Social Assets (Facebook Fan Page, Twitter, YouTube Channel, etc.) are marketing channels that help you get your organization’s message and content out to your audience.

Facebook and Twitter alone won’t get you contributions!

Facebook and Twitter are awesome web 2.0 supplements to your fundraising strategy to:

* Raise awareness

* Connect with your constituents

* Drive traffic to your organization’s website (the site with the big “donate” button)

* Get feedback

* Announce events

* Share “Thank You” & “Congratulations” messaging publicly

* Promote action for your organization’s cause or other causes that your organization supports

These assets mean that your organization no longer has just a website, instead your organization has a distributed web presence (each asset is like its own mini-site).

Social assets also do a number of things for your organization:

* Increase traffic to your organization’s website

* Assist with search engine optimization (how Google finds your website)

* Enable two-way discussions with members and prospects

* Provide a way for you & your users to upload photos, video, etc.

Together each one of those points drives traffic to your website, where you should have a clear, well-designed, and trustworthy donation pathway.

Social Marketing Assets

Twitter:

Twitter is a single-page representation of your organization’s brand on the “real-time” web.

If you open a Twitter account, you’ll want to make sure that you have the time, team, and bandwidth to maintain it, and become a part of the discussion.

Tips on Twitter Page development:

* Make a great Twitter background & avatar like @teachingjobsportal

* Craft a great 140 character bio

* Link back to your organization’s website

* Use an external Twitter management tool

* Leverage #hashtags

Read more: Learn to Twitter, A Primer by @kuhn & @tenaciouscb

Facebook Fan Page:

A Facebook Fan Page is a single-page listing in Facebook that can be used to promote your website.

Tips on Fan Page development:

* Set up your page, and invite your Facebook friends to become fans

* Connect your blog to your Facebook Page (via. “notes” function)

* Post your videos and photos to your Facebook Fan Page

* List your events on your Facebook Fan Page

* Connect your Twitter to your Facebook Fan Page

* Put a Facebook icon on your website that links to your Facebook Fan Page

Read more: Set Up a Fabulous Fan Page in 10 minutes, A Primer by Chrissie Brodigan (Coming soon!)

YouTube:

Set up a YouTube channel for 2 reasons:

* Post your organization’s videos (if they’re awesome)

* Favorite other organizations’ videos (if they’re awesome)

Note: I will post more information shortly on the following topics:

* Donation Pathway, Creating Amazing User Experiences

* CRM 101, Choosing Constituency Relationship Management software

* DMS 101, Choosing Donor Management Software

* Email Marketing 101, Sending emails to your members

* Mobile 101, How Mobile Works for Outreach & Fundraising, Haiti’s story

via Online Fundraising & the Social Web: A Primer « Chrissie Brodigan.

Some foundations are already embracing technology tools that allow for two-way communications, write the report’s authors David Brotherton and Cynthia Scheiderer.

The Daniels Fund, in Denver, for example, set up a Facebook group to communicate with young people who receive college scholarships from the foundation and to try to foster a sense of camaraderie among the students. The fund took that step after it realized that students were not using its Web site or responding to e-mail messages.

“For them, e-mail is kind of the 8-track player,” Peter Droege, vice president of communications at the Daniels Fund, says in the report.

The paper also discusses misgivings that many foundation officials have about new interactive communications technology.

“Foundation concerns are, by no means, insignificant,” write the report’s authors. “They include the worry of losing control over the foundation’s message, allowing more staff members to represent the foundation in a more public way, opening the flood gates of grant requests, or the headache of a forum gone bad with unwanted or inappropriate posts.”

The authors argue, however, that foundations have to reach out beyond traditional communication channels if they don’t want to lose influence among important audiences.

“To decide not to join the myriad online conversations and networking opportunities is to cede territory to others who may have less means, knowledge, or experience,” they write.

What do you think? Has your nonprofit organization or foundation incorporated Web 2.0 technology in its communication or program efforts?

via Foundations and Web 2.0 – Give and Take – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas.

I want to call it Philanthropy 1.0 like Web 1.0 in which information was always provided in one-way road from the big media to us ordinary people. But in the world of Web 2.0, we got the power to express what we want to express and information pathway became two-way road. We are getting connected via the Internet much more than ever before.

