Fitted with high-tech legs, Scout Bassett, at left, and Sarah Reinertsen run together on a track. Photograph courtesy Challenged Athletes Foundation

According to Joseph Campbell, author of “The Power of Myth,” and “Hero With A Thousand Faces” there is only one story.

The story where the hero is thrown out of his home. Then he undergoes the transformation, the struggling in the wilderness, and finally, the triumphant return.

Let’s look at the first part of the story.
I: Departure
1. The Call to Adventure
2. Refusal of the Call
3. Supernatural Aid
4. The Crossing of the First Threshold
5. The Belly of the Whale

II:The Journey
1. The Road of Trials
2. The Meeting with the Goddess
3. Woman as the Temptress
4. Atonement with the Father
5. Apotheosis
6. The Ultimate Boon

III: Return
1. Refusal of the Return
2. The Magic Flight
3. Rescue from Without
4. The Crossing of the Return Threshold
5. Master of the Two Worlds
6. Freedom to Live

Can you recognize this story in your own life?

Are you telling some elements of this story with your appeals, your acknowledgments, or on your website?

If not, why not? Don’t you think your donors would like to read a story too?

For example, say you are working with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
You’re talking about your principal ballerina in appeal letter. How can you make her story more compelling to your audience? Can you talk about her humble beginnings? How some people in her family didn’t want her to become a dancer? How she had to leave home and go through the trials of becoming a professional ballerina? The hours she had to dance on pointe until her feet were bleeding? And her eventual triumph and return to her family? And can you weave that story into the story of your nonprofit, to show how you are there to help dancers triumph over incredible odds to dance for a living? And how it’s so important to keep having heroines in ballerina form in Winnipeg?

Or say you’re working with Knox Parks Foundation.
You want to recruit more people to your Green Crew, which helps people without job skills get horticulture and landscaping skills. How can you make this more compelling to your donors and potential program participants? Can you tell the story of one young man, who came from the projects? Can you tell people that he didn’t have any garden in his neighborhood growing up? Can you tell them how he was so far from nature that perhaps he lived on corn chips and had never eaten an eggplant? Can you tell how he heard about your program, at first didn’t want to go? Can you tell how he eventually left his apartment, and started to come to your program site, to learn to grow his own vegetables, how to get closer to the land, and how he triumphed against the odds to become a master gardener? Can you even tell the story of how he has his own garden now, and his own landscaping business? Can you see elements of Joseph Campbell’s story in his story?

Or what if you’re working with the Amputee Coalition of America?
Can you tell the story of one young girl who had gangrene in both legs, and so had to have her feet amputated? Can you tell how she was teased in school, the sad namecalling, the tears that she shed, how outcast she felt, until she turned 18 and left her small home town, and went out in the world? How she met more amputees thanks to your nonprofit, and how they encouraged her to succeed despite the odds? And how she got prosthetic legs and started to run in marathons? How now she has a partner and a happy life and has learned to survive and thrive in her status as an amputee?

Can you weave stories into your communications so that people know it’s not just a big concrete building that’s getting their money, but a real person, who has triumphed against the odds to make the world brighter thanks to your nonprofit?

How can you start to tell a better story, today?

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What is your safety net? Start planning now!

What is your safety net?

Who can help you when the chips are down?

Here are two ways to create your own safety net.

Number One, build up who you are online.

3 reasons why you should.
1. Layoffs happen. If they happen to you, having people care about what you think is always a good idea.
2. Make your life more significant. Leave something behind. A blog can be the start of a book.
3. Get hired into a field based simply on what you research and learn for your blog. It could be green manufacturing. It could be nonprofits. Who knows where your journey will take you? At the bottom of this blog post, I’ve put my ebook on how to market yourself online better. If you haven’t read it yet, you really should. I would love to hear what you think of it in the comments.

Number Two, constantly keep learning.

What was the last book you read?
Was it to teach yourself something, or was it to entertain yourself?
What was the last blog you read before reading this one? Did you read it to learn, or to laugh?
What was the last class you took? Did you audit a community college class? Did you take a workshop at a conference?
Who was the last speaker you heard? Was the person well-informed? Did you learn something?
And since the best way to learn is to teach, what are you teaching?

If you haven’t been learning, what would you LIKE to learn and HOW would you like to learn it?

If you are constantly seeking to improve your own skills and knowledge, and strengthen your values, and help others, you cannot help but be an asset to an employer, or indeed to anyone who walks into your life.

