Multi-channel Fundraising Strategies for Huge EOY Results

“Crowdfunding?! Are you crazy?! Donors have their plans set for how they give at EOY! We’d only get new donors that don’t renew!”

Nonprofit fundraisers have a love/hate relationship with crowdfunding. But let’s take a step back and look at crowdfunding as a component to a robust, multi-channel, end-of-calendar-year campaign.

In this post we’ll break down a multi-channel EOY strategy that includes:

• Solicitations built on a crowdfunding backbone to appeal to unique donor interests while still filling the general fund coffers
• Targeted email strategy to get donors to click
• Peer-to-peer or “online ambassadors”
• Facebook Ads to expand your EOY campaign’s reach to new audiences

Create multiple crowdfunding pages that align with your end of year priorities.

Crowdfunding projects are specific & targeted, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be unrestricted. Dig into what your unrestricted funds do. Say there are 3 main priorities of the fund – create a page for each one! Tell stories of how those priorities have impacted lives of those you serve. Then you get the specificity and transparency of crowdfunding, and an opportunity for your donors to show you the unique reasons they give and why they care.

Once you’ve created those pages…how do you get donors there? We can rely on digital channels for the execution as well.

Create a segmented email plan directing donors to crowdfunding pages.

Donors prefer short emails. Email is no longer the place to tell your story, but a place to incite an action. So how do we convince the donor to give? Those crowdfunding pages you just created!

This page set up give you the room to tell your story in an easy to consume, visual manner. With your unique stories broken out in different pages, you already have the content needed for email. Use the most compelling information in the email in order to inspire the click to the page to learn more. Then segment your donor list and send the individuals to just one of the pages you’ve created.

Identify ambassadors.

Today’s fundraising will always be stronger with a peer-to-peer component. Although EOCY projects are more institutional, make sure you have real people champion this project. Consider using really active donors or volunteers. If you have the budget – use a social listening tool to find people who really care about your mission! The best ambassador is one who has supported you in the past and has strong online influence – via social media or good email contacts. Email from the ambassadors is a critical channel alongside your institutional email.

Be active on social media! But don’t rely on organic reach.

Your donors (and potential donors) are on social. Hopefully many of them follow you! But even those who follow you may not see all your posts, depending on their history of engagement with your page. Facebook ads will ensure more people see your posts. At a minimum, consider ads that go out to those who you are already emailing. The ads will act as a marketing reminder to those who have already received your email. If you’re looking to expand your networks, consider Custom Audiences.

Crowdfunding is more than the reactive campaigns, the restricted campaigns, the campaigns that only bring in mom, dad, and grandma donors of the project teams; it is a structure of giving that provides the story behind the gift that today’s donors demand.

We’re at a point where there are multiple digital channels for your fundraising office can leverage. For your EOY campaigns, make sure you’re taking full advantage of all of the digital channels at your fingertips!

Interested in a targeted multi-digital-channel strategy for your EOCY or other upcoming campaigns? Click here and fill out our contact form to schedule a strategy session.

Giving Days Done Right with Major Donors – UCSB

When asked “which giving day do you think had the best planning and preparation?” the University of California Santa Barbara is always at the top of my short list of examples. From the theme, to messaging, to online ambassadors, to email, UC Santa Barbara does giving day as well as any institution.

One of the most impressive aspects of UCSB’s first giving day was in the realm of major gifts – an area that is not traditionally associated with donor participation events like giving days …but then again, times are changing in philanthropy.

UCSB raised approximately $1.5 million before their April 8, 2016 #UCSBGiveDay event. This helped secure an enormous $3.72 million overall. Here is the breakdown:

• $800,000+ was raised for a smart, balanced match and challenge plan. This allowed major donors to see themselves deeply connected to a grassroots campaign as sponsors of matches and challenges. The gamification provided by the matches and challenges also led to UCSB’s best single annual giving day in the school’s history as it was one of many drivers of donor activity throughout the day.
• $600,000+ was raised for large “seed” gifts. These are simply large gifts donors preferred to give prior to the day offline as opposed to making an online gift during the event.
• In addition to the money raised from major donors before the campaign, another donor gave a $1.6 million real estate gift during the event. Because of the large gift protocol UCSB had in place, they were able to use the giving day as additional leverage for locking down and promoting this large gift during the event.

Big giving from major donors during a giving day doesn’t happen by accident. UCSB had success with their large gift donors, because development department leadership made the giving day a priority. The enthusiasm that started at the top with Associate Vice Chancellor Beverly Colgate trickled down through the entire department and energized gift officers to use the giving day as another tactic for engaging and re-engaging their donors and prospects. The results speak for themselves: more money for giving day and major donors who were excited to be part of an exhilarating event.

Major donors were thrilled to be part the highly visible, successful #UCSBGiveDay fundraising event.

