Takeaways from Blackbaud’s Charitable Giving Report

Blackbaud’s just-published 2013 Charitable Giving Report shows that small nonprofits, with annual total fundraising of less than $1 million, grew their fundraising by 7.3 percent compared to 2011.

These small guys blew away the large nonprofits who only grew 0.3 percent!

Five key observations from the 2012 Charitable Giving Report:

1. Overall giving grew less than 2 percent. A down economy continues to challenge fundraising efforts for all size organizations.
2. Online giving grew 11 percent in 2012, particularly in the area of disaster recovery. Hurricane Sandy was one of the biggest.
3. Online fundraising accounted for 7 percent of all donations in 2012, which was up from 2011. Online fundraising is still a small slice of the pie for most nonprofits.
4. Small nonprofits grew the most for overall giving (7.3 percent), but medium organizations grew the most for online giving.
5. Giving was flat throughout 2012, but spiked around Hurricane Sandy.

Key observations by sector

• Giving to religious organizations grew by 6.1 percent and this helped to lift overall giving as this sector receives the largest share of charitable dollars in the United States.
• Education institutions also had a positive year with 1.9 percent growth in fundraising compared to 2011. These two sectors combine for 45 percent of charitable giving in the US.
• Arts and culture, as well as environment and animal welfare organizations, were the only other sectors to experience fundraising growth in 2012.

Best sectors in online fundraising

Education and public/society organizations grew their online fundraising the most in 2012 with an increase of more than 17 percent – the largest growth rate for the second consecutive year.

Three focus areas for 2013

If the trends over the past four years continue in 2013, charitable giving won’t grow significantly. This means focusing on donor retention and finding innovative ways to acquire new donors without wasting money is key.

Here’s a three-step action plan for success in 2013:

1. Share accountability for fundraising results throughout the organization. Come up with creative ideas that give everyone an opportunity to take ownership for retaining donors in a way that feels natural, empowered, and uses each person’s unique talents.
2. Leverage new fundraising technology. If your website sucks, start there. Then move on to developing smarter email marketing. Only then should you start thinking about that cool Facebook app.
3. Create colossal content. Never forget that your “competition” is engaging your donors every day with emotionally compelling messages. At the same time, your donors are getting better at tuning out messages that are boring. This means you have to get better at grabbing and keeping your donor’s attention in innovative and remarkable ways.

What will you do in 2013 to retain more donors?

The post Nonprofits: Focus on donor retention in 2013 appeared first on Socialbrite.

Tips for leveraging the power of Facebook at your nonprofit or school

Target audience: Nonprofits, universities, colleges, associations (including alumni associations), cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, Web publishers — and anyone with a Facebook page.

Guest post by Frank Barry
Director, Professional Services, Blackbaud

We already know that Facebook is crushing it, and that schools have an incredible opportunity to use the platform to deepen relationships with families, students and alumni. But is your school or nonprofit getting the most out of the platform? Are you using Facebook to its full potential?

Based on what I’ve seen I’d say there’s a high likelihood that you’re not.

But there is hope!

Among the countless schools I found using Facebook poorly, there were plenty of shining examples of schools doing a great job of utilizing Facebook to build lasting relationships with families, students and alumni (both university and K-12).

Here are some of the key findings and takeaways from my recent presentation on how schools can leverage Facebook.. Keep in mind that these tips also apply to any nonprofits trying to effectively use Facebook as part of their online strategy.

Make the most of your cover photo

1Your Facebook cover photo is prime real estate. It’s the thing that people will see first when they visit you on Facebook. Treat it like you would that area on your main website – you have two seconds to grab the attention you’re looking for.

When thinking through your Facebook cover photo, make sure you keep your brand in mind, but try to also show off your culture, history, mission and values. You might also try having a little fun with your cover photo. Here’s a few ways you could go about communicating these things:

• Show off your campus
• Highlight what you’re known for
• Include your students
• Show off landmarks
• Give parents an idea of the community they’ll be joining
• Promote key alumni
• Go off campus

Make sure the photo is high quality and sized correctly (851px x 315px).

Spice up your ‘About’ page

2One of the first things a new visitor will do on your Facebook page is check out your profile, even if it’s only a quick glance at the small box located right under your profile picture. Make sure you take full advantage of this area.