Just to show you that I practice what I preach, I just finished taking a poetry class with Hoa Nguyen, and I’m signed up to take the next one as well.

Last week I went to the 501 Tech club and heard a speaker talk about how to get your nonprofit organization more engaged online. I also went to the Texas Wax meeting and learned how to package my paintings better. This week I’m presenting at the nonprofit career club in Austin on how to get a better handle on your motivation to find a job. More on that tomorrow.

I have read several books in the last month, including: “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel Pink, “Now, Discover Your Strengths” by Clifton, “Strengthsfinder 2.0″, “Rules of the Dance” by Mary Oliver, “Fearless Creating” by Eric Maisel, “Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper” by SARK, and more.

I read the SmartWoman.com blog by Vicki Flaugher often, and just today she taught me something totally new about how to do a product launch!

What have you been reading? Where have you been going? And what have you been learning?

Please leave a comment and tell me!

How to Turn Your Knowledge Into a Profitable Brand

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Long Tail in Martha's Vineyard, MA

There’s a reason you’ve never seen a full picture of me on here! Yeah, I’ve got a long tail. It’s kind of got a “Puff The Magic Dragon” vibe. But I roll with it.

So, in the spirit of my long tail, here’s what I learned from Chris Anderson’s bestseller The Long Tail, and how this applies to your nonprofit!

Number of words: 1071
Read time: 9 minutes

The long tail is the concept that you can sell products to a particular group of people, over time, and that buying fades away, but never dies as long as you can connect with your truest fans online. So you don’t have to blast out with TV, Radio, Billboards etc, and in fact though this is good, it’s also kind of wasteful when you could be online connecting with the people who really want to hear from you.

I wrote a post yesterday on this, so go there to see what else I learned.

6. One product doesn’t fit all
Tailor your appeals to the 7 types of donors, for a start. That means starting to keep track of your dynasts, your communitarians, your socialites, your religious donors, and so on. A business-minded donor is not going to want to see just a story. They’re going to want to see metrics of how your social service nonprofit saves the county money, or how much they can write off on their taxes if they donate their old copier to your charity or NGO. Just because a picture of a sad puppy works on you doesn’t mean other people are going to respond to that. Get yourself ready to tailor your appeals by sending out batches of 150 letters at a time, each tailored to 7 different types of donors.

7. One price doesn’t fit all.
Just as it’s appropriate to ask some donors to give you $10 a month and others to give you $1,000 per month, you know that people all have different levels of ability to give. You need to spend your time with those who have the ability to give the most. Automate your appeals as much as you can, but make sure that each ask takes into account how much a donor has given in the past, and ask them for just a little bit more. If someone has given $10, they can probably afford to give $30. Make the case for why they should give more now.

8. Lose control: Share information
Transparency builds trust at no cost. If you are honest with donors about the financial straits your nonprofit is in, they will respect your honesty. If you are clear about how much money goes to services, how much to administration, even how much goes towards pencils at your nonprofit, people will understand you better, and realize how much you stretch a dollar to help. You know who does this really well? Yep, that’s right, Imamuseum.org! How can you bring this same level of transparency to your nonprofit? Hire a programmer.

9. Think “and” not “or”.
So if you’re doing 3 things right now to get your development program started, how can you do 3 more things? For example, if you’re doing grants, appeals, and e-newsletters, how can you also do an event, get in-kind donations, and a phone-a-thon? Well, the answer is volunteers and interns. But before that, you need to have a plan. Plan out where people will be trained, when they will be trained, and how they will be trained. Then figure out the highest outcomes you want from their efforts. Bring that vision to them and help them turn it into reality. The more people you have working for you, the more you’ll be able to accomplish. And when you think “and” and not “or,” also think about how people prefer to be contacted. Some volunteers may prefer the telephone, but you can also email them to follow up, or text them. Some interns may want you to not contact them at all. You’ve got to find out everyone’s preferences so that you can make their experience as smooth and satisfying for them as it can possibly be.

10. Trust the market to do your job.
You can try to predict what will make people want to give, but the best thing to do is to measure and respond. For example, you could measure which letters have the greatest impact on which individuals, and respond to that. So if you send out a story-driven letter and 10 people respond and 50 don’t, you can mark these 10 people story people, and try another tactic on the other 50 donors. Perhaps the next letter you send has 2 charts in it which track organizational spending and number of people served. Maybe 20 of those non-givers now respond with money. So you can mark them as chart people and move on to the next donors. This could also be your grant writing tactic, your event tactic, etc.

