The Digital Nonprofit – a project of TechSoup Connect Western Canada
Events and community for nonprofits curious about technology.
Next event: Tuesday, December 7
RSVP:
The topic is still undecided. It will probably be a grab-bag of 3-4 presenters. Please email me with suggestions for speakers and topics. eli@vandergiessen.ca
Thanks to everyone for coming out and making the panel work (all those hard questions!) A special shout-out goes to W2 Community Media Arts Society, who provided the venue.
Special thanks to panelists:
There’s been an interesting discussion on Pull Focus’ Meatless Mondays video on the Meetup.com page. And you can watch the original “Meathead” video on Youtube.
Subtitling:
Videos examples from event:
Free audio resources:
Other cool resources:
Links via Miraj Khaled
Other than youtube grants, projects with feature length video ideas may benefit from the examples &
grant/awards at the Skoll foundation & Participant Media
A youtube success story: one-man’s video journey to change the world
New ways to learn & collaborate:
The Slides:
My grandpappy always used to tell me to “go where the audience is.” (Well, not really, but he should have! Because it’s great advice.) That’s why most nonprofits joined Myspace, and then abandoned Myspace for Facebook when their supporters made the same move.
So, we use paper mailings, email, webpages, social media, public events…. we go where the people are. And increasingly nonprofits’ current and potential supporters are watching video online. So let’s go there too, because the latest research suggests that 50% of internet users are watching online video at least once a week and 32% of all internet traffic is already video (with that figure expected to double by 2013.)
Date: Tuesday, November 2
Time: doors at 5:30pm, Starts at 6:00pm, and finishes at 7:30pm
Location: W2 Storyeum, 151 west Cordova
Special features: amplified audio and adequate seating for all!
Featuring:
Panelists include:
A special thanks goes to our sponsor, W2 Creative Media Arts Society, who provided the venue.
More stuff you should know:
September’s Net Tuesday brought up a lot of questions about best practices for email campaigning.
Long or short subject lines? One ask or newsletter style? Weekly or monthly? Text or HTML layouts?
Now I may not be a grizzled old veteran yet, but I’ve already seen that “best practices” for one organization may not necessarily be the optimal strategy for everyone else. So, you have two choices when developing your email campaigns:
I suggest test! It’s fast and easy with most email service providers.
Example using Mailchimp (but almost any major service will do)
NOTE: this was not a statistically valid experiment because of the small size of the test group. I did this as a test of Mailchimp’s functionality and to show how easy it is to setup an A/B test.
I setup an A/B test on the from field of a recent invitation to the Vancouver Net Tuesday group (instructions). The test sent the two variants of the email to a random 30% of the total list, and then after 24 hours automatically sent the winning variant of the email (based on open and clickthru rates) to the rest of the mailing list.
And here’s the stats on the test. In this case “Group B” won with the more personal “Eli from Net Tuesday” from line.
As the French say, “et voilà!”
I’m plotting a topic for the Net Tuesday November meetup, and Ben Johnson suggested “video.”
What do you think? Are you interested in this topic? And do you know of any Vancouver nonprofits who are doing interesting work with video? Please let me know in the comments or by emailing eli@vandergiessen.ca
Potential items to be presented and discussed:
Thanks to everyone who came out to the Net Tuesday September event focusing on email marketing and fundraising. Your insightful questions were what made it all possible. Well, the awesome audience AND the panelists (Duncan Owen, Shannon Daud, and Ben Johnson.) Thanks all for making me look good!
There won’t be a Net Tuesday in October, but we’ll be back in November. In the meantime, you can relive the summer’s NetSquared Camp unconference with Russell Bennett’s great video.
What I learned this month:
Email campaigning service providers:
The panel didn’t have time to go deeply into their favorite tools for setting up and distributing email campaigns, but here’s the URLs for the tools mentioned.
The remarkable Russell Bennett created a summary video that beautifully captures the energy of NetSquared Camp Vancouver.
TOPIC: Email communications – still alive and kicking
It’s easy to get distracted by that new-fangled social media stuff (so shiny!), but the folks on the ground in non-profits know that the real action’s in email. That’s where you raise the funds to advance your mission. That’s how you get people to show up to events. That’s how you get petitions signed.
There’s plenty of life left in email communications, and learning how to test, optimize, and integrate email campaigns is (I reckon) the best investment you can make in the online space.
Join a panel of experts from Vancouver’s nonprofit community as they discuss the value of email to their organizations, how they manage and grow their lists, and how they test and measure their campaigns so that they’re constantly improving.
DATE: Tuesday, September 14
TIME: 5:30 (doors) 6:00pm (event starts)
LOCATION: W2 Storyeum, 151 W Cordova, Vancouver, BC
RSVP:
blog: http://979s.com.
email: mrbenjohnson@gmail.com
linkedin: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/mrbenjohnson/
DUNCAN OWEN, David Suzuki Foundation
Duncan has been with the David Suzuki Foundation for 1 ½ years focusing on fundraising campaigns (direct mail, telemarketing, email), supervising day to day operations of the donor relations team and looking to find innovation and efficiencies.
TOPIC: Email communications – not dead yet!
Join a panel of experts from Vancouver’s nonprofit community as they discuss the value of email to their organizations, how they manage and grow their lists, and how they test and measure their campaigns so that they’re constantly improving.
DATE: Tuesday, September 14
TIME: 5:30 – 8:00pm
LOCATION: W2 Storyeum, 151 W Cordova, Vancouver, BC
RSVP for the next Vancouver event:
Did you go to NetSquared Camp Vancouver on August 14? Thank you!
I thought it was a roaring success. Do you agree?
And while I have your attention, let me take this moment to thank the volunteers and sponsors who helped make the event possible.
For more information go to http://www.nettuesday.ca/netsquared/sponsors/