This week, Peter Wrinch at Pivot Legal published a post titled 'NationBuilder changed everything' on the Strategic Pivot blog. I'd like to share his story with you.

A couple of years ago, Peter was looking for a technology solution to connect his supporter database with his email list. He scoped out a solution from SalesForce that was prohibitively expensive. When he first signed up for NationBuilder, he thought it was the answer to this one problem and didn't realize how much it would help his nonprofit's entire operations.

Peter highlighted three areas that changed dramatically:

1. Getting to know his supporters

NationBuilder provides a one-stop solution for website, email, social media, and donations. NationBuilder does not connect your website and database – it is your website and database...

All of this together has provided a much fuller picture of the Pivot audience allowing us to judge the effectiveness of our communications and fundraising and rework them when necessary. 

2. Built to be social and data driven

When you need to manage many contacts, it's important to keep track of when follow-up communications are needed. NationBuilder's one-of-a-kind follow-up system helps you move your supporters up the engagement ladder. In this video from NationBuilder Live, Adriel explains how to use this powerful tool. 

Yesterday on NationBuilder Live Adriel Hampton highlighted the work of NationBuilder architect PowerThru Consulting. In this clip, Adriel talks about how PowerThru helps its clients build their supporter base using e-mail advocacy and analytics. 

Check out our Q&A with Mike Nellis of PowerThru below. 

So that your people know what's going on within your network, it's important to communicate with them regularly. From tweets to text blasts to blog updates and email blasts, you'll want to develop a steady stream of communication with your prospects and supporters. And let's not forget to mention, you can also enhance the performance of your email blasts by paying attention to your statistics.

In the first video from NationBuilder Live, VP of Community Adriel Hampton walks you through your email statistics and explains how keeping track will help ensure your emails get delivered.  

You can also read more about what your email stats mean by going here.

When you're just starting your nation, creating your website is a great way to begin reaching your prospects and supporters. In this video from NationBuilder Live, VP of Community Adriel Hampton explains how to switch between public themes to change the look and feel of your website with a click of a button.

We have additional information on using public themes for you here. 

Adriel also discussed setting up a blog and adding content to a post including how to insert images which you can view below. 

This post was written by Steven Miles, Coordinator of Comprehensive Campaigns for United Voice Queensland. It was originally published on the blog of cStreet Campaigns, a NationBuilder architect and expert, who kindly let us repost it here. 

Historic Childcare campaign won by combining digital & field organizing

The key to organizing supporters in your nation is being able to slice and dice them into useful categories that you can target with specific messages and calls to action. Want to send a text blast to all the volunteers who participated in your last event? Or how about emailing your Twitter followers to ask them to spread the word about your upcoming fundraising drive? 

In these two videos, C.J. from the NationBuilder Community Team walks you through what you need to know about tags, filters and and advanced search to organize your outreach like a rockstar. 

Want to learn more? Check out our how to's on organizing people with tags and dynamic filters.

As soon as people figured out the internet could be used to engage people in a cause, backlash began against this new form of activism. Actions like signing an online petition, sharing a story on Facebook, promoting a cause on Twitter, or liking a video on YouTube have all been rolled up in one pejorative term: slactivism. It was the word of the day on Urban Dictionary five years ago and remains a common response to online activism.

Even if you don’t think online activism is completely worthless, you may question its value in getting people more involved in your organization or cause. A new study from Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication and Waggener Edstrom Worldwide convinced me to remove the term slactivist from my vocabulary.

The report entitled “Digital Persuasion: How Social Media Motivates Action and Drives Support for Causes,” (pdf) gives a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between activism and social media. The people surveyed were active cause supporters and active social media participants - definitely a subset of the general population, but with plenty of variety in the ways these two criteria intersect.

This graphic from the report reveals that after engaging in a cause via social media, people were likely to take a deeper, more valuable action including donating money (59%), volunteering their time (53%), and donating clothing or food (52%).Learn how to implement the insights of the report in your nation.

On this Monday, April 1st we offer a handy new feature: The Favicon! The name itself offers quite a branding fashion statement, and indeed it is. 

So what is a Favicon?

Favicons are used to improve user experience and tab-navigation in your web browser. Those little 16x16 pixel icons are the images that appear next to the site name in tabbed browsing and in bookmarks.