Here are a few tips to ensure your Facebook about section is filled out in a way that makes it useful to those who check it out:

• Tell your story (keep it short, but get the main points accross)
• Add your mission statement
• Make sure to include all your contact info (email, phone, etc.)
• Enter your address with map
• Include links to your website and other social networks
• Include calls to action just like you might on your website
• Add milestones

Tell your story by filling in your history and milestones

3Milestones give you the ability to tell people more about your history. Most schools (and nonprofits) have a long history of helping the community through impacting the people they serve. With that in mind, do your best to tell the world about the work you’re doing.

If you haven’t yet, think of at least five milestones that help tell your story then hop over to Facebook and fill them in. Use photos as much as possible.

Here are a few quick ideas to get the creative juices flowing:

• Date when school was founded
• Significant accomplishments, awards, recognitions, etc.
• Famous or well-known individuals/students
• Launch of new programs, colleges/schools, community work, etc.
• Significant sporting events
• Graduations
• New deans, principals, presidents, etc.
• Significant community outreach/serices/programs

Set up a few apps (the Facebook call to action)

4Apps (the icons you see above highlighted in the red box) are Facebook’s version of a call to action. Nonprofits (and schools) understand how to use calls-to-action in their appeals and other forms of asking their supporters to mobilize. Think about these “apps” in a similar way. Use them to get your Facebook fans to take the actions you want them to take.

Apps are also a great place to continue reinforcing your brand (see how well LIVESTRONG has done it in the image above?). You have the ability to use your own icons so you’re only limited by your imagination.

What types of things could you do here?

• Quick links to key resources
• News / Important info for students/families
• Social media policy
• Special offers, discounts, prizes, etc.
• Custom pages focused on what you know parents/students want
• Donate, subscribe, register, volunteer buttons

Make sure the photo is high quality and sized correctly (111px x 74px).

Get the most out of your posts

5Before you can engage your nonprofit’s or school’s supporters, students, teachers, families or alumni on Facebook, you have to build a relationship with them (on Facebook). This means that you can’t simply rely on them being fans, you have to get them to engage with your posts on a regular basis.

If your supporters don’t engage with you regularly, then even when you do post to your Facebook wall they won’t see what you’ve posted.

So how do you create more engagement?

• Pin posts you want people to see for a while. Pinning posts allows you to keep your more important message at the top of your Facebook page for seven days.
• Highlight your best posts. Highlighting posts give you the opportunity to make certain things stand out more than others on your Facebook page.
• Promote posts that need to reach the masses. Promoting posts gives you the opportunity to reach a much larger portion of your Facebook fan base. You can easily see a 50 percent increase.

There are a lot more factors that matter when it comes to creating engaged fans on Facebook. Check out 22 Ways to Stay Connected with Your School’s Alumni on Facebook for more on this topic.

Pay attention to your fans (a lot)!

6Getting your nonprofit’s or school’s Facebook fans to create content in the form of pictures, videos, status updates, questions, etc. and sharing on your Facebook page is arguably the top thing you should focus on when trying to build an effective presence on Facebook.

Facebook made that slightly more challenging with the introduction of Timeline. For brands (nonprofits, schools, etc.), Timeline makes it such that fan-initiated engagement and content takes a back seat to brand-initiated engagement and content. This means Facebook no longer puts fan posts directly into your wall now that they’ve rolled out Timeline to everyone.

If a fan posts something directly to your Facebook page (i.e., not in response via a Like, comment or share to something you’ve posted), it will show up in a small box that lives below the “number of people who like this” section in the right column. That means you need to actively monitor what your fans are doing on your page and, when appropriate, highlight their content.

Here’s how to highlight fan content: Go to the Admin bar at top of your page (you need to be logged in as an adminisrator for this). Then hit the Edit page button and Use Activity Log. You will see a screen similar to the one shown below.

Dig through the activity log to find posts from your fans that you want to highlight. Once you find something, you can select the little circle located to the right of the activity, click on it, and select Highlight on Page.

Bam! You’ve just made one lucky fan very happy!

The post 6 simple steps to create a Facebook page that just works appeared first on Socialbrite.

Blackbaud recently published a guide called How to Identify and Empower Those Who Can Engage an Entire Community that includes information about four distinct nonprofit social media personas.

