Social Media

Claire Axelrad’s Clairification blog, which was one of our Best Fundraising Blog winners in the 2013 Fundraising Professionals of the Year Awards, got more nominations than any single submission in any category of any year of the awards. Last month, we announced the award winners; this month we’d like to formally introduce you to the blog. Here are some of Claire’s favorite recent posts.

In December 2007, then FS Associate Editor Timothy Churchill wrote about the up-and-coming video site YouTube as another potential place for nonprofits to raise money and awareness in his story, "Do You YouTube?"

Stuff happens. An unfortunate typo gets through. Or as in this case, an overzealous keeper of your organization's Twitter or Facebook or whatever account lets something get by that really shouldn't have. The difference is in the way you handle it.

How do you become your donors' favorite cause — you, the one that they want? Here are five things you can do to increase engagement

Wow, we here at FundRaising Success had a collective Sally-Field-winning-the-Oscar moment — you know, "You like me! You really like me!" — yesterday when we realized that we were just 12 "friends" away from 1,000 on our Facebook page and 18 followers away from 3,000 on Twitter.

I had time to reflect on the topic that is on every marketing professional's mind these days: What is the return of our investment in social media — in my case for a general interest museum?

In the October 2007 feature, "OMG! Comment Me!" then FS Associate Editor Abny Santicola took a look at how organizations large and small were using social media.

As nonprofits have increasingly turned to social media, policies to govern their use have become the new frontier. It can be difficult for organizations to find examples that fit their needs. A good social media policy will provide clear guidelines as to what staff should and shouldn’t do when posting and interacting with the community on a day-to-day basis, freeing them up to think more strategically. But what’s involved in creating one?

A few years back, folks were talking about the possibility of fundraising in that weird, little world called Second Life. Thinking it might be fun, like the self-contained world of The Sims I was into at the time, I tried to jump in to that realm — without much luck. Here are my columns outlining that sad effort — one from July 2008 and another from July 2009.

The question today is not whether a charity should use social media, but how it should use the information that supporters are sharing on social media to attract more people to its mission and increase fundraising. The answer to the question lies in understanding social media constituents and identifying which ones are the most “social” — those who best interact with and influence others across their online networks — because, while each constituent is a potential donor, some are more adept at spreading the word and energising others.