A board presentation on online engagement for CT Parent Power

1. From brochureware to actionware:
Creating Change & Raising Money By
Growing Connecticut Parent Power’s
Online Presence

2. 6.14.10
Paul Wessel, Director
CT Parent Power
paul@ctparentpower.org
www.ctparentpower.org
203-654-7958
for
CT Parent Power Steering Committee
Nancy Leonard, Graustein Memorial Fund
memo available for viewing & download at
http://drop.io/meismnb/asset/ctpp-online-engagement
1

3. The next twelve months offer CT Parent Power (“CTPP”) a unique opportunity
to reach out to Connecticut parents about schools, early care & education and
health care. Our web-based activity can be a key tool in taking advantage of
this opportunity.
Through early November, Connecticut will be engaged in a spirited debate over
our state’s leadership as candidates vie for an open Governor’s seat.
Beyond the election and through mid-2011, the Connecticut General Assembly
legislative session will the focus of public policy debate on our core issues.
A strong parent voice on school reform, state-based health care reform and
early care issues over the next year can shape state policy for years to come.
CT Parent Power’s online presence can be a key tool for building and
amplifying Connecticut’s parent voice.
2

4. We are proposing to deepen our online engagement work to strengthen
our existing parent relationships, build new relationships, and begin a
small donor campaign to build our sustainability.
This memo offers an overview of the possibilities for such a project,
proposes a menu of approaches, and, subject to Steering
Committee and funder approval, will be the basis for pursuing
technical assistance from strategic online marketing consultants
with 2009 carryover funds from the Graustein Memorial Fund. It is
drawn from work developed as part of an Online Engagement
course in the spring of 2010 at Milano - The New School for
Management and Urban Policy.
3

5. Rebuilding our website is an opportunity to:
 better define our policy and advocacy role
 sharpen a tool well served for that purpose
 more clearly project our public face or “branding”
 determine how best to put to work grant
resources designated for resource development
4

6. This memo is broken down into six sections covering:
1. Project Goals and the CTPP Strategic Plan
2. Developing our “Parent” personality on the Web
3. Sharpening our online “personality”
4. Building Online relationships = Building Fundraising
xxxcapacity
5. The Importance of Email
6. Email: Growing Our Online Community & Growing
xxxGrassroots Fundraising Measuring Our Performance
7. Next Steps
5

7. 1. Project Goals & the CTPP Strategic Plan
The goal of our online engagement work is to
o Deepen our relationship with our existing members
o Grow our list by building online relationships with new
supporters
o Expand the use of our online program for education and
advocacy work
o Deepen our relationships to include small dollar
contributions and/or dues
6

8. This project’s goals support the 4 strategic goals CTPP established in its
planning process:
1. Strengthen and support member communities and the Delegate
base
2. Influence policy change on children’s issues at state and federal
levels
3. Become Connecticut’s premier parent-led advocacy organization
4. Build & maintain an effective infrastructure to sustain growth and
vitality
In addition, 15 of the 16 strategies adopted by CTPP as necessary for
achieving its strategic planning goals will be supported by our online
work.*
*
The remaining strategy of completing our governance policies will need to be fulfilled offline.
7

9. CONNECTICUT PARENT POWER STRATEGIC PLAN 2009 - 2011
Our vision: All parents will influence public decisions that impact children and families.
Our mission: Educate, engage, empower and mobilize a statewide network of parent advocates to act on children's issues and
participate in solutions.
Strategic Goals: Strategies:
P 1. Build and sustain strategic partnerships at local and state levels to influence public policy solutions.
1. Strengthen and
support member P 2. Support the 16 existing communities in CT Parent Power.
communities and the
Delegate base
P 3. Implement reorganization to support existing communities, and build volunteer capacity for growth.
P 4. Assist each Delegate Community with staff support to sponsor events and action in their community.
P 1. Conduct a campaign to implement universal health care for every child in Connecticut.
2. Influence policy
change on children’s P 2. Promote and protect quality early care and education policies and programs for children.
issues at state and
federal levels
P 3. Advocate for comprehensive education finance, and school reform.
P 4. Select and advocate one new statewide and one federal policy issue for action by CT Parent Power.
P 1. Assure CT Parent Power establishes and maintains presence in all eight Connecticut counties.
3. Become
Connecticut’s premier P 2. Expand and broaden the Delegate Community base of CT Parent Power implementing a system of recruitment and
xxxxxxretention.
parent-led advocacy
organization
P 3. Institute a Leadership Development program to build a cadre of skilled CT Parent Power volunteer leaders.
P 4. Implement a communications campaign to promote CT Parent Power, increasing visibility and recognition among parents
xxxxxxand policy leaders.
P 1. Develop and implement a comprehensive resource development plan to diversify funding and grow CT Parent Power.
4. Build & maintain an
effective infrastructure P 2. Reorganize, strengthen, and expand the Delegate Community and membership structure.
to sustain growth and 3. Refine and complete the governance policies of CT Parent Power.
vitality
P 4. Expand staff capacity to support the organization.
= supported by our online program 8

10. While we face serious challenges in achieving our goals…
 Our resources are limited and our aspirations large: we are seeking to
shape public policy on multiple large issues.
 Being right on the issues is not enough. We have to become effective.
 Parents are, by and large, a disorganized interest group. We are not yet
the AARP for parents.
 The complexity of the issues which we address can be daunting for our
supporters.
 Our supporters – parents – tend to be very busy juggling at least two full
time jobs - working to pay the rent and parenting.
…a robust, online presence can help overcome these challenges
by giving parents an accessible way to learn about and speak up on
their issues.
9

