Will Facebook, Twitter, and Fundly be the Fundraisers of the Future?

At Fundly, we know that the future of fundraising is through online social media channels. Twitter has over 300 million users and 1.6 billion search queries each day. Facebook boasts of having more than 845 million users and more than half of those people log on each day. Furthermore, this past year showed a 13% increase in online giving which equals a 35-55% growth rate over the past year! With numbers like these, which are only increasing over time, it just goes to show that online social networking and fundraising are here to stay.

While we continue to encourage nonprofits and political candidates to take full advantage of their online fundraising potential, it’s nice to know that we’re not alone in our optimism using this strategy for garnering donations. Mike Cassidy wrote in the Mercury News this past weekend an interesting article entitled, “Will Facebook, Twitter, Fundly and the like be the fundraisers of the future?” (Can we answer an astounding “YES!” to that question?)

Cassidy proposes that, “as we move into the meat of the 2012 election season, think of the accelerating convergence of social networking and campaign fundraising as the anti-Super PAC movement.

“Super PAC money rolls into campaign coffers in the form of six-zero checks signed by supporters who possess unfathomable means and political interests that they’ll spend tens of millions to protect. The social network money, on the other hand, comes from no-name nobodies, kicking in $20 or $50 or maybe $200 at a time, in part because one of their Facebook friends did the same.”

Cassidy also highlights the point that social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are allowing those who normally wouldn’t contribute to political campaigns to now actively participate. This is reaching a younger demographic and getting more people involved in the political process.

Fundly has definitely seen the popularity of online giving grow over the past couple of years. At the end of the 2010 election cycle, 120 political customers were using Fundly to raise money. Now the number is 10 times that. The campaigns range from local races to the presidential efforts of Republicans Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and a Newt Gingrich PAC. Candidates also successfully raised $71 million for the 2010 midterm elections, including $23 million for Fundly money leader Meg Whitman, who ran for the office of Governor of California.

Online fundraising is the wave of the future, and we are excited that the word is getting out. We have helped thousands of nonprofits, schools, individual causes and candidates and we would love to help your organization, too!

10 Tips on Using Facebook to Your Non-Profits Advantage

Facebook is a force to be reckoned with. Here are some incredible statistics: there are more than 800 million active users. More than 50% of these users log on to their accounts every day. The average user has 130 friends. With these mind-blowing numbers, it would be ludicrous not to tap into Facebook to reach more donors with your cause.

Fortunately, Facebook has posted “10 Tips for Non-Profits on Facebook  ” to help organizations use their resource effectively. For those who are new to the social media world or if you want to make sure you are using this tool effectively, take note!

1. Create a Facebook Page – “First off, Pages allow you to publish directly into the news stream where you can engage your fans with a variety of different media, such as videos, polls and status updates. Secondly, Pages allow you to analyze how fans are interacting with your page via the Insights Dashboard, giving you instant feedback to help you adjust your method. You can also do things like buy advertising on Facebook for your Page to increase your number of fans.”
2. Use “Causes” – “Anyone can create a user-created advocacy group on Causes and administrators of those groups post announcements and communicate with members of that cause through email and Facebook notifications, foster discussions, share information, sign petitions and fundraise.”
3. Be Unique – You can do a simple link to your website, but a lot of people won’t take the time to click on it. Make you message timely, concise and specific to your cause.
4. Be Active – Let your donors know what happens on a daily basis. Ask for their opinions on news events or on polls that pertain to your subject matter. Interact with your Facebook following and allow them to share their stories and passion for why they choose to support your organization.
5. Reply – You don’t have to comment on every post, but it helps your donors feel more connected and invested if they know a real person is behind the text.
6. Create an App, Game or Quiz – Find new ways to engage your donors and give them reasons to come back to your page frequently.
7. Add a Store or Donation Box – Put these boxes on your front page for easy access. “There are all types of features you can add to your Page that allow your fans to feel ownership of your organization, like a fan badge or a sign petition box for their profile pages. The added bonus of this type of promotion is that, whether it’s published to your fan’s wall or their profile page, it also gets lots of new eyeballs to notice you.”
8. Consider Your Feedback – What is working and what isn’t? What is getting you a lot of traffic?
9. Segue into Other Media – Use texting, e-mail, Twitter and phone networks to fully get your message across. People use a variety of media so hit all your bases.
10. Try a Facebook Ad – “Facebook ads — displayed on the right-hand side of a user’s Page — are an easy, economical and effective way to increase your fan base or visits to your page. The self-serve advertising system allows you to place orders for people (or profiles) that match whatever demographic requirements you may have, mothers of children with a certain illness for example, and you’re only charged for performance.”

