Flickr Photo: Mez LoveYou may have heard by now that we're raising money for scholarships to the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference. Last year was the first time we ran the campaign, and while we met our goal, it was a stretch, and we almost burnt ourselves out.

The challenge in online fundraising today is that it's more than just email: it's Facebook, and Twitter, and e-mail, and widgets, and your website, and your blog, and your supporters blogs, and... well, you get the idea. 

During the course of the 2009 fundraising campaign, the task ahead of me often felt like Medusa: if I stared directly into any of those serpentine eyes, I was frozen. Thinking too hard about any one tactic meant I was lost for hours. But we managed to meet the challenge (by the skin of our teeth).

I meant to write this blog post last summer to share our lessons learned, but I wasn't sure if they were actually applicable. Now that we're halfway through our second campaign, it seems like those lessons are panning out. And, it seems like they're all advice I got from my mom. (That's maddening. Why is she always right? :)

Lesson One: Don't Spend All Day "Cleaning Your Room"

Now that I'm a mom, I really relate to this. I sent my kid (SLB) to her room on Saturday and it took four hours for her to finish picking it up. Along the way, she couldn't resist playing with the very things she was supposed to be cleaning up. Since it took her so long, we didn't get to go to the park as planned. Suddenly, those 15 extra minutes of ten different toys didn't seem so important.

It's the same in online fundraising for specific campaigns. In 2009, we didn't put an end date on our campaign.  Donors felt no urgency to get their part done. We felt like we had all the time in the world to try every tactic, instead of focusing. It took us nearly two weeks to raise $1,000. This year, our time bound campaign has netted nearly $4,000 after the first week.

Lesson Two: Relationships are a Two-Way Street

When I was in grade school, I fought a lot with my best friend, Lia Reynolds.  Whenever we would fight, I would get all righteously indignant, insisting that Lia was being unreasonable. Whenever I complained to my mother, she would turn it back on me: what had I done to contribute to the situation? Was I the best friend I could be to Lia? Or did I take her for granted?

That advice sits at the top of my mind as I use social media for the scholarship campaign. Online fundraising in social media requires that we constantly ask ourselves if we're giving as much as we are getting. Are we delivering quality content to the people who follow us? Are we highlighting the contributions of our community, or only talking about ourselves? I'm most proud of the fact that the $10,000 we raised last year came in from 199 contributors. Our community is there for us when we're there for them. In fact, we wouldn't have made it without several people who went above and beyond, including Beth Kanter and John Merritt, among others.

Lesson Three: What's the Magic Word?

Again, as a mom, I have a new appreciation for this one. I have to remind SLB to say thank you so often, I sometimes wonder if I say anything else to her. (Also, when do I have to stop reminding her that her sleeve is not a napkin?) This is a message that my mother drilled into me. I only know one other human who writes real paper-that-you-have-to-mail thank you notes. (What's up Samantha?)

Thank you messages were key to our success in 2009, and our fantastic start in 2010. We thank everyone, usually in the medium in which they gave -- Twitter, Facebook, our blog -- as many times as we can. We also had scholarship recipients send paper thank you cards to donors last year, as well. Several 2010 donors have related how awesome they thought that was.

Lesson Four: If at First You Don't Succeed

I was one of those kids who got unbearably upset if I wasn't good at something right away. If "Plan A" failed, I was not likely to take up "Plan B"; I was much more likely to walk away and do something I was good at instead. My mom worked really hard to help me accept defeat gracefully and be a wee bit more flexible.

Flexibility was key to hitting our goal in 2009. We took several wrong turns and had to regroup and try again.  This isn't the old days of fundraising where you committed to a course of action, spent months preparing the mailing, sent the mailing, and then spent months getting the results back. In social media fundraising, you often know in just hours whether you're barking up the right tree. Iteration is the only way to succeed.