11. 2. Proudly CT Parent Power: Developing Our Personality
On The Web
CTPP fills an important niche in Connecticut’s landscape of groups
fighting on behalf of families and children. Our online presence will
reflect this:
 We are proudly “parent-led.” Our message is that you are us, and
we are you. We’re not about parents; we are parents. We are
authentically “parent.”
 Our voice is not that of experts (though we don’t mind hanging out
with wonks and learning from them) but of parents. Our
messengers are parents and our website will reflect this: our
“About Us” page will have pictures / videos of our parent leaders
talking about why we do what we do.
10

12.  Our number one priority is parents participating in public policy
discussion. We believe that when parents are present, the world is
a better place for our kids, and by extension, our future and
everyone else. We value participation over having “the” right
answer. Experts are about being right; we’re about helping parents
be heard.
 We offer accessible, timely information. We have strong partners in
Graustein Memorial Fund, Universal Health Care Foundation of
Connecticut, Voices for Children, and the Connecticut Early
Childhood Alliance who produce lots of good information. Our job
is to turn that information into parent-friendly bite-sized nuggets,
promote it, and help people act upon that language. Our top-line
take on the issues will be short and tight – and offer opportunities
to act. Behind those opportunities will be more detailed
information or links to that information from our partners.
11

13. In rebuilding our website, we have sought reflect this by creating a
space that is open, friendly, and where it is easy to act on our issues.
 We seek to feature pictures of parents on the home page, and
provide easy access to “social media” tools like Facebook, Flickr, and
YouTube as well.
 We seek to project our participatory, parent-focused nature.
 We strive to be a friendly, front-door to the world of activism and
policy.
 We want to prioritize easy ways to act, and to be a bridge between
our policy-producing partners and parents who just want to know
what to do for their kids.
This plays to our strength – inclusion, participation, parents – and uses
our partners in areas where we don’t have the internal capacity.
12

14. We will feature actions people can take on a revolving slide show on the
homepage. We will be able to easily update the actions and added pages as
our work evolves, so we will always be fresh and current.
13

15. Detailed information about our issues will be available through two clicks of the mouse:
the first click will take you to a page with two or three paragraph description of our take
on school reform, for instance, with another click to get access to background
documentation.
We have the pieces in place
to be where some parents
already are - including
Facebook, Youtube, and
Flickr:
.
14

16. CTPP leader Marilyn Dunkley reports that
she’s using Facebook as one of her
primary means for getting the word out
to people. This is her PLTI Middletown
page.
15

17. CTPP is authentically parents – our
strength is our steering committee and
delegates.
Videos of our steering committee
members will tell who we are and why
we do what we do.
16

18. In the advocacy and policy worlds, we dwell a lot on being right; in our
CTPP work and on the Web, we want to focus on being effective. Other
partners will focus on the details, on being “correct,” and engaging in
the policy debates. Our job as CTPP, and our presence on the web, is
about talking, listening, and giving people an opportunity to act.
That’s the plan for the website. We know what we would like it to do,
and we’re working hard to put it together. We know too that we’ll fall
short, that our reach will exceed our grasp, and that we’ll need to
modify the site over time, and will need the assistance of some
“strategic communications consultants” to help us more strategically
communicate.
17

19. 3. Sharpening Our Online “Parent” Personality
How we use our online presence to achieve both our project and our
strategic goals requires us to think deeply about a seemingly simple
question:
Who are we?
18

20. How we present our self to the world through our online presence – our
branding – can make or break our program. The personality we choose
to project online reflects our sense of who we are.
Yet the answer to the question “Who is CT Parent Power?” is very
different for
o each of the 9 members of our Steering Committee,
o for the Steering Committee as a group,
o for our 106 delegates,
o to the 300 or so members who regularly open their emails, and
o for the 2600 people who signed up for CT Parent Power (“CTPP”)
over the years.
19

21. Our recent – and as yet unresolved – email exchange over updating our tagline
was a good demonstration of how hard this can be. We all seem to know that
“Engaging, educating and mobilizing parents to act on children’s issues” could
be a little tighter and snappier, but getting there can be painstaking.
Similarly, updating our logo under severe time constraints entailed a much-
truncated process of thinking about the image we wanted to present to the
world. Our old logo was developed quickly without much thought. Our new
logo was adopted quickly with some thought.
As we pondered the final few options, we embraced an
idea gleaned from years of person-to-person organizing
and affirmed by the online world of “social networking:”
Let’s let our members decide. We had the technology and
the courage to do it. We sent a message to our members
about who CT Parent Power is in doing it. The result: we
got the highest participation rate of any email offering
we’ve ever sent (more on this later) and picked an
awesome logo.1
20

22. As hard as it is to think about what “we” - the steering committee and
staff – think CT PP is about, it gets even more complicated when we add
our supporters in the mix. But it also gets more productive since,
ultimately, as Todd Whitney, VP for eMarketing at The Leukemia &
Lymphoma Society recently said about their online program:
“It’s not about us – it’s about what our community wants.”
The beauty of the web allows is that it allows us to get real
and regular feedback from our community – and to
strengthen our community in the process.
21

23. In “Integrating Online and Offline Activities to Build Strong
Relationships,”2 a principal at a leading nonprofit direct marketing
agency suggests an experiment to help us become more “donor-
centric” and better understand our supporters and their view of CT
Parent Power.
As we think about our work ahead, and about how we position ourselves
in the online world, it’s an approach that will strengthen us and lead us
in a good direction:
22