To help you better understand these personas, they also published a handy infographic, which I sliced and diced below. Here are the four basic groups of people you need to engage with in social media:

Key influencers

1Key influencers are widely read, and their updates are shared by more people than posts generated by any other group. These folks comprise about 1 percent of your online community. Along with Engagers,  they create about 80 percent of the online content in your community.

Engagers

2Engagers have well-established social networks and are strong influencers of people they know personally. These folks make up about 5 percent of your online community.

Multichannel consumers

3Multichannel consumers enjoy keeping up with social media content and they occasionally participate. They influence to some extent, but their sphere of influence is not a dominant part of their persona. These folks make up perhaps 45 percent of your online community.

Standard consumers

4Standard consumers read and watch updates more than they create new content or make comments, and they are influenced by their more socially active friends and family. These folks make up about half of your online community.

Developing your nonprofit’s personas

It would be a terrible mistake to simply pin these graphics up on your cube without making them come to life.

The more you feel in the details of  your persona’s lives, the better you create content that truly speaks to them. You can fill in the details about your personas by following these 12 steps.

Do you think these personas correctly identify the makeup of your nonprofit’s online community?

The post 4 kinds of online personas your nonprofit needs to deal with appeared first on Socialbrite.

Results of 2012 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report, with infographic

Target audience: Nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, cause organizations, Web publishers, educators, journalists, general public.

Guest post by Frank Barry
Blackbaud

Blackbaud, the Nonprofit Technology Network and Common Knowledge have just released the fourth annual 2012 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report.

We learned a lot of things, but one prevailing theme stood out: Despite limited budgets and staffing, nonprofits continue to find great value in their fast-growing social networks.

The report is packed with insights into how nonprofits are leveraging social networks as part of their marketing, communications and fundraising strategies. Have a look at the infographic below, and then download the full report to learn more about important behaviors and trends.

6 key findings from the report

• 98% of the nonprofits surveyed have a Facebook page with an average community size of over 8,000 fans. (The nonprofits tended toward the mid- and larger size organizations.)
• Average Facebook and Twitter communities grew by 30% and 81%, respectively.
• Average value of a Facebook Like is estimated to be $214.81 over 12 months following acquisition.
• 73% allocate half of a full time employee to managing social networking activities.
• 43% budget $0 for their social networking activities.
• The top three factors for success are: strategy, prioritization, dedicated staff.

Nonprofit social networking infographic

Check out this Nonprofit Social Networking Infographic based on the 2012 report to get high level insight into the findings as well as a few year over year trends.

View large version if you prefer (yes, it gets larger).

View large version

Don’t forget to download the complete 2012 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report.

And tell us if you agree or disagree with the conclusions or the findings.

Related

• See Socialbrite’s compendium of free reports for nonprofits
• Free social media reports

The post 3 keys to nonprofits’ success: Strategy, prioritization, dedicated staff appeared first on Socialbrite.

A look at how nonprofits are using social media to fund-raise for social good

Guest post by Frank Barry
Director, Professional Services, Blackbaud

According to a study by Blackbaud, NTEN and Common Knowledge, over 92 percent of nonprofit organizations have a presence on at least one social networking site, but most raise very little money through their social activity.

In fact, 87 percent have raised under $1,000 on Facebook since they began using the platform.

A big part of what holds nonprofit organizations back is the fact that they can’t risk full-fledged social media adoption because they’re short staffed and must focus on creating revenue and running programs — helping real people in the real world.

Yet despite the lack of widespread fundraising success, social media is clearly a hot topic in the nonprofit space. Conferences dedicated to helping nonprofits learn how to leverage social media for social good are popping up. Big social fundraising days coupled with workshops and other training events are taking advantage of the groundswell of social fundraising activity. And large online publications like Mashable are even covering social media for social good.

According to Darian Rodriguez Heyman, author of “Nonprofit Management 101” and creator of the Social Media for Nonprofits conference, “In a world where Facebook is the equivalent of the third largest country on the planet, we have to ask ourselves, ‘How can nonprofits leverage the immense word-of-mouth potential that social media makes available to causes both large and small?’ Nonprofit leaders need practical tips and tools for fundraising, marketing, and advocacy if they are to maximize impact online and in general.”

