Inside ASI-AP

Jay, Amanda and I manned our stand at the Connecting Up 2009 Conference which was held in Brighton le Sands, Sydney on Monday 10 & Tuesday 11 May. The conference was focused on "how technology, social media and networking is changing the way nonprofit orgtanisations operate, communicate and connect with their supporters, members and beneficiaries."

The conference was mainly attended by Social Services organisations who have few supporters (donors) as the majority were fully funded by the government. While the budget was handed down last night, many of these organisations were thinking about how it was going to affect their services, and how they would have to consider cutting some services they offer. Very little consideration seemed to be given to raising funds through the community to continue delivering their services.

Jay Yammered that this conference was not really our target market and I agree. Firstly - the audience being mainly Social Services, secondly - a huge emphasis was placed on open source and low-cost technology options and this is where their focus.

Jay's presentation "Improve your social (networking) life" was attended by 40 delegates and he approached for more questions at the conclusion.

I attended a number of the sessions. Here are some of my notes.

SUCCESSFUL ONLINE CAMPAIGNING 101 - Nick Moraitis, Director of Make Believe
- email comms should include less links
- appeal formats work better than newsletters if you want ppl to take action
- conduct A/B testing
- send test emails to small groups to measure best results, then role out to wider audience
- be specific about where donor

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION
Delegates broke up into 7 discussion groups for 50 mins, facilitators shared information with wider audience. My notes for some of those groups below:

SUPPORTER RELATIONSHIPS AND FUNDRAISING (Facilitator: Phillip Kingston, Managing Director and founder of Kingston Development)
- identified why ppl dontate
- trust, emotional connections
- need for transparency
- Defined supporter - complex concept
- either give time or money
- Need to use technology in follow up to giving
- blogs, wikis, photo galleries ("Tehnology is a tool")
- Stats not being used for marketing, organisational planning, etc
- Technology doesnt move ppl upd pyramid of donor engagement
- Value of engaging ppl in low impact/involvement activities (ie Facebook)
- ppl might feel like they are "giving" or being involved with the charity by adding a story on their Facebook page and sharing information with friends. Monotary support may become a second option.
- Technology has low cost centre implications, with responsibility normally handed over to IT(REMEMBER THE AUDIENCE HERE - THEY WERE KEEN ON OPEN SOURCE AND LOW COST OPTIONS)
- Admit adhoc use of effective technology
- Need to design web content relevant to organisation and must be updated regularly
- Donor expectations are high in regards to technology
- Urgency before specificness of message in communicaitons
- Donors are considering the return on their efforts (ie acknowledgement on Facebook, etc)
- Need for planning to folloow other business decision planning

NETWORKING AND COMMUNITY BUILDING (Facilitator: Patrick Kelso, Communications Manager, Engineers Without Borders)
- Information contained in forums can be sensitive (ie. mental health - comments about suicide may lead to loss of govt funding)
- need to monitor
- how do they manage the system?
- Fundraising should be the driver in the community
- engaging individuals should be(face-to-face)
- suggested meetup.com as a social networking tool

TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS (Facilitator: Allen Gunn, Allen Gunn, Executive Director, Aspiration)
- Discussed "cloud" concept
- In reference to Content Management Systems
- use open source b/c if supplier goes bust you can still rely on community
- this is best practice
- Use old (offline) networks to learn whats available