24. Becoming “Donor-Centric”: Understanding Your Supporters and Their View of Your Organization (adapted for CT
PP)
Step 1: Select ten to fifteen people involved with CTPP. Be sure to mix it up a bit.
Step 2: Ask each to: “Tell me how you would describe to a friend or family member your reason
for getting involved with CT Parent Power and the top two things that you feel we do or should be
doing.” Write down, or have them write down, their responses.
It is likely that you now have a list of several – and perhaps may – different answers. There is a good
chance some of them do not reflect what your leadership feels is the mission of the organization. Don’t
fret; you are not alone.
Many of the organizations that perform this experiment find that people, both within and outside their
organization, have very different views of the same organization. And while this may concern the folks
who crafted your organization’s very succinct and crystal clear mission statement, it really should be seen
as an opportunity.
If all the answers on your list are similar, take a look at the narrative of what they people are telling their
friends and family. Are there any major differences in the way they are describing your organization?
Again, there may be some more subtle differences in what people think is most important about your
organization, and perhaps there is an opportunity to widen your focus or alter your message to attract
more people to your cause.3
(We may even want to do a modified version of this in our annual parent survey this year.)
23

25. 4. Building Online Advocacy Relationships = Building
Fundraising Capacity
Building online relationships is key to both our advocacy work AND our
future fundraising work. As the author of the piece cited earlier on
“donor-centric” fundraising noted in 2007:
“…advances in online technology are enhancing existing interactions
and creating new opportunities for people to form and build
relationships, both with like-minded people and with the
organizations they support. And the exciting part of this for
nonprofit organizations is that although online giving has increased
dramatically over the last few years, even the most aggressive
estimates for the amount of money being raised online indicate that
it is still only one to three percent of the total amount of money
being given by individuals.”4
24

26. Online community building is central to building future donors. In “The
Changing Nature of Community: Leveraging the Internet to Build
Relationships and Expand the Reach of Your Organization,” a leading
non-profit fundraising software provider explains:
A fundamental reality of fundraising is that people give to people
with causes, not to organizations… People need to feel a personal
connection to the causes and initiatives they choose to donate to.
The power of personal content, communication and collaboration
all combine to create a sense of community…In that sense,
community building is fundraising – you cannot separate the two.5
25

27. Successful fund raising – as well as successful advocacy - will build on the idea that CT
Parent Power offers CT parents something that they can’t get anywhere else:
Fundraising is not about what you need. Really. It is about what the donor –
through you – can achieve. It’s about giving donors the gift of knowing they
changed the world for the better. It’s not about your goals – it’s about your
donors’ aims.
Everyone knows you need money. So do the other 1.8 million nonprofits in the
United States – and the millions more around the world. If that’s all you’ve got to
say, you are just another organization with yet another appeal.
What is special about you? The answer can’t simply be that your programs need
support. It must be that with your donor, together you can achieve a difference
that no one else can.6
What is special about Connecticut Parent Power – our “value proposition” as they say in
the marketing world – is that we offer a parent-centric take on the issues – and a
parent-centric opportunity to act on them. Embracing this quality is key to our growth.
26

28. GROWING OUR ONLINE COMMUNITY
“Communities are not created; they evolve,” explain two online strategists and
entrepreneurs in “Building Successful Online Communities:”
The growth of an online community takes time and effort. Relationships
must be initiated based on trust, and then carefully cultivated. Develop a
plan that articulates specific steps you will take over time to engage your
general audience and convert a significant segment into active supporters.
Organizations must identify a sequence of steps to increase a constituent’s
level of involvement and offer a variety of participation options that work
to engage different components of their audience. To build a vibrant
online community, organizations need more than an individual’s donation
or membership application – they need ongoing interaction opportunities
that will keep a constituent engaged and developing into a lifelong
supporter.7
27

29. Voting on our logo and our annual parent surveys are the kind of opportunities
envisioned here. When authentic, they build CT Parent Power:
Experience demonstrates that it is possible to build a strong sense of
community quickly if audiences are made aware their opinions matters
and that their participation counts. Which specific feedback tools are used
is less important than an organization’s willingness to listen to constituent
feedback.8
Once valued and inspired, our key supporters can become evangelists for CT
Parent Power:
The challenge is to mobilize supporters to use their social networks for the
benefit of your organization…if you provide supporters with an easy way to
help spread the word about your organization’s activities, many will reach
out to their social network and encourage participation.9
28

30. Tools like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Ning allow for online opportunities for
CT Parent Power supporters to become “content creators.”
Just as face-to-face meetings with participatory sections are far more
productive than “talking heads” meetings, the same is true on the web:
The value of user-contributed content is better content. From the
viewpoint of constituent-based organizations, user-contributed content
presents an opportunity to break down the barriers that currently separate
an organization from its Web site visitors and encourage a passive
observer to become an engaged participant…Once users participate in the
content creation process, they have a vested interest in that content and in
the community, and will be more inclined to promote it to friends and
encourage others to comment on their content.10
29

31. As CTPP supporters mature to active CTPP members – in both their
offline as well as their online activity – opportunities for personal online
fundraising emerge.
Where today we might ask someone interested in reforming
their school to buy tickets to the Waterbury Duck Race, next
year they might be part of an online “person- to-person”
fundraising campaign where they tell their friends their own
story about how working with CT Parent Power has helped
improve their child’s life.
These personal stories can become powerful tools for CT Parent Power.
30

