Building a 4-stage Online Ambassador Program — Stage 1: Identification

A lot has been revealed in recent years about the power of friends asking friends to support their favorite nonprofits online. In higher education in particular, we at ScaleFunder have experienced massive online giving success when this peer-to-peer or “online ambassador” activity has been deployed in support of digital efforts such as giving days.

For example, did you know that according to a Bentz Whaley Flessner study, during online ambassador-led giving day efforts, 40 percent of the donors who gave were new? (New = either first time or long-lapsed donors to the institutions) Or how about the fact that for younger donors, a peer recommendation is one of the most important factors in making a gift? (Multiple studies) Or how, according to a 2013 Georgetown University/Waggener Edstrom study, the large majority of Internet users first learn of a new cause to support through their online friends’ activity?

So yeah, peer-to-peer or online ambassador activity is important. Fortunately, we at ScaleFunder have developed a four-stage process for building a robust online ambassador program. This blog is the first of four that highlights each of the steps.

Today’s topic — identification of potential ambassadors.

For those with a big enough budget, there is software that can be leveraged to scan your email database and return data on which of those emails are connected to social media accounts. And if you have the extra budget, this is a wise move. But new software is not absolutely necessary — especially in the early stages of building your ambassador program. At a minimum, ScaleFunder recommends you start your ambassador program with a list of about two dozen sure-fire heavy digital hitters. Think of this as your board of ambassadors. (But that doesn’t mean they need to be board members!)

To arrive at your list of top-line ambassadors, we suggest the following three-step approach:

Select those you assume might be ambassadors…

This group is made up of the young board member who is VP at their digital agency and is always online. Or the baby boomer who got hooked on Facebook to follow their grand kids, but then realized they could have a high school reunion every day on the platform. The personas are varied, but you can probably think of a few off the top of your head. And you know these potential ambassadors are always using social media, because you follow them on twitter and LinkedIn. (Because, of course, at least someone who engages with donors is heavily active in social media …right?)

Some of the easiest to engage early ambassadors are those who you can safely assume use digital media to engage about your cause or institution. In many cases, you might have had conversations with them about their digital support of your mission. This group should be instrumental in populating your first list of potential online ambassadors.

Select those you observe who appear to be ambassadors…

The person who likes AND comments on every. Single. Post. You know who these social media users are, because you can’t not know. Their constant following and engaging with your social media is unavoidable and out there for everyone to see. And this is a good thing, because by observing their digital behavior you have identified some potential online ambassadors. Add them to the list.

Finding ambassadors through ambassadors…

After you’ve engaged and onboarded the first group of ambassadors who you identified through assumption and observation, then work with this small, but growing group to expand the program. Online ambassadors often know others who would make good ambassadors. Ask them to recruit their connections to grow your program.

Using the above tactics, any organization of any size should be able to develop a strong core unit about about 15 to 25 online ambassadors. That is more than enough to get started and the only investment is your staff’s time.

Product update — ScaleFunder’s Giving Day module (Launching February 29, 2016 with Washington State University’s #CougsGive) includes an online ambassador toolset that tracks the real fundraising ROI of your ambassadors. For the first time, nonprofits now have access to a Giving Day platform that not only deploys ambassadors, but provides data on exactly how much each individual ambassador brings in during the event. To learn more, contact me, VP of Digital Fundraising Strategy, Justin Ware, at justin.ware@scalefunder.com.

HOW TO Build a Digital Major Gifts Program

I love it when anecdotes plus statistics lead to predictions, which then become real life case studies and finally evidential proof.

In 2012, we first witnessed major donors taking notice of online campaigns when a dozen major gift prospects made their first gifts ever to Florida State University during the school’s inaugural “Great Give.” These were prospects who had never made a gift of any size or type, but felt compelled to do so for the first time during the online giving day micro campaign. (Most gifts were made online in the $500 to $5,000 range with one coming in offline as a $100,000 pledge)

Major gift donors and prospects often give four- and five-figure gifts through ScaleFunder’s crowdfunding and giving day modules without being specifically solicited.

