Just because I'm egotistical
razz I'm going to summarise what I've written in Reverend Smooth's site feedback thread - well, and because I happen to think it's relevant.
Feel free to skip if you find it TLDR.
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Great post Rev, as always.
heart
I actually have many similar thoughts, although I would like to make a couple of extra comments.
Speaking from my own perspective, I work in a fundraising area for a large charity organisation. We work very hard to steward our donor and potential donor base and ensure gifts are thanked appropriately. Of course, we have to be very donor-centred. And honestly, it pains me to see how Gaia is just...doing it wrong.
I know Gaia is a company and comes from a different psychological perspective. However based on its past, I feel like there are a lot of similarities in how the users regard their support of Gaia and how donors regard their support of our organisation. Even when I buy from the cash shop, in some corner of my mind I know I am buying not just because I want a virtual item, but because I am supporting Gaia.
Fundraising 101:
1) Transparency is KING. We send our donors, especially major donors, an annual review of how and where their money was spent every year. Gaia is so far from doing this, it is not even funny. In fact, I think they purposely make any inspection of their financial affairs somewhat opaque.
2) Regular communication. We need to communicate with our donors and supporters in as personalised a fashion as possible to make them feel like valued members of our community. The idea is not to beat them over the head asking them for money all the time, it is to update them on what we are doing and keep them involved so that when we DO ask for a gift, they are primed and ready to give. Recently I feel that the only updates I am getting are sponsor and cash shop updates. If you ask all the time, not only will people get donor fatigue and stop reading/giving, but they may leave entirely. Where is my community involvement?
3) Thank every gift in a timely manner, and personally if possible. This is never going to happen on Gaia, but I really think that it couldn't hurt for some acknowledgement to be made when a large amount of money is spent. Can you imagine the thrill of a user who got a personal 'thank you for supporting Gaia, people like you make such a difference' PM from Lanzer or an admin? I know people who spend $100-200+ every month on here. Nowadays I often feel that with Gaia's corporate identity, I'm just throwing good money after bad, because my contributions are a drop in the ocean. I hear all the time how Gaia is going broke and needs money, money, money, but where is the thank you for those of us who are contributing, aside from Rina's trite and boring auto-PM? Even if we are buying 'monthly collectibles', they are pixels and it does not mean that we have to feel that the item is all that's in it.
4) Regular events - people who feel part of a community will encourage each other to participate and give back, especially if you hold events where they are starved for them. This is one reason why Easter was a public relations disaster for Gaia. On that subject, real life events are important too.
5) If you make a mistake, for god's sake don't hide it, and apologise as soon as possible. A donor may not like it that you accidentally published their 'anonymous' donation somewhere, but they will be one hell of a lot more pissed if you're not the one to tell them about it. And also on this subject - learn from your mistakes. If you make a mistake once, you will probably be forgiven. If you make a mistake twice, you will probably be roasted alive.
6) Your constituency may be large, but it is also limited. Good marketing is great, but if you want to keep people year after year, you value the donors you have.
The longer people are with you, the larger the gifts they will make. Not only will those donors who are alienated leave, but they will turn other people in their circles against you.
7) Ask your donors what they want, and if possible, act on it. Not only is asking for their opinions a good cultivation exercise because people will be flattered that you are listening, but you will learn from it and be able to make your program even better. Gaia does this sometimes, but not often enough and not usually in the right areas.
That's all I'm going to mention for now, but really - Gaia needs to have a bit of a rethink. It's not all applicable, but I honestly think some of it is.
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Exiled Doomsayer
I'd say the longer term users have, and again pardon the slight elitism (since I'm really not, but the point really can't stand without a little bit of "Well, they were here longer so their opinion matters more) have more say. Because again, as previously posted, the longer term users are the one's who've been with Gaia through thick and thin, who've wanted nothing more than to see the site we know and love grow and evolve.
So wouldn't it be those users, who Gaia would want to keep? I'd think so.