So obviously I summarized a lot of these points. I encourage you to check out their website
(http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/02/12/10-tips-for-non-profits-on-facebook/  ) to read the full descriptions and to see the many examples. Facebook is virtually free and the audience it reaches is incomparable to other advertising avenues. It’s so important to keep up with the times, and this is one of the easiest ways to keep your organization at the forefront of technology.

If you need to raise money   for your cause, Fundly provides the leading Facebook fundraising   tools to help you fundraise with ease, not only on Facebook, but enbles you to reach new donors via Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and many other social channels too.

Learn more about Fundly’s social fundraising tools today!

The Edelman Health Barometer: What Does it Say About our World?

David Armano, EVP for Global Innovation and Integration at Edelman Digital had an interesting presentation at the Mashable Social Good Summit held in New York this afternoon. He discussed the digital innovations that are available to aid in the greatest health challenges people face globally and how social media can impact behavior.



Armano stated that the Edelman Health Barometer 2011 was created by interviewing 15,000 individuals from around the globe to discover the extent of how people use the internet and how their choices on healthy living are determined. First of all, the term “health” has now become relative as the old idea of “absence of disease” is no longer the deciding factor. Functioning body, mental and emotional health and a balanced and nutritious diet all are contributing attributes. Armano explained that there is “not one global definition of what health is anymore.”

The second point of Edelman Digital’s survey was to determine how social media impacts health choices. They first acknowledged that there are different levels of internet involvement: 7% are “traditionalists” and are net active, 14% are “followers” and aren’t producing content but are consuming information, 23% are “offliners” and are not connected, 35% are “participants” and are engaged and comment on blogs, and 21% are “actionists” and actually are able to influence others to change their behavior.
Once these groups were established, the Edelman Barometer discovered that in developed markets 71% of participants tried to change their negative health habits with 46% of those returning to their former ways. In emerging markets, 45% tried to change their unhealthy ways and 61% of those relapsed.

So with all of this information, how does this influence the non-profit industry?

First of all, it is interesting to note the high percentage of people who use the internet and are active users. Secondly, many people try to change for the better only to go back to their bad habits. (Can anyone say “New Year’s resolutions?) Finally, Armano suggests that by making tools more accessible to those who need them, accountability and a sustainable change can be made. For example, he used an app he found for runners. By relying on one another for motivation, supporting positive behaviors and creating a support group, accountability is established and creates an environment for success. Who knows what we can achieve both with our health and with helping others through the use of the internet?

To read the complete findings discussed in this article, please go to: http://bit.ly/rllS0q
If your organization needs to raise money, set up and promote your non-profit fundraising campaign today using Fundly, the leader in online social fundraising.

Fundraising Online Is Easy For Fundraisers To Raise Money Fast

There is a fundamental change occurring in the way non-profit organizations, entrepreneurs and individuals are approaching the aspect of fundraising. Traditionally, when fundraisers are held in the physical world, their presence and visibility are limited to the location from which the fundraisers are being held and the number of individuals who help fundraise. Thanks to technology, the art offundraising has been exponentially enhanced through social media and platforms that allow individuals to collaborate, donate and collect for a common cause. People from all over the world are now able to publicize their causes and raise money online in order to better the situations of themselves and those around them.