Bonus! 11. Understand the power of free.
Give a sample for free. This means, for example, you could have an open house for your charity. Let people in to see what you do, firsthand. Get a local coffeeshop to donate coffee and tea, a local donut shop to donate day-old donuts, or a local CSA to donate carrots and celery. You can give people a VISCERAL and tactile experience of your mission. Of course you can deluge people with free buttons, free annual reports, free e-newsletters, free podcasts of your executive director yakking it up as well.

What do you think of the lessons from the Long Tail? Can you see another way to apply this to your nonprofit right now? If so, please leave a comment, I’d love to hear what you think!

Follow Wild Woman Fundraising on Twitter! Because you want to motivate people better!

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Long Tail Parakeet

What is the Long Tail?

It’s a book by Chris Anderson, who talks about the internet’s ability to keep a product going long after it should have stopped selling. The Long Tail means that there are no masses, but lots of people with very specific sets of niches and interests. Mr. Anderson looks at the business models of Zappos, Amazon, Ebay, Apple, Google, and other top American companies, and tries to decipher how they keep up with the changing pace of the business world and the internet markets.

This can apply to your charity, and I’m going to tell you how below.

Number of words: 874
Estimated read time: 5 minutes

1. Make Everything Available
Show your donors how your nonprofit is helping, how your resources are being used, and how they can concretely help today, and I’ll GUARANTEE you get more donations. Transparency is huge. the Indianapolis Museum does this very well. Check out their dashboard which shows everything from how many memberships they have to how many kilowatt hours of electricity they’re using.

2. Help me find it
To reach people in your tribe or very specific groups, make it easy to find your information. Put clear search functions on your website, again, Indianapolis Museum does this really really well. On their dashboard, you can find out everything from how many schoolchildren go through their doors to how much their executives are making, all in one place. This openness and attention to detail makes me trust that they know what they’re doing when it comes to museum education. Crazy, isn’t it? But I think that people who have gotten their stats down to an auto-updated science on their website must have their donation processes together, and have hired the right people to keep all of this running.

3. Lower costs: Move inventory in, or waaaaay out
Amazon does this by offering products on their website that they don’t have, that actually belong to their network of small businesses. When a customer orders something on Amazon, they can tell their supplier to get it to the customer, and take their fee without ever having to worry about touching the product. You can apply this to your nonprofit by farming out your appeal letters to a mail house, letting a printer take care of your annual reports, and creating an auto-email thank you when someone gives online. Your development department will run a lot more smoothly, as your fundraising staff have more time to do major gifts, or create events or other tasks. Another way to lower costs is to partner with other nonprofits who do something particularly well that your nonprofit has struggled with, and allow them to send projects your way that your nonprofit does well. This way, you can both provide better services by playing to your strengths and farming out the rest.

4. Let customers/donors do the work
If you can improve what you are offering to the community, whether it’s an opera, senior services, advocacy, or environmental clean-up, give your donors a say in how you improve. Ask them to come in and investigate how you could do it better. Get your stakeholders to figure out how you could do things more efficiently. Many of them would LOVE to be asked for their advice, and it could make them more loyal donors down the line too, if they know that you care about their opinion.

5. Think Niche: One distribution method doesn’t fit all.
This is why direct mail will never be dead. You may feel completely comfortable with an e-appeal, but other people prefer to get a letter. Still others prefer the fullness of information in an annual report before they give. And then there are people who prefer the phone. And of course most foundations haven’t moved to an online application system yet. They still prefer to get your paper letter of intent, and then your 7 paper-clipped copies of your grant proposal which they send, by mail, to their trustees or board members.

Tomorrow I’ll give you five more things I learned from The Long Tail.

Was this helpful? If so, follow me on twitter, and sign up for my newsletter, where once a month I’ll give you tips and tricks you can use at your charity all year long!

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Do you want to meet me there?

Austin 501 Tech Club:
Pain Management: Who has time for social media?
Presenter: Jon Lebkowsky
Where: Austin Free-Net Offices, 2209 Rosewood Ave, 78702
When: Monday, August 16
5:30 Pizza and general camaraderie
6:00 – 7:00 Presentation!
Cost: Free
RSVP: Not required, but it helps us know how much pizza to order
RSVP to dale@austinfree.net.