Here's a picture:

A quick internet history lesson for you: "Favicon" combines the words "favorite" and "icon", and was first introduced by Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 in 1999. Originally, they were used to give a rough estimate of website traffic simply by counting the number of vistors who bookmarked a particular webpage. Today they're used for more aesthetic purposes.  

I want one now! How do I add a Favicon to my NationBuilder site?

Greetings folks of the NationBuilder blog! Julie Niemi here. I am an organizer with the NationBuilder Community team and I will be roaming the Minneapolis metro area from April 10-13 for the NTEN Conference. Look for me. I will be the stylish gal you see to the right. 

Do you like art? Politics? Nonprofits? Technology? I would love to keep busy at the conference by meeting friends, fans, supporters, and general curiosos who want to chat and learn more about what's going at NationBuilder and how we can help connect your folks together.

Set up a time to meet by emailing me at jniemi@nationbuilder.com or come by the happy hour I am hosting with our friends at Causes:

WHEN

Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 7pm - 9pm

WHERE

Gluek's Restaurant & Bar 16 N 6th St. Minneapolis, MN 55403

RSVP here or by texting NTENHH to 323-739-4978.

Hope to connect with you all at NTEN!

On NationBuilder Live we regularly discuss blog posts and articles that can help you be a more effective nation builder. On yesterday's show we talked about three articles on social media strategy.

Stephen Sheperd from iMediaConnection discussed the growth of image use in social media and the need to develop strategies for taking part in this trend.

e.politics shared results from a survey about social media's effect on the 2012 election (available on Slideshare and included after the flip).

I personally found Jay Baer's article explaining a case study of social media use by a local politician particularly insightful. You can spend all of your time chasing numbers or you can use online tools to connect with people on a human level. My preference is definitely the latter. The best part is that you don't have to be a political candidate to gain insight from this case study.

Here are my suggestions on how to integrate the advice of these experts into your work and your nation: 

Last week on NationBuilder Live, VP of Community Adriel Hampton showed how to run a digital field campaign using NationBuilder. Here are a couple videos from that session on two tools offered with our Political Edition that every campaign should be using to manage their voter outreach - turf cutting and precinct assignments. 

Greenpeace India activist, Brikesh Singh

I’ve spoken to a lot of nonprofit organizers recently, and they’ve all had a similar complaint: it’s incredibly overwhelming to navigate the complex web of social media platforms and communication tools that exist today. You have to reach supporters and attract new ones, so community builders have to constantly juggle various software tools to keep up with important communication channels – social media, email, mobile text messaging, as well as good old face-to-face interaction.

Causes can quickly become about technology instead of passionate people and communities working for change.

There are scores of tools out there for managing different outreach methods – HootSuite for social media, MailChimp for email blasting, Eventbrite for events. But trying to manage a set of disparate tools and crafting separate strategies for each channel is time consuming and doesn’t necessarily produce more donations or increase supporter engagement.

Some nonprofits are unifying their outreach into strategic multichannel campaigns that focus intentionally on channels that make sense for the goals of each individual campaign. This approach allows you to focus on the people you’re trying to engage instead of putting all your energy into managing the technology you’re using to reach them.

Greenpeace India's Junglistan campaign is a great example. 

Your website is the gateway to your nation. One of the keys to using NationBuilder effectively is creating great looking websites that help you find and engage new supporters. That's why we make sure to cover different website related topics every week on NationBuilder Live, our daily webcast program. 

Here are a few clips from the show about how to optimize your site for SEO and social sharing, resize photos, and set up content sliders on your home page. 

We've just updated our support home page at NationBuilder.com, making it easier to find our most popular how-to content and to review important questions and answers.

The new support hub highlights the most popular how-to guides, including website topics and detailed instructions on data imports. The questions section features the most-searched-for FAQs, and you can click through to review top questions and answers, and to submit new questions. You can also answer others' questions, and our front-line team will mark the official answers.

• People - questions about data, workflow and public profiles

• Websites - questions on how to set up pages, use custom themes and the like

• Communications - email, social media and blast texting tips and tricks

• Finances - detailed answers on how to manage donations and invoices

• Settings - billing, setup and other general questions

Additionally, when you're logged into the support section of NationBuilder, customers can access contact information for their organizer in the lower left sidebar.

We hope you find the new support pages helpful!