Facebook preferred Social Media for Fundraising

May 17, 2011 Leave a comment

The result of our recent poll on LinkedIn showed that Facebook used more for fundraising than other social media. Having read Pamela Grow’s blog on yesterday’s SOFII post, this is perhaps an area that more organisations should look into, as one charity has enjoyed phenomenal success using the basic Facebook platform effectively.

No matter what the media, I’ve always said that fundraising doesn’t have to be expensive to work.  You don’t have to have heavyweight paper, embossed in gold with expensive print and design any more than you need a database that can do everything but make the tea (although you do need a database!).  Often you can adapt what you already have to reach donors by thinking creatively and using a bit of imagination.  I think that Pamela’s blog outlines this beautifully, as the Soi Dog charity shows how it harnessed Facebook properly, using a little bit of work and imagination – without breaking the bank!

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The Rise of the Social Enterprise

April 26, 2011 Leave a comment

With an increasing number of my clients operating as social enterprises, rather than solely as charities, I read Noam Kostucki’s post on the SOFII blog with interest.  Noam has put together a list of suggestions to help organisations – charities in particular – look at how they can become more entrepreneurial in their outlook and generate their own income.  And that has to be something that is not only worth considering but becoming increasingly important in these trying economic times. 

I’ve blogged many times about the need for charities to take a more creative approach to diversifying their income and generating income can certainly help to provide more sustainability for an organisation.  Noam’s tips include:

1. Look at what you’re best at and capitalise on that – don’t try to completely reinvent the wheel but use the skills and experience you have available to you to help diversify your income.  What do you currently offer clients/service users/the community you’re based in, how does that help them and can it be adapted to  provide an income for you e.g. by providing the same service but to an audience who can afford to pay for it? 

2. What is your current business model and can it be adapted in such a way to earn you an income without your current beneficiaries suffering as a result?  Are there income generating opportunities that ‘fit’ with what you do already?  TOMs Shoes is the example given where, for every pair of shoes sold, the charity sends a pair to a child in need – a nice and obvious link between what the business does and the charitable aim.

3. Use technology to make your life easier – an area which I already advocate to enable organisations to make their fundraising work smarter not harder through crowdfunding, Facebook, Twitter and the use of social media to ‘spread the word’ about your organisation, raise awareness and ultimately, raise money.  Noam suggests using social media to harness that free PR and publicity to help you grow your business and promote your business services to a broader audience.

Noam’s post offers good suggestions as to how to think creatively about adapting your charity into a social enterprise model by thinking out of the box, working smarter not harder and harnessing the skills and experience you already have – thereby turning a change in your organisation’s income generation model from something scary into something achievable, flexible and, most of all, sustainable.

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Fundraising & Social Media

March 28, 2011 Leave a comment

Please complete our poll  (it’ll take about 30 seconds) on LinkedIn to let us know what social media you’re using to communicate with and attract new donors to your organisation.  And we’ll let you know the results next month.

Thanks!

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Using Social Media in your Fundraising

February 17, 2011 1 Comment

The advent of social media has resulted in charities trying new ways of fundraising but, before you go down the route of using social media, there are a few things you need to consider:

1. Work out what you are trying to achieve. It may seem as though everyone is on Twitter but does that mean you should be? That said it’s an effective way to get your message across in bite size chunks but think about why you are doing it before you start. Are you trying to drive people to your website? Or perhaps change perceptions about your charity? Maybe you want to reach a new audience? Whatever the reasons, what matters most is that you know why you’re getting into social media in the first place.

2. Be consistent. Don’t be tempted to change the central message of your charity. You may communicate differently (and you shouldn’t just regurgitate other marketing materials online) but whatever you say should still be in tune with your core message. Do be creative though, using video, podcasts and blogs to enrich your message.

3. Decide who is responsible for social media in your organisation. You may have different people tweeting and blogging on your behalf but you should have a policy that everyone adheres to which sets out clear objectives for your social media activity. And these objectives must be communicated to those using social media on behalf of your organisation. There are benefits in asking others to contribute, adding value and different perspectives to your messages – as long as they are consistent. And please, please make sure that personal social media activity isn’t confused with that carried out in your charity’s name.

4. Encourage your Board to use their online networks to your advantage. We all ask trustees or board members to network on our behalf offline, so why not online? This isn’t an area that has been hugely exploited but it’s bound to become of increasing importance in the future. Ask your Board to use Linked In to promote their involvement with your charity. And if you know that they are on Twitter perhaps they can be encouraged to tweet to their followers on your behalf?

5. Use social media as part of your overall communication strategy. Social media is part of a good communications strategy. Used well it will drive traffic to your site, raise awareness of your campaigns and help to reach new audiences – but it isn’t the only method of communication that you should use, even if it is good value for money. For example, a successful direct mail campaign shouldn’t be replaced with a Facebook page but you could enrich your message by using Facebook to inform fans about your campaign – and vice versa.

Social media is a good, low cost, effective way to reach new audiences but it is only one platform for communicating with your audience. Above all, social media gives you the opportunity to be creative and reach new audiences in new ways, so use it to your best advantage.

freelance fundraiser

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Crowdfunding – the Power of Many

January 27, 2011 4 Comments

I’ve blogged before about social media and fundraising – in particular looking at crowdfunding to support charities.  So I was interested to read in Charlotte Higgins Culture blog on the Guardian online about a new website that launched this week – WeDidThis– which aims to enable arts organisations to fundraise for projects with donors receiving a reward for every successful campaign and a refund if the campaign doesn’t meet its target.  How’s that for incentivising the fundraising team to reach their target? 

I think it’s a great idea – particularly for smaller, non-venue based organisations where traditional friends schemes are often unworkable or don’t necessarily ‘fit’ with their brand.  This type of project based fundraising helps donors to connect directly with the work an organisation is doing while also connecting with them possibly in a way that they are used to. 

Crowdfunding was born in the US (what fundraising technique wasn’t – I hear you ask) and sites such as WeFund and the US based Kickstarter have adopted this approach to encourage large numbers of people to donate small amounts to particular projects and campaigns. 

With an increasing emphasis on fundraising – particularly in light of recent and future cuts in statutory income – this provides another way to engage with donors and build donations in a low resource intensive and cost effective way.

Arts organisations are increasingly using social media to communicate with their audiences and websites that allow a similar approach to fundraising work well alongside this.

It will be interesting to see how this develops and who capitalises on it successfully – but I’m sure that it will affect the way organisations fundraise in the future and, in particular, engage with individual donors.

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