Flash forward to the nearly 900 crowdfunding projects and online giving days ScaleFunder’s team has helped to launch and the refrain is similar in many cases – big gifts come from major donors and prospects, often unsolicited.

But those big gift donors should have been solicited, because we know:

• 85 percent of millionaires use social media, text messaging, AND smartphone applications. (Fidelity Investments study of millionaire investors)
• Online donors have higher household incomes than those who only give offline. (2012 Convio study)
• Online-acquired donors give twice the average size of gift compared with donors acquired via mail. (2012 Blackbaud study)

The statistics tell us the more money a person has, the more likely it is they are engaged online and via social media. Past experience tells us big donors are excited by innovative online giving efforts. For these reasons, digital is quickly becoming a staple of the best major gift programs. With that in mind, here are a few tips for injecting digital energy into your traditional major gifts program:

Train gift officers to be active in the digital space

This is not a mandate that every single gift officer opens and maintains Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts for engaging donors. Instead, find those gift officers who are already active online as well as those who have an interest in increasing their digital footprint for fundraising. Build a training program for the willing gift officers that helps the novices get started and the pros polish their online appearance.

The same goes for your institution’s leadership. For the right donor, having a president or chancellor comment on that donor’s Facebook photo of their granddaughter’s graduation could be monumentally effective at strengthening that donor’s affinity for the institution. Again – provide training for your administration so those opportunities can be identified and leveraged.

Provide digital opportunities for major gift donors

From offering innovative matching and challenge opportunities to branding a giving day theme in the name of a specific donor’s family, online giving campaigns can serve as virtual naming rights for your digitally active major donors and prospects. Whether it’s a giving day theme or a crowdfunding perk, think about how you might build your biggest donors into your online campaigns in visible and meaningful ways.

Create a subgroup of major donor online ambassadors

We’ve seen major donors set up crowdfunding campaigns that have brought in $60,000 in a matter of days. More importantly, those major-donor-led crowdfunding campaigns have identified new major donor prospects through the networks of the major donor ambassadors who launched the campaigns. Which makes perfect sense – major donors often have major donor prospects in their networks (online and offline). Leveraging a major donor’s support as both a donor and recruiter can more than double their impact.

Major donors are proving to us they want to be involved during online campaigns through their actions during those campaigns. On Wednesday January 20, RNL/ScaleFunder’s Vice President of Digital Fundraising Strategy, Justin Ware (that’s me), led a webinar with tips and tactics for building digital into your major gifts program. Click here for the recording, slides, and infographic of that webinar.

Top 5 Stories of 2014

It’s that time of year! …when bloggers seize the opportunity to be lazy and write a post that is nothing more than a list of the first five items on the analytics report.

Of course, posts make a top five list for a reason – readers just like you see value in the posts and often share those posts with their communities. So, in case you missed some of these items, here are the top five posts you and your colleagues read the most from 2014 on the Social Side of Giving blog:

1. 10 of the Best Higher Ed Online Giving Days – An overview of 10 of the most successful giving days in higher education with notes and descriptions for many of the events.
2. ASU Raises more than $3 Million During 2-day Online Campaign – A more detailed look at one of those leading online giving days.
3. How to Have a $1 Million+ Giving Day at Your School – Are you sensing a theme here? Yes, giving days are a big deal. Not just because of the new dollars and donors earned through the effort, but also because online giving days are very public celebrations of philanthropy for you institution. In fact, an argument could be made that there is no better communication tool for your development program than a giving day.
4. Colgate Raises $5.1 Million in 24 Hours with Online (Radio) – The Colgate case might be the best example of what can happen when major gift donors are included in a giving day.
5. 3 Thoughts on the Ice Bucket Challenge and Slacktivism – Hey, a non higher ed story! Which makes sense, because the Ice Bucket Challenge was probably the biggest story in all of fundraising during 2014.

