Social Media Fundraising Lessons
Posted by Allison Fine on March 22, 2010
Stacy Palmer of the Chronicle of Philanthropy invited me to participate in a reporters briefing called the New Nonprofit Reality. The co-hosts are Edelman, the Chronicle and The Bridgespan Group. I will be sharing the panel with Stacy Palmer of the Chronicle and Ken Berger of Charity Navigator.
My charge is to help answer this question:
How is technology influencing public perception of nonprofits as well as fundraising efforts? (Talk about Haiti as a fundraising case study)
My thoughts:
1. Just to clarify my perspective, I will offer my thoughts on how social media can help build relationships with communities of people. I really don’t know anything about hardware or software, big boxes and cold rooms are anathema to me! But I do know something about ways that nonprofits are using the array of social media channels to connect with people, learn from them, build relationships with them to further their causes.
2. Organizations that are focused on friends first, funds second are doing better with social media. The Humane Society spent several years building their friends on MySpace and Facebook. It was only last year that they asked for funds as part of their Spay Day contest that Beth writes about it here.
3. Beware the silver bullet! Text message fundraising was a perfect vehicle for the Red Cross to use after the earthquake in Haiti. But as I wrote here, it shouldn’t be assumed that other organizations with less urgent needs can use it to the same effect. It was an intersection of tool and time that made it work so well – in addition to Wendy Harmon being a great planner and preparing for just this kind of opportunity.
4. Moore’s Law applies to fundraising with social media. Moore’s Law describes the double of computing speed every two years. In the same way, the use of social media for fundraising (not just using websites as portal for giving but using social media like Facbook to raise friends and funds) will increase geometrically. Blackbaud reported last year that online giving was still small part of the fundraising pie, but the percentage has increased significantly just in the first quarter of this year and will continue to do so. Just because it’s small now, just because people expected Causes to be a money spigot, doesn’t mean that it has leveled off. We are just beginning the climb.
5. While the volume of giving is growing online, the dollar amounts are low. Are social media channels simply online direct mail, or will donors be able and willing to give larger amounts over time? It depends largely on whether and how relationships are built with donors. It also depends on how Millennials ultimately begin to give to causes. They, like everyone else, are beginning to dip their toe into fundraising using social media, but will they eventually become bigger donors to specific institutions over time, or will they spread themselves around and give little amounts to lots of causes? We’ll have to wait and see!
So, these are just my thoughts right now about this very big and important topic. Please let me know other things I should be thinking about, thanks!
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This entry was posted on March 22, 2010 at 9:58 am and is filed under Social Media. Tagged: Charity Navigator, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Edelman, The Bridgepsan Group. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
8 Responses to “Social Media Fundraising Lessons”
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Betsy said
Congrats on the panel! I’ve been thinking a lot about this, so here are a few thoughts:
Social media is a game-changer. Reputations can be created and destroyed based on one tweet these days. I mentioned in a recent blog post that creating an online presence isn’t an option any longer — it’s a must-do for any nonprofit, foundation, or institution that wants to win “market share” in the next generation. Unfortunately, if they can’t see you, you don’t exist. You want your brand (and, yes, nonprofits need to have brands) seen as much as possible, and all eyes are on computer screens.
Re: #3: Just as in economics, while new practices come along, the standard theories often remain. In this case, the theory is: maintain significant relationships with donors and they will not only continue to be donors — they’ll give more and bring friends. The text message donation is a tactic, but using social media to keep those donors in the mix is the true silver bullet strategy.
In response to your #5, using social media as another venue for the direct mail appeal represents incredibly small thinking in my opinion. I fully believe that HUGE donations will come as a result of social media outreach and relationships built online. Social media can be used to cultivate and “moves manage” donors at all levels, and should be kept as “ask-free” as possible at most times. My advice to nonprofits: let your brand be robust and personality-filled online — don’t clutter impressions with continuous asks. Publicize what you and your donors are doing, not what you’re asking for.
Allison Fine said
This is terrific, Betsy, thanks! I love the notions of “ask and clutter free” feels so much more authentic and natural. I’ll let you know how it goes, thanks again.
A
Social Media Fundraising Lessons « My Blog said
[...] Stacy Palmer of the Chronicle of Philanthropy invited me to participate in a reporters briefing called the New Nonprofit Reality. The co-hosts are Edelman, the Chronicle and The Bridgespan Group. I will be sharing the panel with Stacy Palmer of the Chronicle and Ken Berger of Charity Navigator. My charge is to help answer this question: How [...] View full post on Non-Profit Social Media Feed [...]
Dave Tinker, CFRE said
The smaller nonprofits are the ones that seem to be winning the online donation contents, e.g. Parade/Case Fdn contest. http://www.causes.com/agc
Also, even though social media has proven to be a disruptive technology there are more opportunities on the horizon to displace current tools as Facebook and Twitter. E.g. Jumo…could that be the next big social media disruptive force?
Also, while Facebook is big in North America, that isn’t the case in other parts of the world.
Since mobile technologies are being adopted more rapidly, people will want information now on their mobile devices, netbooks, smartphones, iPads, etc. In the end it will be the group that can share their information the fastest to the most that will reach the apex of social media
Allison Fine said
Excellent, Dave, thanks. I do love the leveling effect of social media enabling small groups to compete with the big guys – kinda like March Madness, eh? Very helpful, thanks!
A
Tim Ogden said
Allison,
two thoughts:
1) Reporters often misunderstand the growth of online giving as being additive to offline giving–in fact the vast majority is people switching channels from off-line giving to on-line giving. The long term trends in American giving have not budged at all in 40 years.
2) Congruent with your #2 above, as you saw in the survey of mid-size nonprofits that we did (http://www.bit.ly/aTKRp8), a significant majority of nonprofits are coming to social media primarily to fundraise and they are not experiencing much success. Outside of the contests and unique situations (like Haiti) fundraising is only a very very small part of the social media story and only those who approach it as friends first, fundraising second seem to be making any measurable headway.
Allison Fine said
Two outstanding points, Tim, and I hope to make both with attribution to you tomorrow! Thanks.
A
Kalyani Grasso said
Thanks, Allison. Regarding #2, text messaging campaigns can be quite disruptive and therefore annoying. I’m referring to CARE’s continuous announcements during “Half the Sky,” which I saw on International Women’s Day at a local theater. I’m curious if they had much success with this campaign. You are right to caution nonprofits on using what appears to be a silver bullet.