Aimy Wiley, Capital Area Food Bank of Texas

[Ed. note: This article is part of NTEN's Member Appreciation Month spectacular. The most popular pieces will be featured in our newsletter. You can read all the details here.]

I recently started coordinating the online development for the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, a mid-sized food bank serving 21 counties in Central Texas. We have a small communications department and data about our constituents that we want to use! We use Convio, Raiser’s Edge and Excel to manage our data and make it useful.

There are also a variety of content management systems (some that are free) that can help you vary your online copy and emails depending on segmentation and conditionals. If you don’t have a system that does this yet, get help and find one - it’s the now. It's fun to play with, engaging for constituents and has helped us raise 28% more funds online since this time last year.

Geographic location

We started collecting ZIP codes with email addresses sign-ups about a year ago. Even regional nonprofits can use location to change messaging to speak to different audiences. For example, if we are telling a story about a client who lives in a certain area, we make sure the constituents that live in that part of the city know our clients are their neighbors. You can also use ZIP code to restrict or show events near a constituent’s area and show nearby volunteering opportunities.

Offline activities

If your offline database tracking activities can communicate with your online system (whether through data syncing or old-school spreadsheet downloading and uploading) you have a great wealth of information at your fingertips. You can create groups based on first donation dates and thank constituents for donating to you over that time even if they only signed up to receive your e-Newsletter this month. If you track event attendees or volunteers, follow up online by sending a thank you email with pictures of the event. As another touch, you can mention the event again when you communicate with them next.

Interests

Ask folks what they are interested in and use that information to change what you report about. We recently sent out a thank-you email to thank our community for successes during Hunger Action Month in September. We changed which programs we reported successes about depending on a constituent’s interests. How do you know what your constituents are interested in? Check out what events they've attended, where they volunteer, which appeals they donated to, and what petitions they signed up for. We also use surveys in e-Newsletters, on our website and annual reports to ask individuals what they are interested in. An example of this: After a recent survey, we learned that many of our constituents were interested in gardening. We used a "pledge to donate garden produce" to invite those folks interested in our Teaching Garden to a special open house event at the Food Bank. Again, we invited them to the garden party because they showed interest in gardening.

Origins

Systems will sometimes help you track constituent origins and let you know whether they signed up with you because of a forwarded email, a link to your homepage, a petition, or otherwise. However, when you are launching social media campaigns on Twitter, Facebook, etc. make sure you tag your links in a way that your database can read and track.

We recently had a competition for community members to watch a preview of a new movie along with our Kids Cafe children. We publicized both the submission of entries and the voting on entries through social media. Now, we can see if these new constituents came to us through Twitter or Facebook and we can include a tidbit at the top of our next email asking them to follow or become our fan. If we know they are social media users, we also added them to a general “Webby” group that we can update our interactive efforts with.

Special constituents

If a constituent has a specific staff contact at your nonprofit, make sure that staff person has an active role in their online communications, as well. For example, you can include a note from them at the top of an e-Newsletter or email announcement and let the replies to any of those emails reach this contact so they can get a personal response from them.

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Capital Area Food Bank of Texas: The mission of the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas is to nourish hungry people and lead the community in ending hunger. In its 28th year of service, the Food Bank currently provides food and grocery products to 355 Partner Agencies in 21 Central Texas counties. In 2008, CAFB distributed more than 17 million pounds of food. For more information on the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas and its programs, visit www.austinfoodbank.org or call 512/282-2111.

Aimy Wiley serves as Online Development Coordinator for the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Since 2005, Aimy has been helping nonprofits and small businesses develop and implement online marketing strategies. She has recently been exploring conditional content and communicating to donors on multiple channels.