According to this cnet.com post on the story, GM spends roughly $40 million on all its Facebook initiatives. Only a quarter of that goes to ad sales. The rest? Content development, conversation management, and application development are likely some of the areas that receive GM’s Facebook budget. And according to GM’s spokespeople, those activities are here to stay, because “the content is effective and important”. In other words, GM still thinks Facebook is an incredibly valuable space …just not the best place to invest their advertising dollars when they can make connections and form relationships with potential car buyers without having to pay for the space in addition to their production and management costs.

Nothing about the news of GM dropping their Facebook advertising is surprising to me. For many years now, I’ve been preaching the importance of EARNING support from your constituents via social networks, not BUYING that support. Advertising is an attempt at the latter, whereas good content, authentic engagement, and quality customer service are what is required to earn that support. (This is not to say that creative advertising isn’t effective. In the right medium, it absolutely is. But maybe not on Facebook)

GM’s advertising announcement is, at the very least, a poorly-timed bit of news for Facebook. In the long run, it could signal a shift in how the company brings in revenue. But for those of us communication managers out there, it’s just a sign of what many of us already know  - we operate in a new world where transparency, authenticity, and quality content are far more valuable than a slick ad buy.

For more on how online and social media can enhance your fundraising operation, visit BWF.com.

In short, Childfund ran a campaign that allowed its Facebook fans a vote to send one of five finalists to Africa to witness firsthand the work being done there. The winner was David Levis – a California school teacher and Childfund sponsor since 1999 (info from this Chronicle of Philanthropy article). This online voting and recognition campaign is a brilliant way to engage and use your Facebook fans in your overall communication, stewardshop, and acquisition strategies. Here’s why…

A Window into Your Organization

Online media is a great way to pull back the shades and open your organization up to supporters and donors. Videos, photos, blog posts, and other digital media can deliver news and information about your org quickly and effectively. This helps your constituents feel more connected to your mission. The following quotes from the Chronicle story show just how effective this campaign was at opening a window for Childfund’s supporters to peer through:

“The nicest thing about it was to really see how the system worked,” Mr. Levis says. “It seems like this small, little amount of money focusing on one child, and the reality of how they have it set up is so much bigger than that.”

While Mr. Levis traveled the country, he shared his experiences through blog posts and Facebook messages to “bring all of the other sponsors, in a sense, with us.”

It’s Authentic

Here are Mr. Levis’ words on the communication he sent back while in Africa:

The trip was to “put as much communication out there as much as possible to tell the stories as real and impassioned as possible each and every time.”

There’s nothing over the top or fake about a donor telling the story of an organization in their own words. Childfund also sprang for a well-produced video to help tell that story, but the entire time the voice was Mr. Levis. Being and feeling “real” is priceless in modern communications – having a donor tell the story in their words contributes to that feeling of realness.

Creating Online Ambassadors

The success of your online efforts depend, more than any other single factor, upon the size and enthusiasm of your volunteer online ambassadors. This is the army of people who support you and are vocal about their support of your organization both online and off. The Childfund Facebook campaign created an ambassador out of Mr. Levis…

Mr. Levis said his family hadn’t been public about its charitable donations in the past, but the trip gave him a chance to talk about ChildFund with his friends, family, students, and others.

Since he returned from the trip, five of his friends have signed up to sponsor needy children…

Consider your fans and followers in social media. If even 5 percent of them brought another five supporters into your organization, what would that do to your donor acquisition numbers? Maybe that’s why we keep  hearing so much about the potential of online when it comes to acquiring new donors.

For more information on how an online strategy can boost your fundraising programs, visit BWF.com.

A giant hammock, courtesy of the Awesome Foundation’s Facebook page.

The Awesome Foundation is exploding in popularity for a few reasons. One, they’ve so far been able to avoid a lot of the bureaucracy that hampers larger, more established nonprofits. That aspect helped get the Awesome Foundation off the ground, but another factor for its success – and one that will likely help it stick around through the growing pains – is simply the approach the Foundation takes. For a fund to be selected, it has to be “awesome” – and that makes the whole process a lot more fun and engaging for donors. We know that for a growing number of donors, innovation is the key to fundraising success. Quirky ideas that work is one of the best ways to excite that group of donors that places creativity high on their priority list when selecting a cause or organization to support.

