YouTube for not-for-profits…

Charities can set up web TV on YouTube, with more space for their videos and making it easier for users to find them.

Available only in the US and UK at present, more details can be found at http://www.youtube.com/nonprofits.

Selling the outcomes, not the features

On the train back to Glasgow last week, I was writing up some notes I’d taken at the Institute of Fundraising’s Scottish Conference and was struck again by some of the similarities between “customers” and “donors”.

In marketing what a business does, customers want to know about the benefits you provide, rather than the features of what you sell or do. For example, in my case, my clients don’t usually want to know the details of the process I use for selecting IT suppliers. They want to know that they can have a great deal more confidence about the decision they are about to make about their IT.

It’s the same with donors. Donors need to know what a donation does. They need to hear about the outcomes, not the “features” of what you do. When considering charities to support, I want to hear about the difference they make to (say) wild land, rather than the fact that they employ several land rangers. I want to know about the women in Ghana who have been able to start their own businesses and how that has changed the lives around them, not about the mechanics of micro-credit. It’s not that I don’t care about how these outcomes are achieved – I do – but that’s a secondary question for me, one that comes into play after I’ve bought into the outcomes.

Net: all the donor or fundraising management systems in the world won’t help increase the level of donations to a charity if there isn’t a clear understanding of what that charity achieves by its potential donors.