The social ecosystem is evolving and there’s always more to do. Are you feeling pressure to make time for social media? Do you always feel that you’re missing something? We all want to have an effective web presence and communicate the value of our organizations online, but in the world of social media that feels like a 24/7 prospect. Conversations are nonstop on Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and Google Wave, email lists and groups, rich media sites like YouTube and Flickr, aggregate sites like FriendFeed. Web strategist Jon Lebkowsky will lead a discussion about the challenge of making time for social media, and always having something to say.

Bio:
Jon Lebkowsky supports collaboration, communication, and learning for nonprofits and businesses. He helps create effective internal and external collaborations using online social tools, community platforms, and emerging web technologies. He is also an author, social commentator and cultural maven focused on the social web, collaborative technologies, media, advocacy, sustainability, and future studies. He has written for various publications, has been blogging regularly since before the term “blog” appeared, and has been involved with social technologies since the late 1980s. He was part of the early 2000s social technology conversations that led to the concept of “web 2.0,” and is still tracking and commenting on the evolution of Internet tools and practices.

Call Dale’s cell if you get lost. Signage is terrible outside our building:
512/576-9666. You can enter our driveway from Rosewood or Northwestern.

—————————————————————————————————-

Even if you can’t make it, rest assured, if anything interesting comes out of this, I will be blogging about it!

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April’s 5 Best Blog Posts

How Many Things Do You Buy? How Many Things Do you Make?

Let us now praise Black Female Nonprofit Leaders!

How to Get out of Fundraising, and Into Something You Like More!

Aw Girl, Are You Jaded?

13 Tips to Get Your Annual Report Read

Top 5 May Posts

Your Overhead is All In Your Head!

Shut Your Facebook, 3 Tips for Digital Detox!

Advertising Your Nonprofit Is Not Wasting Money!

Why Are Fundraisers Hated?

The Myth of the Naked African Child-When Your Donations Hurt

Best Five June Posts

Why people give you donations-A Radio Interview with me and Megan Schiebe of Travel Volunteer Search

An interview with Amy Sample Ward about how nonprofits can use Web 2.0 for fundraising!

Best nonprofit marketing tips from Lon Safko’s Social Media Bible!

Here are some tips to market your nonprofit with social media!

What’s your fundraising plan checklist?

So it looks like people like Interviews, Social Media Marketing, Tips on how to live on the cheap, Praising female leaders of color, Graphic Design tips, Getting offline, Controversial topics like fundraisers being hated, advertising your nonprofit is not wasting money, and how everything is overhead.

Any other post topics you’d like to see? Please write a comment!

FYI, if you haven’t given to our kickstarter project yet, here are 3 good reasons why.

Because:
1. You could help thousands, perhaps millions of people that you’ve never met!
2. Building the capacity of thousands of people to fundraise is not an opportunity that just comes along every day!
3. You can be the first in your city to have a game that teaches people in your organization how to fundraise. Imagine the edge you’ll have when all of your volunteers know how to research grants for you, do a mailing, or run an event!

So go on. Thank you so much, for whatever you’re able to give!

Nice to tweet you! Follow Wild Woman Fundraising on Twitter!

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You may be noticing something funny around here!

Well, hopefully this blog makes you laugh, so you probably notice something funny a lot, but today it’s the whole blog! If you’re reading this in a feed reader, come and take a look!

After my blog review by Cheryl and Susan at Aspiring Fempreneur, I realized that my old site had gotten a little… cluttered. Sure, you could see my enjoysthin.gs feed, the blogroll, the calendar, the calculator, the Fundraising 101 section, and all topics listed on the side, but all of the bells and whistles kind of distracted from the main, which, in my opinion, is the writing.

Oh, plus, since Beth Kanter did her own redesign, I had to jump on the bandwagon. She did a redesign after 10 years, and for me, it’s been about 8 months, so I guess I’m a little more impatient! Though I didn’t have the help of Rad Campaign, I had the help of one Steve Havelka, and he has done wonders. We worked all last week and the week before to get the pictures the way we wanted them, and took vague ideas, like “How about a natural texture in the background?” or “Can we make the top header clickable pictures to other things I’m doing?” and made them reality. If you need a blog redesign, and you happen to like WordPress, he’s your guy.

What do you think?

Give to our fundraising video game kickstarter project!

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What if it happens? Who are you online? How can you control what people find out about you online?

Why would anyone care what you think? Have you studied the nonprofit and charity and philanthropy sectors? Have you got an advanced degree, or a CFRE certification? Do you have years of experience to back you up? Have you ever thought about writing a book about your experiences?