32. Personal stories are powerful. They cut through the chatter. The
Obama campaign was built on the power of supporters’ stories as well
as those of Barack Obama himself. We saw this past year how
important Heather and Tawana’s stories were in moving legislators.
Personal stories are central to fundraising as well:
Story is at the heart of personal fundraising and its effectiveness. When people hear a story,
they are transported with the storyteller outside the present moment, to another time and
place, creating a shared experience…
People do not remember how many houses were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. We
remember stories of people stuck in the Superdome, women screaming from their roofs, or
an elderly man leaving his pets behind. Those stories were what made us give, and together,
those stories are the filter through which we experienced and remember the disaster.
And if you have a good story, you have everything. That is why as nonprofits, we should
listen to the stories our supporters tell, and we should give them the freedom and tools to
share those stories broadly. Our work can be broad and complex, and that can make it hard
to communicate compellingly. Donors tend to talk about work through their own stories,
making it specific and simple. That is a great gift to us.11
31

33. When those stories come to us from someone we already know - say
from Marilyn Dunkley in the email’s “from” address rather than Paul
Wessel – they build from an existing connection, more likely get opened
rather than discarded or ignored, and stand a better chance of eliciting
the response we want. As one online marketing expert summed it up:
“People give to people, even online!”12
Personal fundraising pages relying on personal stories -for walkathons,
community campaigns, to help a family member, to celebrate a birthday
and the like - all are effective, participatory ways to raise money. They
decentralize fundraising, provide an easy framework to build from
supporters relationships, increase the number of “asks” (since it’s much
easier to email someone than ask them directly for money), and grow
the list.13
32

34. 5. “Stop waiting for people to discover your web site, and
start discovering their mailboxes.”
The web is seductive – and the ability to update an organization’s presence on
the web – daily, hourly , even minute by minute – can be incredibly seductive.
The explosion of social networking sites – like the ones we showed above we
are already using – can make you feel like a ball slamming around in a pinball
machine, bouncing from this site to that to keep up.
Ultimately, however, with extremely limited resources, it is CT Parent Power’s
use of email that will be the key to the growth of our effectiveness.
The reasons for this are laid out in a classic document of the online advocacy,
the “Gilbert Email Manifesto,”14 which opens with this command:
Repeat after me: "Email is more important than my web site!"
33

35. Gilbert proceeds to lay out three rules for focusing one’s
online work:
1. Resources spent on email strategies are more
valuable than the same resources spent on web
strategies.
2. A web site built around an email strategy is more
valuable than a web site that is built around itself.
3. Email oriented thinking will yield better strategic
thinking overall.
34

36. Gilbert argues that email is “the killer application of the
Internet” because:
o Everybody on the net has email and most of them read
most of their messages.
o People visit far fewer websites than they get email
messages.
o Email messages are treated as To Do items, while
bookmarks are often forgotten. Email is always a call to
action.
o Email is handled within a familiar user interface,
whereas each website has to teach a new interface.
o Email is a very personal medium.
35

37. (Here’s recent proof from our own experience: An email we sent under
CT PP Chairperson George Hensinger’s name urging members to
contact their Senators was forwarded to someone who has worked with
George for years, but wasn’t on our email list. She replied with this:
36

38. Even today, nine years after Gilbert’s articulation and despite the
dramatic explosion of web-based social networking communities,
leading strategic communications consultants15 still argue today for the
centrality of email in an organization’s online presence:
37

39. Just last year, the leading online activism and fundraising benchmark
study harkened back to Gilbert’s original 2001 language while affirming
his message:
Despite the astronomic growth of social media – more than 35
percent of American adults now have a profile on at least one social
networking site – the most efficient way to reach supporters is the
still the same “killer app” nonprofits have relied on for a decade:
email.16
38

40. 6. Email: Growing Our Online Community & Growing
Grassroots Fundraising
Remember those “donor-centric” relationships we talked
about earlier? Email is a great tool to use in creating and
deepening those relationships.
In Raising Thousands (if Not Tens of Thousands) of Dollars
with Email, online fundraising, advocacy and marketing
expert Madeline Stanionis suggests three reasons why we
should use email to fundraise: it’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s
everywhere.17 She then spends about 100 revealing pages
detailing how to do it successfully:
39

41. In stressing that “It’s all about the list,” Stanionis grounds us
with some useful “email fundraiser’s arithmetic:”
To generate 10 donations
at least 1000 people have to receive your message,
at least 250 need to read – that is “open” – your
email, and
at least 50 people need to click on the donation link in
that email18
40

42. CT Parent Power currently has a list of 2700 with 1700 email
addresses.
Given there are 450,000 households in Connecticut with
children under the age of 18, we have barely scratched the
surface.
Growing our list is key.
Stanionis lays out five basic approaches19 to email
fundraising that can help us grow our list.
41

43. Advocacy campaigns – In the course of our ongoing advocacy work, we already
take advantage of this approach by creating opportunities for people to
demonstrate support for our campaigns by signing online
petitions and the like.
We did this earlier in
the year with a petition
to President Obama on
early care issues:
42

44. Fun stuff – Contests, giveaways, ecards, quizzes can excite our supporters and
encourage them to pass on to their friends. Putting a short survey up on our
website about a hot issue – “Is teacher tenure good or bad for education?” -
attracts participation and helps grow the list. We could do a drawing for high-
quality children’s picture books or a (hopefully donated) PSAT prep course. Fun
e-cards or videos that people want to send on to their friends is a great way to
share lists.
A recent technique inserts
the name of the recipient
as a “winner” in a video.
For instance, here Paul
Wessel is celebrated as
Mother of the Year (!!) –
and if I forward it to
friends, their name would
be inserted instead.
43