So what is holding nonprofit organizations back and how are the top 1 percent succeeding? It’s clear from the data below that three big things contribute to the lack of fundraising success: 1) lack of budget, 2) lack of staffing, and 3) lack of focus on raising money.

Social media adoption by platform

Heading into 2011, most nonprofits (92%), regardless of organization size, are using at least one commercial social network like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

The industry giant, with 89% adoption among nonprofits, is Facebook. Twitter is the second most popular, used by 57% of organizations, with YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr rounding out the top five.

Social media adoption by budget

More than half (52%) of nonprofits have no formal budgets for social networks with just 4% allocating more than $50,000 annually.

Social media adoption by staffing

On the staffing side, 86% of nonprofits commit some employee time to social networks, with the majority (61%) allocating a quarter of a full-time employee, and nearly 15% dedicating three-quarters or more of a full-time staffer.

But if you look closely you’ll notice that 86% of nonprofits commit one-half or less of a full-time staffer.

Social media adoption by fundraising

Fifty-eight percent of nonprofits report measuring at least the soft benefits — e.g., increased awareness, education, non-financial supporter participation — of their commercial social networks. Just 9 percent measure return on investment (ROI), or revenue received from donors, sponsors, advertisers, etc.

It’s important to note that 35 percent have raised less than $1,000, and a very thin slice of less than 1 percent of all nonprofits have raised more than $100,000 via Facebook in the past year.

How are the top 1% achieving success?

The numbers are interesting and all, but what’s the thing that separates those top 1 percent performers from the rest of the pack? And how can any nonprofit, large or small, put big numbers on the board?

The answer is as simple as 1, 2, 3. Here are three ways for nonprofits to raise big dollars online:

1) Hire or assign someone currently on staff. Nothing good can happen if no one’s working on it. It’s a pretty logical bit of reasoning, but judging by the data, nonprofits don’t allocate much staff time to social media.

Take a look at organizations like Make-a-Wish Foundation, Best Friends Animal Society, Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, American Red Cross, National Wildlife Federation, Humane Society and March of Dimes. Every one of these nonprofits has at least one person on staff that owns their social media program. Some even have full-blown teams. If you’re trying to leverage the social Web and all it has to offer, at some point you’re going to have to put resources on the job.

2) Allocate budget. We all know you have to spend money to make money. Nonprofits spend money on direct mail, email, websites, big events, and much more as part of their fundraising strategy. None of it is free, so why would the effective use of social media be any different?

Those who are finding social media to be an effective fundraising channel spend money on things like custom Facebook pages, Facebook ads, Facebook apps, promoted tweets, professional social media engagement platforms, blogs, content creation, campaign integration and much more. It doesn’t have to be an enormous amount of money, but if you want to raise significant dollars, you have to invest.

3) Add social media components to your fundraising appeals. Now that you’ve put someone in charge of your social media use and allocated some budget, it’s time to get to work, but instead of blowing things way out of proportion, start thinking of ways to incorporate social media into your existing fundraising efforts.

You probably have an end of year fundraising appeal that you distribute through direct mail, email and your website, right? Why not get creative this time around and use Facebook to generate two-way engagement in the form of people sharing why they support your organization, Twitter to tell the masses and YouTube to create a personalized thank-you video for all those who donate?

The key is to infuse your current fundraising activity with social media rather than try to dream up a totally new way of raising money.

Conclusion: Do these 3 things and thrive! Agree or disagree? Please share in the comments.

The post 3 secrets to raising big bucks online appeared first on Socialbrite.

If your nonprofit conducts advocacy campaigns, maybe you’ve had a difficult time understanding how those efforts might align with your fundraising efforts. It might be even more difficult if these two efforts are located in different branches of your organizational tree.

But like Karate and Judo, both advocacy and fundraising are simply different ways your constituents fight for your cause.

Advocates are seven times more likely to donate

A new report, Connecting Online Advocacy and Fundraising by Mark Davis of Blackbaud (with help from M+R Strategic Services and Amnesty International USA) outlines how advocacy and fundraising work together.

Included is research by M&R Strategies and Care2 that shows activists are seven times more likely to donate, compared with supporters who did not participate in an advocacy campaign. This confirms what we all already know in our hearts.

