Social Media and Fundraising

Social Media and FundraisingMay 2016 | Erica Klinger, Director of Marketing

Social media is “Word of Mouth” marketing and not a direct response channel.

Focus on the SHARE, not the donation.

Can you use social media to ignite fundraising? Yes!

Start with a plan

Create clear goals for the channel

Increase AWARENESS with 100 post shares

Increase ENGAGEMENTwith 100 hashtag mentions

Encourage referrals through POST-DONATION sharing

Tactics to increase AWARENESS

• Create branded sharing images (memes)

• Pay to boost your posts

• Build an influencer email list (media, ambassadors, partners)

• Email influencers example messages

Tactics to increase ENGAGEMENT

• Create videos, blog posts and infographics

• Tag partners in your post

• Moderate and reply quickly to comments

• Encourage people to share with a promotion

Tactics to encourage REFERRALS

• Create urgency and share your fundraising goal

• Link back to your donation page – always!

• Promote matching funds to incentivize donors

• Add a social sharing widget on the confirmation page

Identify your target audiences and define key messages

Some GOOD content examples.

SOCIAL MEDIA MATURITY. Create a scaleable and realistic plan. Source: Beth Kanter

Create “sharable” content

Content changes along a donor journey(infographics, articles, celebrity endorsements, photos, quizzes)

Donate

TOP CONTENT IS SIMILAR FOR ALL GENERATIONS. Blog articles, images, comments, and eBooks. Source: moz.com

Think about content people will share

Surprise people(interesting images & facts)

#GIVING TUESDAY – VIRTUAL REALITY. Crowdrise created an app to watch a Giving Tower grow taller as people from around the world donated to their favorite causes. You could even compare the giving to famous tall buildings in the U.S.

TOMS ONE DAY WITHOUT SHOES - INSTAGRAM. For each photo posted of bare feet, TOMS will give a pair of shoes to a child in need. Millions of people around the world spent the entire day barefoot and tagged their friends to do the same.

ONE GIRL AUSTRALIA – DO IT IN A DRESS. Peer to Peer campaign where the donor buys a dress, builds a network of education and women supporters to send girls in Africa to school. Uses fundraising platform CauseVox.

Leverage a Trend(viral videos, celebrity

endorsements, zombies, etc.)

RELATE RECENT NEWS TO YOUR CAMPAIGN. Raise awareness about inspiring philanthropists and causes they support.

ALS ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE: An exceptional example of viral social media content. It leveraged the “feel good” factor and is still going on - with over $115m raised since 2014.

GIVEBIG PSA VIDEO. Sounders FC Captain Brad Evans voices his GiveBIG support with Macklemore & Ryan Lewis “Downtown” soundtrack. Over 31,000 views, a 23% increase compared to 2015

Inspire People(stunning photos or quotes)

PICTURES SPEAK A THOUSAND WORDS Half of social network site users share news stories, images or videos, and nearly as many (46%) have discussed a news issue or event.

CURATION OF 51 BEAUTIFUL LITERATURE QUOTES. This blog post had over 9m views and over 1.4m shares. Most people have favorite books and quotes.

COMPELLING IMAGES AND STORYTELLING. Charity: Water does storytelling through both video, written text and curated images. They also dedicated an entire page of their website to heart-warming, positive-outcome stories.

Don’t be afraid to ask

Start a conversation

“What’s your favorite kind of

Girl Scout Cookie?”

Seth Godin, authorof “All Marketers are Liars”

Position your organization as

a valued supplier.

Show heart and urgency

Use social media to tell your story and to thank donors

SHOW HOW MUCH YOU CARE. Share your expertise, events, news and passion for your cause. This one post had 418 likes, 47 shares and 38 comments.

A ticker countdown builds urgency

Leaderboards & incentives build excitement

Leverage brand ambassadors

Build a list of people that love your brand and will share your content in their social networks.

• Employees

• Volunteers

• Board

• Family

• Friends

• Media and bloggers

• Celebrities

Listen to the science

Analyze data tooptimize your campaign

Watch trends in donations

Check your shares

Review conversion channels

Compare youremail click rate

A quick review…

Set your goals for social media

Make storytelling fun & interesting

Fun

Learn from your failures

$%(L@#!

Review analytics frequently

Keep it simple.

Resources• crowdrise.com/givingtower – #givingtuesday campaign• alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge.html – ALS Campaign• toms.com/one-day-without-shoes – Global health & Education• doitinadress.com/ - Education Campaign• sethgodin.com – Author and Blogger• pewinternet.org - Pew Research Center 2015• moz.com – SEO and Search Software• givebig.seattlefoundation.org – Tableau dashboard

Questions?