Make donating simple, say thank you & showcase your results to keep donations coming

Target audience: Nonprofits, fundraisers, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises.

Acquiring a new donor is more expensive than keeping a current donor.

Most nonprofits know this, but it seems like most of them spend a larger amount of their resources on acquiring new donors instead of keeping their current donors happy.

Plus, the lifetime dollar value of a happy donor is way more than the value of a donor who only gives once.

And the math just makes sense:

Higher acquisition costs + lower donations = 

Following are seven ways to help you turn this sad face upside down:

Say thanks

1Can you believe that even some huge organizations with ample resources fail to say thank you once a donation is made? Research shows that thanking donors increases the likelihood they’ll continue to give, and increase the amount they’ll give.

Give your supporters better tools

2You know what has made Amazon a billion dollar success? They’ve optimized their purchase down to a single mouse-click.

Same thing goes for your top social fundraisers.

Don’t give your top fundraisiers a clunky platform. Give them something powerfully simple, like Razoo and get rid of the ugly PayPal button on your website.

Plug up the holes in your website

3There are critical pages on your website where you want visitors to complete a specific transaction, such as donating money or joining an email list.

Sadly, these pages are often the reasons why people aren’t donating as much as they would. This free eBook includes 15 ways to improve these landing pages.

Make your supporters’ agendas your agenda

4One way to keep your top supporters interested and committed is to support their agendas! For example, if one of your top supporters publishes a blog about why the cause is personal, you need to be retweeting their blog posts.

Or if one of your top fundraisers owns a local restaurant, you’d better be holding some of your events there.

Constantly report outcomes

5I love what the Animal Rescue League of Boston does on Facebook. Almost every week, I see some kind of success story. As Alexandra mentioned, 53 percent of online donors in one study identified “achieving and communicating measurable results” as prominent in their decision to donate again. You want people to donate more than once? Report outcomes!

Develop one cause marketing partnership

6Cause marketing is a partnership between a nonprofit and a for-profit for mutual profit. And it’s probably one of the most overlooked, underutilized strategies for raising money.

Joe Waters has five tips for creating a cause marketing program for your organization.

Don’t shoot for perfection

7Trying to make everything perfect will only get nothing done. But “done” is what you want — not perfect!

Break your donor retention strategy down into to small chunks that you can do one at a time. Done… next… repeat.

What do you think?

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Target audience: Nonprofits, fund-raisers, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises.

In mid-June, Razoo conducted the Twive and Receive national fundraising campaign in which 162 nonprofits competed to win a share of $30,000 in prize money. The Ellie Fund, based in Boston, won first prize for raising more than $53,000 in 24 hours!

Joe Waters and I worked with Julie Nations, executive director of the Ellie Fund, to pull off what we thought was impossible.

We put our heads together to employ the following strategies:

Don’t make it about the money

1The Ellie Fund isn’t in the business of begging. If we talked about the fundraising targets or how close we were to winning, we’d surely come across the wrong way sooner than later. Money is not the way to engage potential supporters, especially when we’re talking about $15,000 in prize money. The likelihood of winning was very low, and we knew it. And if we knew it, so would potential donors.

Create a compelling story

2When we first started working on the campaign, we concluded pretty quickly that talking about a match would get old very quickly. The chance of winning $15,000 would not be an effective story, and we knew it. We needed to uncover the bigger story — the one that matters.

Eventually, we decided to tell the untold story of breast cancer: how families and kids are affected in addition to women.

Our message was that these kids are superheroes – a team of Avengers who exhibited the superpowers of Love, Smarts, Action and Truth. Hugh MacLeod was generous enough to create a logo for the campaign, shown at top.

We also filmed five kids talking about their experiences and strung them together in a series of interactive YouTube videos, which you can view starting with this one:

Leverage existing assets

3Joe and I met with the Ellie Fund a couple of months in advance to start planning. We all agreed that Twive and Receive shouldn’t detract attention from the various things they were focusing on but instead embed Twive and Receive into activities and relationships they were already developing. We wanted to leverage any existing event leading up to Twive and Receive. We also leveraged their partners and sponsors, like a local radio station who mentioned Twive and Receive on air.