Just as a reminder, here is why you want to get the major gifts program involved well before you launch your giving day.

• Because major donors love digital and we want them to be happy:
  • 85 percent of all millionaires use social media, text messaging, and smart phone apps (Fidelity Investments)
  • 55 percent of affluent individuals use mobile pay. That’s compared to 40 percent of the general population and 52 percent for Millennials. (Accenture) That’s right – major donors as a group are more likely than Millennials to pay for a cup of coffee with their iPhone.
• Giving days are a HUGE celebration of an institution and philanthropy. When major donors are at the center of such a vibrant event, they feel good. (That’s why we say giving days offer major donor stewardship opportunities)
• Matches and challenges drive small gift giving. According to The Why Axis, by Uri Gneezy and John List, donors are 20 percent more likely to give when a match is in play.

Majors donors love online giving … big gifts drive small gift activity … digital campaigns offer another point of engagement, cultivation, and solicitation for major donors … the reasons for building major donors into your next giving day are many. Be sure you major gifts team is ready to seize this opportunity.

Justin Ware is the Vice President for Digital Fundraising Strategy at ScaleFunder – a Ruffalo Noel Levitz platform. Justin can be reached via email at justin.ware@scalefunder.com or on LinkedIn by clicking here.

Building a 4-stage Online Ambassador Program — Stage 3: Deployment

This is part 3 in a four-part series that details ScaleFunder’s four-stage online ambassador program building process process. Before continuing, be sure you’ve read part 1 by clicking here and part 2 by clicking here.

OK – the hard part is over. You’ve found potential ambassadors, engaged them and solidified their support of your peer-to-peer program – now it’s time work with them for marketing and fundraising purposes.

Deploying ambassadors for marketing and fundraising success

Software shows sophistication.

Budgets are tight, we understand, but as we explained in part 1 of this series, online ambassadors can bring about a significant return on investment. So, make a bigger investment for a bigger return, right? Moreover, your ambassadors are often important supporters, such as board members or celebrity alumni – it’s important you provide them with elegant tools that are enjoyable as opposed to maddenly frustrating when it comes to user experience. To that end, there are different platforms for different purposes and investing in at least one will greatly help your chances of success through online ambassadors.

If broader marketing (not necessarily fundraising) is your top objective, consider platforms like SocialToaster and ReadyPulse. Those are just two examples of software services that engage your ambassadors and deploy them through easy-to-use content distribution mechanisms across most social media platforms. Each platform is different, but generally speaking, tools like SocialToaster and ReadyPulse allow you to directly send and/or receive content from online ambassadors to be shared with their communities of faithful followers. Ordinarily, these tools require the ambassador to authorize through at least one social media network, which allows your organization to interface with the ambassador’s accounts and profiles and share content directly via those ambassador accounts. It’s a great way to expand your message to new communities in an authentic-feeling way, because the posts appear to come directly from the ambassador, as opposed to an institutional account.

If fundraising is your top concern, you will want a platform that tracks and quantifies this data. Surprisingly, such a feature set has been missing in the nonprofit space – that is until we at ScaleFunder launched our Giving Day module [link] earlier this month. Through the platform, we provide ambassadors with personal URLs that quantify the impact of an ambassador’s sharing activity by tracking the number of individual gifts and total dollars given through a specific share link. This is important, because it allows you to understand the true fundraising ROI of your ambassador program and make adjustments to enhance the program based on real fundraising returns.

Produce great content.

It might be tempting to get lazy with content, especially if you have online ambassadors who initially appear willing to share anything you send them. But resist this temptation. Spend time creating worthwhile videos, eye-caching graphics, and rich written content. Not only will your ambassadors more enthusiastically share this content, but their followers will more aggressively consume and act on good content.

Track and learn from your ambassador data.

Which online ambassadors raise the most? Which appear to have wealthy networks? Who are the most active online ambassadors? Just as is the case with offline volunteer programs, you’ll want to quantify the return on this activity for the following reasons:

• Rewarding ambassadors – Gamification is a key driver of online activity and that behavior seems to be especially true among highly active ambassadors. Encourage your ambassadors to share frequently and sincerely by rewarding them for their sharing activity. More on this in Part 4 of this series.
• Adjusting content strategy – Which posts led to the most sharing? What tone and format of content brought in the most donors and/or dollars? Data driven content strategy is easy – do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. The key is having software that clearly tells you what messaging is effective and what isn’t.
• Adjusting your ambassador program to fit your most influential and effective online ambassadors – The most popular content might not necessarily be the best content. This is why it’s important to look at both marketing and fundraising metrics. In the end, most of us will ultimately be judged by the performance of our development program. So find your top performing ambassadors, determine what they want out of a program by reading the data surrounding their activity, and adjust the ambassador program based on the behavior or your top performing ambassadors.

