This week’s episode goes International!! Jamie Scott, 50% of the UK group Graffiti6, sits down with Tiffany for an in-depth introduction to the NEW EP “Free”. You’ve heard them on Grey’s Anatomy, CSI:NY and Covert Affairs. Download it today!

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Join our Team for HomewalkLA with the United Way

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This is how to ask for money – give vision to your tribe!

This concept is simple (Tell your Story) but it’s not easy. Every September, I look forward to hearing Scott Harrison tell me all the really incredible things that friends of charity:water have been doing over the last year. Seeing peers, families and kids get exited about making an impact in a community half way around the world is incredible – plus it doesn’t hurt when cute kids are putting on a lemonade stand for water projects either.

Conventional (or entrenched) wisdom would say that we need to make sure there’s a regular appeal letter, a response device and we need to wait 3 weeks to see how it does. Get some data returned and then look how else we can “engage” our print audience.

Can you imagine if charity:water did that?

I can’t – it would be against their DNA. They’ve never been a conventional charity, YAY!

Check out their website (it changes during this campaign- because it’s how they got started, they’re using every piece of communication to reinforce their position)

This design is so simple and extremely intentional. It’s pretty but the primary function of the webpage is quick connection and helping site visitors become participants in water projects.

But that’s them…. and you work at a more conventional charity and to mix it up too much could be disastrous.. What can we learn? Here’s a couple of tips.

Tell your story
Don’t just tell the stories of those your impacting make sure your organization doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. It’s crucial to share your impact but make sure you’re consistently sharing with your audiences about why you’re active and why you’ve chosen this work versus others.

Film, Film, Film
Hire/partner with a filmmaker – and I don’t mean the guy down the street with a camera. I mean a professional that works withclients all the time. I’ve found that the best filmmakers to collaborate with have big dreams and don’t feel that client work is their endgame. They are pushing themselves and their company to be bigger, as a result, they are always learning and a position of learning means that they’ll have a careful eye on how to make your next film project. (PS if you’re nervous about it, I’ve got a great list of companies that I enjoy working with – just email me dan@portnoymediagroup.com)

A Clear Ask
One of the new trends is to kind of ask or soft ask. (Have a response device in a mailer but don’t draw attention to it.) It’s confusing. Ask your tribe or don’t. Give them information and thank them, tell them a story or an update but when it’s time to ask don’t “shuffle your feet”. “Do or do not. There is no try?”- Yoda Don’t apologize for raising money to save someones life! When you pause or don’t ask with confidence it can communicate a lot of extra negatives. Either you’re being a good steward with your funds and you can ask with confidence for the ability to carry on this work or you’ve abused this relationship and you’re unsure if this should continue.

Adjust Across Platforms
The web needs to reflect your campaigns. This sounds simple, and it is, but too many times the website is taking a backseat to the agency running a print campaign. remember, you can get more data in 30 minutes from a facebook post (with a vibrant community) than you will on how a mailer responded. (it’s easier for charity:water – to my knowledge they don’t have a regular mailing list, just email)

Community
How are you building it around your project. You have to show the peer to peer influence – don’t just give me some stats – that’s lame. Show me how a human was impacted and made an adjustment in their life for your cause. That will help your community know that this is the kind of action you’re looking for. Read Dan and Chip Heath’s book “Switch” they call it: Highlighting the bright spots.

Ditch the Text
How much text on the charity:water homepage is above the fold? Not that much. Bold statements and a video. This short film will do more than 3 pages of text could ever do to communicate a story. Now look at your website. I run into a lot of NPO’s trying to communicate everything that they do all at the same time. That’s not story telling, it’s asking people to drink from a fire hose and how long would you hang around if that’s all you could do. It’s not connection – it’s offensive. Don’t be offensive.. but you know that already.

Congratulations to Scott Harrison and the team at charity:water for hitting another homerun. I admire your work and you’re all top shelf in my book.

Breaking this information down and getting it working for your organization is what Portnoy Media does best. So if this is feeling like a lot and you’re interested in telling your story better and developing community around your brand – give us a shout. Nonprofits, over 40% of your annual revenue is less than 120 days away!!

Office Number 626.487.9823

Tuesday’s launch of comedian Michael Jr’s “O1″ video on Funny or Die.com was a great one for us at PMG. The sketch made it all the way to the homepage as one of their trending videos.

Here’s a picture:

With nearly 1,000 views in just 48 hours since it’s launch – we’re thrilled to be producing collaborative high quality shorts. Plus, Michael is bringing the funny!

Watch the short here.. and don’t forget to vote!

Ben Stiller and Stiller Foundation launched a video 2 weeks back about an organization involving Jennifer Aniston and the idea of her being naked. This video preys on the natural behavior on the web (that many people want to see her naked) and give it the old Bait and Switch (because she’s not going to be naked) I’m sure this results in some serious clicks.

