A Look Back at 2009

I admit I'm a new year's resolution guy. It usually takes me a few weeks to put them together, but I enjoy the process. My favorite part is reviewing last year's resolutions and seeing how well I did or how well I didn't. It was with great pride that I reviewed my 2009 resolutions recently and was happy to check one off - "Launch SaveTogether."

In January 2009, SaveTogether was a twinkle in our collective eyes. We knew there was demand for this model, but we were still finalizing a business model, forming the partnerships and raising the funds we needed to build SaveTogether 1.0. By the spring, funding was in hand. By early summer, partnerships were finalized and web development was underway. In October 2009, we launched the platform and have been building momentum ever since. It has been quite a ride.

To help measure our work, we've been working on an Impact Dashboard. The dashboard represents a way to depict our theory of change in action. We've set out on this journey to provide opportunities for all Americans to save and invest in their future (and others too but for now one step at a time). To do so, we've built this platform to introduce the general public to the power of matched savings. We hope the platform inspires a broad community of supporters to take action to participate in the field. In so doing, we can expand the opportunity to more low-income savers and magnify their success. Ultimately, our aim is to catalyze our community to drive change at a policy level and demand that these opportunities are available to all.

The dashboard below is an overview of our progress in 2009. We'll be continuing to work on this in the months ahead (Special thanks to Troy Ruemping for his help). After you've had a chance to review, we are looking forward to your feedback. Please feel free to email me at dylan@savetogether.org

Our Challenge in 2010 - Converting a Country into Good Savers

I'm preparing to publish a set of metrics soon after the new year. These metrics will give you, our community, a sense of how far we've come since launching our beta this summer and our public site this October. I'm overwhelmed by our early success. Stay tuned.

One metric that you'll be hearing a lot about starting in 2010 will be our conversion rate. Roughly speaking in the internet context, conversion measures the number of casual visitors who take an intended action. In our case the most obvious action would be an online donation. We are working on a process where we can quantify this real-time and will be trying to publish this number to our community as we set this up.

But, I wanted to write a bit about conversion from a more strategic perspective. The underlying premise of SaveTogether is a strong belief in the power of saving and investing or, perhaps better termed, the importance of setting responsible savings goals and making responsible investments. Over the past several decades, Americans have been drifting away from a focus on this underlying frugal ethos. Recently, of course, in the face of the worst economic climate in the past 80 years, we have seen our savings rate creep back up. But, it remains to be seen rather our new found belief in savings will stick.

That's where SaveTogether comes in. We believe that the dedication, sacrifice, and hard-work profiled in the stories of our savers can be an inspiration for us all. We hope that each donation made on our site is a recognition of the responsibility represented through our saver's story, but also a reminder to our donors of the need to be responsible financial citizens themselves.

And that's where I loop back around to conversion. As an organization, we can only be successful if we inspire thousands of Americans to participate in this experiment. We have to find a way to make savings fun. And, as a corollary, we have to inspire people with their limited time and resources to take specific action to encourage savings in low-wage workers. It's a uphill battle. We don't have a strong history of savings in this country. But, things are changing. And, we are going to do our best to make it stick.

But, I need to ask each of you - what can we do to making savings fun?

The New Internet Browser for Good!

We have some exciting news for our supporters. Global Mojo, a new browser, is now available for download. This innovative new browser is based on Mozilla Firefox open-source technology. You can either download the standalone Global Mojo browser or you can download a Firefox Add-on.

The great news - whenever you use the browser to search or purchase items online, SaveTogether will receive 50% of the referral fees that are disbursed to Global Mojo. And, in the month of December, 100% of the referral fees will be passed to SaveTogether.

So, follow this link, download the FREE browser and make sure SaveTogether is your selected cause. Check your account every few days and watch the contributions grow day by day!

You keep doing the things you love to do on the internet, but now you are giving back to an organization like SaveTogether while you browse. As Global Mojo likes to say, that's changing the rules of the internet, for good.

Interview Request from AARP

Friends of SaveTogether,

We have an exciting opportunity to be profiled in the AARP Bulletin. This monthly publication is circulated to over 20 million readers. The reporter is interested in doing a quick interview with one of our donors to find out why they support our mission and our savers.

If you are interested in helping us, please email me: dylan@savetogether.org.