A few other takeaways from the report:

Advocacy appeals blow away fundraising appeals

These two graphs from the report says everything you need to know:

How to align online advocacy with fundraising

Mark also offers the following steps to create an advocacy-led fundraising campaign:

1. Identify a timely issue
2. Set a goal that uses the issue to move your mission forward
3. Develop a campaign around the issue that uses emails, social media and your website
4. Develop a calendar to schedule multiple messages to your constituents over several months
5. Plan actions that move from easy to hard
6. Show movement and success

A word of caution

One paragraph in the report made me bristle:

If your organization pursues online advocacy, you already have a lead-in to online fundraising; if not, you should explore other ways to connect online with your constituents. Why? Because key industry benchmarks and trends show that engagement online through advocacy is an effective springboard for raising money.

Maybe it’s the word “springboard,” but it should go without saying that advocacy is not simply a means to raise money. Your supporters always come first. They’re smart, and can sniff out the slightest insincerity in your relationship with them.

Download the report over at the Blackbaud blog.

The post How to connect online advocacy with fundraising appeared first on Socialbrite.

Guest post by Melissa Nelson
Media Production and Outreach Manager, Blackbaud

Video is a great way to engage constituents in your mission. It adds a visual element to what might be an otherwise text heavy email, blog, or website. Supporters react to hearing and seeing real people talking about issues or an organization’s mission coming to life with visual examples.

A video that actually empowers constituents to take action and interact with your organization is key to a conversational video.

First, think through the four basic steps:

1. Set the tone
2. Convey real purpose
3. Define the need
4. Inspire supporters

Then you can think holistically about the content and how your video can create conversation.

Asking for feedback is a great place to start. In your video, send an invitation for ideas and welcome feedback by asking open ended questions. Bring your viewers closer to your mission by asking them to contribute content or respond to a question. Make it easy for viewers to leave a comment. Take it a step further by interacting yourself; responding to comments makes it even more interactive.

Feedback can also come in the form of video conversations. Invite your constituents to respond with videos of their own, appear directly in your video to offer feedback, or even create their own edited video in response.

Include links back to your website in your video. A video should be a way of giving enough information to entertain and spark interest — while leaving the viewer wanting more. Reference your website graphically — and mention where a viewer can learn more, register to volunteer, or help your organization’s mission financially.

Make your videos clickable. Add interactive annotation layers to videos, and invite others to add them as well. YouTube’s annotation feature is an interactive layer of clickable text boxes. The key is to annotate with a call to action at the end of the video directing viewers to your website. Then, at the conclusion of the video, they’ll find it easy to learn more about your organization and can spend time exploring your site.

Another aspect of YouTube’s annotation feature is the community, which enables constituents to add annotations as well, thus furthering the conversation. Encourage viewers to add their own thoughts and references to your videos via annotations.

Promote your video in a variety of social media channels. If your video lives on YouTube, for example, shorten that link and share it on Facebook and Twitter, then encourage supporters to continue to grow the conversation.

Post on multiple video sharing sites. While YouTube may be the largest, there are many other video hosting sites, including Vimeo and Blip.tv. Search those out and monitor them for comments. (Use TubeMogul to upload to multiple sites at once.)

Take advantage of tagging options when you upload your video. Use at least three different tags; as a rule of thumb, choose one industry category and at least two tags to describe the content of the video. YouTube is the second largest search engine, so adding tags will help your video appear in a search.

Invoke feelings that make the viewer want to react. Include a place on your website where they can respond while watching the video. This way, they never have to stop the video or leave the site to leave a comment. Include a stream alongside the video player for discussion. For live video, Ustream.tv and Livestream.com offer a chat and social stream next to the video player.

Let’s be honest: if your video content is not something people want to watch, they won’t respond. It’s all about raising awareness and getting people involved in your mission. Start off with a good foundation and consider these tips when engaging constituents.

The post How to make your nonprofit video more social appeared first on Socialbrite.

How to raise money to support your favorite cause

Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, cause supporters, businesses

By Vivian Ramirez and J.D. Lasica
Socialbrite staff

In the old days — before 2005, remember? — we would solicit our friends to raise funds through walk-a-thons, cake raffles and similar homespun events. If you were raising money for a favorite cause, you’d look to your immediate friends, family and co-workers.