Sadly, clicks are not the name of the game when it comes to donor development and brand champions. This video is a great grab for acquisition to a whole bunch of people that probably don’t get asked to help kids in Haiti. (Which is fantastic!) Here’s a breakdown on the video launch.

What he did that was great:

Splash – Using the star power super effectively, Stiller uses his and that of Anistons for fun and with purpose. I applaud Stiller for the brash nature of what he’s doing. The status quo is not getting it done in Haiti so bucking the system is a great start.

A Talkable Video – It’s highly sharable and because of the nature of the video saw exposure on morning talk shows and lots of blog posts. So many nonprofits just communicate facts and forget that they’re crafting a narrative around their brand. Stiller knows this and doesn’t forget.

What could’ve been better:

Nonprofit Youtube Channel – There’s great use of title cards at the end. They show where you can connect to the Stiller Foundation but it would’ve been super hot to allow users to just click the annotations in the video. I’ve written about Annotations inside YouTube videos before (Thanks again for talking about it Weber Shandwick, call me!) and they put a potential donor really close to engagement in your campaigns. Any 501(c)3 can apply for one at google.com/nonprofits

What’s Next? – The question that is always asked. If I do decide to visit the site, the call to action is to support the foundation financially, also a bold move, but it looks like that’s it. There’s connection if I want to click to facebook or twitter (also good) but what about a call to join the email list? Is there an email list?? I couldn’t find one easily. What if in that email was a system of 2-4 auto-responders that explained why Ben felt so strongly to spend his money, effort and energy in this idea. That’s a great story and you’d have me hooked and I’d guess a lot more people too.

Interesting to note:

Impact – With nearly 2 Million followers on Twitter I’d expect a 2 week old video to have more impressions (call me picky). It’s a great video (for reasons mentioned above) but it tells me that the impact for cause related media is not why many of his followers are there. I’d be thinking through how to convert them from observers to participants.

PS. My favorite role of Stiller has to be Tony Perkis in Heavyweights.

A prequel to the Ocean’s franchise – Michael Jr shows what it looks like before Danny Ocean was involved.

As a continuation in his series of cinematic shorts like Blackberry, “O1″ takes it to the next level of funny.

Portnoy Media produced the video, coordinated the shoot and brought in top notch talent to make it possible.

We’re pleased to continue our partnership with Michael Jr. Check out his site here

Make sure you’re balancing your information vegetables with information dessert

From TED:

As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there’s a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a “filter bubble” and don’t get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.
Read our community Q&A with Eli (featuring 10 ways to turn off the filter bubble): http://on.ted.com/PariserQA

Last week we were highlighted by Fox Business’s Small Business Center.

“Remember how you always snuck into your older sibling’s room to borrow the coolest tapes and CDs? With that in mind, Dan Portney created The Drop in 2006, a subsidiary of Portney Media Group.”

The article, written by Katy Finneran, highlights four businesses that are using Twitter design elements for engagement.

Check out the article here

It’s very obvious to me that I’m getting old. The annual trek to Austin is something that I’m beginning to have a love/hate relationship with.

Great people and great info make the time there really worth attending and it would seem that each year the brands are getting smarter and smarter to court the influence of the tastemakers by bringing out the big guns.

This year went above and beyond. CNN, Pepsi, AOL and Samsung all went to the wall with big offerings. Overall the actual panels and speaking was great – however I thought the panels this year were lacking. During the conference I asked around to see if it was just me or a greater problem. Turns out it wasn’t me, I asked around and we all had the same feeling – many panel speakers seemed unprepared or out of sync with each other, like there was zero prep time.

Highlights and Tips:

Apps, Apps, Apps
I don’t know what the square footage of the Austin Convention Center Exhibition area was but 90% of the booths were hocking an app. It makes sense because Apple has paid out over $2 Billion to developers but none of them really stood out to me. App Developers – How are you standing out?? The secret is not by offering a drawing for an iPad2 (everyone’s doing it!)

Print is not dead
The irony that the largest techie conference uses as much paper as they do is disturbing. Big kudos to the crew at Square Space for their brilliant food truck and use of GREAT print. It was effective and drew me in. Loved it!

Print is still white noise
Making a flyer about your website, new app or product is just silly. Mediocre print is sadly not going anywhere but covered any square inch of space available around the convention center. Interestingly the only people I saw paying attention to the massive flyer covered areas were the people covering them.

Ze Frank blew my doors off!
It’s great find out that the word is bigger than I thought and I’ve got a long way to go. I find it challenging and exciting. Ze walked through several recent projects including Young Me, Now Me and The Chillout Story. I was entranced by his humanity crossed with technology storytelling. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a fan of Ze since “The Show” but to hear how these emotion laden one-offs are impacting masses and showing true connection are exquisitely beautiful.

The Mentoring Sessions in Film should be adopted by Interactive
It was invaluable to bounce ideas off of leading filmmakers and executives. I wish this was also done by the interactive side of things. Please SXSW make that happen for next year!