Thanks,
Dylan

What's the word? Reflections on a month of word-of-mouth marketing from BzzAgent

One of the challenges of a young organization like ours is finding the right way to spread the word about our work. And, as an organization whose success is dependent on spreading the word effectively and efficiently, this is especially true. That's why when we were given the opportunity to be a profiled non-profit with BzzAgent, a successful word-of-mouth marketing firm, we jumped on it.

After a month with BzzAgent, we received over 1900 unique visitors who completed surveys about their experience, provided specific comments, and spread the word about SaveTogether by referring us to others.

As we begin to parse through the feedback, some obvious trends are appearing that are not only relevant for us an organization, but I hope are relevant for others in the industry.

Lesson #1 - Welcome to the Save and Invest World

We've decided to use the quote from President Obama on our website because no matter where you are on the political spectrum, this moment in our history requires us all to consider how to move from a borrow and spend culture to a save and invest one. Many of the BzzAgents embraced our message of responsible saving and investing and remarked that they themselves are also reconsidering the importance of savings in their own lives. Going forward, we will be looking for new ways to create a dialogue with all of our community - savers, donors, organizations - around financial responsibility.

Lesson #2 - I'm Trying to Save Too

When you are lucky enough to have a focus group of 1900+ people, you can get a fairly strong pulse of the economy. And, while this is not news to any of you, the economy stinks. Many of the BzzAgents reported that while they typically are in a position to give, this year they are holding back and watching their budgets. We, of course, welcome the budgeting process, but we also want to find ways to encourage those who are fiscally responsible to spread the word. We've responded by dropping the minimum donation to $5 and are looking into dropping it to $1 going forward. In addition, we want to find ways that people can give beyond a donation - including adding their names to petitions and volunteering at one of our partner organizations.

Lesson #3 - Location, Location, Location

Currently, we are only working with partner organizations and their savers in California, Washington and Massachusetts. While many users wanted to give, they wanted to give to someone in their local community. To meet this demand, we are actively identifying new organizations throughout the U.S. who can post savers onto our site, but will do so judiciously in order to avoid flooding the site with too many savers.

Lesson #4 - Who Can you Trust These Days

While BzzAgents embraced the SaveTogether concept, they also want to verify the savers are real people. We address this credibility issue in our "How it Works" page and our FAQ page, but we need to improve our messaging here. We are working on informing users about our growing list of supporters and partners and also providing better content on our partner and saver selection process.

Perhaps, the biggest lesson from all of this feedback, however, is the power of user-generated suggestions. I'm very interested in creating a forum on our platform where we can continue to harness the power of feedback from our users on an ongoing basis. We believe that the best ideas will come from those of you who are engaging with this field for the first time and we're looking forward to hearing from you, wherever you are.

SaveTogether Has Gone Public

The beta stamp has been peeled off, the press release is ready, the bubbly is flowing...well, the first two are accurate.

After releasing our Beta platform in mid-July, we collected some incredible feedback from our donors and our founding partners. In early August, we formed a Product Development Committee with members of our working group and prioritized a series of updates to the site. We deployed the latest code last night and now it's available for you to enjoy.

You'll notice:

1) A revamped home page aimed at improving the message of SaveTogether. We heard from you that we need to emphasize why SaveTogether exists and why it's important to give here.

2) An updated How It Works page that more accurately describes our model

3) A "Take-Action" page that allows you to learn about matched savings legislation and become even more involved in making opportunities like this available to millions.

4) An updated set of success stories

5) And, most importantly, a new group of savers whose stories we hope inspire you to take part in our journey.

We couldn't have traveled so far without the help of our founding partners CFED, EARN, Juma Ventures, and Opportunity Fund and the incredible dedication of a group of volunteers who are always making themselves available just when we need them the most.

Thank you to each of them and thank you to all of our supporters who have already agreed to join us on this journey.

Please spread the word by inviting more of your friends...

Mixing Politics with Business?

Several months ago, President Obama made a speech where he used the following line:

"We cannot rebuild the economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity - a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest."

This quote does an incredible job at setting the context for our larger mission at SaveTogether and we've decided to add it to our re-designed home page that will be released next week (stay tuned!).

But, there is some debate on whether the quote will scare some of our users off. While the sentiment in this quote is widely held by both Republicans and Democrats, there is undoubtedly a percentage of the population (and our user base) who are not particularly fond of our president.

We want to know from you, our supporters, will the message-bearer dilute from the message?