Social Fundraising 101 – Part 1: If Not Now, Then When?

This is the first in a four-part blog series.

Fundly enables non-profit causes to harness the collective energy of their supporters and volunteers and direct that energy toward specific and measurable goals, particularly fundraising goals.

Traditional CRM and donor management systems support a flat, one-to-many messaging structure.  In contrast, Fundly allows causes to rally supporters and volunteers in structures that match the cause’s organizational setup and maximize the likelihood of achieving desired goals.

Social platforms, such as Facebook, are great for generating awareness and initial engagement and, combined with an organizing structure and tools to hold supporters and volunteers accountable to their commitments, allow causes and their supporters to leverage their existing “social graphs” to achieve specific goals for the cause.

Fundly provides a platform that engenders a sense of community, gives supporters and volunteers the opportunity to personalize their message and communicate with each other, and enables them to use the communication channels they want to use, including social networks.  It allows this energy to be harnessed towards a common goal and allows the cause to measure the effectiveness of the effort at every level and across every channel.

Why social?

 

Fundraising is, and has always been, inherently social – people asking people for money.

A personal message from someone you know is more effective than an impersonal message from a faceless cause.  For example, a person is more likely to donate to help a friend meet his or her personal fundraising goal for completing a marathon than to meet the cause’s overall fundraising goal, even though the money ends up in the same place.  Human beings have trouble connecting with large problems or large fundraising goals in the abstract.

Furthermore, from a practical standpoint, de-centralizing fundraising and taking a social approach enables a cause to massively multiple the amount of fundraising activity.  The key to effectiveness is to have an effective organizing structure, to provide tools that help people reach their goals and to monitor and guide the effort.

Why now?

 

Most causes have only dipped their toes into the social networking waters.  Recent surveys show that most causes’ use of social networks is limited to awareness building.  However, as many causes have discovered, the number of fans on Facebook or followers on Twitter does not translate to real engagement and activation of supporters.

However, the raw statistics of social networks are impossible to ignore.  Facebook has over 500 million users.  The average Facebook user has 130 friends.  1 out of 5 Americans plays games such as Farmville on social networking sites.  Zynga, the largest provider of these social games, has 47 million users daily.

So, it is no longer a question of whether you have to engage via social networks, but a question of how.
Fundly allows causes to engage with their supporters and volunteers through social networks but to an end – driving specific actions, rather than merely increasing awareness.

Tomorrow we will look at: The Social Fundraising Maturity Model.