Why not start to build your brand with the knowledge you have right now?

Building your platform takes time and patience and until today, I never thought I was going to reveal to you what goes on BEHIND THE SCENES here.

I never thought I would do this, but today is the day.

I am going to do something really crazy. I guess I wouldn’t be Wild Woman Fundraising if I didn’t!

I am going to give you a free 17 page e-book which details EXACTLY how I got 150,000 hits, 25,000 pageviews and 4,000 uniques this month.

I am going to give away my online marketing and branding secrets, right here, right now!

Download it right here.
How to Turn Your Nonprofit Knowledge Into A Profitable Brand

If you like it, tell me.

Share it, enjoy it, tell your friends, come on over, free advice!

If you don’t like it, lump it, but tell me what I can do better!

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He was so friendly! And did he connect me with resources? I should say so! And now I will give you the hookup.

Here are some events you should check out, if you are in Austin this summer.

Item!
The 501 Tech Club!
Meets 3rd Mondays in Austin!
Date: Monday, June 21st, 2010
Time: 5:30pm – 7:00pm
Location: Austin Free-Net in the DeWitty Ctr
2209 Rosewood Ave Austin, TX 78702

Item!
Nonprofit Bar Camp on August 21st!
If you don’t know what a Bar Camp is, it’s a free camp where you just come and present on a topic and if people want to attend they’ll sign up. So you know I’m going to be there presenting on fundraising and nonprofit management and nonprofit communication!

Item!
Austin Social Media Club!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010 from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
@Bazaarvoice US/Corporate Headquarters
3900 N. Capital of TX Hwy. Suite 300 Austin, TX 78746

Their latest twitter post: “Time to check in for June 15th Meeting on Location-based Social with @IncSlinger & @Gowalla RSVP @ http://smcaustinjune2010.eventbrite.com/”

Item!
Nonprofit Film Fest!
July 29th to August 2nd!

Also, he’s going to come and speak at the Nonprofit Job Club on what it’s like to be a Founder and ED of a nonprofit, so stay tuned for details!

Follow me on Twitter! Because you like getting relevant updates about fundraising, marketing, and making a difference!

I want to know what you want. Because your opinions are important to me.
Please tell me. Takes 5 mins. Tops.

RESOURCES:

Why have a feed reader? To keep track of what people are saying about your cause, your cause news and other news. You can also create a feed directly on your website or blog. This is easy to do with WordPress add-ons.
RSS feed readers
Netvibes.com (my personal favorite)
iGoogle

Interview community partners, program staff, donors, volunteers, or senior management at your charity. Ask them what their favorite part of their job is. Ask them about misconceptions people have about the cause or the work. Ask them to share their favorite music, make that the fade-out. Have fun with it.
Podcast software:
You can record with Audacity, edit with Levelator.
Use podbean.com-put your podcast on iTunes, iTunes University, and PodCast.com

Want to have a monthly radio show about your nonprofit? BlogTalkRadio is free, unlimited numbers of people can listen, and up to 5 people can call in for questions.
Radio for your nonprofit:
BlogTalkRadio.com

Vlogging is video blogging. When you have an event, this is a good time to vlog. Imagine your nonprofit blog-and you’re there, waving from your gala or open house, showing people around, showing the impact your charity has had.
Vlogging software:
freeblog.org

Have you ever taken part in a webinar? Have you ever run a webinar? What do you know well enough to teach? Would donors or staff be interested in taking your webinar? Why don’t you ask? (Wow, the question marks are really having a day out.)
Webinar software:
GotoMeeting
WebEx

If you have a goal that you’re trying to reach, why not send lots of text messages to your supporters and make them aware of the goal, and ask them to give?
Free Text messages services:
Broadtexter.com
Zinadoo.com

Running an event takes a lot of time, energy, and money. I should know. I’ve run friendraisers, galas, auctions, dinners, candidate forums, and even steamboat rides. You’ve got to send out invites, call to follow up, track attendees somehow… it all requires you to have a quick way of cataloging people. Acteva seems to do that. Have you used it? What do you think of it, if so?
Event Planning for your nonprofit:
Acteva

There’s also a list on MakeUseOf of 66 services you can use for organizing events, everything from your next family reunion to big events.

All Resources from the Social Media Bible
FYI. I’m not getting paid any money to list these. Just hope you might find them useful!

Follow @wildwomanfund on twitter!