The success of 2014 in online fundraising has generated a TON of excitement here at BWF_social. It’s invigorating working in an industry where most of our clients and potential clients have barely scratched the surface on what is possible using digital to engage, cultivate, and steward donors at all levels. If you’ve not yet invested significantly in online development at your organization, great news – it’s a new year and you can still make up for lost time! So make 2015 the year where you transform your operation into a modern shop that enjoys immediate and significant success. And of course, don’t hesitate to reach out if you need a little help along the way.

Justin Ware is the Director of Interactive Communication at BWF_social where he helps clients develop online and social media strategies that lead to real fundraising success.

10 of the Best Higher Ed Online Giving Days

In case you haven’t noticed, online giving days have become kind of a big deal in higher ed. The million dollar+ day is no longer the miracle campaign only the best and most prestigious schools can accomplish. Nope, seven-figure online campaigns are becoming common place. Assuming, of course, the organization planning the campaign knows what they’re doing.

We’ve said on this blog many times – to have a successful online giving day, you need three things:

1. Good online infrastructure (campaign landing page and giving forms).
2. A solid, established, and consistent online and social media strategy driven by good content.
3. A coordinated online ambassador effort.

Below are 10 of the best campaigns of the past three years. Seven of them had a version of an ambassador program, nine of them had elaborate and long-running social media strategies behind them (the only one that didn’t have a long-running strategy did have a powerful ambassador effort), and every single one had excellent online infrastructure. So without further adieu, 10 higher ed online giving days or fundraising campaigns to model your efforts after… (And I’d love to know which campaigns you think I missed. Please let me know in the comments)

Georgetown City Challenge – 2013

Purpose: Scholarship support and regional alumni engagement.

Duration: 27 hours.

• Donors: 1,514
• Dollars: $529,000

Gamification was the driving force behind Georgetown’s successful City Challenge campaigns.

Notre Dame Day – 2014

Purpose: Scholarship support.

Duration: 24 hours.

• Donors: 4,049
• Dollars: $918,518

UMass Amherst’s UMassGives – 2013

Purpose: Increase student giving and the overall culture of philanthropy in support of UMass Amherst.

Duration 36 hours.

• Donors: 1,588
  • 626 students gave over the 36 hours.
    • In the entire year prior, 529 students gave.
• Dollars: $84,000

For a blog post recap of UMassGives, click here.

Washington and Lee’s Give Day — 2014

Purpose: Online giving event.

Duration: 24 hours.

• Donors: 4,300+
• Dollars: $1.4 million.

Major gift donors played a huge role in Washington and Lee’s Give Day’s success by giving $650,000 in challenge grants to drive participation.

For a blog post recap of Give Day, click here.

University of Texas at Austin 40 for Forty – 2014

Purpose: Student engagement and annual giving.

Duration: 40 hours.

• Donors: 2,104
• Dollars: $128,000

Boston University Giving Day – 2014

Purpose: Annual giving online campaign.

Duration: 24 hours.

• Donors: 2,872
• Dollars: $1.11 million

Arizona State University – 2014

Purpose: Donor engagement and annual giving.

Duration: 36 hours.

• Donors: 908
• Dollars: $3.059 million

For a blog post recap of ASU’s campaign, click here.

Colgate’s WRCU Radio campaign – 2013

Purpose: Raise money for the school’s communication program.

Duration: 24 hours.

• Donors: 5,683
• Dollars: $5.1 million

For a blog post recap of Colgate’s campaign, click here.

Columbia University’s Giving Day – 2012 and 2013

Purpose: Online fundraising campaign for annual and major giving programs.

Duration: 24 hours.

• Donors:
  • 2012: 4,940
  • 2013: 9,700
• Dollars:
  • 2012: $6.8 million
  • 2013: $7.8 million

For a blog post recap of Columbia’s 2012 campaign, click here.

