much as possible, Miller said. "That's given us the power to respond to the level of demand and to scale nationally.
"We're still at a point where we make what we spend," Miller said. "We're finding our own growth." All of the giving "is attributable to online right now because all of our donor relationships start there." About 40 percent of giving comes in the form of checks, generated by families they have worked with online.
"There's demand nationwide and internationally. It was just a matter of getting online and getting some traction with pulling together that community," Miller said. The last few months, the Web site has attracted an average of 25,000 unique visitors a month, with more than 1.5 million hits.
Much of the online giving has come through the site's Legacy Pages, where families dealing with bereavement issues tell their child's story, share photos and have a guest book where others can offer condolences. Visitors can donate directly on the Legacy Page, which also allow families to generate emails to anyone in the network and set up a URL that often appears in memorials or obituaries.
"When a death happens in our community, we see a spike in memorial giving through that online portal but also in offline checks, which we still attribute and record on that Legacy Page," Miller said.
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