Leverage the power of #GivingTuesday to raise awareness & funds

Today charities, families, businesses and folks like you will come together to help create #GivingTuesday. This creates an opportunity to join a massive trending conversation on social media that will surely create more awareness for your cause.

How can your nonprofit join #GivingTuesday? After you become a #GivingTuesday partner, create a Partner Page to be featured on the GivingTuesday website.

Then use your existing social channels to tell your people about #GivingTuesday:

• Encourage your supporters to join the #GivingTuesday community.
• Email your people with sample tweets and Facebook updates they can use to talk about your cause. (Make sure you keep these short and sweet, and include the hashtag #GivingTuesday.)
• Tweet with the hashtag #GivingTuesday to drive people to your #GivingTuesday page.
• Create a few #GivingTuesday pictures you can post on your page with conditional sharing.
• Share these ideas with your sponsors and other local businesses.

Get more ideas on #GivingTuesday

Check out these ideas for local businesses and families, and see what other nonprofits are doing today. Share your ideas for #GivingTuesday below!

The post Last call for your nonprofit to join #GivingTuesday appeared first on Socialbrite.

Help your donors climb the ladder of engagement

First of two parts. Next:
• Tips & tools for effective online fundraising

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, cause advocates, fundraising professionals.

Why does it seem that raising money with social media is almost impossible?

We all know that retweets can travel faster than an earthquake and Facebook is basically word of mouth on steroids.

But why do so many social media fundraisers fall flat?

The answer lies in understanding exactly how people use social media, and why these tools even exist in the first place.

Four ways you use social media

If you think about your own behavior, you’ll realize that you use social media in at least four different ways:

• Connect – Facebook is a friend network. The reason you visit your Facebook news feed is to see what’s happening with your friends. Updates from brands, including nonprofits, are mostly interruptions.
• Discover – Twitter is where you discover interesting pictures, videos, and blog posts. You’ll also make new friends who might eventually become Facebook friends. YouTube is where you discover awesome videos, either by searching or browsing categories and trending videos.
• Sharing – Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, and in fact all social media, is about sharing. On Facebook, you’ll share with friends; on Twitter and Pinterest, you’ll share with the world; and on Linked In you’ll share with professional connections.
• Organizing – You use Facebook Groups and Google Hangouts to get things done. You share common goals – no matter how formal or informal – with the other members.

What these four uses have in common is that they’re all relational. You and your relationship with a person, or you and your relationship with content or a goal.

Facebook is not Amazon.com and Pinterest is not eBay

This isn’t to say that people don’t buy things as a result of using social media. If I find an awesome musical group on Google Plus, I’ll buy their music. When I saw a Facebook ad about the tsunami in Japan, I donated money by clicking on the ad.

That being said, I never use social media with the goal of buying something or donating to a nonprofit.

The ladder of engagement

If you look at the ladder of engagement that Beth Kanter and Katie Paine discuss in their book, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, you’ll learn that you need to take someone’s hand on Facebook or Twitter and walk them down a specific path where they will eventually pull out their credit card.

In terms of garnering donations, this means inviting those who naturally have a passion for your cause to join your e-mail list, where they are much more likely to donate to your cause.

What do you guys think about using social media for your organization’s fundraising efforts? Leave us a comment and let us know what’s worked best for you!

Related

• 3 top tips for nonprofits’ online fundraising (Socialbrite)

• 4 Facebook apps to raise funds for your cause (Socialbrite)

• Fundraising tips and tools (Socialbrite)

The post Why can’t I raise any money with social media? appeared first on Socialbrite.

36 million pages makes it easy for people to find their favorite causes

Target audience: Nonprofits, foundations, NGOs, cause organizations, cause supporters.

Guest post by Janet Fouts
Social Media Coach

You may have read my post here a few months ago about social fundraising, and I wanted to share a new start-up in this category that has a unique twist.

Founded by Wayne Yamamoto and Jason Culverhouse, both of whom have several successful start-ups to their credit, Charity Blossom has listed close to a million nonprofits on their website. The list of charities runs the gamut from huge multi-national organizations like the Red Cross to tiny, very local charities like my favorite, Town Cats, which may not have the bandwidth to set up fundraising pages on their own. Listings on the site give an in-depth background on the charity based on their Form 990 documentation, so donors can make informed choices and even add comments or update some of the information on the charity, upload photos or discuss the charity right on the page.