Average numbers for all schools:

Average donor number: 3,423

Average dollars raised: $2.69 million

Average duration: 29.5 hours

Are you ready to celebrate a successful online giving day? At BWF_social, we have experience building giving days and a consulting package to ensure success for your school. Learn more by clicking here.

Higher Ed Online Fundraising and the Rise of “Money Bombs”

Arizona State: $3.059 million in 36 hours … Columbia University: $7.8 million in 24 hours (after raising $6.8 million just one year earlier) … Santa Clara University: 2,600+ donors in 24 hours – by far their biggest day for donor participation ever.

Thanks, in part, to a strong social media strategy, Santa Clara University saw record-breaking donor participation during their first ever “money bomb” online campaign.

Short duration, online fundraising campaigns or “money bombs” are taking over higher education. But it’s not as easy as sending out an email and posting a few things on Facebook. The institutions that have had success have invested tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in three main areas to prepare for these online events:

• Well-designed, donor-centric online infrastructure (campaign landing pages, giving forms, mobile sites, etc).
• A long-term online and social media strategy (not just for the campaign, but throughout the year).
• Peer-to-peer or online ambassador programs.

If you’re interested in learning much more about the above suggestions, check out the following web chat from the Chronicle of Philanthropy (full-length chat posted below). In it, I’m joined by Georgetown’s Joannah Pickett (chief architect and strategist behind GU’s perfectly executed City Challenge online campaigns), Ohio State’s Chad Warren (one of the best online campaign planners in the business who has both Florida State’s Great Give and Dayton’s I Love UD campaigns under his belt), and the Chronicle’s Cody Switzer:

 

Are you ready to plan an online fundraising campaign for your institution? We have plenty of experience helping our clients achieve online fundraising success during these money bomb efforts. Click here for my BWF contact info or here for my LinkedIn to connect with me (Justin Ware) and learn more about how we might work together.

 

How the Dalai Lama Helped Santa Clara University Prove Social Media ROI

When you’re selling shoes, the metric to prove social media ROI is relatively easy. Ultimately, it boils down to …how many shoes you’ve sold. (A lot of quantifiable engagement metrics lead to that end result, but ultimately, shoe sales trump all else).

Using the #DalaiLamaSCU hashtag, Santa Clara’s social media team arranged an amazing online event around His Holiness’ visit to campus.

For many of us working in the nonprofit world – higher education, in particular – there is no sale-of-shoes metric that easily tells us what’s working and what’s not. Sure, there’s fundraising, event attendance, number of applicants, and other quantifiable objectives, but there’s also the far less tangible goals of improving the reputation of and sentiment toward your institution. At a very high level, those are the goals Santa Clara University’s marketing and communication pros are chasing and – thanks, in part, to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama – SCU (a BWF client) has an excellent case study on how to prove the value of a strong social media strategy.

“Santa Clara University is the Jesuit University in Silicon Valley and the theme of the talk ‘Business, Ethics and Compassion’ played into much of our key messaging,” said Marika Krause, Assistant Director of Media Relations at SCU.

On February 24, the Dalai Lama spoke to about 5,000 people on the Santa Clara campus, providing SCU with a daunting challenge, but also a tremendous opportunity.

Ultimately, SCU’s MarComm team is working to drive home the institution’s strategic priorities which include excellence in Jesuit education, the promotion of global understanding, justice, academic community, and engagement with Silicon Valley (where SCU is located). For nearly two years, Santa Clara’s communication pros have been building and implementing a strong social media strategy and presence. So when the Dalai Lama visit was announced for late winter, the SCU MarComm team knew they had an opportunity to make big things happen online.

“He is one of the biggest names to visit SCU,” said Stephanie Bravo, Assistant Director of Social Media. “His message of peace, compassion, and social justice naturally fit with SCU’s message.”

Bravo says, in addition to the strategic priorities, her team’s goals also include growing SCU’s online and social media communities. Then, using those communities to clearly communicate the message and priorities of the institution.

“Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and BuzzFeed. We also used Storify to pull it all together after the event. The key to tying it all together was one unifying hashtag the we put on all the programs, press releases – even banners outside the event.” said Krause.

SCU’s timely and consistent conversation management helped ensure mostly positive online discourse around the Dalai Lama’s visit.

“The hashtag was the main tool that kept us organized. It kept the public informed before the event and engaged during the event. It worked so well to generate content that we were able to create photo albums from hundreds of people’s photos from the event,” said Bravo. “A team of 5 student interns were instrumental in helping me post live at the event, which led to our trending on Twitter throughout the day.”

SCU’s efforts placed their event on the international stage via Twitter’s “trending topics” board.

That’s right, the relatively tiny Santa Clara University was sharing space on Twitter’s nationally trending topics list with big hitters such as Netflix and the news of Hollywood comedic legend Harold Ramis’ passing.

Again, a large contributing factor to SCU’s success, was the work put towards strategic planning since mid 2012.

“We had less than two months to pull off more than a year’s worth of logistical planning for the Dalai Lama’s visit. I’m pretty glad we’re all still standing!” said Krause. “I wouldn’t say it’s a surprise that we did so well on social media, because I think we had the groundwork in place for it to happen, but I’m grateful. Social Media is far from an exact science.”

As for advice on managing an event like this? Santa Clara Communications Director Deepa Arora offers the following…

“Be adventurous, try new things, be prepared for the unexpected. On the Live Twitter Feed during the event, some of the tweets were considered inappropriate,” said Arora. “Some students who tweeted the Dalai Lama were inviting him for a drink or asking about rumors, such as if Beyonce was in the audience. We monitored the Twitter feed, but did not delete any tweets. We had to do some hand holding to prepare senior administrators for the tone of the feed, but reminded everyone that SCU is a college campus and sometimes students say silly things. There’s no reason to turn off the Twitter feed for that.”

In the end, Santa Clara’s savviness with regards to managing internal and external forces, led to an amazingly well orchestrated event. And it wasn’t an accident. It’s the product of dedicating staff and resources to creating a sound social media strategy that’s ready for anything or, in this case, anyone.

Justin Ware is the Director of Interactive Communication at Bentz Whaley Flessner. Justin has been working with Santa Clara University since fall 2012. To learn more about Justin and his work, click here.

Content Marketing for Universities Using Hashtags

User generated content – it’s the holy grail of content marketing. But as many who have tried can tell you, it’s not as simple as asking your audience to “submit your favorite photos of (fill in the blank).”

First, it needs to be easy on the user. I mean, REALLY easy …like including a simple hashtag in a post is all they should need to do. Which is the case for students, alumni, and supporters of the University of San Francisco, thanks to the institution’s use of Scoop.it – an online application that builds audiences through publishing by curation.

Scoop.it helps the University of San Francisco’s e-communications team track content tagged with the #USFCA hashtag on leading social networks such as Instagram, Twitter, and blogs. After a post using the #usfca hashtag is discovered, that content is then reviewed. If it passes muster, the USF e-comm team features that content on the Hashtag.usfca.edu website. The result is a conglomeration of photos, videos, and stories about life at and around the University of San Francisco.

The University of San Francisco’s content marketing hub, hashtag.usfca.edu.

“Hashtag.usfca.edu fits perfectly into how we work towards the strategic goals,” said Thomas Listerman, Director of E-Communications at USF. “We curate content as a part of our regular monitoring – morning, noon, and afternoon.”

And it’s working. The Hashtag.usfca.edu project has led to a spike in visitors to USF’s web presence.

“We launched in March 2013 and after 9 months, we have now reached 130,000 views and 960 unique contributing sources,” said Listerman.

The Scoop.it page has also led to extensive use of the #usfca hashtag.

“We also measure (through radian6) the social media footprint in terms of social media conversations that mention the university name, and specifically conversations that include #USFCA,” said Listerman. “Compared to the same month last year, we have seen an average 168% increase in USF-relevant conversations overall and a 573% increase for the use of #USFCA.”

