How to create charity evangelists

Guy Kawasaki, the evangelist of customer evangelism, often gets asked, "How can I get people to evangelize my product?" He has a great answer on his blog: Guy’s Golden Touch:

The key to evangelism is a great product. It is easy, almost unavoidable, to catalyze evangelism for a great product. It is hard, almost impossible, to catalyze evangelism for crap. (Evangelism, after all, comes from the Greek word for "bringing the good news," not "the crappy news.")

In other words, you can't create evangelists. You just have to have a great "product." (Read Guy's post for his definition of a great product.)

What's a great nonprofit product? You're going to have to come up with that yourself. But I bet it has these characteristics:

1. It's different from others.
   
2. It's highly emotional.
   
3. It allows donors to make a big impact with their giving.
   
4. It puts the donors close to the action.
   
5. It empowers donors in exciting new ways.
   

Comments

[Marc A. Pitman]

Hi Jeff,

I'm a bit slow on the uptake of this one...more than 2 years slow!

I agree the product is key.

But I do believe there things we can do to help create evangelists.

There are 100,000's of nonprofits doing excellent work. But "just hoping" donors will evangelize is almost as effective as hoping they'll make a donation without being asked.

Even many for-profit companies with great products nurture and grow their evangelists. (I just added "many" because I remembered how inept Tivo was at handling their evangelists!)

So, while nonprofits had better be doing their mission exceptionally well, helping create evangelists isn't necessarily a bad idea!

(Full disclosure: I have a training program called Creating Donor Evangelists.)