Arm your tribes with a digital tool that allows them to share their passions for your cause and your organization.

Johnson & Johnson is offering a free widget for individuals and non-profits. The customizable &you widget offers one central location for information on volunteer and job opportunities, events, news, and donation capabilities. Place the widget on a website, blog, or Facebook and other social media to keep friends and followers updated. We like that it makes volunteer opportunities so easy to find.

It’s summer. Take a vacation. You deserve it. And while you’re enjoying some R&R by the pool, why not help a deserving charity at the same time. You can.

Geronimo is a website that brings together owners of holiday homes, vacationers, and non-profit organizations.

If you own a vacation property, list it on Geronimo, maybe during off-season weeks or for last-minute cancellations. Homes booked through the website allow the owners to keep half the rent and the other half goes to a charity of choice. Simply place a listing on the website for free and Geronimo takes care of promotions, payments and donations.

Is travel a passion for one or more of your fundraising tribes? This would be a neat way to support those passions of your tribe.

Google is collaborating with acclaimed art museums across the globe to display artwork online. Each museum was able to choose the number of pieces and information to include in The Google Art Project. The high-resolution images are copyright protected, and thus far, 17 museums are participating including MoMA (New York), Tate Britain (London), Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam) and The State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow). In its first month, the project recorded 10 million visitors and 90,000 people registered.

The museums are benefitting considerably from displaying their exhibits for free online. Christian Ghiron at Italy’s Ministry of Culture told the New York Times that the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence, has seen its web traffic rise from an average of 5000 visitors a day to  between 30,000 and 40,000 since the project. The more they digitize, the more people want to see it live, he says.

These art galleries are reaching wider to nurture the passions of their Tribe. The Tribe responds.

Think about your organization. How are you supporting, developing and cultivating your Tribes?

Organizations often recognize their donors by putting their name on something: a wing of the hospital, the university library, bricks of the church, or plaques on an honour wall.  Are you effectively using naming to motivate giving? Are you making it exciting?

These two organizations are divvying it up and raising funds from smaller parts. But they’ve added a heaping dose of creativity and injected some digital vitality to broaden their fundraising efforts.

Greenpeace is retiring their aging ship, the Rainbow Warrior, and replacing it with a $32 million wind-powered vessel fully equipped with a biological sewage treatment plant and satellite communications system onboard. They’ve put every part of their ship up for sponsorship. The amazing digital campaign for A New Warrior highlights every piece of the vessel for donors to pinpoint an exact part of the boat to sponsor.

Ave Maria University in Florida has taken their memorial fundraising campaign online, allowing visitors to pinpoint the exact location of sponsored bricks, flooring, statues and other items in the Ave Maria Oratory. Their Memorial Locator is a simple design that adds a level of visual excitement.

Thinking outside the box is great. But sometimes you can’t execute your outside-the-box idea because of budgets constraints, lack of resources, or limited manpower.

Here’s a different approach. Rename the box!

The small town of Speed, Australia, raised funds for its Lions Club by teaming up with the state’s Transport Accident Commission (TAC) on an awareness campaign to highlight the dangers associated with speeding. They jointly created a Facebook page, ‘Rename Speed’, promising to change the town’s name to SpeedKills if they received 10,000 ‘likes’. Speed would be renamed for a month and the TAC would donate $10,000 to the local Lions Club.

The Facebook campaign has collected 31,000 ‘likes’ so far. After getting their 20,000^th ‘like’ the TAC doubled their donation. And local farmer, Phil Down, has promised to change his name to Phil ‘Slow’ Down for a month. The official renaming ceremonies take place on February 18.

How do you see your box?

Talk to your donors about new ideas
Test if a topic or campaign has potential by asking your donors about it. Ask for feedback. People who support your organization will be the most honest (sometimes brutally). But your donor’s perspective will give you a good feel about the acceptance of an idea. And you may receive better ideas or ways to tweak your own. More importantly, the donor will appreciate your willingness to include them in the idea process and letting them feel more involved with the organization. And involving donors at the early stages of planning builds excitement around the project. Which leads to the next point…

Encourage conversation through special access
When you give someone a sneak peek, they are often eager to tell their friends. After all, they knew it first. Make your donors feel special and let them be the first to know about news and special events. They will be inspired to talk when they feel they’ve got something exclusive or rare to share. Treat them like ambassadors and look for opportunities to connect them with new potential donors.