Like most universities, the University of San Francisco has few staff resources assigned to social media.

“Three full-time staff manage both email marketing and social media for the university, so we have to use our time efficiently,” said Listerman. “The monitoring and review process of #USFCA has been a way for us to generate more social media content, and more engagement with our content, with much less effort compared to creating the social media content ourselves.”

The Hashtag.usfca.edu Scoop.it site is authentic while also remaining on brand, thanks to the review process. Since it’s easy to use, there’s no shortage of user-generated submissions. And, because it’s user-generated, it’s helping USF understand what matters to its constituents, which shapes overall content marketing.

“The data from Hashtag.usfca.edu is playing an increasingly important role for our content marketing strategy,” said Listerman. “We use metrics from hashtag.usfca.edu and our other social media venues as a live ‘Litmus test’ for which stories to develop further through other channels.”

Interested in conducting your own content marketing campaign similar to what the University of San Francisco has done using Scoop.it? Listerman has the following list of tips to offer:

• Consistently monitor your content – Look at what your community is already talking about and how your curation can make a difference. Respond daily to questions and comments that deserve response.
• Get students involved with developing the concept for the project, either as student workers or as a focus group.
• Give the community one common hashtag to identify themselves when they refer to the university in their social media conversations.
• Use your brand messaging platform to create curation standards for your team.
• Make sure that your platform of choice…
  • Links back each curated piece to the original item.
  • Gives each curated content item a URL of its own.
  • Allows for sharing through other social media channels.
  • Allows for metrics both on a site-wide and item-specific level.
• Implement a procedure for circling back with every contributor you curate and publish, to let them know you’ve published their content.
• Swag doesn’t hurt. USF used postcards and stickers for the back of laptops or smart phones to create extra attention in the student population.
• Re-launch your project every semester with a focus on incoming students, in order to get them into the habit of using the right hashtag when they discover the university and throughout their student experience.

Justin Ware helps higher ed institutions, healthcare organizations, environmental organizations, and other nonprofits develop content marketing strategies. To connect with Justin to learn more, click here.

The Brilliance of SCU’s BuzzFeed Content Marketing

BuzzFeed is the embodiment of the move toward visual that has consumed social media in recent months. You’ve probably seen a few yourself – BuzzFeeds are those lists of images and gifs such as “21 Reasons Why Exercising is a Terrible Idea” and “The 40 Most Important Corgis of 2013.” They’re funny, heart-warming, and the safest bet of just about any content to go viral.

So it makes sense that Santa Clara University (a BWF client) decided to leverage BuzzFeed for their online and social media engagement and content marketing activity.

“The idea to use BuzzFeed really came from vigilant monitoring of social media,” said Marika Krause, Assistant Director of Media Relations at Santa Clara. “I noticed how many people were liking and sharing BuzzFeed links in my newsfeed.”

Krause is part of social media team at Santa Clara led by Assistant Director of Social Media Stephanie Bravo and Communications Director Deepa Arora. Bravo and Arora have been focused on using online and social media to connect with SCU alumni and supporters who might not otherwise be connected to the institution (in addition to serving those with a high degree of connection already). BuzzFeed, the team found, fits that need perfectly.

“It is vital to have a strong presence on multiple social media platforms, because the communities are in constant transition – anyone remember Friendster or when MySpace was the biggest player?” said Krause. “As social networks evolve, each site serves a different purpose, with different levels of popularity, and means different things to the unique population using them.”

The result is a series of BuzzFeeds – some created by students and alumni, others by the Office of Marketing and Communication at Santa Clara – that capture what it means to be a student at Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley. All the while, keeping a strategic message there for everyone to see in the best, least-intrusive way possible.

“The content is engaging with subtle nods to Santa Clara University,” said Krause. “We’re not banging people over the head with a message, but instead inviting them to enjoy some easily digestible content with a little Santa Clara flavor.”