Ditch the Parties and hang out at the lobby bar.
This is the best piece of advice I can give you and I’m so glad I wasn’t the only one thinking it. Most nights I was trying to catch up with a fair amount of people and it was great to just hang out in one place and not have to yell over the thumping bass. The bonus was one night finding Guy Kawasaki and Pam Slim at the next table – I knew it was a good idea!

Talking to 3 different continents during Beth Kanters’ session!
A packed house for Beth’s session on engaging free agents and the best part was talking in real time with new friends in Lebanon and Egypt at the same time. It’s so important for free agents and nonprofits to team up and Beth does an amazing job of making that point. Don’t be a fortress nonprofit and get her book!

Experience SXSW as a team!
I was very fortunate to be with 3 great guys from Out:think Group. I work with these guys everyday and it was great to spend some time with these extremely talented guys without due dates hanging over our heads.

Get some Coulhaus!
I can’t talk enough about this food truck! Just ask Tiffany, we talk about them at least once a week. They’ve got the BEST ice cream sandwiches and Firefox showed how smart they were by bringing them to launch their Firefox Mobile Party. Thanks Firefox!!

Breakfast Tacos and Thunderbird Coffee
Part of my annual trip of SXSW is to see my friend Carrie Graham and hear about all the cool work she’s doing with Mosaic church. This year she took me out for some breakfast tacos and Thunderbird Coffee. The next time you’re in Austin check them out – thank me later.

That’s SXSW for 2011 for me! See you next year!

Packing up gear and heading to Austin, TX for a weekend of tech, film and general brilliance.

I’m really excited to hear from leading pros around the web about what’s coming up, what’s working, how engagement is happening and general stories of connectedness. Last year was definitely an adventure and this year will be no different. It’s a time where I get to join up with super smart guys like Tim Grahl, Joseph Hinson and Brian Morykon of Out:Think Group. Plus I get to attend great sessions like this one from Josh Kaufman.

Mashable came out with a great list of can’t miss pieces (I will probably miss some of these, however, it’s so much.)

I’m also thrilled to be part of the Twitter peanut gallery at Beth Kanters session on the networked nonprofit. See more about it here. Best part, you can take part while it’s happening just use the hashtag #netnon

Also in the same vein for Nonprofits is a special area hosted by Beaconfire consulting – this is home base for many nonprofit attendees. I’m looking forward to hanging with Eve Simon and Michael Cervino. Check out the lounge here!

This year I’m also attending film events which is going to be intense. As the web landscape continues to provide many distribution tools for indie filmmakers. This is like the OK Corral to the general internet’s Wild West.

I’ll be posting the most interesting tidbits from both types of sessions in the next several days.

Be Safe,

URM Board members Stan Gerlach and David Dow pose with Andy Bales (center) at the AFP awards

Los Angeles – The Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals held their National Philanthropy Day Awards yesterday at the Beverly Hilton.  Hosted by Leeza Gibbons, these awards highlighted the best in LA for philanthropy.

From the LA Chapter AFP Website:

National Philanthropy Day® (NPD) is one day set aside each year for the purpose of recognizing the great contribution philanthropy makes to our society and to honor individuals, businesses and support organizations that are active in the philanthropic community.  NPD was founded by Los Angeles philanthropist and attorney Doug Freeman.  The first NPD awards luncheon was held in cities across the country in 1986, after President Ronald Reagan proclaimed November 15 as National Philanthropy Day. Award-winning composer Marvin Hamlisch penned the music and lyrics for “Now, More Than Ever,” the anthem for the event.  Since then, NPD is celebrated in all fifty states and Canada.  NPD offers an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of charitable giving and the spirit that makes such generosity possible.

The Association of Fundraising Professionals Greater Los Angeles Chapter (GLAC), a nonprofit organization that provides education and support to promote ethical and effective fundraising practices, will honor the following people and organizations at the National Philanthropy Day® awards luncheon.

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT BY A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION

presented by The Jay & Rose Phillips Family Foundation
Will be awarded at the event.

Finalists
Disability Legal Rights Center
Goodwill Industries of Southern California
Runner Up – The Harmony Project
Mar Vista Family Center
Para Los Niños
Salvation Army of Southern California
Winner – Union Rescue Mission

As the winner was being announced by Matthew Zarcufsky, he sited that URM had stepped up to meet the need of the greater Los Angeles area and increased services 45% in this economy.  He also sited this summers need to raise 2.8 Million Dollars in less than 40 days to keep Hope Gardens, URM’s women and children center, from closing it’s doors. The team at URM rallied their community and raised 3.8 Million dollars in just 37 days through seven different mediums!  The outpouring from the community was so great through bloggers and people sharing info on facebook and Twitter. It even prompted Hope Gardens volunteer and  NCIS star Pauley Perrette to join Twitter and lead a rally cry for the ladies. Thanks Pauley!!

Portnoy Media Group is proud to tell the URM story in the digital medium and be part of the team that helped make that a reality. Lead by a strong team at URM and joined by direct mail legends Grizzard Communications and the brilliant filmmaking of Chronicle Project