Don’t make it all about you
Hogging a conversation and making it all about you is rude! Instead, listen and talk about your donors, too. Understand and appreciate the emotions of your donor and introduce them to others with similar passions within the tribe. It’s a simple way to get your donors talking: help them to talk about themselves.

Get your own talkers
Do you have someone in your organization to chat with your donors, especially in the social media sphere? Dell has made listening to their customers a priority. They have launched the Social Media Listening Command Center to manage real-time conversations about Dell. Your organization may not need a team. But why not put one person in charge of listening?

This year, the Legion took the traditional Poppy Appeal mobile and created a mobile application for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. For 59p (Gold) or £2.99 (Platinum), users could download a poppy seed, water it, see custom animations and watch it grow to full height leading up to Veteran’s Day. The application allowed users to donate directly to the Legion. It also gave users the ability to share via social media and invite others to download.

The mobile sphere is growing and your organization should leverage mobile to increase your revenue. We’ve blogged about ways you can start.

Talk to us about how your organization can fully embrace mobile innovation.

This summer, the Pew Research Centre released a study called Mobile Access 2010, highlighting the rapid growth in mobile usage. Here are some numbers that caught our eye:

• Eight in ten American adults (82%) currently own a cell phone.
• Young adults are heavily invested in the mobile web, although 30-49 year olds are gaining ground.
• 18-29 year old cell phone owners are significantly more likely than those in other age groups to engage in all of the mobile data applications asked about in the survey; 95% send or receive text messages; 81% send photos or videos to others; 65% access the internet on their mobile device.

What’s very clear is that more people are sharing a lot of information across cell phones, and the number is growing. Are you incorporating mobile in your fundraising strategies. Make it easier for someone to support your organization and give via cell phone. Here are some tips:

Mobile Text campaigns

• Keep your text messages to fewer than 140 characters.
• Ensure proper timing of SMS delivery. Don’t wake anyone up in the middle of the night.
• Don’t overdo it. Don’t text too often.

Mobile Website

• Create a mobile website. Simplicity is key here.
• Highlight the subscribe functions on your mobile website (text alerts, email correspondence, newsletters). Make it easy for people to keep connected with your organization.
• Ensure your DONATE function works on your mobile website.

Mobile Apps

• Cater to various age groups/donors and create a cool app. What about an information app or a related game? (see our write-up on social gaming)
• Promote your app in app stores and via online and direct mail.

Thus far, there’s one charity featured on the network: DonorsChoose.org allows customers to choose a local school project they wish to donate to.

Can you get your organization on the Starbucks network? There are over 11,000 stores in the US. That’s a lot of customers and a huge potential donor base.

And a partnership like this can percolate through to specific online sectors. If your organization provides shoes or clothing to those in need, why not approach popular online retailer Zappos.com for a collaboration. If you donate books to schools, what about getting on Amazon.com.

Drop us an email. We’d be glad to discuss (over coffee, if you’d like) opportunities for your organization.

“The more you download, the more we donate” –fairsharemusic.com

Across the pond, UK music website fairsharemusic donates 50% of profits from downloaded tracks to a charity of your choice. Songs are priced at rates similar to other downloading sites like iTunes and Amazon MP3. All you do is create an account, choose a charity, and download. We like the sound of that!

Can this idea be incorporated to benefit your organization? Could you run a campaign (short or long-term) with a music label to donate part earnings to your cause? What about partnering with a musician beyond the level of spokesperson and have proceeds, from an album or song, donated to your foundation?

And go beyond the music realm to collaborate with industries looking to differentiate themselves from their competitors.  Offering consumers ‘feel-good’ purchases is a formula where everyone wins.