Have a sense of mission

4We wanted this campaign to be about something big, to generate huge amounts of passion and commitment among the Ellie Fund community, but also keep the core team excited! Early in the afternoon, we lost the first-place position, but via email, we encouraged each other to imagine the kids being so proud of themselves if we won. This gave us the fire to keep fighting!

What do you think of these strategies?

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Give2Gether, Rally, Razoo, Fundly offer nonprofits a new way to support causes

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, fund-raisers, NGOs, social media managers, donors, bloggers, social cause advocates.

This article is part of a series focused on social fundraising.

Guest post by Janet Fouts
Social Media Coach

There’s a new breed of fundraising tools out there that can help organizations with “social fundraising.” These tools leverage the social networks of donors, supporters and organizations to substantially increase the revenue raised as well as the long-term benefits of becoming a part of the fabric of your donors’ social media networks. They focus not just on large donations but on the collective power of micro-donations, which are often repeated and shared with friends.

These applications — which offer people a way to help spread the word about a cause through their social networks and their friends’ networks — arrive with a dazzling array of services and fee structures. Where to start? As the fall “giving season” gets underway, nonprofits are looking at another tight-fisted year. It’s more important than ever today to optimize platforms for donations and offer a way for your supporters to donate on as many platforms as possible.

Here’s a quick breakdown of five applications we like. See the table at bottom for a snapshot comparison of features. Which have you used? Add your experience, feedback and suggestions in the comments, please!

Give2gether

Give2gether leverages social networks all on one page. When your organization builds its main page, a template is created that includes the donor list for the overall initiative, and the “Champion Pages” can also be created as sub-sites by anyone raising funds for your cause. Funds go directly to the organization and to fundraisers for your cause so that your champions never have to worry about funds transfers, etc.

Both organization and champion pages allow users to see at a glance which of their friends have liked or donated to the page, tweet or post to Facebook with their own call to action, and keep tabs on how things are going.

Give2gether also integrates a mass email service with templates you can custom-design for calls to action, as well as create updates and donor thank-yous customized to your nonprofit’s messaging, look and feel.

If what you’re looking for is a mini-site to offer as much data as possible to potential donors complete with ways for them to customize it minimally and share with their friends, this could be a good option.

Razoo

So far Razoo is probably the most progressive of all of these sites. It allows you to create team fundraising pages as well as pages at the organizational level. You can accept donations on your own website rather than on their site using an embeddable widget that donors can also use to embed on their own sites with a click. It also offers template-driven event pages you can use for individual fundraising events.

You can send out emails to thank donors, create a personal thank you video, and track reports and donations from your Razoo dashboard or on their iPhone app. You can even register donations made offline so your accounting stays on track, something that can be critical with team fundraisers.

Razoo does not charge a monthly service fee. Instead it takes a flat rate of 2.9% across the board thanks to their partnership with US Bank. Unlike some of the other platforms that deposit funds immediately into your account, Razoo delivers funds once on the 10th of each month either by check or through electronic funds transfer.

Rally

Originally launched as a political donation platform called Piryx, Rally focuses on using the social connections of your donors to help spread the word about your cause. Rally lets your individual fund-raisers create their own version of your page and share their stories with their friends. You control the look and feel of the page at the overall template level to keep branding elements intact and then users can add their own call to action, images and information to encourage their fans to donate and help spread the word.

Unlike many fundraising platforms, Rally has its own funds processing capabilities so you don’t pay a processing fee to them and then to the credit card processing company. It also offers multiple platforms from Web-based to mobile in order to reach as many people as possible.

At the moment, Rally is in private beta. Only a select few have been invited in to play with the offerings, and it’s using that user base to fine-tune the product. Rally is working on rolling out an extensive content-sharing platform that integrates email in addition to social tools, but we won’t know until it comes out of beta. Expected to go live to the public in October, Rally should be a platform to watch.

