In August 2011, BWF had the good fortune of being invited to conduct a social media strategy workshop at The Florida State University. After the workshop, Chad Warren – Director of Annual Giving, set to work applying the principles we established during the workshop. Within a few months, plans were in a place for an online-only giving campaign that would take place over a short period of time – 36 hours, to be exact. Chad and his small team of three, with a budget of less than $10,000, worked hard using social media, email, traditional media (TV, print, radio), and direct mail to promote the 36-hour campaign in the days leading up to and during the event.
The results speak for themselves – $186,000 given by 1,100 different donors during the 36-hour period. Of those 1,100 donors, 380 had never given to FSU before and nearly 90 percent of them had never given online. Chad talks more about how the FSU “Great Give” was conducted in the video below… And about how the successful promotion of the Great Give through digital channels could translate into big savings thanks to no longer having to rely as heavily on traditional, more expensive annual fund tactics like direct mail.
For more information on social media in philanthropy, visit BWF.com.
Wow – what an impressive example of a successful online campaign. Thanks for sharing. It sounds like one key to success is having a big network to rely on. Do you agree? How would a smaller organization with less staff and overall supporters/alumni approach something like this? Do you think it would work?
Posted by Amy Eisenstein | February 28, 2012, 4:39 pmAmy – I do think this approach would work for an organization of any size. The perfect example comes from another (partially) online campaign, this one done by The Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona. Have a look at this post for more…
http://socialphilanthropy.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/social-media-increases-alumni-engagement-more-than-400/
Posted by Justin J. Ware | February 28, 2012, 5:03 pm