Dorothy could barely believe her ears. I'd interviewed her just the day before, and now our small team had returned to her home in rural Zambia with pages of prayers and encouragement from people across the United States. People she would never meet mentioned Dorothy and her children by name and referenced the specific fears and hopes she'd expressed during the interview.
Dorothy's son, Samson, was mentioned often as we'd posted a picture of him joyfully proclaiming his pride in how he managed the family's goats. He'd been dubbed "The Goat Whisperer.”
As I handed her the pages, Dorothy said, “I will hang these on my wall and look at them every day as a reminder of the blessings I’ve received from the United States.”
Dorothy, her arms and back scarred from pulling her kids from a burning home as it collapsed around them, and Samson, her 12-year-old goat whisperer, were amazed that people in the U.S. knew their story and cared enough to respond. They'd already received life-changing donations of goats and agricultural help, but this was a very special gift for two people who had lived very hard lives, plagued with life-threatening malaria and a crippling lack of food.
The people who had posted those prayers got to share in this joy as they heard their words being read to Dorothy and saw her reaction via video just a couple of days later. It was a moving example that would play out again and again over the course of a month-long voyage.
THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS EXPERIMENT
It was 2009, and we’d embarked on a social media experiment called the "Spirit of Christmas Tour" for World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization. The month-long journey around the world allowed for an unprecedented depth of interaction between thousands of donors and the people we were helping in several different countries, including Dorothy and Samson.
Our goal was to go beyond simply telling stories to providing an emotional experience for donors. Not only could donors see the impact of donations, they could ask questions and participate in the unfolding story. It wasn't easy. In fact, it was exhausting, but the effort appeared to pay off, correlating with a 24% increase in retention rate during a period of enormous economic crisis.
Six years later, we're still just in the beginning phases of seeing how the trends that enabled the Tour will transform the work of nonprofits.
THE TRUST AND EMPATHY BARRIERS
The Tour was our response to three key emerging trends: the democratization of media creation; the rapid, global spread of communications technology; and the rise of social media.
This emerging landscape provided an opportunity to confront two enormous barriers for the humanitarian sector: the lack of trust in nonprofits, and the difficulty establishing empathy for people who live in different circumstances, often oceans away.
Most organizations saw these trends as a call to be "social" and “interactive" with a primary goal of acquiring more donors. Technology without the right intention and artistry serves no real purpose, however.
Driven by short-term metrics, the result can often be a flood of stories, "content," and trendy gimmicks that do little to diminish the lingering doubt many donors have about what’s being done with their donation dollars or establish a true sense of connection to the people being served.
Focusing on creating intimacy rather than “being social” isn’t just a semantic difference; it is critical in terms of strategic intent and leads to very different decisions. We could have returned home, as usual, to create and post our stories about Dorothy, Samson, and the rest but what would we have lost?
Building trust and empathy takes much more than just churning out stories and content. It requires reorienting the core product experience around creating intimacy.
The experience we created with the Tour did more to inspire donors than any typical series of stories or reports ever could. By using social media as a way to connect donors and recipients, rather than as just a channel for delivering content, the emotional impact of our stories was amplified a thousand-fold.
It’s hard work that necessitates a passion for the needs of donors, and a rare combination of analysis and artistry. It can also lead to enormous growth.
THE INTIMACY ERA
We saw the changing technology landscape as enabling a new era in which the greatest value is created by those who create intimacy between people, organizations, and the common purpose they are pursuing. In the context of nonprofits, the donor is at the center of those relationships, with the primary relationship being between the donor and recipient.
The Tour was our way of exploring these concepts, with an explicit focus on retention and long-term donor value.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
The guiding principles we established in 2009 still hold true today:
PEOPLE: Nonprofits should help the recipients' tell their stories, not the other way around. Make the recipients the heroes and define them by their passions, dreams, and talents rather than their need. The poor are too often reduced to abstractions; abstraction is the enemy of empathy.
PURPOSE: Show, don’t tell how donations serve the purpose or cause, and do so in as close to real-time as possible. Statistics are necessary but emotions drive decisions and allowing donors to hear how they've made an impact directly from recipients is a game changer. It makes donors part of someone else’s story.
ORGANIZATION: The Internet age allowed any organization to appear large; the Intimacy Era will require even the largest organizations to learn to feel small. Sign all communications, use a personal voice whenever possible and emphasize transparency in all phases.
The economist Jeffery Sachs has said that this is the first time in history we have the means to end extreme poverty. A radical shift in intimacy, leading to trust, could bring millions of people into partnership to get that done. Imagine what we could see in our lifetime if that were true.
RIPE FOR DISRUPTION
In other parts of their lives, donors are experiencing an increase in intimacy through brands like Airbnb, Uber, Kickstarter, Snapchat, and Periscope. Rather than seeking incremental gains by using technology to supplement the status quo, each of these companies has taken the risk of reimagining the prevailing model.
Meanwhile, the core experience with most nonprofits is fundamentally the same as it was ten years ago. People have an innate, powerful drive to help others that the current generation of nonprofits are largely failing to enable.
Our industry is ripe for disruption in much the same way as communications, lodging, transportation and even politics are being disrupted now. Organizations will innovate or find themselves on the sideline as the next generation of nonprofits engages with a newly energized universe of donors to literally change the world.
A WORLD-CHANGING OPPORTUNITY
Having intimacy as our North Star implies a long-term view requiring trust and empathy, nurtured by transparency, immediacy, and authenticity. It’s a strategy that is based on deep relationships that result in loyalty. And in this era, loyal, impassioned donors are the engine of acquisition and growth.
The Intimacy Era brings an extraordinary opportunity for innovative, risk-taking, nonprofits to inspire and nourish people in world-changing ways. It will take a great deal of experimentation and a new set of skills.
That’s why I founded MOYO. I’ve had a glimpse of the amazing connection created when donors and people like Dorothy and Samson are brought into relationship in creative ways. I can't think of a more exciting challenge than helping to unleash the full potential of all the other "goat whisperers" of the world and furthering the ideal that we are better defined by what we share than what we have.
Devin Hermanson, Founder, MOYO Media Lab