45. “Chaperone” emails – Here an organization sends an email on behalf of
another organization.
For instance, Elaine Zimmerman could send an email to Parent Leadership
Training Institute alumni encouraging them to take part in our annual parent
survey. Or the Connecticut State Employee Association,
which represents state employees who work
in the Zero to Three Program, could email
its members to join and promote a
campaign we are doing to fight state
budget cuts.
The national organization MomsRising
recently sent out such an email in support
of CT Working Families Paid Sick Days campaign:
44

46. Tell-a-friend - Tell-a-friend campaigns encourage supporters to take action –
and to get the message in front of their friends. For instance, there was a great
video from Ben (of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream) showing with Oreo cookie bar-
graphs how little we spend on children’s health care and the Head Start
compared to Pentagon spending. As well as being enjoyable to watch, the site
featured a hard-to-miss big red “Tell A Friend” button:
45

47. Once our website is fully functional and we have engaging
campaigns underway, one easy Tell-A-Friend approach is to
for members of the CTPP Steering Committee, and some of
our closest allies, to go through our own personal address
books and engage in our own “Friends and Family”
campaign.
Our email provider allows us to track sign-ups from our Tell A
Friend campaigns, providing an added element of friendly
competition for our sign-ups.
46

48. Offer something parents want – and get their email address as part of
the deal – We can offer a free report on, say, ways for parents to raise
kids who are readers, or offer “I Care About Kids – And I Vote!” buttons.
To get the giveaway the person has to provide their name, email and
snail mail address before downloading.
A recent example is a
combined gift offer /
tell a friend email from
MomsRising promoting
a free MOM bumper
sticker and an
opportunity help our
“favorite mom” do the
same:
47

49. In addition to these specific approaches offered by Stanionis,
she also emphasizes the need to see emails as part of an
ongoing program of interactions with our supporters.
Successful email programs often start like first dates
(either through introductions from a friend or a
random encounter) but blossom over time into
relationships.20
And, like other relationships, it deepens over time and
expands into other parts of our life: We start to show
up a meetings, we give of our time, and then dig into
our pockets.
48

50. 7. Measuring our performance
The single most powerful feature of online advocacy is the
ability to track one’s effectiveness. Fund raising, inherently,
is about numbers and performance; long before the web was
born, direct mail marketing firms were tracking lists and
measuring performance.
The growth of email has allowed the melding of these
fundraising practices with previously difficult to track
advocacy campaigns, and online advocacy tools allow for
very detailed data collection and feedback of campaigns.
49

51. Nonprofit industry benchmarks
The annual eNonprofit Benchmarks Study provides an analysis of online messaging, fundraising and
advocacy metrics for nonprofit organizations. This study of 31 US based national non-profit organizations
serves as the industry standard.
The findings for 2009 advocacy emails21 include:
Open rate: 14.26% of advocacy emails get opened. The statistic means, on average, more than
85% of the emails communications professionals unleash on the world go unread.
Click-through rate: 4.65% of the recipients of advocacy emails click on the action link contained in
emails.
Response rate: 4.00 % of email recipients actually sign the petition, email the legislator, or take
the action desired.
Churn rate: On average, 16.83% of email addresses “went bad” in 2009. (Another 2010
benchmark study of 500 nonprofits found that most organizations lack usable email addresses on
44% of their membership file.22)
These statistics remind us that (a) growing our list is vital, and (b) we should be grateful that the cost
difference between sending 1,000 emails and 10,000 emails is zero.
50

52. Comparison of CTPP’s list performance with industry standards
Salsa, our email package, is a very user-friendly, robust tool which
our first organizer, now a part time consultant, handles well, and
which CTPP’s new executive director is coming up to speed on.
51

53. Two groups with very similar missions and communities to ours use Salsa and
have grown their influence through strong online programs.
One is the Connecticut based Working Families:
52

54. The second is a “moms” organizing group:
MomRising, a national organization started by a founder of
MoveOn.org, used petitions and other online tools in Salsa’s online
program to grow to over 140,000 members in 24 months.23
53

55. Salsa boasts a variety of online tools, and just announced a new
series of “apps” produced by marketing partners.
54

56. One of the tools we most regularly use allows us to track the email
performance metrics we spoke of above. See the details below on our
“vote for our new logo” email.
55

57. We can also track performance of specific action campaigns: On our recent
email seeking support for the Children In the Recession bill we saw that 52
emails were sent to Senators, 10 with personalized subject lines or content.
We can alsosee which Senators got how many
emails and from whom:
56

58. We are just starting to scratch the surface of what we can do
with Salsa and look forward to learning the system more and
gaining some technical assistance to help us refine our use of
the system's tools.
The following pages show what we can learn from a
relatively quick look at some of CTPP's 2008 – 2010
email experience
57

59. 12 Da
t
0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
25.00%
30.00%
35.00%
40.00%
45.00%
/1
5/ e
20
1/
24 07
/2
2/ 00
27 8
/2
0
3/ 08
4/
20
3/
25 08
/2
4/ 00
10 8
/2
5/ 00
15 8
/2
7/ 00
31 8
/2
9/ 00
20 8
/2
11 00
/3 8
/2
12 00
/2 8
/2
0
1/ 08
7/
20
1/
17 09
/2
1/ 00
29 9
/2
2/ 00
24 9
/2
3/ 00
19 9
/2
0
4/ 09
8/
Emails sent to more than 1000 recipients
20
5/ 09
4/
20
6/ 09
4/
2
6/ 00
11 9
/2
2008 - 2010
7/ 00
13 9
/2
8/ 00
24 9
diminished since end of the 2009 legislative session.
/2
8/ 00
CT Parent Power Email Open Rates
31 9
/2
9/ 00
14 9
/2
10 00
/7 9
11 /20
/1 09
3
12 /20
/2 09
1/
2
2/ 00
15 9
/2
01
0
On average, our open rates were high – 19.54% - but they have steadily
58