It’s about search engine optimization

Charity Blossom brings another card to the table with search engine optimization. The website is designed to maximize the benefit of the extensive SEO knowledge of the Charity Blossom team, and as a result it’s heavily indexed by Google and Yahoo. Charity Blossom already has more than 36 million indexed pages. In the end, this is going to make it very easy for people to find their charities through Charity Blossom and donate. As new charities create a presence on the site and attract donors, it becomes even more visible through social sharing with Twitter and Facebook integration as well as the ability to start a discussion on the site with Facebook Connect.

Says Wayne Yamamoto, CEO and founder of Charity Blossom: “Giving is going online — just like airplane ticket sales, banking and shopping. However, a lot of donation activity is currently entrenched in the offline world. When you give at events, over the telephone, or in response to snail mail, so little actually makes it to ‘doing good.’ We want to change this and make giving, easy, efficient, and even fun. Charity Blossom helps donors help their favorite charities blossom.”

Sharing is giving

Currently they are running a promotion to help spread the word where a donor can invite their friends to donate through the site. For every three friends who donate to whatever charity they choose, Charity Blossom will give $10 to the charity of the initial donor. Some additional details:

How the funds are transferred

Charity Blossom partners with Charity Pass to process funds. Charity Pass is a 501(c)(3) public charity that works with nonprofits to process donations on behalf of donors. The full details of how funds are transferred and fees incurred are in the FAQ on their website.

Charity Blossom accreditation

To make it easier for donors to feel comfortable about donating, Charity Blossom offers a badge of confidence for approved charities to post on their websites. From the website: “Whenever you see the Charity Blossom Badge, you can be assured that the charity has agreed to be truthful and transparent. Only those Charity Blossom members that exhibit trust and transparency can become an Accredited Nonprofit of Charity Blossom and display the Badge.”

For the donors

When a donor makes a donation, it shows up on their Charity Blossom dashboard, where they can easily see who they have donated to, amounts and dates of donations and download a receipt. This means a donor can contribute to several organizations all from their Charity Blossom dashboard and be able to track the receipts easily for tax purposes.

Donors also have to option of donating to a “field of interest” donation. This means the funds will be distributed to Charity Blossom vetted charities.

Have you used Charity Blossom? What do you think?

The post Charity Blossom: Another step forward for social giving appeared first on Socialbrite.

At the Vivanista Charitable Fundraising Summit and Bootcamp, held Saturday in San Francisco, Janet Fouts and I closed out the afternoon with a wide-ranging conversation with nonprofit representatives in the audience about social media tools and strategy.

The night before the summit, I put together a one-page color flyer in the visually pleasing style that has characterized these handouts from Socialbrite. Social Fundraising Tools for Nonprofits & Causes (a PDF found at bit.ly/fundtools) lists 10 platforms for raising funds, including:

• Stalwarts like Fundly, Razoo and Causes

• Relative newcomers like Rally and give2gether

• GiveForward, a new platform to help people who need financial support for medical purposes

And others. Be aware that your mileage may vary with some of these platforms — they differ not only in pricing but in placement (your site or theirs), effectiveness with social networks, metrics dashboards and rules governing data ownership.

We’re releasing the flyer under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license, like others in this series of handouts:

• 40 hashtags for social good
• 12 steps to mobilize your cause
• 10 iPhone apps for social good
• 12 social action hubs

Video of sessions coming soon

After a full day of sessions, the give and take turned out to be a good way to wind up the summit, held at the San Francisco Art Institute (following a wonderful reception the evening before at the 12 Gallagher art gallery). Questions covered a range of topics, but many centered on internal processes and expectations. For instance:

Q: What do you say to an executive or department chief who insists on hitting certain milestones, such as 1,000 Twitter followers within six months of launch?

A: That’s the wrong metric to emphasize. You can get 10,000 followers within six months, but they won’t be worth much. The quantity of raw followers is less important than the quality — even a few dozen followers can be more useful if they’re passionate and committed to your cause. In the end, what matters isn’t the size of your following in social media but whether those people are taking actions in the real world to advance your mission.

The sessions at the summit were videotaped and will be available to view online in a couple of weeks.

Related on Socialbrite

• Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks
• 24 tools for fundraising with social media
• What social fundraising means for your nonprofit
• Fundraising with social media — the right way
• How charity: water leads the way in social fundraising
• What’s your video strategy to raise funds?
• Fundly: Tap into your supporters’ social networks
• Rally: Raise money for your favorite cause
• 10 tips for a successful fundraising event
• More fundraisng articles on Socialbrite

The post Social fundraising tools for nonprofits & causes appeared first on Socialbrite.

