Source: Phault via Flickr

I’ll be taking a break from blogging for the rest of the year. During the downtime, I’ll be moving this blog to a new hosting company, which runs its servers on 100% wind power. There may be a few days when the site is completely down, but have no fear. I’ll be back in action in January of 2009!

Best wishes to you and your families during the holiday season. I’m looking forward to resuming this discussion after the New Year.

Source: USA Today

The prospect of social approval — and disapproval — is far more motivating to most people than factual information. And according to a recent story in USA Today, Staten Island authorities believe that the ad above, which shames convicted shoplifters, will more effectively deter in-store thievery than a more traditional warning, like the one below:

Source: Veganstraightedge via Flickr

Assuming the Staten Islanders are correct, could you mimick this approach? Create an billboard shaming the five biggest polluters in your area? As measured by the amount of polluted runoff from their property?

How else could you incorporate the prospect of social disapproval into your efforts to deter undesirable behaviors?

Many of you are worried about the economy and what it means for your budgets and fundraising over the next few years. I’m sure times will be tough overall, but there are some bright spots — and one of them is that charitable giving over the Internet is holding up pretty well. That’s according to a recent memo from M&R Strategic Services, a big DC firm that helps a variety of good causes with their online campaigning.

A couple of things worth thinking about:

• Although people who give to charities over the Internet tend to be younger and more educated than charitable donors as a whole, they still respond more generously to clear and compelling requests than to a bunch of scientific and policy shoptalk. Try using the Water Words That Work method when you send your next appeal.
• Online fundraising from these individuals is not a quick fix for your financial woes — these kinds of fundraising programs take a while to build up steam and begin producing serious revenue.

Quite rightly, the authors note it’s still too early to make any definitive conclusions about how the 2008 giving season will go down — but the important takeaway message is to keep trying and not to use the economy as an excuse to give up.

Click here for the memo on the state of online fundraising today.

P.S. If you are interested in online fundraising, but not sure where to begin, get in touch. I have lots of experience in that area and I expect to be spending a lot more time on this over the next couple of years.

Our outgoing vice president, Dick Cheney, once famously remarked:

…conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy…

Mr. Cheney’s remarks pissed some people off, but research suggests that he was using the term “conservation” the way that most everyday citizens understand it: referring to personal behaviors like turning off lights, turning off the water while brushing teeth, carpooling, cutting back on lawn watering, etc…

Whether referring to energy or water, there is no term that Americans generally understand to mean comprehensive social programs and policies to encourage efficiency and reduce waste. In a 2001 study conducted for the League of Conservation Voters, researchers reported:

While voters think of conservation efforts as a personal endeavor, thinking about improving efficiency on a large scale does not readily occur to them.

I mention this now, because down in drought-stricken Florida, leaders from government, agriculture, and nonprofit organizations have negotiated such a large scale water efficiency plan, and they are gearing up to sell it to the governor, state legislature, and voting citizens.

So here’s the conundrum:

• If the authors call their plan a “water conservation plan,” many Florida voters will have an incomplete understanding of what that means — they won’t recognize that industry and agriculture are supposed to do their part. They’ll think the burden is on individual families.
• If the authors call the plan a “water efficiency plan,” some voters just won’t have any idea what it refers to.
• If the authors call the plan a “comprehensive drought response plan,” many voters will think it’s temporary.

There don’t seem to be any great options here. Anybody got a suggestion on what the best one might be?