Give the gift of “fun” to bring more gifts in to your organization

Creativity in the giving process does more than create buzz and attract tech-savvy donors – it boosts interest and participation from all donor groups and brings new donors into your organization. For example, look at what Middlebury College did with their online giving program MiddSTART. MiddSTART is a social network where donors can select from any number of funds which are managed by students and volunteers. It makes participation easy, gives donors the power to choose where their money goes, tells the story of philanthropy at Middlebury, gets younger donors involved, etc. What if Middlebury also threw a few projects into the mix that had a touch of “awesome” associated with them? Maybe a giant hammock in the school’s quad or bicycle rental stations set up around campus? Whatever the quirky tactic, the key is giving the donor something that’s a heck of a lot of fun to be involved with (while still maintaining some meaning to your overall cause).

It all comes back to providing donors with “value” via your online channels and social networks. Remember, a fun experience is what most of us are seeking when spending time online. Smart nonprofits can capitalize on that desire to have fun, by adding a little levity to the online giving experience.

For more info on integrating online media and philanthropy, visit BWF.com.

1. 

   A stripped down online giving form makes it easy for donors to support your organization from their smart phones.

   Make it Easy: The same is true for any aspect of online giving – to generate gifts electronically, you have to make the process easy to navigate for your supporters. The general rule of thumb for online giving is to set up a process that requires no more than two steps (clicks) to get to your online giving information form where the donor enters their name, address, credit card info, etc. Is the same true of your email solicitations?

   Also, don’t forget about mobile – do you have an stripped down mobile giving site that makes it easy to make a gift from a smart phone? A lot of your donors will be reading your email from their mobile phone. If you don’t have an easy-to-use mobile giving process set up, you could be losing gifts.

2. Give Them Something for Opening Your Email: An over-arching theme for your online/social media strategy should be the attempt at delivering value to your supporters through everything you post/share/send. All too often, that focus on value can be lost when an email is sent out. This doesn’t mean you should overcrowd an email with too much content, but make your supporters happy they opened you message by giving them something interesting or “valuable” for their time.
   When we talk about “value,” we’re not necessarily saying you need to give something away (tickets or merchandise, for example). Instead, “value” means something your supporters would find interesting, funny, or moving that relates to your organization. As is often the case, the Humane Society of the United States gives us a great example of providing value in an email with this message containinig a link to their clever infographic on the Canadian seal slaughter…Good content is “valuable” because it reinforces a donor’s decision to support your organization. Can you embed a video into your emails that details how past gifts have helped your further your cause? How about a thank you from your CEO? Every ask online is also an opportunity to share your message about why giving matters. The same is true of your email solicitations.
3. Build Smart Lists: During a campaign, your email supporters can become your biggest fundraisers either through their own email accounts or on social networks. When developing email lists, separate one for “most frequent donors” or, better yet, “highest Klout scores” (Klout is a method of measuring a person’s influence online). Then, during the campaign, send pre-written text, email, and social network messages to those lists, asking them to copy and paste the messages into texts, emails, and social network updates to their friends. It’s an easy way to build a grassroots campaign, because it takes little effort on your supporters’ parts (they don’t even have to give to boost your fundraising!).

For more tips on email fundraising, check out Blackbaud’s “Raise more money by avoiding “one-size-fits-all” email appeals“ and “Click-through rates, compelling links and your end-of-year fundraising appeal“.

And for info on how BWF can help you build a strategy for online fundraising, visit BWF.com.

Twitter conversation with Nicole Harrison (@SocialNicole)

A recent study with seismic implications for online fundraising tells us that donors acquired via Facebook are worth $214.81 in gifts per year when organizations follow up with those donors via both electronic and traditional means (in other words, email and direct mail). Great! So let’s just carpet bomb our new Facebook fans with a ton of mail in both their inboxes and mailboxes, right? A friend of mine and fellow nonprofit pro, Nicole Harrison, reminded me via Twitter why fundraising organizations might want to take a second and rethink that approach.

