Case Studies:

1) Small Targeted Mailings: Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
2) Parties, Events: FOR’s Rafting Chapter Membership Program

Guest Article:

Snagging Members on the World Wide Web: For Nonprofits, Website Content is the Bait that Works Best

Case Study:
Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance

by Amy O’Connor

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) is a nonprofit organization that was created in 1983 by three individuals. Its mission is the preservation of the outstanding wildlands at the heart of the Colorado Plateau and the management of these lands in their natural state for the benefit of all Americans.

SUWA grew slowly at first, as word of mouth spread the news that someone was finally willing to take a strong stand on behalf of Utah’s wild lands, many of which encompassed the incomparable redrock canyon country of southern Utah. As SUWA established itself, the organization’s leaders began to see the enormous value a strong membership can provide, both monetarily and politically. By 1988, the organization had acquired about 1,000 members and, with a strong commitment from both board and staff, decided to pursue an aggressive direct mail program.

Cautiously, SUWA began investing in direct mail membership acquisition. Initial mailings were sent to extremely “hot” lists such as people who had actually visited southern Utah and left their names at trail registers. Returns on the initial mailings were three percent or more. However, it soon became apparent that the initial lists used, which were also incredibly labor intensive to acquire, were simply too small to help the organization grow.

The first large mailing, which included some national conservation lists, consisted of some 35,000 pieces and represented a giant leap for SUWA’s direct mail program. Results in those early days were very good, often between one and two percent.

SUWA continued its direct mail program, growing its membership to 11,000 by 1994. At that point it began an aggressive canvassing program to further build the membership.

Today, it has more than 20,000 members, maintained by a combination of direct mail and canvassing. Most of SUWA’s growth from direct mail occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is important to recognize that at this time direct mail membership acquisition was easier than it is today because return rates tended to be higher and competition was not quite as fierce. Nevertheless, organizations today can still apply the same techniques and build their memberships, albeit a bit more slowly.

Case Study:

FOR’s Rafting Chapter Membership Program

by Mike Dolin and Rachel Stevens

Is your river group looking for a fun, innovative means of fundraising? If so, Friends of the River’s (FOR) rafting chapter will probably be of interest to you. Based in California, FOR works to protect free flowing rivers through public education, citizen activist training and organizing, and expert advocacy to influence public policy.

FOR’s rafting chapter carries out a program of noncommercial river trips that raises money and awareness and recruits new members for the organization. Since its founding in 1981, the rafting chapter has provided a crucial and highly successful fundraising strategy for FOR which capitalizes on the one asset that all river groups share—rivers.
The rafting chapter raises money by holding an annual membership drive in which its members, who are experienced rafting guides, volunteer to bring as many of their family, friends and acquaintances as they can gather on river trips. Rather than charge their guests for the trips, members of the rafting chapter ask them for a donation to FOR.

As an incentive to members of the rafting chapter to recruit as many new members for FOR as possible, FOR holds several drawings at the end of the rafting season based on the number of membership credits that guides have collected.

Guides receive one membership credit for each new member, or the monetary equivalent thereof, recruited. Those guides who collect 150 or more membership credits qualify for the first level drawing; guides who have collected 100 membership credits qualify for the second level drawing, and so on. There are a total of four levels for which participants may qualify. Participants who do not win at the highest level for which they are eligible are moved down to
the next level drawing. This past year, FOR awarded such prizes as a raft, kayak, rowing frame, dutch oven, pump, and life jackets.

In 1993. 40 individuals from the rafting chapter participated in the membership drive and recruited more than 1,100 new members into FOR between March and November. With an average donation of $35, the membership drive brought in almost $38,000 dollars, which was split between FOR and the rafting chapter. The rafting chapter’s portion of the proceeds goes toward equipment upkeep and staff salaries.

FOR’s method of fundraising does more than just raise money. The river trips serve an educational, as well as recreational, purpose. Once the rafting chapter gets people on the river, guides use the opportunity to raise people’s awareness of the issues surrounding rivers and to encourage direct grassroots action, both of which complement the fundraising efforts and reinforce FOR’s mission to preserve, protect and restore rivers, streams and watersheds.