GiveZooks

GiveZooks offers two main types of campaigns: long-term fundraising initiatives and single events-based initiatives. The pricing is based on the amount of money raised for the long-term fundraising campaigns, billed monthly or using a flat transaction rate of 2-2.5% (plus credit card processing fees) for events. It also offers several premium services to help you get your fundraising campaign up and running without delay.

There are several options for raising funds. You can create an online “wish list” to raise money for specific projects or even items you need to keep your nonprofit running smoothly. Additional items can be added to the list and donors select which items they want to help with.

If you want to promote a campaign online, you can create custom landing pages and embeddable widgets to allow supporters and donors to help you spread the word by embedding them on their own pages. Unlike some of the other services, you can offer multiple options for your donors to give: recurring, stock transfers, wire transfers, pledges and even gift cards can be donated to your cause through GiveZooks.

GiveZooks’ individual fundraiser pages allow the individual to put their own personal call to action on a page and provides a guest book for individuals to communicate with their friends and rally support for the cause either by adding a link to the page, a widget on their own site, or by connecting through online sharing tools.

Fundly

Fundly claims to raise 52% more funds simply because it incorporates social tools that allow a giver to tell their social network about their donation and encourage them to donate as well, thereby making that individual donor a gatherer of more like-minded individuals to donate and support the campaign. Using the Fundly Facebook application, users can donate or grab a badge and put it on their profile to encourage their friends to do the same. Then their friends add a badge and so on. Fundly leverages the “social graph” to recommend new followers for your cause. Fundly uses the same tools to inform donors of who else in their network has donated, and their fundraising goals, videos, photos and stories can all be shared through Facebook almost instantly.

Set-up is super easy. Enter a federal tax ID, name and address and you’re good to go. From then on, everything is managed through your organization’s dashboard. You can add basic graphics, logos content and links to your page, and you can have as many pages as you want so you can cover individual initiatives with their own focused donations page.

Fundly creates a button you can add to your blog or website to send donors right to your donation page, and there is a Facebook application to connect with donors directly on Facebook (as opposed to the Facebook integration through social plug-ins on the other platforms).

Customization of your donation form is possible, but at the moment you’ll need a little help to create the custom CSS code to make sure it looks its best. Look for a more detailed article on Fundly later in this series.

Services at a glance

					Facebook app	Donor mini-pages
	Credit card fees extra	Pay as you go 4.9%	over $25,000 raised, $199/mo.	over $400,000, $499/mo.	Yes	No
	Credit card fees included	4-4.5% flat fee			Integration with social plug-ins	Yes
	Credit card fees extra	$250/mo. 7%	$300/mo. 5%	$500/mo. 3%	Integration with social plug-ins	Yes
	Credit card fees included	2.9% flat rate	2.9% flat rate	2.9% flat rate	Integration with social plug-ins	Yes
	Credit card Fees extra	Individual fundraisers free	up to $500,000 raised, $129/mo.	up to $2 million raised, $249/mo	Integration with social plugins	Yes

Fundraising series on Socialbrite

• What social fundraising means for your nonprofit

• Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks

• Fundly: Tap into your supporters’ social networks

• GoodThreads: Custom T-shirts as a fundraising tool

• HelpAttack!: Unleash the charitable power of social media

• Rally: Raise money for your favorite cause

• Mobile: The next frontier of nonprofit fundraising

• 10 tips for a successful fundraising event

The post Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks appeared first on Socialbrite.

Has Social Media Fundraising Finally Arrived?

A look at the growing phenomenon of social media fundraising

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, fundraising executives, social media managers, donors.

This article is part of our series on social fundraising.

I’ve been looking forward to the promise of “social media+fundraising” for a while now. There are plenty of fundraising solutions that leverage social media, relying on fundraisers to tweet, share, and post their fundraising pages to their social networks. There are also fundraising solutions that fully rely on and live within a social platform, such as a Facebook fundraising application or a fundraising widget you place on your blog. Then there is the newest evolution: fundraising that innately uses social media as a platform.

