Grants Alumni Call
Topic: Getting your Organization on the Web
Guest Speaker: Harish Rao, CEO of EcoDitto
Date: November 2007

1. HARISH RAO'S BIO

Harish Rao is the CEO of a company called EcoDitto, on the web at ecoditto.com; EcoDitto is a relatively new company that started about 4 years ago. Their focus is building communities online for their clients for online fundraising, and for organizing individuals for action or communication in general. They have a wide variety of clients, spanning into both the non-profit and for-profit worlds. About half of their clients are progressive, non-profit type groups. Some examples include the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, the United Nations Foundation, and Do Something, along with many others. On the for-profit side, EcoDitto does internet work for Rosie O’Donnell.
Four years ago, Harish worked as the director of technology for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign.

2. QUESTION & ANSWER

Q: The first question, the one that we get a lot is, how do you create a website or some kind of website presence without any money?

A: That’s a great one. I think the first that you need to start out with is to make sure that you have really compelling content. I’d love to hear toward the end of the call what you all are doing or what you want to be doing, whether for a personal thing or for the organization that you are working at or trying to do. But, the content is really key, and making it as cause-oriented as possible but also being very authentic and personal and relevant, which is something that I think our generation really knows how to do well.

In terms of the actual practical detail, if you try to get a website without any money or close to as a little money as possible, I encourage everyone to look at blogging tools, the free blogging tools out there like Blogger.com, blogspot.com or even a MySpace page or Facebook page, just as a start. Those tools are of course free, and they also have the benefit of making it very simple to publish online. And you can often times make it not look like a blog if that’s not your thing.

If you have any money at all, the one thing that I will recommend that you do is building a list of supporters and constituents, or people who are involved in the community. If you have any money at all, I would encourage you to spend it on what we call a CRM package, which is basically a tool that allows you to collect the constituent’s email address or contact information so you can reach back out to them. And try to develop a conversation with them.

Q: What are some of the most important elements that should be included in one’s website?

A: Really start with very compelling content. Be as authentic and personal, or personalized I should say, to your audience; be as relevant as possible. Pictures really tell a thousand words, they should be cause-related. Try to convey some of the emotional appeal of what you’re trying to accomplish online, and that’s why I’m recommending pictures. And then the other big element is trying to get the contact information. I think one way to envision this is, to think of a website as a process by which you get people interested in what you’re trying to accomplish, and building their commitment to your own project. But it’s kind of a hierarchy, if you imagine an inverted pyramid, and at the top of the pyramid, where most people are, those are the people who you are exposing to what you are trying to do, and you’re trying to step them to different levels of the pyramid, trying to get them to take a particular action: whether it be at the end of the pyramid, at the tip of the pyramid, or on the bottom, which might be fundraising, or it might be like, volunteering for something or so forth.

And, the way to build people through that inverted pyramid, that sort of engagement hierarchy, is by getting them to give you their email address so you can continue the conversation with them, perhaps getting their cell phone number so you can text message them, perhaps getting them their IM address, but making the content on the site very simple and straightforward, so they can get it, so they can understand it. Some of the most effective websites I have seen out there make it very easy for you to get the contact information of people who come to the site, but make it very simple to understand your organization, a very simple site. You don’t have to be complicated; you don’t have to spend a lot of money. I think there is a lot of potential for making it simple and straightforward and accessible.

The last thing that I would really urge all of you to do beyond the compelling content, beyond making it an emotional appeal, and providing easy ways to keep in touch with these folks, is just being honest and being transparent about what you are trying to accomplish and trying to show, depending on where you at, trying to show what you have been able to accomplish, given the limited resources. There is sort of a big thing that people are wanting to see in the return on investments of sorts, like, what is their money going towards or what is their volunteer time really trying to, what kind of change are you trying to affect. And providing whatever data you can, the impact that you have had on your environment or your community, through your website is important.

Q: How can the web and social networks be used to market one’s non-profit?

A: I think, the way that I look at it is, it can be so effective and so straightforward and so inexpensive that it would be kind of crazy not to have a website, but I think that plenty of organizations exist that really spend no time and no money. This is a way for you to really get out there cost-effectively. It doesn’t have to be a community blog where people are logging into social profiles or so forth. At a minimum, if you can have a website up, sort of like a brochure, that at least explains to people what you are doing, and put that into your business cards, so that people actually see that you are sort of professional about your approach. I think that’s really invaluable.

What can you do to market it? It really depends on the audience you are trying to reach. And this is actually a conversation that we’re going through with Do Something, with sort of a younger crowd, like teenagers, 13-19. Ultimately I think you really have to be focused on list-building, building a list of your supporters or constituents. And with the younger crowd, the 13-19 year old crowd, and there are some laws and so forth that you have to worry about here but, as much as you can, try and get their cell phone numbers so you can text message with them. As much as you can get their IM screen name so you can IM with them. I mean, that’s really where it’s at. With the older audiences, the traditional marketplace like, let’s say, 23 years old and up, from there, to the 40s and the 50s, what you should really be focused on in terms of your marketing outreach efforts are trying to collect email address and home phone numbers and zip codes as secondary, because that group communicates more via email than text messaging or IM. I think that there are some other things that you should consider other than collecting email addresses.

