Social Ch@nge

With a Cosmo-worthy title like that, I have to start by mentioning that not too long ago, we laughed ourselves silly over a blogging advice blog that advocated taking magazine headlines and inserting your target audience – for him it was a data centre -  in order to create eye-catching blog titles such as ‘Five Summer Makeover Tips Your Data Centre Needs Now!’ A look through Cosmo shows up the immediate pitfalls to this approach (’Hair That Gets Your Data Centre What It Wants!’ ‘Five Things Your Gynecologist Isn’t Telling Your Data Centre!’) This provided us with a running gag every time we were in the checkout line, and we pass it on to you.  Anecdote aside, dear data centers, the truth is that the easiest way to tell what your donors think of you is to ask them.  And the best way to ask them online?  How about that most beloved Cosmo tool of all – a survey?

When online non-profit Avaaz sent me a survey today about what I thought of them, I was really relieved. Generally Avaaz does amazing work using online petitions. But recently, I’d been thrown off by a campaign that seemed totally out of keeping with their mission statement. However, whenever Avaaz does a controversial campaign, their next step is to send around a survey to check not only what their members thought of the campaign, but also to find out where members think Avaaz should be focussing their efforts.  Using a survey this way gives you a chance to actively listen to your donors – and it gives your donors a valuable chance to engage with your organisation.

Avaaz had to think about donor engagement this way perhaps because it’s based online. But your organisation can benefit too from their approach. How many opportunities do your members have to give feedback to your organisation? If the opportunities you offer are mostly ‘public’ ones at programs, fundraisers or AGM’s, then you aren’t hearing everything your donors have to say.  A survey takes the public spotlight off of a donor and helps them marshall criticism that is truly constructive for you by breaking down the issues, by limiting some input to picking from a series of options (good old multiple choice), as well as leaving space for members to add comments. A bonus of doing this online is that your donors can make their comments as long as they need to be, and they can send their response with the click of a button.

Which was too bad for me, because I made all sorts of mistakes in my survey before I sent it off with the click of a button – Avaaz, I now know you’re not really based in San Francisco.  This proves another point – the act of listening to your donors (even if they have something critical to say) helps donors re-engage with you – like me, they’ll take the time to find out more about what you’re doing and they may be surprised along the way.

To get started using online survey tools in your next e-newsletter to your donors, here are two we’ve tried:

a) Survey Monkey - this is the one Avaaz used, and there is a free (highly limited) version.

b) If you have a Gmail account, you can try using Google Documents Forms, which is a survey tool. It seems better suited to small groups and of course carries the usual Google ethical issues (see here if you’re nonplussed)

And for an exhaustive list of good non-profit survey tools, try ldealware’s suggestions – they’re the Consumer Reports of the non-profit software world.

Know about a tool we missed? Please post it or email editor@netfornonprofits.org!