In the slide presentation above, I review the three categories of social media fundraising and my thoughts about how social media fundraising has finally arrived in a real way.

Sharing is huge

A report from Share This states that sharing generates more than 10% of all internet traffic. In order of frequency, most people click on links shared within Facebook, followed by “other” (blogs, social bookmarking, etc.), email, and Twitter. Facebook is the largest sharing channel, at 38%, which is why so many online fundraising pages are shared and shared again on Facebook.

Social fundraising is growing

By all definitions, online fundraising is growing. Social fundraising is also growing. Network for Good’s online giving study’s quarterly giving index illustrates that, despite the current poor economic outlook, social giving is still rising. In Q1 and Q2 of 2011, social giving increased (though Q1 giving may have been skewed by Japan tsunami relief fundraising). The 2011 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report of US nonprofit social media fundraising reports that Facebook is the social media platform most nonprofits are using if they are participating in social media fundraising, though it is still a very small percentage who have raised significant money using Facebook.

Social sharing of fundraising pages yields results: Social media fundraising that leverages social networks

When fundraisers share their fundraising pages to their social networks, giving increases. Blackbaud recently issued a report and created an infographic about the power of peer-to-peer sharing. Blackbaud found that Twitter and Facebook posts convert 0.25% of impressions into donations. It also found that Twitter users increased donations nearly 10x more than those who did not use Twitter. FirstGiving found that for every share to Facebook, 5 people returned to a fundraising page. FirstGiving also found that the value of a share to Facebook was worth $10.87 in donations.

Peer to peer online donation solutions (such as FirstGiving, Razoo, Crowdrise, Donors Choose) where a fundraiser creates a fundraising page and shares that page are increasingly being used by nonprofit organizations, and the culture of online donations is growing. Sometimes these solutions are also called social media fundraising, because they rely so heavily on social media for amplification. These solutions are ideal for leveraging an organization’s base, and increasing donations through personal social network sharing. However, it’s just as important that the nonprofit also have a vibrant social media presence to amplify these efforts and engage with fundraisers.

Giving that relies on or lives exclusively within a social network

Social media fundraising can also be defined as fundraising that happens within a social network, rather than shared to the network. Most examples of these fundraising solutions live within Facebook. Examples include Causes, the What Gives or FirstGiving fundraising tabs that you can add to a Facebook page or profile, fundraising applications developed for a Facebook Page. These fundraising solutions rely on Facebook to thrive: You have to connect using Facebook, and they count on fundraisers sharing with their Facebook friends for amplification. Other examples include Google Checkout for nonprofits on YouTube or fundraising widgets placed on a blog. This type of fundraising is growing, but certainly is not mainstream, and best used where you have a fair number of supporters and know you can energize them.

Innately using a social platform for donations

Here is the promise of social media fundraising. What if someone could donate just by tweeting, posting an update, Liking a comment on Facebook, giving a LinkedIn recommendation, or writing a blog post? This is the true the convergence of social media and fundraising. A few companies are offering these types of social media fundraising solutions: Help Attack!, Twitpay, and Givey.co.uk.

With Help Attack! (featured later in this series), fundraisers can choose to give by assigning tweets, Facebook posts, using certain key words or hashtags, etc., until they reach their pledge amount. Givey and Twitpay offer similar services, but neither is as developed or offer as many ways to give as Help Attack! A fundraising solution like these are great to use during an online or fundraising campaign to raise awareness, increase donations within a limited amount of time, and energize your base. I suspect that you’ll also need to educate your fundraisers about this brand new way of fundraising merely by tweeting or posting.

I think the future of social media fundraising has just arrived. I can’t wait to see how it matures.

What do you think? Have a favorite fundraising tool? Please share in the comments!

