Charity Begins at Home

Old timers like me are generous donors to charities. Maybe it’s because we have more available funds, maybe because it’s become an ingrained lifestyle decision honed over decades of generosity. But recent statistics show that Baby Boomers—born 1946 to 1964—give $901 a year to 5.2 groups. We're exceeded only by older siblings and parents who give an average of $1066 a year to 6.3 charities.

So what kind of role models were we to our children? The study says we did OK!

Gen Xers—born 1965 to 1980—give on average $796 to 4.2 organizations a year, and the youngsters out there, the Gen Yers—born 1981 to 1991—give $341 to 3.6 groups a year.

Hence, as people age their charitable contributions increase, as do the number of charities they support. What is also changing is the number of ways nonprofits can approach donors.

Gen X and Gen Y combined now make up more than half of the available pool of potential donors, and they don’t seem to have the “brand loyalty” that their seniors do. So figuring out how to reach these upwardly mobile donors—and keep them donating!—is critical to nonprofits.

There used to be a limited number of tried-and-true ways to reach and influence potential contributors. The explosion of social media and the internet has made that effort exponentially more difficult. Now it gets really complicated.

Retail. Just over half of all age groups say they have made contributions at the grocery or retail store, but older folk still prefer to receive their information through direct mail. Younger folk have a variety of paths from which they get information, and no single channel predominates.

Internet. 35% of the Xers had gone on a charity’s web site to make a contribution as had 29% of the Yers in the past 2 years. What had gotten them to that website in the first place is still TBD.

Social Media. 36% of those under 30 years old said they had shared information about a charity with friends in the past month and 29% posted information on a nonprofit organization on their own Facebook page.

Text messaging. Text messaging is gaining wide acceptance. 77% said they had heard about opportunities to contribute to Haiti earthquake relief via their cell phones and 36% indicated their willingness to make a cell phone contribution. But there is a generational divide. Cell phones generated contributions from 13-14% of the X and Yers, but only 4% from the Boomers.

Social Events. Younger people tend to like social events such as 5K runs and galas. They also are generous volunteers. On the other hand, they tend to give simply because they are asked to do so and without conducting much research. By comparison, older donors like to know how much of the donation goes to overhead expenses.

Direct Mail. Still a very viable tool, Direct Mail got attention —and money— from 43% of the Xers and 26% of the Yers in the last year. Individuals born before 1965 voiced a strong preference for direct mail; people born after 1965 preferred web sites.

As the number of donation avenues increases, the old metrics of nonprofit fund tracking is becoming obsolete. An individual may have first learned about a nonprofit from a friend who directed the individual to a Facebook page which got him to a website. Or it may have come from an invitation to join in a 5K, an overhead public service announcement, an ad in a newspaper or even a direct mail solicitation.

The multi-channel nature of today’s giving environment necessitates a more global perspective on response rates and specific media ROI. Nonprofits have figured that much out. Nonprofits haven’t figured out how to compute the value of various input sources: internet vs DM (direct mail) vs WoM (word of mouth) vs text messaging vs Social Media vs special events, etc.

The world is changing. If you don’t know what is working, you don’t know why it’s working and then you don’t know how you can make it better.

Like so many things, it used to be simpler.

Social Media Proves Men and Women are Different Animals

Anyone who has been married more than a year knows that it is an Undeniable Truth that men and women look at things differently. Women want to voice their needs, upsets and concerns, but men want to fix those issues.

Married women want girlfriends with whom to talk because their men don’t listen to them. On the other hand, married men who want girlfriends that aren’t looking for scintillating conversation, but that’s getting way off track.

Back to business. Social media is only reinforcing the age-old divide.

Facebook, it seems, is dominated by women. Of the 400 million+ members, 57% are women but the site attracts 46 million more women visitors than men each month. Plus female Facebookers have 8% more friends and do 62% of the sharing.

“The world’s gone social. And women are more social than men” explains Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Facebook is not alone in its female bias. Women are the majority users on Twitter, MySpace, Bebo and Flickr.

Why? Sociologists will tell you that girls are taught from birth to share information. It’s a skill passed down from our stone-age grandmothers who had to learn to cooperate to survive. (“You watch the kids and scare off the wolves; I’ll go forage for berries for dinner.”) That same cooperation is apparent on-line today as women query each other about toilet training, dealing with difficult bosses, and shopping preferences.

Men, on the other hand, gravitate toward Digg, YouTube and LinkedIn which are content-driven sites. Statistics show that men use YouTube 20% more than women, perhaps because the site is about finding, consuming and passing along content. It is not about conversation or sharing ideas.

Men also blog more and are more likely to comment on other blogs. (Side note: from the blog responses I’ve read, men tend to be confrontational and competitive. [“You are such an idiot!”] Women’s comments are more supportive of the writer [“That was really funny!”])

Men, it seems, see Social Media as a tool to gather information to increase their status. For in today’s society information is power.

It figures. The same sociologists will say that men are taught to be competitive from birth. Our cave-dwelling spear-wielding male ancestors probably jostled for credit for making the kill-of-the-day the way they now fight for the fastest computer or the corner office. It’s all about status within a community.

So what can a savvy marketer do to span this chasm? Retailers are figuring it out.