Today, social media has changed the game. With the surge of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, you can reach a much wider audience to raise money for your cause. The success of such online efforts varies widely: 30,000 runners in the Flora London Marathon raised $7.3 million through the online fundraising platform Justgiving. On a smaller scale, the Trail of Tails Pet Walk and Festival raised $41,000 for the Jacksonville, Fla., Humane Society using social media tools. And New York dancer Amanda Gravel raised $988 using the widget ChipIn for the campaign against breast cancer.

How did it work for them? Social tools now make it easy to solicit donations using fundraising widgets or badges, social networks like Twitter and Causes (part of integrated with Facebook). With Network for Good or PayPal usually handling the transaction, the solicitors can concentrate on sharpening their message and targeting the right recipients. Not all take the same approach: Some let you add advertising to your site, or create personal webpages, as a way to support your cause instead of ponying up dinero.

Depending on the size of your campaign and budget, cause advocates and small nonprofits now have lots of tools to choose from — further down, we’ll tell you about the ones for mid-size and large nonprofits. (See last month’s 10 mobile apps for social good for ideas on how to donate or volunteer using mobile devices.)

Here are 24 tried-and-true tools for online fundraising. Have we used them all? No. But if you’ve used some of these, add your observations. And we know there’s a 25th out there, so tell us your favorites in the comments below.

ChipIn: The easy way to collect money

1ChipIn is the most popular widget used by fundraisers today for distributed fundraising. It’s a simple tool you can place on your website or on a Facebook profile page. It amounts to a donate button that comes with a thermometer that measures the campaign’s progress. If you don’t have a site, you can subscribe to ChipIn and they’ll host your campaign for free. Subscribing to ChipIn is free, but you’ll need to set up a PayPal account to process donations. Every monetary contribution made through ChipIn is charged at a rate beginning at 2.5 percent of the amount donated.

GlobalGiving: Donate to grassroots projects

2GlobalGiving is an online marketplace for philanthropy where anyone can post an idea and get it funded. The nonprofit connects donors with community-based projects that need support in the United States and abroad. You select the projects you want to support, make a tax-deductible contribution and get regular progress updates — so you can see your impact. The organization sustains itself with a 15 percent optional fee you can add so that 100 percent of your donation goes directly to the project.

Change.org: Empowering people to take action

3A social enterprise, Change.org helps to raise awareness about important social causes and to empower people to take action, chiefly through partnerships with leading nonprofits. Actions might range from joining an organization and making a personal pledge to signing an online petition or calling a congressperson’s office about an issue like homelessness or sustainable food. In addition to signing petitions or leaving comments, you can raise funds by creating a page with photos, videos, logos and supporting materials. Change.org’s fundraising pages use donation widgets with progress thermometers that track the amount raised. Basic membership is free; it costs $20 a month for those who want customized pages. Donation processing fee: 4.75 percent for every transaction.

ChangingThePresent: Make the world a better place

4ChangingThePresent is a nonprofit that connects you with more than 1,500 meaningful if nontraditional charitable gifts — for instance, “stop global warming for $20″ or “adopt a tiger for $40.” Browse by cause or nonprofit to find a gift for friends or for your own charitable giving. The service also encourages donors to make simple donations of any amount through their home pages. A premium profile costs $100 per year. Donation processing fee: 3 percent of each donation plus 30 cents.

Razoo: Experience the joy of giving

5Razoo is a new way to donate and raise money online. Whether you want to donate money, run a fundraiser for your favorite nonprofit or raise money as a nonprofit, Razoo offers simple, secure tools to achieve your goals. A nonprofit based in Washington, DC, Razoo helps donors find inspiring giving opportunities and helps nonprofits and volunteers with fundraising pages, social media tools and donation processing.

Causes: Empowering anyone to impact the world

6Causes is a wonderful way to gain attention for a cause. Co-founded by Sean Parker, an early member of Facebook’s executive team, Causes allows fundraisers to solicit donations from their own contacts and recruit volunteers who want to participate on behalf of a cause. People who use the site as a way to socialize can also participate in fundraising ideas by posting Cause profiles on their Facebook page. Donation processing fee: 4.75 percent through Network for Good; only Facebook members anyone can donate.

givezooks!: Support a cause in minutes

7givezooks!, an online fundraising platform, lets individuals, nonprofits, foundations and companies create an account and start raising funds for a cause. It’s new givezooks!eventslets nonprofits create and publish events online, create, send and track email invitations and reminders, promote causes through Facebook and Twitter, sell tickets and manage RSVPs. Transaction fee for events: 2.5 percent per ticket purchased or donation received (up to a maximum of $19.95/per ticket). For online campaigns for nonprofits, monthly subscription fees start at $129/month with no transaction fee.

