Tuesday through Thursday this week, I had the pleasure of attending the FUSE Conference by Salsa Labs in the Washington DC area.
A word that sticks out more than any other from the conference is ‘integration.’ Whether it’s integrating your software solutions together (if your API will allow) or integrating your social media campaign with your email campaign and even the dark-never-talked-about-in-the-digital-world, direct mail campaigns, integration makes for a cohesive message (and even, believe it or not, less work for you). What helps convey your message better than a cohesive message? Integrating your strategy and your technology is also imperative. It will not only help your nonprofit harness effective year-round engagement, but it can help you work smarter, not harder… or as one of our consultants will call it ‘smart lazy.’
Between the various sessions that gave great tips and tricks on social media, peer-to-peer fundraising know how, insights into mobile and even new user ‘how to’ sessions on Salsa’s software, the word integration was glaringly obvious. If you want to use a fun and cute analogy, puzzle pieces look pretty random when they’re spread across the table, but once you connect them together they create a beautiful picture. Take advice from the sage-like past-time, the puzzle, and integrate and communicate everything you can!