The most popular method for online fundraisers is a technique called crowdfunding. Crowdsourced fundrasing allows individuals, business and causes to put forth an idea, determine a goal for the amount of funds to raise and set a deadline for raising the funds. Typically, crowdfunding social fundraising sites will display your project along with projects from a variety of categories. Individuals who are interested in funding or donating to projects can visit the site and select thefundraising project that is closest to their interests. By default, these sites can add a great boost to your effort to raise money online but when coupled with other approaches, can be even more effective.

One of these approaches is the concept of integrating your crowdfunding opportunity with direct social networking platforms. Most likely you already use a service such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or LinkedIn. These services can be used to vastly boost your earning potentials through crowdfunding sites such as Fundly, the largest online social fundraising platform in the world will allow you to share your fundraisers directly with all of your friends and also allowing donors to share your project to all of their friends. Such methods have been shown to increase fundraising potential by up to 50%.

Once these mechanisms are in place for your project, one will be able to fundraise quickly, cheaply and with little effort. Since your project is viewable online by millions of people, the amount one can fundraise in a given amount of time is much larger than compared to a traditional fundraiser. When you raise money online, you also avoid the conventional costs of a fundraiser; some sites may charge a fee for their services, but in the end it is worth it when compared to the extra money said cause generates. Once you have advertised your event and others are donating to the cause, you can typically sit back and watch the dollars roll in as individuals contribute and announce to their friends that they have contributed, which leads to more donations.

By following these tips, you too can begin to raise money online for your favorite cause, charity or start-up. There are individuals with deep pockets out there waiting to hear from you; all you have to do is make your case and promote your cause. By turning your fundraiser into an online fundraising event and integrating it with social fundraising platforms, your project will receive the time, attention and funds it truly deserves.

Raise Money Online For Your Causes’ Fundraiser

There are many ways to raise money online, some of which are ways that you may have never imagined or at least were not aware of previously. Most of these efforts to raise money online have to do with large fundraising operations that are used to benefit catastrophes or other large disasters, but not all. There are many different charities that try to raise money online for a number of causes that there are for people who wish the money raised is as numerous as the stars in the sky. That is the way that it has been for raising money online. It is completely possible to raise money online in large volume and with minimal time and effort; however you need to really have the right tips and tricks for it. The reasons for this are numerous because many different non-profit organizations out there try to gather the donations that people are giving away every year. To say that competition is fierce out there for funds would be an understatement, so it takes a special type of person and cause to be able to raise money online form various donors. However, with the right training and instruction anyone can increase their ability to raise money online either now or in the future via the social web. The reasons for this type of training is simple, many people will not give money to a cause that they don’t believe in. Therefore, you need to be able to sell your charity that you’re trying to raise money online for. It should also be noted that you should widen your spectrum geographically too. You should not try to limit yourself to just the local area in which you live because you could be denying yourself the opportunity to reach a much larger audience online. To raise money, you really need to be cognizant of the audience that you wish to reach out to and raise money online from. Now, this audience may not just be limited to the people in your city or town. It may be a cause that affects people across the entire world and therefore it would be a good idea to broaden you search for donators to the entire world rather than just your own city or town. To do this you will want to try to use larger medium to raise money online. These mediums will most likely include using email, blogs, websites, applications, widgets, press, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. You may be familiar with one or even all of these mediums; however they can be used to great effect in raising money. With these someone around the world from you can hear your message and understand that charity that you are trying to raise money online for. These mediums help you to reach across the world and broaden your exposure to people and places that you would not be able to on a regular basis. So it would behoove you if you are trying to raise money to look into either one or all of these different mediums to raise money online. There is no harm in trying and that is literally all you have to do, try.

Why You Should Get Into Online Fundraising Now

Fundraising is the process by which an individual or a group makes the effort of collecting contributions to a specific cause.  Back in the day, fundraising was done through events, direct mailing and face-to-face solicitations.  However, with the advent of technology, the Internet and the many tools that we have today, fundraising was elevated to online fundraising.