Now I want to call microfinance of Kiva Philanthropy 2.0, because Kiva established two-way road between lenders and borrowers with the Internet. On the website of Kiva, we lenders can always see the current situation, like how much money raised so far, how much it needs to the goal, how much re-payed so far. And we can know what people are lending on the Kiva website. We can see the profile of them and there is kind of sense of togetherness like SNS (Facebook, myspace. SNS is the best example of Web 2.0). Moreover we can send a message to borrowers and if we are lucky we have a response from a borrower in the distant countries. The meaning of “If we are lucky” is that they don’t necessary have the education of English. When they don’t have English literacy, the response depends on the translation of local staff.

In the developing countries, only $1000 can be a help for most entrepreneurs in need of borrowing. And one shot of lending via Kiva is $25, there is no need to lend $1000 by one person. The lending is diversified to 40 people (40 people × $25 = $1000). That’s why each one can lend casually. That’s the greatness of Kiva. ≒Zero × ≒Infinity ＝ Something.

(The Long Tail – ≒Zero × ≒Infinity ＝ Something (Blogged on 12 Feb 2009))

The goodwill of us and the motivation of them can go together in harmony. This might be able to be Web 3.0 in which the world of the real and the Internet can go together in harmony.

Although I’m not super rich, I’m not interested in pursing money to live rich. I can’t get excited about it. Instead, I feel more happy when I spend money on others.

(Spending Money On Others Promotes Happiness (Blogged on 10 Dec 2008)).

Again, one shot of lending via Kiva is $25. So it’s very easy to get involved in Kiva. And because it’s lending not donating, we can get repayment and lend it again to others like forwarding email. The lending never ends. We can keep on doing good things and feeling good again and again. I think money can buy happiness.

One expensive dinner, one CD and one taxi ride of us can make the world a better place in real.

By the way, the online lending system of Kiva is supported by PayPal. And there are many many supporters like Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Facebook, Myspace, Microsoft and so on. Kiva is running by the collection of goodwill of people (Kiva supporters).

via TO THE ANSWER: Philanthropy 2.0.

“Not unlike Web 2.0, Fundraising 2.0, or F20 for short (pronounced like the molecular formula for water H20) calls for consistent, proactive, event-driven alliances between nonprofits and businesses,” says Portugal. “Alliances manifest publicly in social networking, social bookmarking, blogging, and in this case live special events and promotions. Alliances expand organizational connectivity and create stronger communities of like-minded advocates compelled to give and/or spend by the alliance itself.”

Portugal believes long-term success of F20 uniquely depends on the successful planning and activation of live, offline efforts via face-to-face networking and relevant events and promotions. “Bonds between consumers and brands consist of 'emotional fibers'. The best way to foster emotional bonds is in person – via activities that bind and translate emotions into actions and loyalties.”

Live activations can only take place by first cultivating meaningful partnerships between nonprofits and businesses. “These partnerships are called Brandraising,” says Portugal. Ideally, current and prospective donors, volunteers, advocates and customers understand, acknowledge, and embrace the partnership as a brand unto itself.

Analysis of, and outreach to each partner's base refers to a practice known as Friendraising. “Like Experiential Marketing for businesses, Friendraising relies on translating habits, emotions, aspirations, and rituals of target profiles, and connecting these traits with a nonprofits mission to foster affinity, participation and commitment.” These days, Friendraising is complicated by the recession and the ensuing (in)ability for people to make immediate commitments to financially-based contributions.

Implementing both Brandraising and Friendraising can be described as Fundraising. Portugal notes, “it is crucial to understand that in the 2.0 context Fundraising represents a much more fervent, frequent, and event-based commitment to nonprofit development efforts than ever before.”

Benefits? According to Portugal, the key to F20 lies in its very definition: strength in numbers. Aggressively practicing F20 for nonprofits costs very little due to sharing of resources with business partners. Businesses recoup their costs almost immediately via traffic and revenues F20 events provide.

“For F20 to truly work, nonprofits must again embrace a shift in velocity of planning and program execution. To help with this shift, nonprofits can contact planning resources designed help connect them with businesses and (ideally) event sponsors, and kickoff the Brandraising process” says Portugal. In a world of economic recession, unemployment, swine flu, global warming, etc. Fundraising 2.0 is a bright spot that can sustain if not elevate nonprofits and businesses now, and for years to come.

