If you work with or for a non-profit organization, no matter how small or large, you MUST have a copy of Heather Mansfield’s Mobile for Good.
I’ve been working, and serving on boards of directors, for a variety of not-for-profits companies for just over a decade. In that time I’ve heard (and seen) a lot of talk about using social media more effectively but none have done it well. One organization with a budget (and fund-raising goal) of about $1M annually uses social media a great deal, with much success in attracting attention, but very little effort has been put in to using social media for planned donations. Other, smaller organizations (where $50K annually is a big deal) have spent very little time on social media and none at all for fund-raising. All that is about to change in my little corner of the world!
Heather Mansfield writes intelligently and thoroughly about all the benefits, and all the potential pit-falls and traps of social media and basic internet protocol for non-profit organizations. Her reasoning is sound and well supported by research, and the very fact that many of us will pull out a cell phone to ‘google’ this book is probably proof enough that we in the non-profit world need to get with the program and get our organizations accessible on all modern internet-surfing devices.
I read and ARC of this book on my Kindle and I have to admit I was using the highlighting feature frequently. So much of what Mansfield says not only make sense, but she writes about it in such a way that I actually was getting excited to start making some changes.
Other books and pamphlets I’ve read about social media marketing have been rather vague. For instance, a common theme is to use a CRM (Constituent Relationship Management) System. If you’re lucky, there might be the mention of what to look for in CRM software, but Mansfield actually lists three or four of the top-rated systems, and she does this consistently throughout the book. A listing of top-ranking available options is incredibly helpful. You could easily spend an entire day just researching only one such system. And if you read the e-book on a web-accessible device, it’s very easy to be taken to the site directly from the book, not just for CRM, but for all items, devices, and software that she talks about. This is so incredibly helpful. Mansfield, and McGraw-Hill, make this super easy.
But perhaps the best part of this book is that Mansfield creates a strategy for the non-profit organization. Starting on page one and working through the book, the reader sees how this works and how this can benefit the organization and how to put it all together. It’s almost like having Mansfield on your board of directors.
Following the checklist plan in the back of the book, I’ve already put Mansfield’s strategy in motion for one small organization and I’ve ordered a hard-cover copy of the book to sit in the office, for reference to any of the staff that might work on the strategy. I’m excited and confident that it will work for us. My only complaint? I’m wishing the book were spiral bound to make it easier to highlight and to use the checklists.
Looking for a good book? Mobile For Good by Heather Mansfield is an indispensable guide to fundraising for non-profits in the 21st century. If you want to raise money for your organization, this is the book that others will be quoting from and it’s best if get familiar with it now.
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Mobile For Good: A How-To Fundraising Guide For Nonprofits
author: Heather Mansfield
publisher: McGraw-Hill
ISBN: 0071825460
hardcover, 256 pages
