Social Media

You know your donors and prospects are active on social media, and you know you should track donor data in this ever-evolving media. But how do you know what to look for and analyze when it comes to social-media data? On June 10, we'll host the Engage Virtual Workshop: Driving Donations With Data to help attendees come to better understand and work with their data gathering and usage.

Nervous about your crowdfunding campaign’s wobbly, uncertain success? Perhaps your campaign is not going as well as you expected or you’re not getting the traction and publicity that you thought you would. It’s not all lost. You can still change it! Let’s look at what the common symptoms are for a failing crowdfunding campaign and what you can do to change how things are going.

If you’ve never launched a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign before, it might seem pretty daunting. You might be unsure of where to even start or whether you’ll have the resources to make it successful. Essentially, you may just feel like you’re starting from zero. And we know that can feel scary.

If you’re feeling this way, you might be one of the following types of organizations who have never tried peer-to-peer fundraising before, and are wondering how to get started.

Hundreds of nonprofit organizations could dramatically increase awareness and donations if they used social media more effectively. Most nonprofits rely on volunteers, who engage in a variety of offline marketing efforts such as direct mail, fliers and phone banks. That’s fine, of course, but the smart nonprofit will use every tool at its disposal, and these days, that means supplementing offline tools with online ones such as social media. Why use social media in fundraising? Here are a few reasons …

It’s the 21st century, so it’s no surprise that a recent report showed 93 percent of nonprofits are on at least one social-media channel. What is surprising: Only 20 percent consider social media to be a particularly valuable tool. Getting on social media is easy; leveraging it is a whole different story.

But organizations that dismiss social media as a detouring side street rather than a main thoroughfare to fundraising are actually missing out on an opportunity to further engage supporters, build new giver relationships and tell stories about how donations are utilized.

I find that many nonprofits, and small businesses, share without a plan or a strategy. They just share. And, even more often, what they share tends to be rather narrow, focusing on just one or two things.

Here are seven things your nonprofit should be sharing via various social-media channels: stories, the need, change, the opportunities, images and video, your vision, and your heart.

In the age when social networking has become the No. 1 activity on the Web, social fundraising has also sustained a meteoric rise. It makes sense: The online fundraising trend allows users to reach wide networks of people through popular online channels, and the return is high. In 2013 alone, the number of acquired charitable donations by peer-to-peer fundraisers grew 50 percent.

Nonprofits wanting gifts should give them. Relationships work that way. And relationships count for everything. Getting and retaining donors (and, really, any type of constituent) is all about building and stewarding relationships. Satisfying, long-term relationships; not quick transactions. And lasting relationships are measured by the mutually sustaining benefits experienced by all parties over time. Give and get.

That's what social media is all about. Here are 10 truths about social media's impact on nonprofit fundraising and marketing that promotes giving and getting.

Can you imagine starting a new campaign and bringing in 584 new donors in the first 17 hours? OK. Here’s how a crazy successful crowdfunding campaign happened.

Shana Pennington-Baird, along with her friend Amanda, put together a campaign to raise $25,000. The money would be used to fix an historic glass structure in Seattle. The structure had been damaged by some excited fans after the Seattle Seahawks had won the Super Bowl.

Everyone knows promoting your nonprofit’s events, services and fundraisers on social media is a good idea, but many don't know why, or more importantly, how, to do it. What you might not have heard are some more unique strategies to promoting your nonprofit. Here are a few of those strategies that could help your nonprofit go viral: 1. Promote events that might not be events. 2. Get visual. 3. Talk back. 4. Give away anything. 5. Measure metrics.