To be clear, someone “liking” your Facebook page is NOT an open invitation to spam them either electronically or through the US mail. That strategy could lead to some fundraising success, but it would likely do more damage than good with budding supporters who are not yet ready for the full “donor treatment.” I’m not suggesting you can never solicit these fans. Instead, I’m recommending that you start by building a relationship with them online that leads to them making their first gift.

So how do you convert fans into donors?

Get them to make their first gift in the space where they originally connected with your organization. It all goes back to the two main tenets of any good social media strategy – grow your online supporter base by 1) providing them with valuable content they’ll want to read and watch and 2) acknowledge them in the various spaces where they’ve connected with your organization. Retweet them, respond to Facebook and blog comments, answer emails …show them their concerns matter by acknowledging them. The first step in online engagement should be friendraising, not fundraising.

As long as you’re consistently focused primarily on the friendraising approach, then there’s nothing wrong with using those online spaces (Facebook, Twitter, email, websites) to ask for support. When you do reach the point where asking for a gift is appropriate, keep these tips in mind…

Keep it Simple

Remember the Tootsie Pop commercial that asked “how many licks does it take to reach of the Center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop?” When building your online giving websites, consider how many clicks it takes to get to the online giving form. From every page on your site, it should never be more than two. Make sure your Facebook page follows the same rules.

Don’t worry about asking for support on the social networks either. This type of post should be relatively rare and a very small percentage of what you’re posting overall, but an inteligently-worded, timely update that asks for support is fine. Pay close attention to organizations like the Humane Society of the United States and Oceana for great examples of how and when to do this. During the giving process, that’s when you ask for a donor’s email and the right to send them further information via email and snail mail. Not before they voluntarily make that first gift.

OK, so now you’ve got them. They “like” your org, they’ve made a gift, now let the inundation begin! Not so fast. Yes, now you’ve earned the right to solicit them, but be sure you’re taking a strategic approach to how you’re soliciting them. Statistics tell us dual channel donors – those who give online and off – are the most valuable. However, mailing donors is costly. If they gave online, they might also give offline …but what if you focused a more concerted effort on not just soliciting, but stewarding those donors online? Would an online-only approach be more efficient than the dual approach? (your largest donors aside).

For the answer, let’s take another look at the Blackbaud study that tells us the average Facebook-acquired donor gives $214.81 per year when solicited via dual channels. When the online-only approach is taken, that number drops to $161.30 per year. The cost to acquire those Facebook fans via online engagment? A tiny $3.42. A large nonprofit organization in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area tells BWF that the cost of acquiring a donor via direct mail is $43. Subtract that from $214 and you get a yearly donor net value of $171. Subtract the $3.50 from the $161 online-only donors give and you have a yearly donor net value of $157.50. Considering that, under this scenario, the dual channel approach and online-only approach are nearly neck and neck, what happens when organizations dedicate a more appropriate amount of resources to online engagement? (Keep in mind that many organizations are still in their infancy when it comes to effective online strategies, despite that fact that they’re raising money in the space)  It’s a safe bet that the online-only approach will then be not only more efficient, but more lucrative in every way.

For more information on social media in philanthropy, visit BWF.com.

To continue reading, click here…

Much thanks to Cheryl Black and Convio for the opportunity to produce this guest post for their blog “Connection Café” 

For more on how BWF_social can help you build an online strategy that increases fundraising at your organization, click here.

The next and probably better question is, “if we’re going to spend more money on digital communication, how do we spend it?” Below is a graphic pulled from the Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report that shows how respondents to the survey (the same group that is, on average, raising more than $200 per Facebook fan) are investing their online communication dollars and energy:

From our observations, the organizations that are raising tons of money online are doing precisely those three things – putting staff in place to manage the online work, keeping leadership in the loop and educating them on why the online managers are doing what they’re doing, and executing an integrated strategy. To be clear, simply having a Facebook page, building a nice online donation site, or occasionally posting to a blog is not an online strategy. If that’s your organization’s approach, you could and should be doing more. For starters…

• What is your content strategy and how does it meet the needs and wants of your supporters?
• How do you know what your supporters need and want?
• What type of posts generate the most engagement with supporters?
• Does your content encourage your supporters to share information about your organization with other potential donors?
• How can emails be written to garner the largest number and amount of online gifts?

