A new force awakens- cyber tools are impacting charity development mediating invisibility cloaks with stealth and value creation by nonprofit branding.  Hands on giving is more difficult to access and public charities are now finding out how to use tools to reach their audience despite new options and circumstances in investment structures.

First, a formulating institution creates a mission that serves a need.  Then the need to reach out and touch someone…now the annual year end donor activity and preparing for a cyber grant cycle sets a goal changes everything.  Donors are being advised on how to protect their privacy and still give without putting their assets at risk.

Even with the use a telephone and sales database, social conditions, a lack of reserve capital and with survey cyber communications and online or two way social media, technology has changed the footprint of people that your organization can connect to directly and with this fusion of new irs vehicles, database integration and sales software and big data...nonprofits must reach another level of branding and responsibility in contacting potential givers or their advisors that want them to be untouchable. 

Here's the rub.... while the pool can be both bigger and smaller...the message will drive your success.

Donors are more diverse.  Radio stations are advertising for car donations.  Foundations and donors have switched up the entire "list, mail and ask then cultivate" practice.  What is required …roll up one's sleeves and keep learning how to combine and use new tools to innovate and become "sticky".  With a DAF (donor advised funds), you can be listed to receive a gift that someone is already planning for, but that giver is no longer directly accessible and only able to calculate their giving based on their own reconnaissance.

Besides understanding how to meet the agency's mission and its fixed and variable expenses, now it will take branding and matching knowledge along with the personal acumen to ask for the dollars and find out the data set that will drive a potential gift.

The dialing it took to continue to serve the community, along with an annual event, now requires cyber skills from widgets to design, from copy and reporting with clout, and boomerang publicity that will allow for your organization to claim one's place in the area's service pond. It may take metadata to focus on the person or group that can yield a capacity building grant or gift and this is an analytical task not one that starts with a physical handshake.

Reaching out for to "touch somebody" is an analogy describing annual campaigns formulated more like elections.  With a campaign in place for outreach every season… writing, logos, article placement besides personal newsletters can turn the direction back to you even with a small development staff.  Blogging and new media can bring social philanthropy actively into the mix by energizing your base and putting your agency into the public/private spotlight by engaging a reader base.  Email blasts can help you, but that copy can be reassigned to entertain and educate, or be read and shared by "being handed around" and boosting your profile.

Whether writing directly about existing services or one's clientele, needs, or colleagues placing the story in the the surrounding sector with editorial and pictures can show off your initiatives and your activities.  You can showcase your site and your results year round.

Vital for nonprofits to show their impact and cover the gap between fieldwork and services, your blog can now allow you to be seen in a specific sector when someone is seeking you out, checking your profile or your Board connections.

"The New Philanthropy" is empowered by computers, but as the Sacramento Arts Council and the Pew Foundation's "state" cultural database project advise… stories can warm up the "cold/invisible" aspect of moving forward in a Big Data world. Capturing a share of dollars that are available for your services through sponsorships or through grant dollars are vital and driven by new communication and administrating skills that must be learned and applied throughout the fundraising year.

1) Put out your shingle.  Keep it polished and up to date:

To deliver on their missions, nonprofit charities are now actively learning to reach out to the broader community they serve "competing" for grant, philanthropic, DAF Direct and social investment dollars.  Informed leadership is learning to use marketing and metrics to improve potential development dollar gains and benefits that are magnetized by virtual "connecting" and by using business to business digital tools to personalize and connect the message and medium to the stakeholder.  Nonprofits are learning to "put out a shingle" (your brand) on the gifting highway for both planned individual and business giving.

While getting ready for  "an elevator speech" regular stories can be culled from stakeholders, clients, staff, board members, community institutions, and potential contributors as participants as potential contributors to an online "newsletter" or bulletin board. Writing and "friending" can help to maximize outreach and help donors understand your purpose, style, and impact. Instead of Yelp, this kind of "publicity" can be planned for and put on an editorial schedule.  Featuring your dedicated staff or volunteers can bring unexpected returns.

2) Look at your averages and be aware of your Industry and your profile within it:

The California Cultural Database is a landing page for donors interested in well-utilized investment dollars. The project captures statistics from arts organizations and organizes financials over time providing a timeline narrative of management, administration, and fiscal practices including operational reserves or practices.  "The war of perception" can be pushed by media and can be personalized to your "type" of donor, but artists and funders built this tool to make it easier to know what you are getting and to meet institutional needs.  

3) Readership could make a difference:

If annual donations or multiyear donations are not yet possible or slim, more smaller donations can really matter and this kind of daily advocacy brings clarity, shows capacity, and good management in order to gain donor confidence over time or with first time donations.  With new connections to donors who like to choose, this handshake with readers/interest parties, can boost the goals of an annual giving drive or the receipts that lead to expanded services by transparency and digital presentation.

The goal to show sustainability, due diligence, and public benefit, use big data, metrics and  brand demonstration to spotlight their case for donations and show sustainability and differentiate your mission while showing  up as a value added alternative. 

Stories show how a program was born and ways they involve others.  Nonprofits can show past endorsements, and find new and ongoing collaborators and partnerships.  Marketing through articles, interviews, small format videos, and free articles can help gain new members or to get to new and old service groups to participate.  Corporate givers and employees can match needed funds taking part this year in how annual needs will be met. New givers can be proud that their proposed gifts are being fulfilled whether dedicated or general with confidence.  Whether for capacity building or fee for service the web story and presence can build continuity and a sense of place by a digital archive of photos, events and videos.

Examples:

• Start bookending your favorite website or save your next constant comment blast or survey monkey email. You can put elements into a folder or copy someone else's wording.  You can use the Baker's Dozen of sales techniques with these new nonprofit apps to use graphic/copy tools to gather "friends".  Guidestar and Charity Navigator can play an important role along with notice of awards and your  written "good elevator speech".