About Marc Portugal:

Marc Portugal is an experiential marketing and business development professional with expertise in event and partnership marketing practices. For more information, please contact Marc Portugal via phone or e-mail. An overview of Fundraising 2.0 can be found by clicking HERE.

Contact: Marc Portugal

Phone: 312-371-2660

E-mail: liveprofits(at)gmail.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcportugal

http://www.marc-portugal.blogspot.com/

via New Revenue Generating Solution for Struggling Nonprofits and Businesses: Fundraising 2.0.

“Is there actually any real demand for crowdsourced funding platforms?”

These include Kiva, GlobalGiving, America’s Giving Challenge (Case foundation), Betterplace, Pepsi Refresh, and even Change.org itself from the idea-crowdsourcing point of view. Nathaniel succinctly summarizes the situation like so:

“What about GlobalGiving? GlobalGiving allows people to support development projects of many different types, and allows the same sort of “direct to beneficiary” relationship between the donor and the project that people love about Kiva. It is a successful platform, but it seems to me that — just like Kiva — its central challenge has been figuring out how to manufacture demand among donors. What they’ve learned is that just putting your project on the site is not enough. People don’t sit around waiting to give. It takes active donor cultivation, and more than anything, GlobalGiving is a platform where a project can establish legitimacy to dig deeper into its own community of dollars.”

“New efforts can try and outsource this role to the companies or nonprofits raising money, but I sense a growing fatigue among donors in the nonprofit sector who are repeatedly being asked to vote for and donate to nonprofits participating in competitions.”

I agree.

Actually, I think the deeper problem is the Internet is turning into mush. People are all shouting at strangers and there are so few real personal connections underlying these interactions. Donor fatigue is more generally a fatigue in supervicial relationships that are only FaceBook deep. It becomes a non-issue for people who have a strong, meaningful and longstanding connection to a group or place around the world.

via Overrun by social media campaigns for your vote « Chewy Chunks.

Here’s what we did…it’s rather simple and hardly groundbreaking but it worked for us and it could work for others: we gave people something they’d already shown us they wanted and we directed them to our social media channels to get it.

Some specifics

Our program normally costs $975 and whenever we run a promotion giving a discount (i.e. $150 off during January) we see a big response, sometimes with a few hundred people taking advantage of the offer over the course of a month. Normally these promotions are planned out well in advance and have promotional materials, emails and web graphics to go along with them.

For our Facebook/Twitter promotion, we took this successful concept and altered it slightly, giving people one day to save $150 on our program. We called it the One-Day Sale and put a blurb in two of our monthly newsletters, letting people know they could save $150 on our program but the only way to find out when was through Facebook and Twitter. We saw an immediate spike in followers and reactions from people on our Facebook wall. A few days later, we let people know the first One-Day Sale was coming soon, giving them a big hint the day before saying in our status updates “…IT’S TOMORROW…”

Results

We ended up with 15 enrollments (over $12,000 in revenue) through that first One-Day Sale, which is pretty good when you consider that our product is not going to be an impulse buy for people. It costs almost $1,000 to enroll and people will then spend, on average, eight to ten months completing the program. So, we’re never going to see the same results as when someone gives away something like coffee or ice cream on Facebook or offers a discount on a product that is much less expensive than ours and appeals to a wider audience. Our program is also only accepted for public schools in nine states to date, so our market is still rather small compared to an organization that sells a product that could be used in all 50 states or the rest of the world.

Apart from the financial results, there’s also the increase in followers, which means we have more people to get any of our messages out to, not just the One-Day Sale announcements. And, because they know we’ll hold these spontaneous One-Day Sales, some people are more likely to keep an eye on our Facebook page or our Twitter account, during which time they might come across one of our videos, decide to make a donation or read an interesting story about us and share it with others.

A few other upsides to the promo…

The cost for us to hold a One-Day Sale through our social media channels is basically nothing—it’s really just about the time. We also don’t need to plan these out in advance because nothing needs to be printed, no emails need to be scheduled and nothing needs to be done to our website. We can turn around and hold one of these on very short notice. Another nice thing, we already have people wondering when the next one will be. Just yesterday, someone posted to our Facebook wall asking if we’re planning another one soon.

via Non-Profit Generating Revenue Through Facebook & Twitter « Mike Holden’s blog.

