The Secret Sauce of Social Media Fundraising
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A lot of organizations are creating online fundraising campaigns; not a lot of organizations are raising funds. So what's the secret to a well-run online campaign? Effective online fundraising is remarkably similar to raising money and supporters offline—as you’ll learn in this dynamic presentation, the trick is in the translation.
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The Secret Sauce of Social Media Fundraising
- 1. THE SECRET SAUCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FUNDRAISING Matt Mahan and Anne Diaz, Causes.com
- 2. CAUSES 175 500,000 $40 20,000 BY THE million cause million Nonprofit members communities partners NUMBERS raised for nonprofits
- 3. Eric had an idea.
- 4. All great causes start with an idea. • What is your origin story? • What drives you? • What’s the change your organization creates? • What makes your organization different?
- 5. Eric knew his audience.
- 6. Identify your audience. • Who’s already involved? • Who’s responsive to your message? • You already have a target market
- 7. Eric had a message.
- 8. Eric had a message.
- 9. Craft a specific and compelling message. • Stand up for what you believe in • Experiment: elevator pitch • Make an emotional, intuitive connection
- 10. Eric sought out allies and advocates.
- 11. Eric sought out allies and advocates.
- 12. Develop and empower advocates. • Communities don’t grow overnight • Stand out from the crowd • Give your advocates tools, information, and inspiration
- 13. Eric cultivated a community.
- 14. Eric cultivated a community.
- 15. Eric cultivated a community.
- 16. Turn your list into a community. • Create a group identity • Give before asking • Facilitate dialogue
- 17. Eric mobilized his community.
- 18. Eric mobilized his community.
- 19. Eric mobilized his community.
- 20. Run action campaigns. • Supporters want to take actions that matter • Define clear goals • Create and recognize different levels of involvement
- 21. Eric showed people their impact.
- 22. Cover Story, Cancer Research—Dec. 2009
- 23. Always close the loop. • Report back frequently • Demonstrate concrete impact • Give voice to your beneficiaries
- 24. Eric’s idea keeps growing.
- 25. Join us!
- 26. THANK YOU Become a nonprofit partner at http://nonprofits.causes.com Come visit our table! Matt Mahan, matt@causes.com Anne Diaz, anne@causes.com
Editor's Notes
- Thanks for having us, here to talk about “secret sauce” of social media fundraising, and while there are best practices for being a successful social media fundraiser, there is no silver bullet. In fact, it turns out that effective online fundraising requires all of the hard work and organization of effective offline fundraising (community organizing). GENERIC:IDEAAUDIENCEMESSAGEADVOCATESCOMMUNITY (Roles, Communication, Relationship Management)CAMPAIGNS (Goals, Media)CCP:IDEA: B&W vs ACSAUDIENCE: People who care about cancer researchMESSAGE: NHS (Nurses’ Health Study)ADVOCATES: Med School Students and ProfsCOMMUNITY: Causes as hubCAMPAIGNS: AGC, Cancer Research Article
- Add in 20,000 NPO PartnersWe started as 2007.You may know us as “Facebook Causes”, We were one of the first Facebook applications, but since then we’ve grown into our own site, Causes.com. Most people still find us through their friends sharing actions they’ve taken on Causes through Facebook. We didn’t think that the tools in Facebook were enough for grassroots organizing, so we’ve built out more tools for activists. 175M people use Causes.com to support their favorite nonprofits on Causes
- The story starts with Eric Ding, pictured on the right above. At time he was a 25 year-old medical school student at Harvard who had an idea. Actually, he had a frustration. Eric had been in medical school for a couple of years and when talking with friends and family back home whose lives had been changed by cancer he realized that he had access to dramatically better information about about cancer treatment, prevention, and research than the people he spoke with. What bothered Eric was that cancer is so common, it touches so many people, and yet those who want to understand prevention, treatment, research, and how to take action to help end cancer lacked the quality of information that a couple of years at med school has given him. Eric didn’t think it was inevitable that non-med school student should have poorer knowledge…- Talk about him being particularly frustrated by the funding model (people not giving to the best research, and research taking way too long to get grants) ----This was made possible by a medical student who was passionate about social change and had started a small online community on Causes two year before. What I want to walk you through now, through the anatomy, no pun attended, of how a single med school student was able to galvanize literally millions of people around a cause he cared about - and how you can learn from Ding and the thousands of other individuals who work at nonprofits – or don’t! – who have learned how to apply to principles of community organizing to social media for effective fundraising.
- Eric’s story in many ways is the story of how all nonprofits are formed. If you think about your organization’s history, it likely started with your founder having an idea – or feeling a frustration about an inequity, or seeing a solution to a problem so clearly that no one else did. And you, if you’re not the founder, joined that nonprofit because you began to see and want those same changes. So with social media, you start with building a community. And to get those people on board, you have to think like a founder – like a community organizer. Remember that people are choosing between your organization and 1.5M others.
- Audience = people who had been touched by cancer but did not have good access to information about prevention, treatment, and research. People he had spoken with who cared about aspects of cancer as much as his fellow med school students but didn’t know where to begin with finding information, connecting with other survivors, contributing to research that seeks to end cancer, etc. Defined his audience broadly. Called this “Campaign for Cancer Prevention” to bring in a wide audience of people – not “I Support Research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital” Eric created a cause to reach his audience
- Who are the people who already care about your organization – without even knowing about it? Is your mission focused on stopping domestic violence in the Bay Area? Then be general with a title. I know you have a LOT to choose from, and you have a lot of different platforms. The important thing to remember is not everyone will connect with your organization. Even though the problems you’re tackling are hugely important, and even though your solutions are making great change in the world – not everyone is going to pay attention.That’s ok. One of the basic principles of community organizing is to find the people who do care about your mission- and helping them to connect with others. You’ll meet naysayers along the way; learn what you can from them and move on. Finding a core committed group of supporters is more important than a broad audience. Your board, volunteer, and staff composition will tell you a lot about the type of people who truly careabout your mission.Mirror off-line community:Board MembersVolunteersDonorsIn-kind donorsStaff friends and familyClientsStudent groups
- Audience = researchers and people who cared about cancer research. Specific niche within cancer organizations. Clearly standing for something – even if it’s controversial – will attract the right people to your organization.