Getting a woman to say she prefers your brand is tremendously influential to her friends. Since twice as many women as men say they share purchasing preferences on line, some of the most successful fashion brands—Tommy Hilfiger and Urban Outfitters among them—sponsor virtual fashion shows to engage their adoring public. And not coincidentally, to sell product.

Some marketers are using games—long popular with men and growing in popularity with women—to win eyeball time, and possibly win new converts to their product line.

Similarly, both men and women respond to tweets or text messages from their favorite retailers. (“Half price burritos tonight at _______’s from 5:00 to 7:00. Bring this message with you to participate.”)

Men, however, ever looking for the competitive leg up, like to get content from articles. After all, one never knows when that new factoid can be a valuable weapon in one’s arsenal. Hence, savvy marketers are using “transactional” sites like LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter to post provocative material hoping to spark manly interest.

Yes, difference in communication style is as old as gender.

Long after Thomas Edison and long before Feminism, some man somewhere asked “What are the three fastest forms of communication?”

His troglodyte friend responded “Telegraph…telephone…Tell a woman.”

Men guffawed. Women winced.

Social Media types say “Thank Goodness!”

Easy Does It! Maybe.

It’s summer again. Children—young and old—are kicking back lemonades and heading to the beach to squish sand between their toes once again.

Colorful tattoos are appearing in places that weren’t even visible two months ago. Haircuts and skirts are shorter; nylons are history and neckties aren’t far behind.

Monday-to-Friday is now Monday to Friday-ish. People start wandering out the door at noon, only to reappear on Monday with a deep tan and a zen-like air of serene relaxation about them.

Nothing is hurried. It’s too hot to rush, anyway. Everybody has gone into “vacation mode.”

But maybe there’s too much of a good thing.

Studies show that students lose two and a half months of their hard-earned math skills over the summer break which is, conveniently, two and a half months. Hmmm. How about that. A one-to-one correlation between “time away” and “information lost.”

Now translate that to marketing. A lot of the effort of marketing is simply keeping your name, your brand, your message in front of your clients, donors or prospects.

Consider McDonald’s. Mickey D spends millions of dollars a week just to remind us that they are there. They just want to keep their name in our consciousness.

Focus group of one: when I get thirsty, I head to Mickey D’s for the unsweetened ice tea. So as I was driving through the line today to get my daily tea fix, I spotted a new menu item: Real Fruit Frosties. Sounds yummy. I passed it by today, but I can almost guarantee that lunch one day next week will be a Real Fruit Frostie. I’ll be fantasizing about that frostie for days until I can’t resist any more. Their ads won’t let me forget. That’s good marketing.

Why is your business any different? If your clients/donors don’t hear from you for two and a half months, that’s a lot of time lost. You’re out of sight, out of mind. You’re losing market share simply by wearing your summertime cloak of invisibility.

Taking it easy now is fun, but do you really want to have to rebuild your business again in the fall?

Use the summer to stay in touch with a newsletter, an email or a postcard. Use social media, text messaging and PURLs to let them know what you are doing and why it is important to them.

You’ll be top of the mind, and poised for business when the time is right.

And that’s even better than a long weekend at the beach.

The Post Office Redecorates

The Post Office has always been a community center of sorts. Not like the pre-fab commercial Town Centers that grace our highway signs today, but a community center of the truest sort.

The post office has always been the place where neighbors bumped into each other as they collected their mail, sent their holiday packages to far-flung friends and family, or simply paused together to gawk at the “Most Wanted” posters.

But that was then and this is now.

Now the post office has gone commercial. Today the post office sells boxes, padded bags, shipping labels, shipping fillers, as well as cute collectibles like teddy bears, toys and pins. In more than one sense it is in competition with the bank and the gift shop down the street, Western Union, Toys-R-Us and Kinkos. As a result, the post office needed to spiff up its image.

Post Offices all over the country have scraped years of accumulated grime off their walls, repainted, and added specialty windows for stamp collectors or people who just want to buy postage. On the walls are large posters for USPS-sanctioned collectibles, commemorative stamp series and other USPS-sponsored products-for-sale.

Most strikingly, the Most Wanted posters are gone, whacked into oblivion by the new, upscale ambience.

No longer will the neighborhood post office have those scary, snarling faces staring at me as I walk out the door. Today, if I want to know if that suspicious man trimming my neighbor’s hedge is a Really, Really Bad Guy operating incognito, I’ll have to go to the online to the FBI’s Web site, or to the website of John Walsh (the founder of “America’s Most Wanted” TV show) for confirmation or comfort.

While I appreciate the new, cleaner look of my local post office, and I love the express line for stamp buyers, there is a neighborhood feeling that is lost forever.

I miss the old yellowed map of our little town that had been on the wall for decades. I miss the community bulletin board with its message about a missing beloved dog and the local-kid-made-good newspaper clipping that a proud parent posted for all to see. I miss the neighbors standing around in clusters sharing photos of the kids and tsk-tsking about the price of tomatoes at the Safeway. And yes, I miss those Most Wanted posters, too.

They say you can’t be all things to all people, but the Post Office lost its vibrant soul when it went upscale retail.