Social Media

Facebook is about "quality" and what you do — or don't.

Crowdfunding is no longer reserved exclusively for small tech startups. Nonprofit organizations have started using this popular form of fundraising to extend their reach and to find new donors. Here are some tips to make your nonprofit's crowdfunding campaign a success. 1. Set a clear goal for your fundraising campaign. 2. Cultivate a community around your nonprofit crowdfunding campaign. 3. Create a great story that has potential to go viral.

Here is a mobile and social fundraising success checklist excerpted from "Mobile for Good: A How-To Fundraising Guide for Nonprofits" by Heather Mansfield, founder and principal blogger at Nonprofit Tech for Good. By reading the book and implementing the steps necessary to launch a comprehensive mobile and social fundraixsing plan — and checking off the must-do items as you go along — your nonprofit will have in place mobile and social fundraising plan flexible enough to adjust to rapid changes in fundraising and communication technology that will occur over the next decade.

Nonprofit crowdfunding is changing the landscape in online fundraising. As more and more donors are being exposed to crowdfunding for products and services, they’ll expect your fundraising to shift toward those approaches as well. Here are five best practices that I’ve learned along the way that you need to follow in order to crowdfund successfully for your nonprofit: 1. Start with a measurable goal. 2. Rethink rewards and donation tiers. 3. Create a sexy story. 4. Build a tribe of champions.

Storytelling has been receiving a lot of press lately, as a content-marketing tool and as an effective way to engage audiences on social media. Brands and businesses are getting their stories out there — stories about their origins, their values, their customers. Here are five stories that your nonprofit should be telling everywhere you do fundraising and marketing — including social media.

Creating an online community to mobilize your supporters and further your nonprofit's mission might seem like a big task. What to do? Where to start? A simple way is to look at what your peers are doing. Below are five examples of what some innovative nonprofits are doing with their online communities. Think online communities are just a general space on your website? Think again. Each of these are purpose-driven online communities designed to achieve specific results for the organization.

Here are seven steps to succeed with crowdfunding in 2014 gleaned from a meetup on crowdfunding.

If you’re like most nonprofits, you’re still trying to figure out how social media can help you sustain and grow your mission. Most of you are getting it wrong. Sorry to be so blunt.

Here’s how you’re going astray: (1) your posts are too promotional; (2) your content isn’t relevant to your readers, and (3) you’re too repetitive and boring, without adding value. If you’re simply counting up your numbers of “likes” and “follows” and patting yourself on the back for how you’re growing your lists, you’re totally missing the point.

Craig Newmark's craigconnects has released a dynamite infographic about crowdfunding for nonprofits. Crowdfunding is a confusing term, because it can cover so much ground. But for the purposes of this infographic, Newmark and the agency that created the graphic, the RAD Campaign, stuck to crowdfunding for nonprofits. There are lots of stats in this infographic that paint a pretty rosy picture of where crowdfunding for nonprofits stands and with hints about its future. 

With its ability to spread the word easily and quickly, social media is a great tool for your nonprofit to use in fundraising. But if that’s the only thing you’re using social media for, you won’t get very far. People use social media to be social, to interact with others. That means you should be engaging with your supporters throughout the year by chatting them up on your sites, responding to them when they have questions, and sharing useful and entertaining information about your charity’s mission.