Last month's poll of online communications professionals about online advocacy issues had too low of a response to draw statistically significant conclusions. But the five essay questions prompted some fascinating responses, which we have excerpted for you. ALSO: If you missed your chance to sound off, you can always take it to the boards, the nonprofit discussion boards, that is!
"The way it's done now, it's more about building fundraising lists than making social change."
"As chair of my county Democratic party in Vermont, I have used online organization for advocacy to overturn the Republican dominance of our legislative delegation. The other county chairs are following in our footsteps and using online resources to get out a clear message and organize actions that are making a clear difference at the grass roots."
"It is empowering for advocacy organizations who couldn't otherwise get so much reach for so little money, but at the same time it is being discounted and subverted by decision makers and policy makers who understand the dynamics and don't want democratic input."
"It's not effective to the extent that I get SO MANY requests to sign this poll, write this letter, that I am sometimes overwhelmed and can't respond to them all so then I sometimes don't respond at all."
"Online advocacy sometimes has little to no impact. However, it often has a moderate impact--especially at the state level or when comments are personalized."
"It depends somewhat upon what your goals are and how you leverage the online efforts. In and of themselves (unless you're targeting someone who is not at all accustomed to being on the receiving end of an email campaign) strictly email campaigns are often not a very effective way of creating policy or social change. But an integrated strategy that goes beyond email (but uses email as one of its core tactics) can be very effective."
"Its scope makes it effective."
"Only effective if online activism tools are utilized in conjunction with other campaign tools (on the ground grassroots organizing, media outreach, direct mail, etc.). Also, the definition of "effectiveness" needs to be broader than "effective in passing a bill" for example. Its also an effective tool for building stronger relationships with supporters and the public, and engaging people on public policy issues, which has longer term benefits for nonprofits and society."
"I worry that emails/faxes created by online initiatives may be counted as 1 reply by staffers, due to the fact that they often are not personalized."
"Integrating efforts across channels. - learning from industry best practices, including the private sector. - using data wisely."
"Most nonprofits are still at the infancy stage of using online communications effectively, including both of those I consult with (the Student Conservation Assn and the Vermont Democratic Party). It is a matter of resources at both places. Both are making progress and it becomes easier, but it is hard to advocate use of Convio or Get Active to the VDP, with an annual budget of $170K, even if it could really benefit from that technology."
"Biggest opportunity/need is to build cross-movement online communications capacity--the kind of thing Care2 is doing commercially but with active guidance from participating organizations to focus advocacy drives strategically, and a funding mechanism that makes it affordable."
"Keeping items short and simple, easy to read/skim and pass along. Be sure to embrace people from both political parties and have the ideas expressed be for the planet not just for democrats and republicans."
"Lots of room for improvement including: * better emails, more timely emails * better database marketing, segmentation * better coordination with offline campaigns * better engagement of esubscribers"
"They should do more list swaps! Every nonprofit with a direct mail program does this to great advantage. And they should be running more integrated campaigns (advocacy, fundraising, communications) as well as more online-offline integrated campaigns. Another thing groups should do is take it more seriously - spend more money on it, hire more staff for online work. A fourth impediment is the silo-ization that most groups work in - better communication and integration between development, communications, advocacy, etc., is essential."
"Non-profits are missing the collective aspect: they need to do a better job recognizing how many other organizations out there are working towards their same goal, and by sharing resources, how much more effeciently they could accomplish things."
"Nonprofits need to be thinking of their online campaigns as more of an integrated strategy - integrated with the wide range of other campaign tools in the campaign "toolbox."
"Interest Coding (i.e. identifying constituents by the types of efforts they may be interested in and tayloring their communication depending on the code). Working together to figure out whats best / leveraging other nonprofit's insights."
"Advocacy messages need to be short and to the point. Let people know the issue at hand and make it easy for them to take action."
"It is the future. Print is dying. Of course, I have been saying that the net is the future for a decade and still print is the most effective form of fundraising."
"It will grow rapidly, but perhaps not as exponentially as it has it the last 10 years. It has become our organization's core communications channel, though both membership growth and fundraising have yet to be linked signficantly to our educational and advocacy activity"
"It will continue to grow!!!"
"Will become much more important as tool for fundraising, membership growth, educational outreach, and organizing. Not sure about importance for advocacy."
"Just going to continue to grow but hopefully people will figure out these integration issues."
"It's going to keep growing."
"Continued momentum and improvement - its a fast growing, cost-effective tool!"
"I think online fundraising will continue to grow and become a vital aspect of resource development."
"Definitely to investigate Convio and Get Active and perhaps other similar systems that can provide the needed infrastructure. Involvement in the DMANF is really helpful, especially the conferences it puts on and the networking that ensues."
"Biggest thing we've done, and the core of our effectiveness, has been weekly production of original material for our listservs and web sites since 1991; second is creation of a vast unique useful database; and third is a comgination of daily robot-feuled news updates combined with GetActive
tools (though we may dump the latter for DIA since the expense is over the top)."
"Email newsletter"
"Clickz newsletter, progressiveexchange list
(www.progressiveexchange.org), GetActive's discussion groups"
"www.progressiveexchange.org"
"Consultants :-) rock my world. How else do we make sense of ALL that stuff out there?"
"Programs like GetActive or Convio are essential for online initiatives. Blogs, podcasts and other new media are great ways to reach a larger audience."
"Experiment and analyze. Fail and learn. Grow and keep on growing. Never get discouraged."
"Don't build complex systems and services yourself--even if you have amazingly talented dedicated volunteers. You are not a software enterprise, you're a nonprofit advocacy organization. At the same time, it took us too long to invest in full-time inhouse internet development staff. Don't skimp on skilled technical staff."
"Many lessons, not one. But first question/lesson is: Are you communicating with your esubscribers about something that *they* care about? This is critical."
"Get your hands dirty. get a job at an org that takes online work seriously."
"This is going to hurt."
"A little is better than not at all?"
"Keep it short and simple."