Google (sorta) gets it

On Sept. 8 I noticed Google had a link to support Katrina relief on its start page. (By the way, who invented the dingy gray "Katrina awareness ribbon?") I clicked it and was brought to Amazon's Red Cross donation page. So I wrote to Google and said,

Dear Google,
Don't you think it would make sense to instead link to a page of your own keyword advertisers who are charities raising money for hurricane relief? I mean, the Red Cross doesn't need ALL the money!!! And you don't have to chase people away from your site to give. Thanks.

A week later I got an auto-reply (can you call it an auto-reply when it takes a week?) that said,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. We just wanted to let you know that we've passed your comments along to the appropriate team, and that your feedback is extremely valuable to us.

Yeah, Right, I thought.

Then, last night, I saw a more substantial "Hurricane Katrina Resources" link on their home page. I clicked it, and -- Wow -- a real collection of links to aid agencies and resources.

I still don't understand why they don't just run the "Hurricane Katrina" Google keyword ads. Is that too hard for them to do?

Rick...

Why does Ted Rall get published?

Ted Rall is an idiot. His Sept. 13 column is entitled "Leave Katrina Efforts to the Government" and it instructs his readers not to donate to charities helping evacuees. He says, "Disaster relief is too important to be left to private fundraisers, with their self-sustaining fundraising expenses, administrative overhead (nine percent for the Red Cross) and their parochial, often religious, agendas." As if the government has a lower overhead than the Red Cross? The only "religious agenda" of the faith-based nonprofits helping there is to curry favor with their God, not to spread the word.

He says that "generosity feeds into the mindset of the sinister ideologues who argue that government shouldn't help people" and "It's time to 'starve the beast': private charities used by the government to justify the abdication of its duties to its citizens."

Not only does this man not understand human nature and history, but he's got his facts wrong. It wasn't the Red Cross, or Operation Blessing that waited for four days to act. It wasn't the Salvation Army that blocked trained "self-deployed" rescuers from getting into New Orleans.

Nonprofits are nothing more than the combined, organized efforts of people helping people. Wait, isn't that what government is supposed to be, too?

While Ted Rall is an idiot, I'm OK with that. What bothers me is that the Washington Post and Universal Press Syndicate publish his work. I suppose they pay him for it, too. Talk about the need to starve the beast!

NASCAR ads for a homepage?

It was a big NASCAR weekend in Richmond. I'm not a fan, but having lived here for quite a few years, I know plenty of fans. What has always bothered me is how busy the cars and the uniforms are - all those stickers, patches and endorsements by every type of company. It's hard to focus on any one thing at those rates of speed.

At NPA we often come across nonprofit homepages that suffer from "NASCAR syndrome." Every program and fundraising campaign have a sticker, patch or moving graphic on the homepage. Sometimes, it's even apparent that the homepage has been politically divided up with sections allocated to each division. At the rate of speed that most internet users scan a site, it's no wonder the homepage is often the top entry AND top exit page. There is nothing to focus on. There is no one clear call to action, so they hit the back button.

Having said that, I have noticed that most race fans don't identify cars by advertiser, even if the advertisers do. Fans are loyal to a driver…a person…a name... Not a team or a type of car or an advertiser. It’s a person. This is a valuable lesson for nonprofits. What do your website user’s identify with?

In the last two weeks, many nonprofits have been raising funds for Hurricane Katrina relief. Some have employed a technique referred to as a "hijacked homepage." They have eliminated all the clutter; stripped out extraneous links and concentrated the whole homepage on one single effort - raising money for the relief work.

This focus has netted HUGE results. More than half of the $500 million raised by the Red Cross has been raised online (as reported by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Sept 9, 2005).

It’s not practical or appropriate for a nonprofit's homepage to have this type of focus all the time. However, neither is the NASCAR advertising approach. The answer must lie somewhere in the middle - starting with the identification of the site's primary purpose.

Segmenting your email file!

Marketing Sherpa has put together a list of Katrina-related information for marketers and advertisers. One item in particular caught my attention. Here's an excerpt and a link to the full article:

"Potentially millions of email addresses have been affected by Katrina. Email users may not have access to regular email for days or weeks. Their mailboxes may quickly fill and start sending mailers auto-bounce messages. This means emailers' list management systems could unsubscribe those names automatically due to deliverability concerns. It also means mailers' open and click result reports will show anomalies."

"If you have an integrated database, and can identify which of your email opt-ins are in the affected regions, you should use USPS zip guidelines to segment your files."

Full Story...

Fundraising musings

Thoughts on crisis fundraising:

1. It pays to have PR relationships in place before a disaster
2. Sometimes, the search engines are baffling. Yahoo did not start running Katrina ads until today. No explanation.
3. Keep your directory listings current and call the list owners as soon as you know you will be participating in relief efforts. These lists like Network for Good, Charity Navigator and Mission Fish are picked up by the media and are duplicated throughout the web.
4. Even paid advertising relationships should be established before a disaster. The Hunger Site refused other paying charities in order to offer Mercy Corps "first dibs."
5. Have a plan that includes roles, responsibilities, technical capacity of servers, additional resources should you need them - and definitely a signoff process for tasks and budget.

Personal thoughts on the relief effort - there is no shortage of work. It's surreal to be referring to American refugees and possible cholera outbreaks. Search and Rescue workers have to get shots before heading down there - like international relief workers. Support as many worthy charities as you can. There is no way one organization can do it all. It will take a lot of efforts from a lot of groups.

-Heather