Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media VFRI Conference — Charlottesville, VA 2009 | Katie Rucker | Page #1 Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media to Increase Your Organization’s Overall Visibility and Fundraising Judy Nash Account Executive, eTapestry Division of Blackbaud
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Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
1. Learn from your content(Start with Google Analytics to see how many unique visitors you have, how they found you, what they viewed, where they
stayed the longest, and what content produced actions.)
2. Make your content easy to consume(Always offer RSS feeds in addition to various subscribe options. Make sure they are easy to find and use.)
3. Make your content ever changing
(Be brave enough to blog, show responses, share viewpoints, and utilize forums. New information needs to be added daily or weekly by you and your community. Why do you think millions go to Facebook or Twitter by the minute.)
4. Make your site easy to find(Every NPO and those serving NPO’s should have a social web presence. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and
Flickr are your outposts linking back to the web site hub!)
Keys to Building a Successful Web Site
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
What is Social Media??Social media is online content created by people using
highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. Social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content; it's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologues (one to many) into dialogues (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers.
Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal, political and business use.
Source: Wikipedia, 2009.
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
– A FREE, online social networking site that connects people through online communities
Facebook started out as a service for university students but now almost one third of its global audience is aged 35-49 years of age and almost one quarter is over 50 years old.
Non profits can use Facebook to: – Connect
• With supporters• With other organizations
– Brand• Build trust through exposure
– Share your story • Pictures• Stories• Photos, etc.
Facebook Pages Cont… Facebook Cause Page=Online Donation Tool (application) on FB Also a Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Page since anyone can start/create a cause
TIPS:
Brand & Link to your Page
Provide Clear FR Goals
Give Supporters Updates on your Progress
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
– The Nature Conservency’s “Lil Green Patch” Case Study• Built a cause page on FB to attract users to support the Adopt an Acre
program to conserve rainforests in Costa Rica & fight global warming• 20K new cause members and $33K in support since Feb 2008
These results will most likely NOT be the case for your organization…– HOWEVER, creating an online, Facebook presence will not hurt – Creating a group of fans/people that advocate for your cause WILL
increase your giving and support POST YOUR ONLINE GIVING PAGE LINK ANYWHERE YOU CAN ON FACEBOOK Have an intern or student volunteer create these pages for you—they
typically have the most knowledge and insight into what will sell to their generation of internet users!
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
TWITTER—Stupid or Worth a Second Look? What is Twitter??
– Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
– Compete.com numbers show that roughly 2.5 million people visit Twitter.com each month. Just as a comparison, Facebook receives about 41 million unique visitors per month.
– Often times referred to as a “micro-blog” (140 characters or less) where entries are “TWEETS”
– A service that is QUICKLY gaining momentum—mentioned in 2 commercials I saw over the weekend!
– But NTEN (the Nonprofit Technology Network) reminds us that Twitter isn’t the point. Relationships are the point. Relationships are always the point. The most basic of fundraising secrets is that people give to people. Twitter is simply one more tool to help people connect with each other.
**Can your nonprofit afford to not explore all the tools available?**
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
A few apps to take a look at as you get started TweetDeck is a must for any community manager, marketer or researcher
tracking important and relevant conversations on Twitter. It's an Adobe Air desktop application that enables users to split their main feed (All Tweets) into topic or group specific columns allowing the tracking of a broader overview of tweets based on keywords or groups of people.
TwitterFeed connects your blog to Twitter and automatically feeds posts into the timeline with each new update.
Whoshouldifollow.com makes it easy to find relevant, like-minded friends as well as friends of friends based on keyword and validated networks.
Twubble can help expand your Twitter network. It searches your friend graph and introduces and recommends new people who you may want to follow.
Twellow, a service of WebProNews, is an exceptional service for finding people who matter to your business or industry, by category. You can search keywords or browser through common categories to find the voices you deem as worthy following and/or connecting with on Twitter or other social networks. You can also claim your Twitter ID to further customize your individual profile with a short bio, extended bio, links to other profiles popular social networks such Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, Flickr, FriendFeed, etc.
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
Takeaways from Twitter… Don’t get overwhelmed—there is a lot of information to sift
through in the beginning as you learn how to use it effectively
Don’t be afraid to try it and start connecting with other like organizations—You’ll be surprised how fast your followers grow
“Tweet” regularly—assign someone this responsibility each week
Use Twitter to reach out to your constituents as a way to get information in front of people—whether that be about your organization as a whole or to inform them of the need for support, or to celebrate how well things are going
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
Flickr—Photo Sharing Application Podcasts—Short recordings about a variety of different topics
that can be purchased, downloaded for free, or posted on a web page
Message Boards—A segment of a website that hosts an open discussion amongst users
Blogs—A portion of a website (or a separate entity altogether like Twitter) in which an author posts discussion topics or information to be shared with followers– Personal Blogs=Online ‘Diary’– Organizational blogs=Information sharing/News Updates
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
Average volunteer sends over 30 emails One in four emails sent by a volunteer results in a donation Average online event gift is $59 which is a 50% increase over the
average off-line gift Many volunteers reach their stated FR Goal!
Personal Fundraising results are typically pretty impressive. Take a look…
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
“My own "ah ha!" moment came recently on my birthday. In my personal email account, I found 33 notifications from Facebook that friends had left birthday greetings on my Facebook page, but only two regular emails with birthday greetings.” (54 yr old male)
“Most interactions now come from my social networks. Not only do my birthday greetings come via Facebook and Twitter, but almost all of them were made where other people could see them. Those public greetings prompted several others to add their own.” (52 yr old female)
“Email messaging — the main tool of most nonprofits for "push" marketing — will need to meet a higher and higher bar in terms of relevance, or it will be increasingly ignored.” (61 yr old male)
Kevin Mannion, On-Line Publishing, February , 2009
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
10 Ways to Support Charity Through Social Media(from a donor or board member perspective)
Write a blog post Share stories w/ friends Follow Charities on Social Networks Support Causes on Awareness Hubs (ie. Change.org) Find Volunteer Opportunities Embed a Widget on your site (to collect $$ through social
network) Organize a Tweetup Express yourself using a video Sign or start a petition Organize an online event (form fundraising drives/eCommerce)
Source: Mashable:The Social Media Guide (http://mashable.com/2009/07/14/support-charity-sosg/)
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media
It is not FREE, resources are required Being present is not enough, engage Be authentic, otherwise you will be exposed fast Integrate, don’t imitate other mediums Endorsements matter, think forwarded emails! Measure Have something to say, must be regular or it dies fast
Stephanie Miller, Email Insider, 2009
Technology & Fundraising: How to Leverage Social Media