Mike Dolin worked in the Sacramento office of Friends of the River. Rachel Stevens was an intern with River Network. For more information regarding FOR’s rafting chapter and membership drive, contact FOR at (916)442-3155.

Guest Article:
Snagging Members on the World Wide Web:
For Nonprofits, Website Content is the Bait that Works Best

By David Jenkins, Director of Conservation and Public Policy. American Canoe Association

Unlike the eight-legged web weavers we see in nature, river advocates cannot depend on potential members to accidentally fly into their web site and get stuck there. Competition for the public’s time online is fierce as web entrepreneurs engage in multi-million dollar ad campaigns to vie for people’s attention. Most non-profits do not have the financial resources to compete at that level. Even if they did, it would probably not be the wisest use of the organization’s money and effort. Still, the web can be a good membership generator, but only if organizations find a way to compete for their share of the traffic.

Luring traffic to an organization’s web site does require some targeted marketing, but before marketing can even have a chance, the destination that you are trying to market must be an appealing one. Too many non-profit groups create dry, boring, web sites that are targeted primarily at their most avid supporters. The key to attracting new members from the web is to have a site that has appeal to a larger audience of non-members. That sounds pretty simple, but it is very often overlooked.

Most organizations have a niche, a purpose and reason for existing that is unique. It is that uniqueness that can often guide them to web content that not only reflects the organization’s mission, but also provides information or services that broader segments of the public will want to access. Information about the river or watershed that your group is dedicated to can bring people to your site if the information is targeted to serving a public need.

For example, an organization dedicated to a specific river may choose to develop a recreational guide to the river that shows public access, highlights notable features, and displays current water conditions. The organization could then have the site promoted by, and linked to, state and local Chambers of Commerce, tourism bureaus, local guide or travel related web sites, even canoe club or fishing organization web sites. An informative guide that details the wildlife, history and geology of the river could be tied into classes at area schools.

Organizations that are involved in grassroots issue campaigns can use those campaigns to drive potential members to their website. Placing an automatic letter to a targeted agency or elected official on the site is a great interactive feature that makes it easy for the public to weigh in on an issue. The organization can then post alerts to various list servers, newsgroups, and web bulletin boards to direct people to the letter -- and to the site. Placing a link to the site in the alert makes responding to it very quick and easy.

The American Canoe Association (ACA) has found that these grassroots web campaigns generate a lot of traffic to its website. Three recent campaigns generated over 2,000 visitors to the ACA website and resulted immediately in dozens of new members. The ACA also generates traffic by providing very basic canoeing and kayaking information on its website that is targeted at non-members, and by trying to make sure that any news story referencing the organization – even this one -- lists the web site (www.acanet.org).

For a web site to generate traffic it also needs to be easily found by search engines, and that does not mean just when someone enters in the organization’s name. This is done, in part, by listing key words and phrases related to information on the site in the “meta tag” part of a web page. Anything a non-profit’s website offers the public (beyond the simple promotion of the organization) needs to create search engine hits. If the site contains a recreation guide for a particular watershed, then the site should be found when someone enters the name of any stream in the watershed, or when an activity such as fishing or canoeing is entered in conjunction with the name of a stream, county, public land unit, or town that is within the watershed.

Partnerships with likeminded organizations can be useful in generating traffic to your site. However, just as big corporate web entrepreneurs are trying to hog web traffic, there are sure to be some big non-profits trying to do the same. Never surrender your organization’s unique content to another organization. The goal is to have people come to your site for its content, stay around long enough to learn more about your organization, and then hopefully join. If a partnership does not help make that happen, then it is probably a bad idea.

It also important to have a site that is visually interesting, loads quickly, is updated regularly with news or other timely content, and prominently displays contact information (including an old fashioned
phone number). A good web site to visit to see how your web site rates on things such as loading time, search engine recognition, and browser compatibility is www.websitegarage.com. Of course the site must also provide obvious opportunities to join online. The ACA has found that offering a neat gift for joining online often encourages a visitor to take the plunge.

An organization can learn a lot from studying the successes and failures in the “dot com” world. Still, no matter how great or well promoted a non-profit site is; it does not alleviate the need for the more traditional types of member solicitation. A website can be a great promotional tool and an economical way to generate additional members, but the key to making it work is competing effectively with all the other spiders on the web who are also trying to snare the attention and money of potential members.