FirstGiving: Tools to benefit charitable causes

8FirstGiving is a U.S. subsidiary of U.K.-based JustGiving. The site provides easy-to-use tools to benefit charities. Subscribers are able to fundraise through their own Web pages on the site. The basic platform of is free. For those who want to customize their pages and to link them back to their own sites, the annual fee is $300. Donation processing fee: 5 percent plus 2 percent for credit card processing.

SixDegrees: Spread a ripple of good

9SixDegrees.org, an affiliate of Network for Good, enables social networking with a social conscience. Through the site, you can support your favorite charities by donating or creating fundraising badges — as well as check out the favorite causes of other people, including celebrities. Through tools such as donation widgets, which can be posted in places around the Web, people are encouraged to give to causes easily. The badges provided by SixDegrees can be customized by adding photos, videos and other narratives. Progress is tracked at the top of the badge, though the badges do not have thermometers. Donation processing fee: 4.75 percent with no setup costs.

RT2Give: Retweet a worthy cause, give $10

10RT2Give is Twitpay‘s fundraising solution for nonprofits that handles secure processing of donations over social networks such as Twitter. Last month on World Malaria Day, three organizations teamed up for a week and used RT2Give to raise money for disease-preventing bed nets. (Each $10 donation was matched by the Case Foundation up to $25,000.) Twitter itself used the TwitPay platform for donations to its Hope140 campaign to #EndMalaria. The site can use some copy editing: It says “pay with bank account,” but then asks for your credit card number. Expect to see a lot more of these campaigns on Twitter (note: Twitter-based Tipjoy bit the dust last year).

JustGive: Removing barriers to charitable giving

11By setting up a fundraising page on JustGive, nonprofits can solicit donations and set up a Donate Now button that they can use on their own sites. Donation processing fee: 3 percent with no set-up costs or monthly fees.

Crowdrise: Using social networks to raise funds

12Crowdrise is a new service that gives cause supporters an easy way to crowd-source fundraising. Whether you’re running a marathon, volunteering or have causes that you care deeply about, create your own fundraising pages, choose from over a million charities to raise money for and then share them on social networks. Crowdrise provides incentives to users by awarding bonus points toward prizes.

YourCause: Fundraising through personal Web pages

13 The mis­sion of YourCause is to empower indi­vid­u­als to change our world — leveraging your own voices, net­works and spheres of influ­ence to improve the lives of oth­ers. The ded­i­cated and accom­plished Your­Cause team is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing and facil­i­tat­ing the efforts of a car­ing member com­mu­nity and the causes they cham­pion so passionately.

Better The World: Raise money for causes by surfing

14Better The World is a plat­form that lets you raise money for your cause simply by surfing the Web — and down­loading a side­bar that will be used to dis­play rel­e­vant ads on the pages you visit. Char­i­ties span­ning the whole world have part­nered with the com­pany to give users every­where many options to choose from.

Pifworld: Play it forward

15The letters PIF in Pifworld stand for “play it forward.” Playing it forward is donating online to a charity project and inviting friends to do the same. The Amsterdam-based site launched in March 2009 and currently has over 45 charity projects on the platform. By mobilizing communities, together we can create positive change and eventually help wildlife, save a rainforest or build a school.

PincGiving: A platform for online fundraising

16PincGiving helps corporations and charities with their philanthropic goals. Donate to the charity of your choice in the USA, Canada, UK and Australia; enable fundraising on your organization’s website; create a peer to peer fundraising campaign or access millions of dollars in grant money, all in the currency of your choice.

Universal Giving: Donate or volunteer for global causes

17Universal Giving is a marketplace that allows people to give and volunteer with top-performing projects all over the world. The organization passes along 100 percent of the donations you make to the nonprofit of your choice.