Online fundraising is rapidly becoming popular these days because almost everyone around the world is hooked up to the Internet.  You can easily set up a website, post a status on a social networking site, upload photos or other graphics, and many more ways to show that you have an announcement that you need to raise money for a certain cause, and watch the donations pour in through your friends, colleagues, family and other people that you may not know from other places around the world who may support your endeavors.
Fundraising online is something that has taken the world by storm.  Charity events and non-profit organizations have taken this route to be able to connect to their patrons and other more people who are aware of their causes to make a contribution.  We have seen many tragedies in various parts of the world and we have all seen various calls to raise money online for them.

There are a few good things about fundraising with the use of the Internet.

Your supporters, donors and patrons can easily become aware of your cause.  They can donate immediately through their online bank accounts or other secure means of transferring money while the information about the cause is still lingering in their minds.

In the same way, the organization who has organized the fundraising effort will almost immediately receive the funds and will also be able to establish immediate communication with the donors to thank them for their efforts.  With this, the funds can also be immediately used for emergency situations, when necessary.

Being able to do online fundraising will also help you to instantly have analysis on the fundraising behavior of your donors and patrons.  You can extract information such as effective marketing strategies, optimal website navigation design to facilitate quick donations, and the best call to action method that will help keep the issue lingering in their awareness.  Having a website to be able to receive your donations and make an announcement will also enable you to centralize all information and data gathering efforts such as names and contact details of the people who have contributed to your cause.  You will need this to be able to show them gratitude for their contributions.

It is highly important that your cause is always genuine and all the funds will go to where you intend them to be.  Be transparent with your actions as an organization or individual who solicits funds from others because this is a good cause for the society and it should never be tainted with any harmful motive.  There are various free online fundraising tools provided by a company, such as Fundly, who can help you with how to raise money online for your heartfelt cause.

How To Raise Money Online For A Cause? Easy Fundraising Tips

t is now possible to raise money for a social or political cause without having to organize an event or advertising in newspapers. The Internet has come up with an easier solution where you can reach out to millions without incurring expenses. You can raise money online as there are many avenues that you can employ, including social networking sites.

Raise money by targeting your donor audience
If you want to raise money online then it will be a good idea if you target the audience that supports your cause. You can do that by assessing the popularity of your cause and promoting it across a number of social networks. You can start with Facebook and Twitter and later expand your footprint to other social networking sites. All it needs is a simple approach that can help you in expanding your outreach.

·      You can start with creating a page on Facebook. This will serve as the mainstay of your fundraising efforts.

·      You can then start the process of outreach by visiting pages supporting similar causes and encouraging people to join your page.

·      You will be able to reach maximum number of people if you promote your page on social networking sites. The greater the number of fans and friends, the more will be the money raised.

·      Twitter can serve as the secondary platform to raise money online. A single tweet can encourage many to donate towards your cause if you have significant number of followers.

·      Linked-in and other websites can also help you to raise money for your cause.

How to raise money in significant amounts?
While you may be able to find some donors on social networks, it is important to expand your footprint to raise significant amount of money. This will call for a streamlined approach where you can track analytics on every social networking site. It is also important to create a network of payment where people are able to donate without lengthy procedures or glitches. Credit cards, electronic checks, and other modes of payment should be enabled on your platform.

A single platform for making donations may increase the number of donations as people will find it easier to donate to your cause. You can use payment platforms that offer simple procedures of accepting donations from social networking sites. These platforms offer an application where you can post links to the payment module on social networking sites and people will be able to make donations by clicking on that link. Some donation platforms do not even need the posting of a link as you can directly embed the donation module on your Facebook or Twitter page. Visitors to your page can use this module to donate on the spot without being directed to an external site.

You will also be able to keep track of each donation through this arrangement. You can raise money online in substantial amounts by using donation platforms and applications. You will be surprised by the ease with which you will be able to raise money.