The launch of the Causes application really helped to make fundraising possible on Facebook. Causes enables not for profit organisations to set up their own pages for users to and show their support by advertising the charity's brand on their profile. The idea is to publicise your charity using Facebooks network set-up – allowing friends to spot your organisation on others profiles and join your cause themselves. Relying on this type of networking can be very successful – some charity groups have hundreds of thousands of members.

Several high profile charities including Childline, Marie Curie and NSPCC host their own Facebook pages which members can join, just as if they were adding a friend to their virtual social circle. Pages like this provide a space for members to chat, a message board to promote news and events, and a downloadable logo button to spread your charity's brand.

Some charities are taking their Facebook presence one step further, and devising fun applications to catch the attention of potential supporters.

via Facebook fundraising = How it might help you ! – lots2play’s blog.

AUSTIN, Texas, March 10 /PRNewswire/ — Following the recent release of new research showing a growing impact of social media on nonprofit event fundraising, Charity Dynamics today announced that nonprofit organizations using the company's innovative Boundless Fundraising™ social networking application have raised more than $15 million directly through the application since the beginning of 2009.

To date, 50 charitable organizations use Boundless Fundraising to enable participants in more than 8,500 events to achieve and, in most cases, exceed their fundraising goals. Nonprofits currently using the application include American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, Autism Speaks, Canadian Cancer Society, and National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

“Recent changes made on Facebook have opened up new opportunities that were helping nonprofits take advantage of so they can achieve new levels of fundraising success for their events,” said Donna Wilkins, president of Charity Dynamics, Inc. “These giving results for Boundless Fundraising indicate that social media fundraising is experiencing strong momentum in the nonprofit marketplace, and we fully expect this trend to continue well beyond 2010.”

Boundless Fundraising is a highly effective online fundraising tool that empowers nonprofits to mobilize social networking communities on Facebook® in support of their causes. The application enables event participants to leverage their Facebook networks to reach more donors, raise more money, increase awareness and build enduring support for nonprofits and their missions. Launched by Charity Dynamics in late 2008, Boundless Fundraising is used by nearly half of the organizations represented in the Run Walk Ride 30—an annual ranking by the Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council of the largest athletic event fundraising programs by revenue in the country.

Wilkins is speaking on a panel titled Debunking the Myth of Social Media Fundraising at the upcoming South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, TX. The panel discussion—happening Saturday, March 13 at 12:30 CT at the Austin Convention Center—will feature case studies examining successful fundraising strategies that incorporate Boundless Fundraising and other social media tools.

About Charity Dynamics

Charity Dynamics provides comprehensive online solutions for nonprofit organizations. From strategy to implementation and beyond, Charity Dynamics partners with clients of all sizes to deliver the services, software, and support they need to meet their objectives. Organizations using the company's innovative social networking application, Boundless Fundraising, have raised more than $15 million directly through the application since the beginning of 2009. Charity Dynamics' clients include The ALS Association, American Cancer Society, Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. For more information, please visit www.charitydynamics.com.

via U.S. Charities Experiencing Social Media Fundraising Boom, Raise More Than $15 Million in One Year… — AUSTIN, Texas, March 10 /PRNewswire/ –.

Who says social advocates can’t raise big money and forge lasting donor relationships online for their causes? Today’s South by Southwest (SxSW) panel on slacktivism — more elegantly and formally called Debunking the Myth of Social Media Fundraising — offered a rousing antidote to the notion of ineffectual, click-and-give philanthropy. Urban Dictionary defines slacktivism — a portmanteau of the words “slacker” and “activism” — as “a way of pretending to care while sitting … in front of a computer playing WoW.” Such detachment, the panelists asserted, is becoming less of a factor in today’s cause-wired, text-aided giving arena: the outpouring of mobile contributions to victims of Haiti’s January 12 earthquake and donor retention strategies being crafted to hang on to many of those donors over time should be proof positive that online giving has, at last, begun to evolve and inform even the most traditional philanthropy circles.

