Social Media

There are four major online communications tools that every fundraiser should take advantage of — event marketing, social-media marketing, e-mail marketing and online surveys — according to Erik Mintz, director of event marketing at nonprofit software provider Constant Contact.

A decade ago, museum Web sites were little more than online advertisements, displaying an institution’s hours, directions, admission prices and exhibitions. But evolving technology has created new opportunities.

Talk to anyone involved with museum technology and the conversation inevitably boils down to one universal word: engagement.

The Twitter stream, which last month proved to be a vital link for anti-government protesters in the Middle East, quickly turned into a worldwide forum for comfort, heartbreak and hope for Japan's quake-stricken residents.

Social-networking powerhouses Twitter and Facebook once again became important communications tools in a natural disaster.

In a recent post, Patrick Thornton of the Poynter Institute shares how journalists are using metrics to track the success of tweets. It's well worth a read.

Technology is great, but it takes human beings to make the most of it. Ask these questions to make your fundraising efforts successful this year and beyond.

It took almost a decade for donors to trust Donate Now technology. Similarly, it might take years for them to trust apps and widgets (and mobile-giving technology), but can you imagine if we had listened to the naysayers and thrown out Donate Now buttons in 2005 because the results weren't immediate?

Rick Weiss, who owns Insty-Prints, is taking a different tack this year for his annual search for groups deserving of help. He has made annual donations to local organizations for the past 11 years.

Using Facebook and LinkedIn, he launched "a $1,000 Nonprofit Challenge" last week, asking people whose lives have been touched by a local non-profit to share their stories.

His plan is to have people vote for their favorites and then award the top vote getter $1,000 worth of marketing and graphics services. The second and third place winners also receive donated services.

Social fundraising startup Fundly closed a $2 million seed funding round led by several Silicon Valley investors.
 
Crowdsourced fundraising can be one of the most powerful methods of making money for a cause, as evidenced by the rise of services like Kickstarter and GoFundMe. Fundly claims that 74.6 percent of donors are more likely to give if asked by family or friends and donations are generally 52 percent larger when friends ask friends to donate.

A lot of the talk at the Washington Nonprofit Conference was about how so many organizations are still hesitant to devote money and manpower to social media. How is your organization using social media?

The humanitarians behind Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, a charity that raises money for 170 children’s hospitals across the country, are always looking for new ways to fundraise. The end result came in the form of the new hospital-themed social game Hospitopia. Created by CausePlay, a social gaming company that was founded on the idea that games can make a difference, Hospitopia allows users to build and manage a virtual hospital while generating real funds to help children.