Understanding Crowdfunding: Viral Events and the Future of Nonprofit Fundraising

Understanding Crowdfunding: Viral

Events and the Future of Nonprofit

Fundraising

Gregory Saxton, PhDTwitter: @gregorysaxtonNovember 10, 2014

The Printing Press

European Book Production

Daily Activity

• 3.5 billion Google searches

• 3.2 million blog posts

• 573,000,000 tweets sents

• 108 million posts on Tumblr

• 90 million photos uploaded on Instagram

• 6,733,747,000 videos viewed on YouTube

• 190 billion emails

Information Overload

HOW SOCIAL MEDIA IS

DISRUPTING PHILANTHROPY

Normal Distribution

Power Law Distribution

CROWDFUNDING DATA

Variables positively associated with amount of funds raised:

• Size of Fundraising Goal

• Number of Updates

• Number of Photos Uploaded to Gallery

• Number of Fundraising Links on other Social Media Sites

• Size of “Team”

• Number of Perk Levels

• Number of Times Appeal Site Tweeted

• Number of Times Appeal Site Shared on Facebook

• Length of Text Describing the Team

Up to now we’ve dealt with the

CAMPAIGN – the analogue to

the cat video. But you need to

take a step back – first find

your NICHE, build your

NETWORK, then feed, mobilize,

and leverage that network

HAVE A SOCIAL MEDIA

STRATEGY: FIND YOUR NICHE

CHOOSE A VOICE

NETWORK STRATEGY:

IDENTIFY KEY TARGETS

Making Network Connections

BUILD AND FEED YOUR

NETWORK THROUGH

MESSAGES AND CONNECTIONS

….AND THEN CAMPAIGN