Just to add on to this, in case I didn't make it clear in my first post, this not just makes good sense, it makes good
business sense. In fundraising, if you want a big donor, you keep a small donor. If you have a positive relationship with people over a long time, and you can keep them giving every year, then when the time comes for you to ask for a really big donation, they will probably be there for you. Of course, you do get some super rich people who you can just approach initially and they will give you a million bucks (and I'm not exaggerating that amount), but that takes very targeted homework and is a lot more time consuming than keeping a number of small donors happy. When I first joined Gaia I started donating $2.50 a month. Next month I donated $5. A year later I was giving $10. Two years later I was giving $20. Nowadays I give between $30 and $50 every month. Why am I giving more? Yes, there is more content to buy, but I am also giving more because I am comfortable with giving, and I have got used to giving every month. My relationship with Gaia has taken over 4 years to build up, and in the future perhaps I will give even more. Gaia has hundreds or thousands of people just like me, and if they destroy those relationships by not listening or providing community-building activities, they will not be easy to rebuild and Gaia will have wasted a hell of a lot of time and money. Even if Gaia gets most of its money through sponsorship, they would be fools to alienate their base and sacrifice not just the money now, but whatever money their donors would have given for years in the future.
Potentially, I can bully a donor into giving more than he or she is comfortable with, even long term. I can do this by asking all the time, bothering them all the time, or putting pressure on them to give more and more. But do you know what happens then? I have squandered my good relationship with that person, and they will make me pay for that. Eventually they will resent my attitude of squeezing them and they will leave, and I will have lost years and years worth of support, and potentially that of their friends as well. This is especially likely when a donor is not enjoying the community or being treated as a respected individual.
On a related subject, I think that the announcement feature on Gaia is being seriously misused in a quest to satisfy sponsors and earn money, failing to realise what a precious communication tool it is. If there aren't real updates mixed in amongst the money-making, people are going to switch off. I already don't bother to complete a lot of the quests that are announced when I used to do so religiously, even when free items are involved.
In a similar vein, in my opinion, Gaia releases too many cash shop items in too many updates, and this donor fatigue is probably going to get more and more noticeable over the next year or so. Eventually people are going to have enough. They will realise they don't have time to wear the items they do have as their inventories build up, and the warm, fuzzy feeling of supporting the site and community is gone. They will notice that what they valued as the free part of Gaia is no longer being prioritised, and they will look for other ways to fill the empty hole where the interest and community once was. They will probably find another site to do that.
There may be one hundred users who will join to take that user's place, but they will likely take at least six months and more likely two years to become lucrative donors. Not to mention they may also notice the lack of community and many will leave before they settle in and start to give back.
In my experience, the vast majority of Gaia's committed users and donors are relatively easily satisfied. They want communication, they want regular events (some prioritise plot, some do not), and they want free items. They ALSO want good moderation - or customer service, in other words. Of those, lately they have not been getting the first, second or fourth, and the third is dubious. With 100 plus staff, I cannot fathom how Gaia cannot provide these simple things, with the exception of moderation which is always a tricky subject with volunteers. There should be at least one person whose specific job it is to surf around and listen to what Gaians are saying. Preferably, they should not be someone who is going to get up in arms or take offence, but rather sift through the chaff to get to the good stuff, and respond immediately with an announcement if people are going crazy a la the Easter event. If Gaia doesn't want to spend money to do this, they can start up a focus group of Gaian users (say, 100 or less) who will let the admins know what people are saying. Periodically, people should be rotated (especially inactive people - make this clear from the beginning so people don't get upset and bitchy upon rotation) and replaced with newer users to keep the group from stagnating or harping on the same issues. The focus group should be drawn from a number of sources, not just the GCD and SF. You need fishers, game players, exchangers, vendors, and so on.