Maybe the best example is this BuzzFeed – Top 7 Reasons You’re Addicted to BuzzFeed. In the visually-driven spirit of BuzzFeed, here’s a breakdown of why this particular Feed is such an awesome example of content marketing…

Top 4 Reasons Why SCU’s BuzzFeed Rocks Content Marketing’s Socks

1. The “Top 7 Reasons You’re Addicted to BuzzFeed” post is about BuzzFeed (social media loves talking about itself).
2. SCU’s own Instagram and Facebook posts are featured in the Feed. Strategic content placement, anyone?
3. It’s about the psychology of BuzzFeed and why we like the silly things we like. Who doesn’t love learning about that?
4. The information in this post comes from an SCU expert. Strategic placement of an expert in engaging social media content, anyone?

For more on content marketing and how it helps your achieve online fundraising success, connect with BWF’s Director of Interactive Communication Justin Ware by clicking here.

Knowing Your Audience is (Still) the Key to Good Content

To produce online content that gets shared, commented on, liked, retweeted, pinned and what ever else requires knowing what your core audience likes to share, comment on, like, retweet, pin, and whatever else. This is nothing new. Producing content your audience enjoys has always required knowing a thing or two about your audience. The difference communicators now face in the modern world is this – as soon as your audience is unhappy, literally more than a billion other options are just a mouse click away. To keep eyes on your organization requires knowing exactly what your audience wants before even they know it. Your content should answer the question “what is your audience about to Google?”

The following link will take you to a guest post I did for SpotOn – an effort towards helping science educators deliver their message to a larger audience. The focus of the piece is on identifying and connecting with your audience and includes tips toward the bottom of the post…

SpotOn NYC: Telling Stories – Teaching Science Through Valuable Content

Below is the video that led to the blog post and a number of other accolades. I was part of the award-winning team that produced the video, which still stands as one of the most highly-viewed higher ed videos in the world, four years after it was produced. (1.78 million views as of 2/19/13) Above all else, I believe the success came from knowing what our audience would be looking for at exactly the time we released the video. In this case, it was scenes from an upcoming sci-fi movie …with some scientific learning baked in, of course.

For the full piece in SpotOn, click here.

Justin Ware is a fundraising consultant who specializes in online and social media engagement at Bentz Whaley Flessner. To contact Justin, click here.

Online Ambassadors Help Columbia Reach $6.8 Million in 24 Hours

In a previous post, I suggested nonprofits do three things to boost their online (and offline) fundraising. 1) Build an online ambassador program. 2) Improve your online giving websites, apps, and widgets. 3) Invest in personnel to manage your social media strategy. Columbia did all three of those things on their way to a wildly successful, 24-hour, online giving campaign that brought in more than $6.8 million on October 24, 2012. But you don’t have to take my word for it. BWF interviewed CloEve Demmer, Columbia’s Director of Annual Fund Programs, and Gwynne Gauntlett, Director of Digital Strategy for Alumni Relations and Development at Columbia. In the video below, Demmer and Gauntlett talk about how they prepared for and executed Columbia Giving Day:

In addition to the massive fundraising total brought in during the 24-hour campaign, Demmer and Gauntlett said they were equally surprised by the success in the days following Giving Day. Several million additional dollars were given to Columbia by alumni and supporters who said they were inspired by the powerful campaign. Which shows that online campaigns might be as valuable as marketing tools, as they are fundraising mechanisms.

Above all else, what Columbia’s campaign demonstrates is the value of investing in online and social media for fundraising. Facebook might be free, but a strategy to raise money using Facebook is not. Columbia’s staff and leadership understand this. As a result, the school just wrapped up one of the most successful one day fundraising campaigns ever. And chances are, they’ll do it again in the near future.

Justin Ware is a fundraising consultant who specializes in online and social media engagement at Bentz Whaley Flessner. To contact Justin, click here.