60.  Generally, and not surprisingly, opens rates were higher during the
2008 and 2009 legislative sessions.
 Open rates peaked in early and late 2008 for emails around schools
work, an email titled “Victory,” and a meeting notice.
 Two 2009 emails - “Upcoming Trainings and Events” and “We won!”
- enjoyed open rates exceeding 30%.
 Click-through (taking action) rates have generally been below
industry average, but exceeded those at specific points, most
notably during the 2009 legislative session.
59

61. 0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
25.00%
30.00%
35.00%
40.00%
45.00%
Date
12/12/2007
1/10/2008
2/4/2008
2/27/2008
3/4/2008
Open Rate
3/13/2008
4/8/2008
4/10/2008
5/8/2008
5/27/2008
7/31/2008
9/20/2008
10/24/2008
11/13/2008
12/8/2008
1/7/2009
1/14/2009
1/21/2009
2/4/2009
2/24/2009
3/6/2009
4/4/2009
4/27/2009
5/4/2009
6/3/2009
6/9/2009
6/11/2009
Emails sent to more than 1000 recipients 2008 - 2010
7/13/2009
8/13/2009
8/27/2009
9/1/2009
9/14/2009
9/30/2009
10/16/2009
12/7/2009
12/21/2009
Rate
Click-
Through
2/14/2010
CT Parent Power Email Open and Click-Through Rates
3/11/2010
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
60

62.  At points, our open rates have exceeded 30%, double the
industry average, and our click-through rates exceeded 5%.
 Click through rates exceeding 5% were on emails with subjects
about saving the HUSKY (Medicaid) program, saving parent
leadership training programs, and the “We Won” email.
 Our highest click-through rate was in the recent vote for our logo
and is the peak on the right hand side of the above chart. That
11.7% click through rate affirms the idea that people like being
asked their opinion and will respond when presented with the
opportunity.
61

63. Since the “We Won” email had both high open and click-through rates,
it deserves the right to take a bow:
Not surprisingly, this email is about the culmination of a broad offline
and online campaign and had a clear, timely message.
62

64. This chart shows
all emails
exceeding a 20%
open rate and/or
a 4% click-
through rate,
with red
highlighting for
those emails
exceeding 30%
open rate and/or
5% click-through.
We will continue to
mine this data for its
lessons about the work
that our members value.
63

65. Google Analytics: taking the guesswork out of what works on our website
Once we launch the new site, we can take advantage of Google Analytics, a free
tool which give us information about who is coming to website, what they are
finding useful (and what they are ignoring) and data like:
o new versus return visitors
o “visitor loyalty” - how frequently people
come to our site and how long they stay.
o how someone got to us: Did they google
us? Did they come to us through a link on
someone else's website? Find us through
our Facebook or YouTube page?
o which pages were most popular
o keywords people used to find us24
64

66. 8. Where Do We Go From Here?
Our new website is projected to launch in mid-July. Most of the design
work is completed and the next few weeks is focused on writing. In
addition, we need to finalize the three action components for the
revolving slide show on the homepage, which will feature one action
each for health care, schools, and early care and education. Finally, we
will need to identify documents and links for some resources pages; this
may be a good project to “crowdsource” out to our list, in a similar
fashion to how we voted on the logo.
Beyond this immediate work, we hope to engage the organization in
learning from the experiences of others.
65

67. “Imitation is the highest form of flattery”
We propose looking more closely at the sites of similar groups and seeing what
best practices may be out there. Steering committee members, staff, and
supporters can begin this process. It may helpful to bring in some seasoned
expertise to help dig deeper and see what is relevant to us. Sites worth
considering include:
 Momsrising.org
 CT Parent Advocacy Center
 ConnCAN
 CT Working Families
 CT Commission on Children
 Children’s Alliance (A “local” group surveyed in the 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study,
M+R Strategic Services and Nonprofit Technology Network)
 Children First for Oregon (A “local” group surveyed in the 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks
Study, M+R Strategic Services and Nonprofit Technology Network)
 Voices for America’s Children
 Equal Voice for America’s Working Families
66

68. Old Tricks and New Tools
There are many old tricks and new tools we could consider, and the support of a strategic online
marketing consultant may well help us figure out which may be useful and when to deploy.
Specific approaches to consider include:
1. Site “Check-up” - Once we’re up and running, it might be helpful to have someone with more
technical competence than us to take a look and make recommendations about what we’ve done
well and what we could improve. Consultants with expertise in Salsa or PicNET, our new web
provider, would likely be of value.
2. Mining our lists - In most organizations, 7% of members account for almost one-third of all the
online advocacy.25 In addition, different types of user seek different online experiences. A study of
“the Wired Wealthy” found three main user types – “All Business,” “Casual Connectors,” and
“Relationship Seekers” – each of whom could be appealed to in different ways.26 As our list grows,
there may be more strategic ways to segment our supporters.
3. Dues and memberships – The idea of more defined membership and dues paying has been
kicked around for a while. We built out the website anticipating some sort of formal membership
status. This is an area calling for some deeper thinking.
4. IfIwasCTgovernor.org is a domain we purchased with the possibility of kicking off a campaign to
get grass-roots Connecticut residents to proclaim what they would do if they were governor. Such
67