To answer those questions and more, we’ve crafted our online fundraising consulting services around helping nonprofit organizations use new technology to both add new donors to their database and increase overall fundraising. It’s worked for clients like The Florida State University and is something we’d love to talk with you about. If you’d like to learn more, just click here to find my email address and get the conversation started. Or, follow us on Twitter. We’re excited to help you transform your online philanthropy!

To know how to create nostalgia that can transport an alum from a glum office cubicle to memories of a beautiful fall afternoon on campus, requires knowing who your supporters are and why they might feel connected to your institution. To do this, Oberlin College in Ohio hired a former student to manage their media production. The result is the following video that has been viewed (so far) nearly 20,000 times (that’s more than six times the total number of students enrolled at Oberlin) and has led to the College receiving piles of mail from alumni who are grateful for the opportunity to be transported back to the memories of their glory days on a beautiful midwestern campus.

Why did this video become a viral success and an effective form of donor outreach? Because Oberlin tasked the creation of an important piece of content – the year-end mailing – to an alum who knows the College and what makes it special. Daniel Schloss, Director of Media Production at Oberlin, understands the reasons why students choose to attend the College and why alumni like himself appreciate the place many years after their education is complete. Having social media managers in place who have an intimate knowledge of your nonprofit organization is essential. It can be innate or learned (being an alumnus, for example, isn’t required …although it does help in higher education), but either way you want the people in charge of creating and sharing content to be focused on your organization. Like any form of stewardship, you’re trying to build relationships and to do so, requires someone who has a relationship with the organization themselves. Oberlin understands this and as a result, now has a powerful YouTube channel helping connect alumni with the College.

For more on developing a social media strategy to boost fundraising, visit BWF.com.

Inforgraphics for Fundraising

Infographics are great way to quickly deliver the most pertinent information to your donors and other supporters in an attractive, easy-to-digest, easy-to-remember, and – most important for online purposes – easy-to-share format. Here’s a great example of an infographic from the Humane Society about their efforts at ending Canada’s seal hunts.

What are some of the best infographics for philanthropic purposes that you’ve seen? What would you like to see in infographic form? Let us know in the comments below!

For more on social media in philanthropy, visit BWF.com.

• Use your American Express card to purchase advertising credits on Twitter.
• Twitter takes your more popular tweets (items that have been shared, for example) and posts them as “promoted tweets”.
  • Promoted tweets are posted to the feeds of other Twitter users whose online activity suggests they would be interested in your organization.
• You account is charged only if those users act on your “promoted tweet” – i.e. retweeting it to their followers.

Why it’s good – In a word, exposure. Twitter’s new advertising tool takes your most popular tweets and shares them with other Twitter users who are likely, based on their activity, to appreciate what you’re posting. On top of that, you are not charged unless those Twitter users take action on your “promoted tweet.” In other words, they have to share or possibly “favorite” your promoted tweet. If they don’t, your account balance remains untouched and available for the next promoted tweet.

This tool should connect your message with new potential supporters, thereby expanding your exposure to an audience with little effort on your part. Of course, you do then have to cultivate those relationships once the initial impression is made (which is already be part of your social media strategy, right?).

Why it’s not good – The best relationships start organically, without prodding or promotion. You’re most likely to develop a relationship that results in support of your organization through good old-fashioned conversation and content-sharing on Twitter. That said, I could see promoted tweets as being a great step toward starting those conversations.

Like everything else, your communication strategy should be about more than a single tweet, or update, or blog post, or video. I believe “promoted tweets” or advertising on Twitter can be an tremendously effective tool for introducing new supporters to your mission. However, if you don’t have a strategy in place for keeping those new supporters engaged, then the money spent on advertising will ultimately be wasted.

For more on social media in philanthropy, visit BWF.com.