Thumbnail Marketing

Despite the recession, there is some optimism for fundraising in 2009, but the road is rocky and clearly uneven. The Association of Fundraising Professional’s annual conference this week brings this news:

• Ony 46 percent of fundraisers raised more in 2008 than in 2007, a new low in the eight years of the annual AFP survey.
• Another AFP study found 60 percent of members expect fundraising income to stay the same or increase in 2009. Be “prudent, being realistic, and focusing on the fundamentals that got you here,” AFP President Paulette Maehara told the conference in New Orleans.
• Nonprofits should focus on the mission rather than the financials, ask donors to give now and focus on what their money will achieve, several veteran consultants said. Cutting programs across the board will head to failure, not success, while using part-time or contract talent can keep opportunities from losing traction, they added.

In another recent report, charitable contributions to colleges and universities grew by 6.2 percent in 2008, reaching $31.60 billion, delivering mixed results, according to the Council for Aid to Education.

While that’s the highest raised in one year and above the average 5.7 annual increase over the past decade, if the top 20 institutions were taken out of the data, giving declined by 4.2 percent. CAE’s annual Voluntary Support of Education survey says that data for fiscal year ending June 30, 2009 will give clues to the longer-term effects of the recession.

Sharply declining endowments are compounding the problems. Typically endowments have been a cushion for lean years, but in today’s environment, “endowments are not able to play as protective a role.”

This report offers gloomier predictions for 2009 than the AFP study. “Even at institutions that reported healthy gains in fiscal 2008, advancement professionals told us they had ‘hit a wall’ in January 2009 and that the decline was substantial,” said Ann E. Kaplan, director of the survey. “Both the number and value of contributions dropped early in the calendar year.” And the outlook for fiscal 2010 could be worse, the CAE report cautions.

Fundraisers by nature are optimistic, and data analyzed since the Depression show that these cycles do end. The best short-term course is to keep an “eyes forward” focus and stick to the tried-and-true fundraising fundamentals.

Here’s what the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the largest association of its kind in the world, advises:

• Keep cool, don’t panic, lead by example and believe in success.
• Be candid.
• Stay positive.
• Remember your mission.
• Act — put equal weight on planning and doing.
• Don’t stop asking for money. After September 11, 2001, many organizations stopped or postponed fundraising and discovered later that decision was a missed opportunity. Surveys show that people still give in hard times, sometimes even more.

Here’s what the AFP, the largest association of its kind in the world, advises fundraising marketers:

• Retain and cultivate current donors as the top priority.
• Continue awareness activities.
• Don’t cut marketing and advertising. Keep it steady and consider increasing it.
• Protect your brand reputation.
• Segment, segment and segment — personalize appeals in a cost-efficient manner.

For more tips, see my whitepaper, “Communicating Value during the Economic Downturn.”

Not only is small the new big, but less is the new more — ergo, Alltop.

Thanks to the dizzying amount of information overload on the Internet daily, suddenly everyone I talk to is crying for simplicity. And accessing information in bite-size dozes through dusty research books or the inky morning newspaper at the front door is starting to feel revolutionary. Just enough information for one day and one sitting.

Now for blog-harnessing, Alltop seems to make things simpler than than RSS, according to megabloggers like John Haydon and Brian Solis.  It’s an online magazine rack organized by topic — all in one place on the desktop.

All this got me to thinking about a revitalized niche for middlemen and women. Seth Grodin’s article on the changing role of “agents” hit a similar theme. In a self-service Internet culture where anything is a keystroke away, there’s simply too much information to manage. Agents who are specialists in their field and stand for something can really help their customers cut through the clutter to make good business or personal decisions. Come to think of it, I started using a travel agent again. That way, I can focus on my skills as an “information agent” for my customers, distilling information to advance their business goals, while my travel agent uses her expertise, connections and judgment to save me time and money.

As selectivity becomes the new excess, “keeping it simple” is an old idea with very modern currency.

The message is clear for cost-effective marketing for small businesses and nonprofits during the economic downturn — keep marketing, but keep it simple. The challenge is to do more with less, but the question remains, what’s are the best choices for my business or nonprofit?

I’m an enthusiastic follower of some of the most generous marketing resources on the web — Marketing Profs, Jim Jantsch, Andy Wibbels and Beth Kanter among them. The good news is that there are tons of tools and resources. The bad news is that the information overload can be overwhelming for small businesses and nonprofits trying to hang on with slimmed-down budgets and accelerated revenue goals. The temptation is to seize a couple of the latest cool tactics and apply them without a goal-focused process customized and scaled to each situation.

“Thumbnail Marketing” is an attempt to cut through the clutter. As an information specialist, I’m often asked by my clients to assess the options, do the analysis and make recommendations that are strategic, manageable and affordable. Remember the Three Bears when you look at your marketing roadmap — not too broad, not too narrow, but just right.

When the post-recession uptick begins, we’ll not be returning to the old ways. So, rather than live with that “deer in the headlights” feeling any longer, let’s recalibrate creatively to take care of the present and be ready for the next phase.

The first assignment as you get a grip on your marketing now is this — begin with the end in mind.

The impact of the recession on communications practitioners is game-changing. I’ve been thinking about that forecast ever since the “Financial Meltdown Mania” panel discussion by the San Francisco chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) as 2009 had gotten underway.

Our Bay Area senior communicator colleagues from Double Forte, Goodwill Industries, Cisco, Wells Fargo Advantage Funds and Hart Communications followed a meltdown analysis by Tom Osborne, vice president for alliances at Exeros (“the only thing that remains the same is historical ignorance”).

The overall takeaways:

• Strong companies with a good story to tell have a marketing opportunity to get their messages out.
• Marketing in the crisis is not just about products but thought leadership.
• Status quo is not going to make it.

Useful tips:

• Leverage a niche that can be developed.
• Develop a communications playbook to drive marketing strategy, internally and externally, with a focus on expanding customer relationships while preparing for the economic upturn.
• Maintain transparency, be realistic, empower new communicators among your employees.
• Focus on the value that you can deliver.
• Communicate more — long periods of deafening silence, especially internally, breed fear and mistrust.
• As with any crisis, say what you know – and also what you don’t know.
• Don’t be afraid to break your model and try new things.