Discover an easy way to fundraise by rewarding your donors with online deals

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, businesses, brands, educators, community organizations, fundraising professionals, individuals.

Guest post by Kristen Elworthy
Director of Marketing & Publicity, GoodTwo

It’s a challenge that every nonprofit, school and community organization faces in a soft economy: donor money is more necessary than ever, but many donors are reducing the size of their gifts or the number of organizations they support.

Solution: make it worth the donor’s while to contribute to your cause. GoodTwo is a fundraising platform that rewards donors with great deals and offers from businesses (think online deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial) while also generating donations for fundraisers. We provide a way for fundraisers to connect with their donors by giving something back.

How it works

• GoodTwo works with a variety of brands across the country to create great offers that have a built-in donation to a cause in each sale.
• Causes like yours come to www.goodtwo.com and sign up for a free fundraiser. It takes about five minutes to create your GoodTwo page.
• Select from all of the deals that we have available across the country, based on the ones that your donors would like best.
• Promote your page using our built-in e-mail, Facebook and Twitter tools. Every time one of your donors buys one of the deals, they save money and you get a donation!

Two-in-one cause marketing

You’re probably faced with hundreds of different fundraising programs every year, so the big question is: Why GoodTwo? Sure, it’s a free program, but what makes it worth being part of your fundraising cycle? The simple answer is that it’s a fresh new take on a cause marketing fundraiser and it gives you the rare opportunity to thank your donors while also getting valuable contributions to your cause.

For example, imagine receiving an e-mail from an organization that thanks you for your support — be it time, treasure, or talent — by offering you a $50 gift card at a popular restaurant for just $30, or a two-night stay at an upscale hotel chain for $200. That’s a great deal and a fantastic thank you, but what’s even better is that a portion of either of those deals (typically 25%) will go back to your cause, giving your donor a chance to feel thanked by you and to continue to invest in your organization.

How to achieve effective fundraising with GoodTwo

We often get questions about what type of organization GoodTwo is best for, and our answer is that it’s an effective fundraiser for anyone looking to reach their supporters online via Facebook, e-mail or Twitter. From individuals walking, running or riding for a cause, to large organizations that execute massive e-mail campaigns, GoodTwo is a flexible campaign that can really fit into any fundraising style.

We work with Run Walk Ride events like The Jimmy Fund Walk to create easily customizable campaigns for their individual participants. If you’re a large organization that would like to set up a landing page for your participants to create their own GoodTwo fundraisers, you can do that as well. Read more information on our Organizer’s page, or e-mail fundraisers@goodtwo.com.

Any other fundraisers can go directly to our signup page and create their own custom fundraiser in just a couple of minutes. Some of the areas we serve are schools (including PTOs, PTAs and sports teams), animal welfare and animal rescue groups, community causes and many others.

We hope you’ll check out the fundraising tools available on GoodTwo. If you have any questions, you can e-mail us at fundraisers@goodtwo.com.

The post GoodTwo: Give something back to your donors appeared first on Socialbrite.

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, fundraising professionals, social media managers, cause supporters.

This is Part 6 of our series on social fundraising. See below for other articles in this series.

If you’re a nonprofit looking to raise funds online or an individual looking to support a favorite cause, there’s a new kid on the block you should know about: Rally. Rally is an online fundraising platform that helps causes raise money faster, easier and in a more social way.

Following in the tradition of Causes, Give2gether, Fundly and other social fundraising services we’ve been writing about in this series, Rally brings some impressive things to the party: a sleek, streamlined interface, a simple business model and a platform that will soon be open to anyone who wants to support a cause. We wrote about Rally in Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks.

The platform is currently restricted to beta testers, like Students of the World, which raised an impressive amount of money in a few weeks, but is expected to open up to everyone this fall. Rally will be for anyone — nonprofits, foundations, political campaigns, churches, sports teams, neighborhood improvement efforts, filmmakers creating a documentary — looking to leverage social media on behalf of a bigger idea. We’ll update this article when Rally flings open the doors wide.

Check out the Students of the World page on Rally to see what it’s all about. Students of the World is a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits tell their story through video and photography, and they achieved success on Rally by interacting with their supporters with photos, videos and conversation.

I recently visited the San Francisco headquarters of Rally — where they also host the “RallyPad” incubator space for fledgling startups — and interviewed Kaitlyn Trigger, Rally’s director of marketing.

Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo

Rally is for nonprofits looking for a new revenue stream, Kaitlyn says, but it’s also for any person looking to raise funds to build a neighborhood playground or to raise money to support a friend with a medical condition.

“We know that one of the most powerful ways to get people to donate money is to have a friend ask them,” she says. “It’s the Uncle Joeys and Aunt Lucias of the world. When they tell family and friends about a cause they deeply care about, they’re going to respond much more generously than if an organization makes that ask.”

Rally has no monthly charges, no contract or set-up fees, and a flat per-donation fee of 4.5 percent, which drops to 4 percent when you raise a certain amount.

How Rally differs from its competitors

I asked Kaitlyn how Rally differs from its main competitors — all of whom do estimable jobs — and she laid out these reasons:

• Customization: Rally allows causes to completely customize their donation pages to align with their brand identity, while Fundly and Give2gether have a set modular template.
• Fan fundraising: Rally empowers your supporters to instantly create their version of your donation page and post their own content about your cause. Give2gether doesn’t accommodate this, and this feature is minimized in Fundly’s user experience.
• Ongoing vs. project-based: Rally is built for causes that want to raise money year round with multiple different campaigns. We make it easy for you to create unlimited donation pages, each with its own design, copy, and donation amounts. Give2gether and Fundly allow you to create only one page. Give2gether also asks you choose an end date for your campaign, and they transfer money into your account only at the end of the campaign.
• Pricing: Rally has its own payment processing network (just like PayPal), so we charge no additional fees on top of the 4 to 4.5 percent transaction fee. Both Fundly and Give2gether charge their own transaction fee, plus an additional credit card or PayPal processing fee on top of that. They both also charge a monthly fee, which Rally doesn’t do.

In this 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 Rally: Raise money for your favorite cause appeared first on Socialbrite.

Connecting people to causes through shirts that tell stories

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, fundraising professionals, community managers.

This article is part of our series on social fundraising.

Guest post by Brandon Hance
Founder & CEO, GoodThreads

In 2010 our family lost my aunt Carol to breast cancer. When tragedy strikes, I believe it is part of the human condition to find healing through “the fight” against the culprit – be it disease or disparity. Additionally, surrounding friends and family often rally around those who have been affected and show them support, caring and compassion.

This theory became blazingly clear to me as I watched my mother and close friends train for a 39-mile race to honor my aunt soon after her passing. Not only did they train, but they spent ample time, energy and money creating T-shirts for their team, each with unique messages dedicated to my aunt, and each remembering her in their own distinct way. As I observed this labor of love, I couldn’t help but think: There must be a better way to do this — and a way that actually benefits the organization.

Thus, GoodThreads was born, and the idea of connecting people to a cause through “shirts that tell stories” became a reality.

GoodThreads provides nonprofits with a technology that seamlessly integrates into the event registration and donation processes, while supporters are given the tools to create customized merchandise — T-shirts, hats, bags, water bottles, etc. — that allows them to tell their personal story and demonstrate their connection to the cause.

Nonprofit organizations that partner with GoodThreads enable their supporters to buy merchandise that can then be customized with their name, the name of a loved one, photos or other images, and personalized messages. GoodThreads also allows the nonprofit to identify what portion of the item’s cost will be donated to its cause.

Increase donations, awareness & engagement

What we provide to nonprofits is a “Three Increase” solution for their cause marketing efforts:

• Increase donations: GoodThreads uses its innovative technology and systems to provide nonprofit organizations an easy, cost-effective means to supply supporters with personalized merchandise and receive donations from the sale of these goods – turning a merchandise program into a source of fundraising.
• Increase awareness: Supporters can customize merchandise with their name, the name of a loved one, a photo or personalized messages, while the nonprofit maintains control of branded aspects of the merchandise, including color, logo placement and references to sponsors – ensuring increased awareness about the cause.
• Increase engagement: Nonprofit organizations that offer supporters a means to tell their personal stories about a cause, deepen their relationships with these individuals and provide them a continuous means to proudly demonstrate their support – creating engagement that will serve an organization for years to come.

In addition, the GoodThreads platform offers social sharing features; this gives supporters an opportunity to mobilize their core group of friends and family through inviting them (via social networks) to purchase the item they’ve created to support the nonprofit.