I should come out and say that Facebook does quite a bit of advertising now, I’m sure you’ve seen it. What we’ve been finding at EcoDitto, is that its not very effective to buy ads on Facebook, I don’t really recommend it. If you have any money to spend marketing online, web and social networks-wise, I would probably put it towards something like a Google adwork campaign, buying a little text ad on the side of Google when you type in search words. Those can be very effective and cost effective since you’re only actually paying them when someone actually clicks on it. If you want to spend no money whatsoever, I think a simple way may be to set up a Facebook page and to try to friend people who you think might be interested in what you are trying to do online.

Q: If you do have money to spend, what would be the most effective ways to spend it? I think adwords and banners were a couple of possibilities.

A: Unlike marketing, I don’t want you all to equate necessary online marketing to online advertising, and I’ll explain what that means. There’s a lot that you can do, marketing online, that doesn’t cost money. One thing you should definitely consider other than maybe creating a free Facebook page and friending people is reaching out to private organizations and seeing if they can help you in some way, whether it be very simple like sending out an email, sponsoring some kind of phone call like this one, getting people engage. Try to cultivate as many partnerships as you can, is what I’m really trying to get at, if you don’t have a lot of money.

If you do have a little bit of money, I think adwords are a great place to start, both on Google and on Yahoo, because again, you only pay for performance there.
Blog ads would come up next on the list. I think those can be very effective as well. Depending on your budget, I would really stay away from banner advertising, especially at the less than five- to ten-thousand dollar level. There are a few exceptions that I don’t want to get into right now but in general, for less than five-to ten thousand dollars, your total money, banner ads are really not very effective, and generally at that level you also spending just to put them out there, not towards the actual performance of them. So, I would keep away from that.

Q: How do make your page stand out amidst all these different groups and presences in the social networks?

A: Well it goes back to the fundamentals that I talked about a little earlier in the call, focusing on the really compelling, authentic, personalized, relevant content. Making it as unique and compelling a story as possible. I think a lot of organizations and a lot of people immediately go into the higher level stuff, like the social injustice theory or something like that, and I think that’s really important and very powerful, but when you start, I think what is really relevant is the story of the person whose life you have changed, because that’s sort of what your goal is. Really explicating and expanding on the cause in very personalized terms, personal terms.

Q: I feel that running a whole bunch of different fan sites and groups, like on Facebook, there are just so many now, since the addition of application and so forth, that frequently people just get bombarded with just so much that I’m seeing that it’s becoming less and less useful to recruit and sort of maintain a core membership exclusively through Facebook.

A: Yeah I mean I think that’s fair. I think that’s very true. I think the key piece is one of the words we use, and it’s a buzzword, is really segmenting your audience, and that’s getting really specific as to who is really going to be affected by what you are trying to do in the real world. I think Facebook fatigue is a real thing, so maybe you should consider not doing a Facebook page and just making a very simple brochure-type website on blogger or something like that. Try collecting supporter’s information, going to events, networking in real life, getting people’s business cards and email addresses and then using the website as a tool to keep everybody connected. The biggest point is to focus on your audience and the best way to reach that specific group.

Remember that the web may not be the best strategy for you depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. Maybe you don’t even really need a website beyond a placeholder site that just talks about your organization because it’s not very effective given what you’re trying to do. Again, it just depends on your audience and your project specifically.

Q: So you were suggesting that instead of Facebook to have connections and the ability to converse through your site. How would you do that through your own site?

A: People come to the site, they look at it, they like it. I don’t know if you have a PayPal thing or something like that, but they may be moved to make a one-time donation, but then how do you keep in touch with them? And early in the call I mentioned if you have any money, even a little bit of money, I recommend that you purchase a tool, it’s called a CRM tool, its stands for “constituent relationship management.” It’s essentially a big database or could be a big database of all the people who come to your site and give you their contact information and allows you to email them very effectively, very easily. It manages that list for you. Also allows you to have fundraising asks and so forth. A very simple CRM tool that is not very expensive is constantcontact.com. That’s an email list management tool that’s a lot better than just using Outlook or Apple mail to email people in your contact list. It track things like how many people are opening the email, how many people are looking at it, and clicking through on it, and this is very useful and not for a lot of money. And it allows you to do nicer things with your emails.

Now that’s for if your audience is older, 23 and up, because depending on what you’re doing the younger audiences, don’t really use emails, you probably know, they use IM and text messaging and there are other tools to focus on instead. But I think that’s really it, trying to build a list and trying to communicate with that list continuously.

Q: One of the other things that we would like you to go into more is using the web or your site to fundraise.

A: The fundamental there is your list, whatever that list looks like, IM or email and so forth, and frankly, that is getting in touch with relevant contacts to that list on a regular basis like once a month. I think people get bored very quickly, so you have to be judicious in how many times you send out contacts. A couple of tips on that: its important to make them from a human being and not from just the organization. The second, is to make your subject line, very relevant, very useful, and then the content itself in the email personal.

How do you take money online? Definitely Paypal, that doesn’t charge a lot of money. But I don’t know if you’ve seen this tool though, it’s called Chip In (chipin.com). You can sign up for a little widget that you can embed in your website or whatever, on your social networking page. It shows how much money you have raised for your project or organization. People can click on a button to “chip in” and send you money through their Paypal account. And it shows your progress towards your goal. It’s free and it’s a great way to visualize where you’re at online.