To learn more about technology to support ambassador programs, contact me, ScaleFunder’s VP of Digital Fundraising Strategy, Justin Ware, at justin.ware@scalefunder.com.

Building a 4-stage Online Ambassador Program — Stage 2: Engagement

Before reading this post, be sure to check out Stage 1 in this four-part series on identifying potential ambassadors by clicking here.

All caught up? Great! Now let’s talk about engaging and on-boarding your potential online ambassadors.

At this point, you’ve developed a list of your online supporters who have a good degree of influence over online communities, be it on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn) or email. Next up is the crucial step of inviting them into the program and having them accept their responsibilities as online ambassadors for your institution or organization.

Today’s topic – engaging potential online ambassadors

Pick up the phone!

Sometimes new-school tactics require old-school approaches. This is certainly true of engaging your soon-to-be online ambassadors. While email and web login are mandatory aspects of most ambassador programs, some of the best performing peer-to-peer programs are built around person-to-person invitations. Often this one-on-one engagement takes place over the phone.

One great example of going one-on-one over the phone to invite ambassadors comes from Wabash College in Indiana. Before Wabash’s first giving day in 2014, Wabash Associate Dean for College Advancment, Joe Klen picked up the phone more than 180 times to recruit 175 online ambassadors who were instrumental in the day’s success. Not only did more than 2,200 donors give nearly $500,000 to the tiny school, but the ambassadors were so active that “Wabash” was trending on Twitter along other slightly more well known names like “Netflix” and “Charles Barkley.” Not bad for a school with fewer than 20,000 emailable alumni. (To read more about and watch a video on Wabash’s ambassador effort, click here.)

Tweet them!

To engage ambassadors on social media, first warm up the relationship by conversing with the potential ambassadors on their social network(s) of choice.

If someone is active and supporting your organization on a social network, then it makes sense that you would use that network to engage them. This is especially useful if you don’t have an email or phone number for this supporter.

But be careful – you don’t want to use social media to spam or uncomfortably surprise someone. Before asking your active social media supporter to be an ambassador, warm up the conversation by retweeting them, commenting on their blog posts, or sharing their Facebook photos. Get to know the potential ambassador before using social media to ask for their support as an ambassador.

Be clear!

It’s likely you want something specific from your ambassadors – perhaps it’s supporting a giving day, expanding awareness of your mission, driving an email campaign – whatever it might be, make it clear to your ambassadors what you’ll be asking of them in the near and long-term. Give them an idea of how many emails you’ll be sending them, make them aware of any software they’ll be using, and reinforce their importance by clearly stating how impactful online ambassador activity can be in accomplishing your mission.

Additionally, it’s wise to have some rules for the ambassador game. Do you require ambassadors to state they are digital advocates of your organization in their profiles? Better let them know. Is there a minimum amount of posting activity to remain in the program? If so, your ambassadors show know what that threshold is and what happens if they don’t maintain that level. Along with basic rules for decent online decorum, give your ambassador guidelines that will help both your organization and the ambassadors themselves.

Give them a job!

Once an ambassador has agreed to be part of your program, give them something to do as soon as possible. This will help cement the program in their mind as part of their normal, daily digital routine. If too much time lapses between engagement and deployment (more on deployment in a later post) ambassadors might forget their purpose and not perform the desired sharing activity.

To learn more about technology to support ambassador programs, contact me, ScaleFunder’s 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.

Age Breakdowns for the Biggest Social Media Networks and What it Means for Your Strategy

More than half of America uses social media regularly and Facebook is still the king when it comes to number of users. And while the share might shift between social networks and demographics, there is no indication that use and growth of social media is going to stop any time soon.

For the full report from eMarketer and Adweek on who is using which networks, click here.

We frequently see reports and studies telling us how many people, in which demographics, use social media. But how can we take these usage numbers and apply them to our digital strategy? Below are a set of tips, based on data from the above eMarketer strategy, for the three biggest social networks — Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Facebook

Facebook is a behemoth of a social network with more than 1 billion people worldwide and more than half the U.S. population actively using the site. Facebook’s user base is getting older, but that’s more of an opportunity than a drawback for fundraisers. To understand why, think major gift work.

Did you know that:

• 85 percent of all millionaires use social media, with 70 percent of that group on Facebook?
• Online acquired donors give more than mail acquired donors?
• Major donors LOVE digital campaigns?

The third point is from our work with clients at BWF_social. In our two most recent giving day campaigns, 42 major donors gave online gifts of $1,000 or more during one giving day, while 26 gave gifts of $1,000 or more during the second effort. In both cases, the gifts were unsolicited beyond the mass marketing work that reached all donors, primarily through email and social media.