[Evgeny Morozov, one of the critics of slacktivism, wrote in a Foreign Policy Magazine article last fall entitled "From Slacktivism to Activism" that he is skeptical of numerous digital activism campaigns "that attempt to change the world through Facebook and Twitter." He said the desire to instantly connect with others online around ever-new causes poses a threat to more productive uses of time, such as brainstorming solutions to the world's ongoing problems.]

Combining research data with personal anecdotes, panelists Stacey Monk (Epic Change); Brooke McMillan (the Lance Armstrong Foundation); Donna Wilkins (Charity Dynamics), and Frank Barry (with Blackbaud, the fundraising software firm) made a strong case for the potential of social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to raise money and awareness — not simply as tools in one-off fundraising campaigns but also in efforts to build richer and more sustainable donor relationships across the socioeconomic spectrum.

There are dozens of commonly-held misperceptions about the use of social media in advocacy, the panelists said, and here are five of them:

Myth One: Social Media Aren’t Very Effective. Not true, said the panelists. Social media can be effective in breaking down geographic boundaries, building communities of donors who otherwise would not be able to connect, and bringing in contributions from many more people than before. Monk says her nonprofit has raised nearly all of its money via Twitter, to build classrooms in Tanzania, buy school supplies for the students there and provide skills training inside and outside the classroom — including social media skills aimed at helping them to learn more about other people from around the world. While the panelists agreed that using social media to fund-raise can take time, as it’s all about relationship-building and not simply a matter of learning the technology.

Myth Two: Major Donors Do Not Exist in Social Media. Not true, said McMillan, and cited the example of @fatcyclist, the Twitter handle for a man who blogged and Tweeted to raise some $800,000 over the course of a year for Livestrong, Lance Armstrong’s cancer research foundation. With social media, Barry said, “major donors” are no longer just wealthy individuals. Now they include individuals of all income levels adept at using their social influence online and off to engage others around giving to a cause.

Myth Three: No one Raises Money on Twitter. Guess again, said the panelists. For one, look at Twestival, the regional, national, and global fund-raising campaigns staged on Twitter to benefit a variety of causes. Then look at TweetsGiving. Both micro-blogging fundraisers have increased donations year over year, suggesting such campaigns are sustainable. To be sure, Monk said, “when you first get on Twitter you don’t know what you’re doing there.” But soon, she added, you discover that “Twitter engineers serendipity” — all sorts of connections that can be leveraged to raise money and awareness over time.

Myth Four: Building Community Does Not Help You Raise Money. Also not true, the panelists said. Social media campaigns allow nonprofits to reach new donors and build the relationships required to raise funds from previously untapped sources. Nonprofits, said Monk, “shoot themselves in the foot” when they put a “give” button on their Web sites. Causes need, instead, to humanize fund-raising by using social media to engage donors in the cause. “Authentic connections between humans create movements, and movements raise funds,” Monk said. “…Social media should humanize the process of giving, not automate it.” Storytelling, the act of humanizing your cause to engage donors, is critical, she added. “If the word ‘donate’ is in your Tweet, you’re doing it wrong,” said Monk. To emphasize the point, Monk says she writes the Twitter handles of donors on the walls of the classrooms they’re helping her to build as a way of showing them both her gratitude and their impact, and it works.

Myth Five: Social Media Cannibalize Other Fundraising Channels. Au contraire, said Monk. “Social media are just additional tools. Donors want to be able to choose” the way they give money to a cause, she said, and sites like Facebook and Twitter give them the option to give in new ways. Besides, the panelists agreed, social media offer an effective way for causes to reach the hearts and pocketbooks of Baby Boomers, the largest-growing demographic using Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. Both Wilkins and Barry said multi-channel fund-raising strategies proved most effective, citing a recent Blackbaud/Charity Dynamics study. One finding: organizations that use email effectively to fund-raise also tend to use social media more effectively, as well. “My job didn’t exist a year ago,” said McMillan, the social media evangelist at Livestrong.

For more on the subject, check out the study on social media in fund-raising released last month by Charity Dynamics and Blackbaud.

