Weekend Musings 32
Understanding Advaita Vedanta, Neon Email report and picking the best digital agency for Nonprofits
The teacher asked, “Can you locate the soul in the human body.” The students knew where the heart, the brain, and so on but the soul?
This classroom conversation is from the movie The Substitute. Streaming on Netflix drama movie is about a literature professor who takes a stance once one of his students is threatened by a drug lord.
But can we locate the soul?
Generally, there are two kinds of people one who believe that there is God outside and the remaining ones who find god inside.
The second set of people believes that there is one soul that connects and exists in all living beings, no separate god soul (Brahman). These are people who follow the Advaita Vedanta school of thought.
Earlier this week after I completed Silence of Heart by Robert Adams I was getting impatient about what should I read next. I tried reading Psychology of Money but it felt like a joke on me.
As I grow older my reading habits have changed drastically. Till last year the only spiritual book I had read was “An Autobiography of a Yogi.”
Last year I read everything about Ramana Maharshi and last week I had this interesting desire to read and understand more about Advaita Vedanta.
Hence I landed at one of the most popular bookstores in Bangalore - The Blossoms Bookstore on Church Street. I wanted to feel the books before I buy and the bookstore has a vast collection of rare books at a very decent price.
After spending more than an hour I came back with a bunch of amazing books regarding Ramakrishna Paramahansa and one little book 🙂
I am a South Indian who was born in Kharagpur and grew up in Haldia. In short, I grew up more as a Bengali than a Telegu fellow. And if you grow up in a Bengali society then every other house will have a picture of these three great souls - Ramakrishna, Sarda Devi, and the student Swami Vivekananda.
Don’t know where my quest will take but right now the desire is to read more and more about the things these great souls had discovered and left for us to discover and experience.
In a way, I feel indebted to my father who was a religious man. He would often remind me to take blessings from god. And I would joke that I have you to take my blessings. Today even though the schools of thought are different I am drawn to the same path.
In the end, whether you believe in a God outside or inside; it can only happen when you have love and belief.
Both have their merits and demerits explained beautifully by Swami Sarvapriyananda in this video where he is sharing what is Vedanta and Advaita Vedanta.
From the world of spirituality let me move to the world of materials :)
How important is the preview text in your email marketing campaign?
FYI: Preview text is a snippet of copy that briefly informs people what is in your email and why they should read it. This copy appears alongside your email’s subject line.
Here is what the Neon Email report found out:
The report has some great findings to strengthen your email marketing campaigns and lessons from the most engaging emails from 2022.
On that note do you think NGOs should ask donors to cover processing fees for their donations or just remain silent?
A test done by NextAfter states that introducing donor fees impacts the conversion and tests show that it is better to avoid such mentions:
“A big takeaway from this experiment was the negative impact that adding transactional language had in the conversion process. Donating is a largely irrational action and introducing transactional language like “fees” resulting in potential donors abandoning the process.”
However, Future Fundraising Now states that it is better to stay away from the hypothesis:
“There may be other tests with different results out there, but think twice before you put this one into action on your website. It may look like free money, but it might not work that way.”
One of the comments sums up brilliantly: “This is similar to asking the donor to pay the cost of processing a check. Who would do that?”
I would rather make it clear rather than keep the donor in darkness.
Kevin Schulman posted on LinkedIn - “Would you be more willing to help the spotted owl if a solution offered to save 10% of the habitat or 50%? Randomized experiments show it doesn't matter.”
He further notes: “Our support is mostly a function of our attitudes about the problem, not the size or scope or thoroughness or efficacy of the solution. I feel more for the spotted owl than the scaly reptile.”
The take as he lists:
-The problem matters more than the solution
-Not all problems are creating equal
-The size and scope of the problem and your solution don't matter much
-Instead, people make quick, heuristic, judgments tied to broad, global attitudes about the importance and severity of the problem
-Importance and severity judgments are malleable. Convulsing birds make it feel more severe and important to fix. Your instinct about soft and cuddly animals seeming more important is correct.
-The perceived impact is what matters, not the actual impact. Judgments on perceived impact are heavily influenced by small details - clean water is a bigger impact than bottled.
Humans are messy and for the full article check out his post on Donorvoice.
Another post that I happened to find on LinkedIn was by Beeline - How do you pick the best digital agency for Nonprofits?
The attributes defined in the blog post are worth taking a look at.
In my opinion, Nonprofits need to understand that there are primarily two key areas:
Brand building and Retention
Acquisition
Find out if the agency can do both since all of them are important to growing consistently.
Sometimes NGOs are not able to fundraise because people are not aware of the problem. So in such case brand building becomes important.
Now if the agency does both then it will be expensive so please check your budget.
One workaround that can work when you don’t have very high budgets: hire an agency that will do the creatives for brand building and awareness campaigns. Simultaneously find a freelancer who can do donor acquisition digitally.
Finally, it all boils down to budget 🙂
Meanwhile Google Drops Mobile-Friendly, Page Speed, Secure Sites & Page Experience As Retired Ranking Systems. Discussions are happening on Twitter about this move while Google said it was dropping page experience where it is more of a concept of sorts rather than an actual ranking system.
Regardless, make sure that your donation page is mobile-friendly and loads fast. Humans these days are restless.
That’s all for now. Have a good weekend.
P.S. Last week I also shared my thoughts on my stay in Tiruvannamalai, knowing Ramana Maharshi, and returning back to find peace in Bangalore - 10 months of being with Arunachala.