69. a direct, participatory way of the electorate educating the candidates has intriguing possibilities.
There are online approaches to do this which would allow others in the community to vote for their
favorite ideas, or, in Facebook lexicon “like” specific proposals. Done well, this has the potential to
generate a lot of interest and harvest a lot of email addresses.
5. Web Meetings – We know that good “face to face” meetings provide both for “one to many”
communication - a parent leader telling their story about why school reform is so important or an
health care wonk explaining what’s in the federal health care reform – and for “many to many”
participatory discussion. In the past, CTPP used conference calls with our members for “many to
many” discussions.
We can now do the same with online web meetings. Services from our current provider,
ReadyTalk, allow for calls in presenter only mode as well as in discussion mode with web
presentations with real time polling and reporting, recording capability, and tools for connecting
with Facebook and Twitter both before and after the meeting.
68

70. Consider the potential for a doing a series of online, interactive half hour sessions on the issues at
stake in school reform and health care reform and the importance of the 2010 gubernatorial
election. We could have a PowerPoint presentation with commentary, questions and answers,
online polling and the like all scheduled conveniently for parents – we could even poll our members
for the best times - and then record the meeting and post for others to view. CAHS has been
successfully holding webinars already so this may be a good collaborative project with one of our
partners.
6. Going to where our potential supporters already are: We can purchase banner ads, get a
nonprofit grant for Google ads, post information on parent websites, ask supportive organizations
to post links to our site and engage in other forays out into the online world.
We’ve just scratched the surface with Facebook.
The site keeps encouraging us to take advantage
of their ads:
69

71. Additionally, Google provides grants to non-profits for its ad program:
Exploring how might use these opportunities – and how we would track their value – are clearly
worth considering. The best wisdom about social networking is that organizations should develop
a coherent strategy that is sustainable for the organization rather than engage in a scattershot
approach.
70

72. 7. “Paid acquisition:” Care2, Network for Good, FirstGiving, Greater Good Network and other
online services create communities around participation in progressive causes, host petition
campaigns, and drive traffic towards partner non-profit sites.
These services will recruit a set number of new e-mail addresses for you on a cost-per-name
basis. To do this, they set up online actions related to your mission, promote the actions to
their own members and then enable those who take the actions to check a box to opt in to
your nonprofit’s e-mail list. You then pay a set cost for each name. You might be able to
entice third-party Web sites to recruit donors on your behalf, too, by offering to pay them a
set amount for every donor they send your way. The cost per donor typically will be much
higher than the cost of the e-mail address of someone you later try to convert into a donor. 27
While generally these services have a nationwide focus, in discussion they have indicated that they
are able to do state-specific“geotargetting” and their pricing typically includes charging only for
delivering what their end user non-profit is looking for.
8. “Catalist:” Catalist is a list provider that specializes in meshing voting lists with commercially
available consumer data. Catalist reports it could provide a list of 998,172 registered voters (in
690,151 households) in CT in households with children under the ages of 5, 11 or 17 and coded as
either likely or possible to vote in 2010. The data fields they supply would include all of the voter
data, phone numbers and some census data, and could be matched for email addresses.
71

73. A list of registered voters in Connecticut with children under the age of 5 and likely to vote in the
2010 gubernatorial election could be a very useful list to work via direct mail, phone banking, or
email for our early care and education work.
MomsRising found Catalist data helpful in their work:
MomsRising’s use of the Catalist-Salsa integration was two-tiered. First, they matched their
Milwaukee voter-file list from Salsa and called unregistered members to ask them to register
to vote. This proved especially powerful for the members who had been dropped from the
voting rolls, many of whom had no idea that they weren't registered.
Second, MomsRising ran a "Sick or Treat" campaign on-the-ground in Milwaukee. They
distributed 15,000 pieces of "Sick or Treat" candy with "Vote YES on paid sick days" on the
wrapper to families to hand out on Halloween. To boost this effort, MomsRising pulled
Catalist's phone data on Milwaukee members, and called them to ask them to vote YES on
paid sick days, and to ask if they would like to distribute the candy. The phone calls made
using the Catalist data increased member participation in the Sick or Treat campaign by
50%.28
Catalist’s data is typically expensive, running more $10,000 for a one-shot deal, and $35,000 for a
subscription. The good news from Salsa, which arrived shortly before this writing, is that they
renegotiated a partnership with Catalist that will make this data available at a nominal rate (in the
hundreds of dollars.) We are pursuing more information on this.
72

74. 9. Cultivation plans for our donors – as we develop a donor base, we need to make sure to
nurture those relationships. The two way communications of Web 2.0 allow us to do that more
systematically, allow us to listen, engage and deepen the relationship.29 There are some very
developed strategies about how we could do this, and we can learn usefully from the experience of
others.
10. Supporting the Interaction Institute for Social Change Process - Graustein Memorial Fund has
contracted with the Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC) to help create an inclusive,
transparent 18 - 24 month process for the building of a statewide early care and education system.
GMF states, “Connecticut will need broad based public awareness and will to make the decisions
required to remake the early childhood system.” CTPP’s online program may well be a useful tool
in the dissemination of information and interactive discussions of issues as the process proceeds.
11. Mobile - Mobile computing - using one’s phone to access the web - is becoming increasingly
important. As web access by phone expands, it becomes a relatively inexpensive and convenient
way to go online. At least 2 of our 9 member steering committee get their email almost exclusively
on their phones. African-Americans are among the most active users of phones for internet access
and are the fastest growing segment of the market; this growing use is narrowing the digital divide.
Texting, text-based fundraising, and “call now” alerts are all growing tools for online engagement,
particularly among low-income communities.30 It may be an opportunity for us.
73