- Audience = researchers and people who cared about cancer research. Specific niche within cancer organizations. Clearly standing for something – even if it’s controversial – will attract the right people to your organization.
- What messages you send out, are how you transmit your message. Your message is all of the things we talk about Eric doing – but he got the message out by sending it consistently. Regular, personal communicationEducate and inspire throughgreat contentAsk questions, answer questionsClearly standing for something – even if it’s controversial – will attract the right people to your organization. Social media channels give you the freedom to experiment with different ways of presentingyour message. If you don’t clearly care, no one else will.
- 3. Spread through med schools – cross promotion. Students and profs.Empower your core supporters To get to the average person on Facebook, who has no idea what you do, start with the people you know. A community of 50,000 started with 50 people – all of whom were active in getting the word out. Eric got researchers involved by doing X
- 3. Spread through med schools – cross promotion. Students and profs.Empower your core supporters
- Are your advocates prepared to confidently talk about your organization to others? Online communities mirror off-line relationships. Don’t assume that people are segregated between online and offline. People have different ways in which they want to communicate, but often nonprofits make the mistake of assuming people offline aren’t online as well. They are. Lighter weight communication channels give more flexibility – invite your friends, family, in-kind donors,clients.
- 4. Managing the community - hall of fame, health tips direct from trusted sources, wall of mutual support, multi channel –website, fb pageCauses as a hub for CCP.
- 4. Managing the community - hall of fame, health tips direct from trusted sources, wall of mutual support, multi channel –website, fb pageCauses as a hub for CCP.
- 4. SHOW BULLETIN OR MEDIA ITEM FIRST! INTERESTING INFO, ETC. Managing the community - hall of fame, health tips direct from trusted sources, wall of mutual support, multi channel –website, fb pageCauses as a hub for CCP.
- Provoke, listen, respond, reward Educate and inspire – you can’t craft a group identity unless you get everyone on the same page.
- ADD SURVEYFUNDED PROJECT5. Action takingEric mobilized the community to take large scale action
- 5. Action takingEric mobilized the community to take large scale action
- ADD SURVEYFUNDED PROJECT5. Action takingEric mobilized the community to take large scale action
- We tend to focus on the dollars raised, and not always the impact our supporters have. We know that people want to take actions that matter. So before engaging your supporters in a membership drive, asking them to watch a video, or getting people excited about your next fundraising goal, think through the metrics that really make a difference – not only the end goal, but the smaller goals in between that add up to one large impact. We tend to recognize things like, the biggest donation made – but what about the person who helps to generate the most donations?What can people actually do to help you? Define clear goals, including timing and impact. Supporters want to know what you’re doing – in order to best understand how to help.
- NEW PICTURE FOLLOW UP BULLETIN
- SHADOWOn December 15, 2009, the medical research journal Cancer Research’s cover featured a study that demonstrated a new way of using mammogram data to more accurately predict breast cancer risk. For obvious reasons it is an important study. But it is also important for a reason that is less obvious: this was the first published study that was funded by doctors who communicated directly with individual small-dollar donors through social media. This is revolutionary because…I want to back up and share the story leading up to this historic study because it is a model for a new era of fundraising—really, of doing business in the nonprofit sector—and it contains a number of important lessons for all of us who are trying to figure out how to leverage social media for the greatest impact. As I tell this story, step-by-step, my colleague Anne Diaz, is going to distill from each step the lesson that is relevant and applicable to all nonprofits. Many if not all of these messages will not be news to you—in fact, the best practices of social media fundraising are, for the most part, the best practices of the off-line fundraising you and your organization has done with individual donors since your founding. ------1: Idea: B+W over KomenCover Story on Cancer Research – Dec. 2009.The study was the cover story because it taught us _______about mammograms; right when there was controversy about mammograms.Also particularly notable because this was the first time that doctors had raised funds directly from small dollar donors through social media to fund a published, peer reviewed study. This was made possible by a big brand, like the Susan G. Komen Foundation; or the American Cancer Society.
- Because a lot of people think or have heard that social media isn’t great for fundraising – so they don’t invest in the same kind of follow-up and reporting-back that they would for an off-line campaign. Very few nonprofits actually do that – this is a great way to differentiate yourself. Being in a community as a community member – what does that feel like or look like? You should show people when they contribute that their contribution had a direct result. They made an impact. The campaign produced results. In the age of digital technology, you have an incredible opportunity to, for free, instantaneously, show people the impact. You can show the 95 year old grandmother the piece of the Amazon Rain Forest that she saved through her support of your organization. Organizing, fundraising – it’s all about the emotional impact and connection people feel
- 5. Action takingEric mobilized the community to take large scale actionIf I had before this presentation, come to you and said, there’s a 130-year old large hospital, with very little name recognition, had a 40 year old study with nurses and wanted to do something on Facebook – would you have expected that we’d be successful?
- 20,000+ Nonprofit Partners
- 6. Follow up