...Ack, this turned into another mammoth, rambly post. xD
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Quixotic Faye
Arrowchan's post struck a chord with me, because I, too, work for a pretty big foundation, and the comparison she makes really does reflect both how a foundation and Gaia functions. We are always mindful of our donors, and we treat them with the utmost honesty and respect, because without them, the foundation would collapse. We are always encouraging feedback, taking surveys, taking calls, listening to what they have to say and incorporating the best ideas in order to achieve a high satisfaction level. We act like everyone is a million dollar donor. Gaia isn't a foundation, but it does function similar to one, and while Gaia does have a lot of communication with its users, it's painfully clear that it's not enough. I know that a lot of Gaians have been abusive toward the staff, and that could be a result of feeling like we're not getting enough information in a timely manner. It's not an excuse, but it is frustrating. If a regular foundation were to keep its donors in the dark about any major changes that are to occur, there would be severe repercussions.
It speaks volumes when the staff doesn't communicate information to the users; it speaks even more when it seems that the staff doesn't even manage to communicate to each other.
Also, the comparison of constant Cash Shop updates to being constantly asked for money is spot-on. I get tons of calls from people who are continually frustrated by the foundation's constant mail solicitations when they have already given money. It's pretty awful.
Edit: Suddenly, I remembered - didn't Cindy Dinovinh used to do an update on Gaia every week about what was going on? When was the last time that happened?
Thanks for this post - it's nice to get confirmation from others in the same business as I am that I'm not off track in my comparisons.
smile I suppose fundamentally I feel that Gaia has moved from being user or donor-focused to being money-focused, and while I can understand it in some ways, it's harder and harder for those of us who were involved in the original model to not feel it grate. In my opinion Gaia
needs to work out a successful user-focused/money-focused hybrid model if it is going to keep its older users and attract newer users to its forums. And the very simplest way to do this is to continue to provide us, the users with what we have grown to expect (events, plot, information, communication), and combining that with asking for money in an obvious (but overall restrained) way. I also think they need to prioritise moderator recruitment and retention rates, because it seems like the mod situation is getting to the point where it is very difficult to find a mod listed as being online nowadays, and this affects community confidence and forum cleanliness.
Surely, if Gaia gets a large proportion of its money through sponsorships, it does not need to be doing cash shop updates every week, and similarly if much of its profit comes through cash shop items, surely it does not need to cultivate sponsorships all the time. It needs to get to a balance where people are not being approached all the time for money while not getting much in the way of content. And I don't see how anyone can possibly argue that the above four things can't be provided by Gaia at minimum cost and trouble given that it was possible back when Gaia was a hobby site based in someone's basement with one tenth of the manpower. Clearly the problem is with priorities, not with manpower.
If Gaia is going into debt as has been claimed, I, as a long term supporter and donor, want to know the reasons why. Who decided that it was better for Gaia to invest more money than they had in a battle system add on and other fairly unnecessary gadgets when clearly (to me anyway) their talent is not in game making, it is in creating a dynamic, thriving forum community and convincing people to give money to support it? And who decided to let the forum community degenerate due to a dearth of mods and community-building events in favour of a battle system that hasn't even been released yet? Perhaps that is a vast oversimplification, but I would like to see some more information on this. Obviously, if it was a choice between Gaia dying and being involved with investment, I would choose the investment any day. But if not, I don't see why we couldn't have moved a lot more slowly on this.
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shulie
I agree with everything but I doubt Gaia will improve. I've given up on it.
I haven't given up on Gaia yet. It may make me cranky now and again, but I still believe that the majority of people who are in power at Gaia are good people who care about their users, but are confused as to the best way to move forward and what their users really want. I can really sympathise with the pressure they must be under to make money for their investors. I also think though, that there are probably some people who don't know Gaia on the ground level but know - or think they know - how to make money and are determined that their way is right. I just want to make a plea to all of those wonderful admins and devs out there who DO care and DO prioritise the community to realise that making the community happy may cost some money in the short run, but in the long run it makes Gaia stronger, better, and hopefully more lucrative financially too. I'm sure they have had the market models thrown at them constantly - I want to make them aware of the fundraising model, where events and communication are prioritised, but people still make a lot of money through appealing to good causes and strong communities. I believe it is possible to have the vast majority of the things we love about Gaia and still have a strong financial bottom line.
This site has meant so much to me and if there's anything I can do to stop it, I'm not going to let what is wonderful about it die. I don't think Lanzer or the other staff members will either.