Fundraising series on Socialbrite

• What social fundraising means for your nonprofit

• Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks

• Fundly: Tap into your supporters’ social networks

• GoodThreads: Custom T-shirts as a fundraising tool

• HelpAttack!: Unleash the charitable power of social media

• Rally: Raise money for your favorite cause

• Mobile: The next frontier of nonprofit fundraising

• 10 tips for a successful fundraising event

Related

• 24 tools for fundraising with social media (Socialbrite)

• 8 tips for raising funds online (Socialbrite)

• A beginner’s guide to mobile fundraising (Socialbrite)

The post What social fundraising means for your nonprofit appeared first on Socialbrite.

Have you considered asking the community to support your new enterprise?

Target audience: Social enterprises, nonprofits, volunteer groups, sustainable businesses, community organizations.

Guest post by Kerry Given
Green Marketing TV

Finding funding can be one of the biggest challenges for social entrepreneurs. Fortunately, there is a growing number of options for social entrepreneurs and founders looking for capital to start or expand their social enterprise, startup or nonprofit organization and do more good in the world.

One non-traditional funding opportunity that has seen exponential growth in recent years is the phenomenon of “crowdfunding.” Family and friends have been one of the most common sources of venture funding capital for centuries. Crowdfunding takes this age-old source of venture funding and brings it into the digital age.

Thanks to social media and other forms of modern technology, entrepreneurs are able to build networks of friends, colleagues and like-minded individuals more easily and effectively than ever before. Crowdfunding websites allow entrepreneurs or project leaders to leverage these networks to gain funding.

Typically, entrepreneurs post a request for funding on a crowdfunding site with a detailed project description. Depending on the site, funding may be provided as a loan or a donation. Once the funding request is posted, the entrepreneurs use their networks to spread the word about their project to potential donors through word of mouth, email, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

Crowdfunding is not for everyone. The majority of crowdfunding sites fund entrepreneurs on an all-or-nothing basis. If the project is fully funded when the deadline arrives, the money is given to the entrepreneur. If it is not fully funded, it is returned to the donors to keep or donate to another project. So it’s important to have a compelling project or story and to be a skillful marketer and networker to ensure that word about your project reaches enough potential donors to fully fund the project before the deadline. If you’re confident that your social enterprise has what it takes to become a crowdfunding success story, you may find crowdfunding to be the perfect option for your fundraising efforts.

The following is a list of crowdfunding websites that can help your social enterprise, sustainable business or nonprofit organization get off the ground:

33 Needs: Connecting microinvestors & social enterpreneurs

133needs is a recent crowdfunding startup that connects microinvestors with social entrepreneurs who have big ideas in categories such as sustainable food, health, education and the environment. Investors can earn a percentage of revenue in exchange for their support.

AppBackr: Offset app development costs

2A specialty crowdfunding site that may be useful to some social enterprises, AppBackr allows Apple developers to get funding upfront for iPhone, iPod and iPad apps in the concept stage by selling the app wholesale to backers, who receive a percentage of the profits for the apps they have purchased. Many app buyers also assist developers with marketing and promoting their apps to ensure that their investment is fully recouped. With a growing number of social enterprises tapping into the explosive apps market to raise awareness and sell products or services, AppBackr may be a useful tool to help offset app development costs, and even gain some extra promotional help.

Buzzbnk: Supporting a wide range of fields

3Buzzbnk is a crowdfunding platform especially for social enterprises that allow funders to donate either money or time to support social enterprises working in a wide variety of fields. Though based in the UK, it is open to social ventures operating anywhere in the world. Social enterprises must submit their project proposal to Buzzbnk and the Buzzbnk team will work with the social enterprise to help develop appropriate fundraising targets and benefits or rewards to offer funders.

CauseVox: Fundraising pages for nonprofits

4CauseVox offers nonprofit organizations a fully customizable fundraising page that makes collecting money from supporters easy. Supporters can also create their own personalized fundraising pages. Social media integration makes it easy to embed YouTube videos, Flickr slideshows and more.

ProFounder: Investors share in the profits

5ProFounder caters to entrepreneurs – social or otherwise – who are looking for alternative sources of venture capital. ProFounder provides a secure platform where entrepreneurs can raise money from family members, friends and other connections, who then receive a share of the profits when the business they have invested in succeeds. This revenue sharing system is good for investors and good for entrepreneurs, because it doesn’t commit entrepreneurs to making debt payments (potentially with high interest rates) during periods of bad business, only when the business is successful and profitable.