• Expert Click.com can help tell unique stories in an interactive press kit type layout.  Think about reaching the press with a 'tasty' message that merits coverage

• New Education Options, Inc. has launched a nonprofit landing page now named Facebook.com/neodigitalrends".  This short format page is used as a nonprofit medium for discovery, exploration and musings on literacy and its local activities.

On the url (facebook.com/neodigitaltrends), NEO's director writes about books, software, new tools, new teaching resources, and trends that inform its mission and opens up new horizons for other associations, researchers, industry trends and initiatives.  The need to connect to clients, donors, and creatives drives its

outreach.  By trolling for readership and with the possibility of new fans,  it is building a footprint of relationships, developing the potential for future donations, joining the community and calling for volunteers and allowing stakeholders otherwise unreached to find them.  Such pages can show personality and drive both mutual understanding and web or foot traffic.

A nonprofit web page can gather friends, help ideas take form, and forward events, programs and projects.   It can celebrate the work of others, fete Board members, follow uptrends, downtrends, service expansion, staff changes and growth.  It can present annual impact, while covering " beats" like books, cds, events, concerts, musical innovations, educational innovations….promote unrelated business traffic and attract either donations, sales or program income….depending how or what is featured, found, or developed during the year. It can expand to augment what is on the official website or to feature info on the contextual elements that define its unique characteristics and demographics that it serves.

NEO's Digital Trends Facebook now covers local, regional and national stories. In the last quarter of 2015, it reflected on "blended instruction", "new kinds of publishing", "new funding sources", and social enterprise, entrepreneurship, social service, arts, philanthropy. 

It has covered music, reading, health and financial literacy.  It writes about exhibitors from CES, MusicEdventures, Book Expo, NAMM, RPDMA, Music Biz and other association events and tradeshows. As an analyst and publisher, the director covers new titles, new software, new applications, new music, new books, new authors in short mentions, reviews, or segments.

It gathers stories and creative endeavors as a way of demonstrating literacy and community in action in formal and informal settings.

This kind of nonprofit page on Facebook can drive traffic, interest, or float balloons regarding priorities and coverage expansion.  NEO's Digital Trends covers indie outpourings or celebrates collaboration in vertical or horizontal markets.  It relies on a broad shotgun approach to help other nonprofits and readership such as teachers, nonprofits, new pedagogies and mediums. 

It looks to the Facebook page to broaden its 24 hour connection to those interested in its cause or like causes.  Its editorial aimed at "quality, convenience, and value" driven by the medium and its new tools will hopefully reach like minded people who will become readers and potentially donors over time.  By "trolling" for others looking for a cause to give to using the web.  Digital Trends can tell its story or others multiple stories building a list of accomplishments and sense of confidence in givers over time. 

This quarter more than any other time of year…going digital in a more responsive way can matter.  Posting your corporate info and updating your address and email, capturing the essence of your message is more important than ever, given Fidelity and its partners are featuring their DAF Direct Widget and there are new tools for making donations bankable emerging all the time.

Technology is here and on iphones, ipads, androids, Internet/cpus and with your merchant banking unit.  Staging your best face forward can benefit your operations and your campaign outcome(s). It's a new digital day in the nonprofit neighborhood.  You can tell your story with short video, podcasts, Soundforge or by tweeting, go to meetings or by meetups and by online teleconferences.  You can record on your phone or your tablet and build a new element that will energize your base. 

Viva la digital difference when duly applied and head to CES.  Hand held devices, servers, and scanners in your phone are bringing about new possibilities every day to replenish, renew and restore confidence, programs, and fill coffers.  Year end can be a time to learn about terms, software, online streaming, and servers as well as use your annual report as an outreach tool.  It's a new world of relationships and full of opportunities. "May you live in interesting times" has never been truer.  May the brand be with you may empower your search and assist donors to meet you coming the other way.

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Resources and research tools:

Directed donations:

http://www.donorschoose.org/

Donor Advised Funds require nonprofits to multiply visibility:

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/26/the-dark-side-of-donor-advised-funds.aspx

Getting the Story Out:

http://expertclick.com/

Sites like Charity Navigator or Guidestar describe nonprofit financials:

http://www.charitynavigator.org/

First Book and Jeffrey Foundation finding new footholds at PCR or at NFF:

http://www.nonprofitfinancefund.org/announcements/2015/first-book-story-within-story-transformation

http://pcrsbdc.org/2015/pcr-helps-nonprofit-foundation-overcome-cash-flow-problems/

Joy (new film) features woman entrepreneurship:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR-2TiQVY-k

Soundforge:

http://download.cnet.com/Sound-Forge-Pro-11/3000-2170_4-10005603.html

Pinterest and Social Media:

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/21-ways-non-profits-can-leverage-social-media/

Great Nonprofits.org and publicity:

http://greatnonprofits.org/nonprofitnews/how-to-get-your-press-release-noticed/

Youtube and Google Video for Nonprofits or radio:

http://thenonprofitjournal.com/

http://thenonprofitjournal.com/the-nonprofit-journal-live-with-dee-suomala/

Find your fit:

https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/trends-policy-issues/charitable-giving-incentives

Find your place in stories locally, regionally or statewide:

http://greatnonprofits.org/state/California

http://nonprofit.about.com/od/nonprofitpromotion/tp/localmedia.htm

https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/article-tags/california

Staging successful giving (our FREE Private Foundation vs. Donor-Advised Fund Comparison Chart):

http://staging.foundationsource.com/impact/comparison-chart-lpt/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=donor%20advised%20funds&source=usa&cr5={creative}&kw=donor%20advised%20funds&c1=seer+daf&adgroup=general+daf&utm_campaign=seer+daf