75. CONCLUSION
As the length and breadth of this memo indicate, not only are the
possibilities of online advocacy endless, but they evolve daily. It’s a
dynamic and confusing landscape, ripe with possibility and, as you see
here, quite overwhelming.
Clearly, both continuing to use our tools and learning from our
community will be one way to grow our capacity. It is equally clear, that
we could use the benefit of a strategic online marketing “Sherpa” to
help us figure out the best ways up the Connecticut parent online
organizing mountain. This would be someone(s) to help us figure out
which paths to take, which to avoid, when to stop for provisions, and
where to seek shelter when the avalanches occur.
74

76. This memo offers an overview of where CT Parent Power might go with
its online program. As a next step, we propose to seek advice on
strategic online marketing consultants who colleagues think might be a
good match for us, share this memo with them, and solicit some
proposals from them about assistance they might offer.
Following receipt of these proposals, we suggest establishing a working
group of Steering Committee members and supportive colleagues to
consider next steps.
Thank you for the time you've taken to plow through this memo. We
look forward to hearing your thoughts about how we might continue to
expand CT Parent Power’s work in the online world.
75

77. 1
With our online program in the middle of a transition, an extremely part-time eAdvocacy staffer, and the hectic
activity of the legislative session, we did something really stupid: I don’t think we thanked people or told them what
they’re choice even was! Maybe we’ll announce their good work with the launch of the new website.
2
Mark Connors, “Integrating Online and Offline Activities to Build Stronger Relationships,” People to People
Fundraising, ed. Ted Hart, et al., (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2007) 187.
3
Connors 188
4
Connors 187
5
Steven R. MacLaughlin, “The Changing Nature of Community: Leveraging the Internet to Build Relationships and
Expand the Reach of Your Organization,” People to People Fundraising, ed. Ted Hart, et al., (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley,
2007) 4.
6
Katya Andreson, The 8 Online Fundraising Changes You Must Make in 2010 (Network for Good,
http://www.fundraising123.org/article/8-online-fundraising-changes-you-must-make-2010 ) 9.
7
Sheeraz Haji and Greg Neichin,“Building Successful Online Communities,” Nonprofit Internet Strategies, ed. Ted
Hart, et al., (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2005) 89.
8
Sheeraz Haji and Greg Neichin 93.
9
Sheeraz Haji and Greg Neichin 96.
10
Sheerz Haji and Emma Zolbrod, “Advocacy 2.0: Leveraging Social Networking to Further Your Organization’s
Mission,” People to People Fundraising, ed. Ted Hart, et al., (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2007) 40.
11
Katya Andreson and Bill Strathmann, “Crafting the Marketing Strategy to Make it Happen,”, People to People
Fundraising, ed. Ted Hart, et al., (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2007) 80 -81.
12
Phil King and Nicci Noble, “Peer to Peer Fundraising and Community Building,” People to People Fundraising, ed.
Ted Hart, et al., (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2007) 62.
13
For more, see Mark Sutton, “How Individual Supporters Use Online Fundraising Pages to Make a Difference,”
People to People Fundraising, ed. Ted Hart, et al., (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2007) 117 ff.
14
Michael Gilbert, “The Gilber E-Mail Manifesto for Nonprofits,” Nonprofit Internet Strategies, ed. Ted Hart, et al.,
(Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2005) 329.
15
Farra Trompeter, “Online Communications Opportunities” presentation slide 2.25.10.
76

78. 16
M+R Strategic Services and Nonprofit Technology Network, 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, 9 May 2010,
www.e-benchmarksstudy.com, 2.
17
Madeline Stanionis, Raising Thousands (if Not Tens of Thousands) of Dollars with Email, (Medfield, MA, Emerson &
Church, 2006) 10.
18
Stanionis 15
19
Stanionis 16 ff
20
Stanionis 39 ff
21
M+R Strategic Services and Nonprofit Technology Network, 2010 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, 9 May 2010,
www.e-benchmarksstudy.com, 2.
22
Vinay Bhagat et al, The Convio Online Nonprofit Benchmark Study, March 2010, 5 May 2010,
http://my.convio.com/forms/2010ConvioOnlineNonprofitBenchmarkStudyGuide 14.
23
“Salsa Helps MomsRising.org Grow to 140,000 Members in 24 Months,” 11 May 2009,
http://www.salsacommons.org/o/8001/p/salsa/commons/content?content_item_KEY=1001
24
Ten Best Features of Google Analytics, 9 May 2010, http://notesfornonprofits.blogspot.com/2009/03/ten-best-
features-of-google-analytics.html
25
M+R Strategic Services and Nonprofit Technology Network, 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study.
26
Convio et al, The Wired Wealthy, 5 May 2010, http://my.convio.com/?elqPURLPage=104, 33.
27
Geoff Handy, The Five Basic Steps to Acquiring Donors Online, May 2009, 5 May 2010,
http://www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com/article/the-five-basic-steps-acquiring-donors-online-406763
28
“Salsa » Case Studies » MomsRising ,” 9 May 2010,
http://www.salsacommons.org/o/8001/p/salsa/website/public2/?reference=MomsRising
29
For more on this, see Jon Thorsen and David Lawson, “Relationships Take Two: Donor-Centered Stewardship,”
People to People Fundraising, ed. Ted Hart, et al., (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2007) 107 ff.
30
See Mobile Commons - Connect / Engage / Measure, http://www.slideshare.net/501technyc/mobile-commons
and Chrisse Brodigan, Texting for Change, Immigration Reform’s Stealth Strategy, 29 January 2010, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chrissie-brodigan/texting-for-change-immigr_b_442128.html
thanks Farra and Leah
77