Kickstarter: Supporting a wealth of creative projects

6One of the best-known crowdfunding websites is Kickstarter, which rose to fame after the open source Facebook alternative Diaspora raised more than $200,000 on the site. Kickstarter funds creative projects such as independent films and music albums, books, software, citizen journalism, theatrical productions and more. Project creators are required to offer rewards to donors, such as bonus musical tracks, autographed books, signed prints, free performance tickets or something similar. Although Kickstarter cannot be used to fund social enterprise start-ups, it can be a great source of funding for social enterprises and nonprofits hoping to use creative projects to raise awareness of their cause, as well as for social-minded creative enterprises such as nonprofit theater companies and independent music producers. Other great crowdfunding sites focusing on creative projects include IndieGoGo, RocketHub, UK-based Crowdfunder and Australian-based Pozible.

ChipIn: Embed a widget, raise $

7ChipIn is a simple widget that can be posted on blogs, websites and many social media profiles. It allows individuals, private groups, non-profits and others to raise money easily online.

Crowdcube: Equity-based investment community

8UK-based Crowdcube bills itself as “the world’s first equity-based crowdfunding community dedicated to business investment.” In exchange for microinvestments of as little as £10, investors can fund worthy enterprises and in exchange gain a share of direct equity in the business. Crowdcube is currently available only to UK-based investors and entrepreneurs who have or can start a UK Limited Company, but hopes to expand to other regions in the future.

Give.fm: Create your own campaign

9Give.fm allows nonprofits and individuals to set up a campaign to raise money for causes ranging from local soccer teams to international efforts to fight poverty, hunger, disease, environmental degradation and more. The site works by allowing donors to set up recurring microdonations of as little as 10 cents per day.

Peerbackers: Raise funds from your peers

10Peerbackers offers entrepreneurs and nonprofits of all types the opportunity to raise funding for their idea from their friends, family and peers. Rather than receive financial returns or equity, backers receive rewards such as free or discounted versions of the products or services offered by the company.

FirstGiving: Raise funds for your favorite cause

11FirstGiving has helped more than 8,000 nonprofit organizations connect with more than 13 million donors and raise more than $1 billion to date, it reports. The site allows nonprofit supporters to create their own fundraising page to raise money for the cause of their choice.

Razoo: Simple, secure tools to raise funds

12Razoo is a crowdfunding platform for nonprofits and charities that allows individuals, organizations, corporations and foundations to set up a fundraising page to raise money for their own cause or their other cause of choice. Razoo also allows team campaigns.

Sponsume: Free fundraising platform

13Sponsume is a crowdfunding startup, launched in 2010, that allows both creative projects and social enterprises to raise funding on the site. Sponsume is currently free to use, but does plan to start charging fees in the future.

Spot.us: Funding citizen journalism

14Spot.us is a one-of-a-kind crowdfunding platform that supports citizen journalists by funding their investigations of specific topics. Spot.us can be a very useful tool for organizations seeking to raise awareness through hard-hitting investigative journalism, community reporting or similar means.

Start Some Good: New kid on the block

15Start Some Good is a new crowdfunding startup that launched in February with the goal of connecting social entrepreneurs with crowdfunded venture capital. Start Some Good allows both for-profit and nonprofit social enterprises to post fundraising campaigns to the site. Team members will help review the campaign’s goals and rewards to ensure they’re a good match for Start Some Good’s philosophy.

Have we left any crowdfunding websites off this list? Please leave a comment below!

Related

• 24 tools for fundraising with social media (Socialbrite)

• 9 Web platforms to help you change the world (Socialbrite)

• 12 awesome platforms for social good (Socialbrite)

• Ideavibes: A new way to do crowdsourcing & crowdfunding campaigns (Socialbrite)

The post 15 ways to crowdfund your startup or project appeared first on Socialbrite.