While I’m extremely excited about the prospect of having a positive, social impact on nonprofit event fundraising and supporter engagement through the use of technology, what GoodThreads is really about is harnessing the powerful emotions around profound loss and life challenges, and providing an opportunity for healing and connection on the most basic, human level.  Who knew Technology + T-shirts could do that?

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 GoodThreads: Custom T-shirts as a fundraising tool appeared first on Socialbrite.

Nonprofits can increase funds raised by more than 50%, says Fundly CEO David Boyce

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

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

By Tamara Schweitzer
Socialbrite staff

Did you know that individuals donate $300 billion to nonprofits every year? But only 13 percent of that amount is given online. Why is that? According to David Boyce, CEO of the social fundraising platform Fundly, the only reason that number isn’t higher is because nonprofits don’t make it easier for their supporters to give online.

Boyce, who presented at the Social Media for Nonprofit event in New York last month, wants to help nonprofits make fundraising a more social and Web-based experience. Increasingly, charitable giving is moving online – in fact, online giving grew at a rate of 55 percent in 2010.

The problem, Boyce says, is that 90 percent of online donations are what he calls “one-and-done transactions.” Meaning, the supporter goes to the organization’s website, clicks on a form to donate, fills out their credit card information and hits contribute. There’s no shelf life to that action at all, and Boyce believes that’s not the way that most people want to interact when they give money away. “They want to join something and feel like they belong, so it needs to be inclusive and it needs to be social,” Boyce told me when we met at the conference.

What exactly is social fundraising?

Social fundraising is a way to leverage the power of your supporters’ social networks to gain more donations. If a supporter is giving to you, it’s because they care about your cause, and they’re going to want to share that with their friends, too. With social fundraising, you are opening up that individual act of giving to the power of social networks so that every transaction is just a jumping off point for supporters to be able to share their passion and commitment with their online networks.

Boyce says supporting a nonprofit is inherently a social experience. Want proof? According to figures from Fundly, people are 10 times more likely to make a donation when asked by a friend than when asked by an organization, and these gifts tend to be about 50 percent bigger.

Over the past few years, a number of platforms have launched to help nonprofits, organizations and individuals with online fundraising. Each has something slightly different to offer, but Boyce says regardless of what your needs are, there is a platform out there for you so you don’t have to build anything yourself. Most online fundraising platforms are as easy to set up as a Facebook page. If you haven’t explored the options, this article from the Socialbrite archives is a great place to start: 24 tools for fundraising with social media.

Also see Debra Askanase’s article from this series for a comprehensive breakdown of the different types of social media fundraising platforms available to organizations and a look at what features are right for your nonprofit.

What sets Fundly apart

Fundly is part of this emerging and fast-growing group of companies focused on social media fundraising. (See Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks.) However, unlike platforms such as Facebook Causes and Crowdrise, the Fundly platform operates within an organization’s own Web domain. Therefore, instead of visitors locating the organization’s fundraising page on another website and giving via outside channels, Fundly allows organizations to embed their campaign directly onto their website with a simple Java script. This allows organizations to engage supporters directly from their website and turn every giver into a gatherer for the cause.

Once a donation is made on a Fundly-powered website, that donor is prompted to tell their friends. Fundly’s algorithm has the ability to tell who your donor’s Facebook friends are and lets them know about any friends within their network who have also donated to the cause. This creates a sense of community around giving, says Boyce, and rather than an isolated action, giving quickly takes on a multiplying effect.

Once an organization has built a community of supporters around a cause, every time something noteworthy happens in your network, Fundly will spread the word via the social Web. For example, if a friend of someone in your network made a donation or joined, notifications will go out to your followers. Fundly calls this the “social multiplier effect.”

Mastering social fundraising

Boyce cautions that Fundly was not designed to have social networking take the place of traditional fundraising efforts. Just because you put your fundraising campaign out into the social sphere doesn’t mean that it’s automatically going to spread around, he says. As with the rules to any fundraising campaign, you have to stay involved and continue to cultivate your zealots – your committed supporters, board members, community organizers, etc. who are your key to making your fundraising campaign succeed through social media. Your zealots are going to be the first people who share their support with their friends and networks, so it’s important to interact with them frequently.

Since its founding in 2009, Fundly has helped its clients raise over $215 million for their causes.

Have you used Fundly or another social fundraising platform? Let us know what you have found effective.

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

Previously on Socialbrite

• 24 tools for fundraising with social media

• 8 tips for raising funds online

• A beginner’s guide to mobile fundraising

The post Fundly: Tap into your supporters’ social networks 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.