Social Media

So with all these great, new outreach and engagement tools at its disposal, how can your organization harness this still-new medium to empower constituents on your behalf? There are many strategies and 
initiatives already playing out all over the fundraising sector — with plenty more new and unforeseen ideas still to come. Here, FundRaising Success highlights some creative and successful ways organizations are using social media to raise awareness and funds.

Until recently, people were not used to having true, two-way conversations with their fundraisers. Social media has changed all of that. It's also made mobilizing supporters to act on organizations' behalf easier than ever.

The days of organizations standing on a mountaintop and broadcasting their messages for the world to consume are rapidly evaporating. No longer is control solely in nonprofits’ hands, no matter how much they wish it was. To truly succeed in raising funds and solving the world’s problems, nonprofits must work in concert with networks of social changemakers — passionate individuals and organizations, among others.

Blame hard times, the spread of social media or the incentives created by a competition, but things have gotten ugly in an online contest among cultural organizations to win a $200,000 grant from American Express.

On Thursday night Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, one of nine nonprofit groups competing for the grant, posted a Twitter message saying: “I know we’ve asked before, but we really need to beat StoryCorps. We NEED your HELP. Show some love & vote for the arts.”

On-demand nonprofit constituent engagement solutions provider Convio announced a  new version of its online marketing, fundraising and advocacy suite that makes it easier for a nonprofit's constituents to leverage social media and social-sharing technologies.

This past week my computer died. To most people this would be an inconvenience, however, to someone who makes her living using online tools and a consistent Internet connection it was a slightly different story. I was nearing hysteria by day four of using a loaner computer that would probably be more useful as a coaster than for accessing the Web.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, established in 1983 to promote understanding between members of two major, often at-odds religions and build broad 
support for Israel, was one of the first nonprofit organizations to devote a full-time position to social media.

If you love thinking about how social media and technology can be used to raise money, increase visibility and create social change (is there an app for that?), there's no better place to be than the annual NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference, which took place this year in April in Atlanta. Once I got done ogling all of the new iPads and finished searching for places to plug in my laptop, I actually had real conversations with a few breathing humans. Look, ma! No plugs!

Nonprofit technology provider Blackbaud will be the exclusive nonprofit sales channel for ThePort social-networking solutions.

Hardly a day goes by where I don't hear about some new Twitter initiative in the fundraising sector. From Britt Bravo's recent Twitter chat to Roger Craver discussing the reach of Twitter and social media (albeit in a fraudulent manner), Twitter's influence on keeping donors engaged is undeniable.