SocialVibe: Partnering with brands to support charity

18SocialVibe is a micro-fundraising social media utility that connects nonprofits and individuals with brands, empowering them to engage with sponsors and share branded content with their social graph to benefit their causes. SocialVibe has raised over $700,000 for more than 40 nonprofits by getting corporate partners to engage in a more interactive means of advertising. Users of the site don’t have to donate money at all as corporate sponsors do all the donating. Individuals are simply encouraged to donate ad space on their social network sites by adding the SocialVibe widget to their MySpace, Facebook or other networking pages or blogs.

Giving Impact: Empowering supporters through sharing

19Giving Impact, a Web-based service from Minds on Design, describes itself as “an online fundraising platform for nonprofits that empowers supporters through sharing and offers organizations flexibility to run multiple campaigns with a custom donation experience at an affordable price.” Like any new venture, proceed with caution, but we wish them well. Giving Impact charges a monthly fee of $30 with a $1 transaction fee for donations under above $20; donations are handled through PayPal.

Tools for larger fundraising efforts

Nonprofits looking to launch much wider campaigns that entail more sophisticated outreach and monitoring may want to look into higher-end fundraising packages. Depending on your needs, these solutions may provide better support for long-running or large-scale campaigns. In general, these services may cost from a few hundred dollars a month to thousands of dollars or more for a campaign. This is not a comprehensive list of fundraising solutions but rather a few that struck a chord with us:

Artez: Turn supporters into fundraisers

20Artez Interactive provides a suite of online fundraising tools that let you tailor a campaign to your nonprofit’s specific needs. Supporters can easily make donations and purchase tickets to an event. Artez also make it easy for you to extend your event or cause’s brand into the realm of social media, and it provides customers with a rich set of reporting tools.

Convio: Converting fans into lasting donors

21Convio provides marketing, fundraising, advocacy and donor database tools to nonprofits. Its TeamRaiser for Special Events module allows users to translate their mission into online or integrated marketing programs that can acquire, engage and convert individuals into becoming lasting supporters. Users are able to set up individual and team fundraising pages with measurement and reporting capabilities. Constituent360, an online constituent database, is included as part of TeamRaiser.

Care2: Access to a huge community of social activists

22Care2 doubles as both an online community with more than 12 million people who actively involve themselves in both social and environmental causes and as a platform for activism and fundraising. By bringing together nonprofits, individuals and socially responsible businesses, it is able to help nonprofits and companies find new supporters for their causes and in the process help them grow targeted email lists of supporters, activists and potential donors. About 500 large and mid-size nonprofits have used Care2’s social networking strategies, which include its click-to-donate races, email strategies, online petitions, healthy living solutions, eco-shopping and e-cards. Campaign fees start at about $5,000.

Donor Perfect: Helping cultivate donor relationships and achieving terrific fundraising results

23Donor Perfect comes in packages for small and growing nonprofits and packages for mid-size and large nonprofits. Depending on the size of your organization, Donor Perfect offers an online software solution to encourage giving among your supporters. Smaller packages are priced at $39 and $119 per month and the premier package costs $199 per month.

Kintera: Supporting your organization’s walkathon and other “team” fundraising events.

24Kintera’s Friends Asking Friends is being used by larger nonprofits such as Amnesty International USA. Since it allows the creation of sophisticated and customized distributed campaigns for fundraisers with multiple pages, it has become a convenient tool for many large-scale campaigns. With the use of this software, administration can be centralized no matter how many the supporters and volunteers there are or how many pages had been set up for the charity’s purposes. Setup fee for Friends Asking Friends is $1,400, plus a percentage of each donation solicited.

Final thoughts

Determining which tool is best for your organization requires planning and research. Look around and know what other organizations are using and how it works for them. If you’re planning to purchase software, compare prices and see if the price is worth the potential payoff. Consider whether your staff is equipped with the technical skill to run the software. If not, are you willing to spend a bit more for technical support?

If you’re an individual supporting a cause or a small nonprofit, you should try out some of the free online tools. Go ahead, start supporting your cause!

Do you use other tools for online fundraising? What has worked for you? Tell us #25!

Related

• Behind the success of 10 top Causes (Socialbrite)

• 10 mobile apps for social good (Socialbrite)

• A directory of top cause organizations (Socialbrite)

• Social bookmarks of fundraising tools and cause platforms (compiled by JD Lasica on Delicious)

The post 24 tools for fundraising with social media appeared first on Socialbrite.