Still not convinced? Come to the NTEN annual conference in Atlanta in April to hear some opposing views on the subject and a debate over the challenges to online giving that exist. My panel on Slacktivism will feature Nancy Lublin, CEO of dosomething.org; Jacob Colker, Cofounder of The Extraordinaries; Wendy Harman, social media director of the American Red Cross, and Aaron Smith, of Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, which is conducting ground-breaking research on the use of social media by Generation Y. Hope to see you there!

–By Marcia Stepanek

Original Article here

__________________

As the web becomes more social in nature people grow to expect more social behavior on your web site. Have you thought about how that affects you? Or how it affects the way people give online through your site?

Here’s a few things to get you started. Hopefully they’ll give you ideas about how you can make the online giving experience more social for your donors! Once you’ve put some thought into it I’d love to hear what you’ve decided to do (or please share a link in the comments if you are already doing some of these things).

Follow the Rules

There are some well defined guidelines that everyone needs to know, but I’m not going to rehash this because it’s been covered well by the industry leading Nielsen Norman Group in their study “Donation Usability: 58 Design Guidelines for Improving the Donation Process and the Usability of Essential Information on Charity and Non-Profit Websites“.

You can read more about it on Steve MacLaughlin’s Blog.

For now, here are a few key points you can’t miss when it comes to making the online giving process more social.

* Explain why someone would be interested in donating.

* Use real examples of people you have helped and situations you have improved.

* Provide information about your organization’s presence on social outlets so users can connect with you on them.

* All this info shouldn’t live right on the page where the donation form is. Just make it easily accessible from the donation form.

Simple is Always Better

You’ll make it complicated for people to share if it’s complicated to give. Read that again. And let’s keep the goal in mind – you want people to give. Then you want people to pass on the opportunity of giving to their friends and family. Here’s five quick tips. (Some thoughts on simplicity by Chris Brogan)

1. Don’t use too many fields or have too many options. You don’t need to collect three different addresses and info on where a person went to school when they give. Make sense? Less is more.

2. Don’t make your form multi-step. Keep it to one page and one step. Too many steps equals too many ways for a person to fall out of the process. Browser issues. Boredom. Distraction. See?

3. Don’t use extraneous text/imagery. It’s a fact that giving people too many things to do or look at distracts them from the main goal. Keep it clean. Keep it simple

4. Always confirm payment immediately. Doing this makes people feel secure and confident in their decision. Security and confidence make people more inclined to share with others.

5. Send an email confirmation quickly. This closes the deal and gives you an opportunity to thank a person for their time and money. A very important step! It’s also a great opportunity to ask the donor to share what they’ve done with their network (remember, their networks matter).

Make it Sharable

Let’s think back to the first pointer here (Follow the Rules) – Explaining why someone would want to give and how you are making a difference makes people want to share with others. It gives them something to share. If people are giving to you its likely they’ll want to share that opportunity with their friends and family. Now it’s your job to make it easy for someone to do so. Here are a few ideas.

1. Don’t make people give to share. Check out what Tweetsgiving did. They asked people to tweet what they were grateful for with a link back to www.tweetsgiving.org – this helped to spread awareness.

2. Use AddThis plug-in on the donation form and the onscreen confirmation pages. It’s simple to add and makes it very easy for people to share via numerous social networks and email.

3. Provide a way for people to share in the confirmation email. I.e. forward to a friend type functionality and links to your Facebook and Twitter pages.

Go the Extra Mile

There are a couple things that have been cropping up more and more with social media campaigns and online giving – The idea of showing social proof and creating a friendly competition right your online giving pages.

1. Social mentions / Social Proof – Showing social proof helps potential donors feel safer and builds excitement around the cause. Think about it, if you see that something is “popular” you’ll probably be more likely to join in, right? Check out what Epic Change did with Tweetsgiving (see top right area where it says “22,605 Thank You Notes”).

2. Friendly Competition – For some reason people like competition. It helps foster engagement and community (when friendly of course). Again, check out what Epic Change did with Tweetsgiving (Check out the “Top Turkeys” section in the lower right)

Discussion: What else have you seen going on? What’s caught your eye? What’s been working for you?

If you don’t want to miss out on the 31 Day Challenge To Optimize Your Blog With Social Media, please sign up here.

via Optimize your Online Giving for the Social Web (Day 9) – Social media and inbound marketing for non-profits.