Is Social Fundraising Right For Me?

I know I've mentioned social media in various posts throughout this blog but I believe this is an emerging channel in fundraising.

I listened to a podcast today from The Chronicle of Philanthropy that interviewed 2 people who have been actively using social media to fundraise.

The first person is Tracy Viselli who is "a community manager at Action Alexandria, [and] is working with a group of small, local nonprofits in Alexandria, Va., to build successful online fund-raising campaigns." The second person is Aaron Steinberg who is "the social media manager at SAR Academy, in Bronx, N.Y." His school is "participating in an online fund-raising contest designed to help it attract at least 1,000 online donors."

They raised several interesting points from their experiences that I think every organization who is thinking of launching social media campaigns need to consider:

• For Aaron, prior to beginning the school's contest, he had to evaluate if social media marketing was appropriate for his organization. He wasn't sure how responsive parents of the Academy would be. All organizations need to discuss this internally. What does social media mean to our organization and to our supporters? Wanting to be "social" and being "social" are 2 very different things.

•  For Tracy, her main takeaway was the importance of training. You must train the staff and everyone in the organization how to use social media. And not only how to use the platforms like Facebook or Twitter, but to be able to understand how to capitalize the impact. Another component is to be able to train your donors and potential donors. Both Tracy and Aaron urge people to hold events that incorporate a social media element. Have laptops, people, and literature available on how to participate in the social media campaign.

• Both agree that experimentation is key. Try different approaches. Aaron was able to have a local company match donations and turned it into a contest to see how many donors and dollars they could bring in. Tracy had various local non profits participate in an online giving challenge. They wanted to see which non profit would bring in the most online donations and had a leader board posted on their website. Because this is a new way of fundraising, you have to be able to test different approaches and find out what works for your organization.

Has your organization tried a social media campaign? If so, what were some of your takeaways?

--L