In short — your major gift donors are online and the majority of them are using Facebook. Considering the above mentioned data about major donors and this eMarketer data which shows a large and growing number of older Facebook users, your major gift officers should know the network and be leveraging it to better connect with their major gift donors and prospects. Your communications team should be producing content that reinforces giving at all levels, especially the major gift level. Finally, you should be looking to Facebook and all social media as a way of prospecting for new major gift donors.

Twitter

Twitter users are mostly a bunch of kids, right? Sure, nearly half of all Twitter users are under age 35, but more than a quarter are between age 35 and 54. And it might surprise many to learn that about 13 percent of Twitter users are over age 55.

But really, when it comes to Twitter, age doesn’t matter as much as functionality. For most people, Twitter is a news source. So a good Twitter strategy should be built around sharing a good deal of relevant content. Both relevant to your organization and, most importantly, to your audience. An aging but still accurate HubSpot study from Dan Zarella tells us Twitter users with the most followers are those who often post links in their tweets. Another study from Zarella and HubSpot tells us posting a picture via your tweet helps engagement.  In other words, don’t just tweet about your lunch — tweet about your lunch using a picture and including a link to the recipe.

Instagram

Instagram is the king of social media networks when it comes to audience engagement.

On Instagram, it is (mostly) about the kids …and engagement. In fact, Instagram has, by far, the highest engagement of any major social media network. If you’re looking to connect with and market to people age 45 and under, Instagram is where it’s at.

You can’t post links on Instagram, so don’t bother using it as a direct marketing resource. Instead, think of Instagram more like traditional advertising. Can someone give a gift directly through a TV ad? How about a print ad? No. But both television and print have value for raising the awareness and improving the perception of your organization. At a minimum, Instagram — and all social media, for that matter — is no different. Especially if we’re talking about engaging the younger audiences who heavily use Instagram and who really don’t watch TV or read much print.

Justin Ware is the Director of Interactive Communication at Bentz Whaley Flessner where he helps clients build digital engagement strategies for every aspect of fundraising — from the annual fund to major gift work. Click here to learn more.

Online Ambassadors and the “Death of Organic Reach” on Facebook

Facebook’s ever changing algorithm now means that, unless you have a paid ad strategy driving content, the vast majority of your followers will never see the posts you share from your organization’s Facebook page(s).

The “Death of Organic Reach,” as some call it, is detailed in this post from SocialToaster’s Brian Razzaque. In the post, Razzaque highlights just how low your Facebook reach can go, while also offering some tips on how to combat the decline in eyeballs on your posts.

So is Facebook worth the effort if you’re not laying down enormous ad buys every month? Yes, but it depends on your strategy.

First, there are the basics of good content marketing – be valuable to your audience, not overly promotional, and connect with current events and other issues the Internet is talking about at the point in time when you’re publishing. That approach still helps, but truth be told, good content isn’t enough for Facebook anymore. Just take a look at your page’s posts over the past two years. On average, Bentz Whaley Flessner’s page sees roughly 10 percent the organic reach of content shared just one year ago.

But there is one other option if you still want to avoid Facebook Ads — and it will help drive reach and engagement on all your digital and social media channels, not just on Facebook alone. When people like, comment on, and/or share your posts, Facebook rewards those posts with a higher ranking value on your followers’ Newsfeeds. In other words, more of your fans will see the content you post when you post it if some of your fans are sharing that content. Which means, online ambassadors are the option B for anyone who wants to avoid Ad spends.

If you want to beat Facebook’s tightening Newsfeed algorithms without big ad spends, find ambassadors and work with them to share your content. That requires more than simply asking your online ambassadors to like and share content. For the best results, find out what your ambassadors want from you and what they like to share. Always be analyzing this data to inform your content marketing strategy. If you ask ambassadors to share content that matters to them, they will share enthusiastically and your organization will enjoy much greater reach on Facebook. (Plus, you’ll have more effective content for email and other social networks like Twitter and Instagram)

As effective as ambassadors can be at driving content, laying ads on top of the content ambassadors share does significantly increase reach and engagement. BWF_social client Santa Clara University began social media marketing with ambassadors in late 2012. They quickly discovered ambassador-led Facebook posts typically brought in about three times the engagement as those posts in which ambassadors were not leveraged. However, when Facebook Ads + ambassadors were deployed to share content, the reach was often as much as 40 times higher than average and engagement was 10 times higher than average. Staggering numbers that might be even more severe in 2015 as they were in 2014 when those numbers were recorded.

So yes, Facebook is still valuable. There are simply too many active users on the network to ignore Facebook if you’re truly interested in a multi-channel communication strategy (and you should be). To make your investment in Facebook and Facebook Ads worthwhile, be sure you have a healthy group of online ambassadors ready to help your content reach the masses like it did in 2012.

Justin Ware is the director of interactive communication at BWF_social where he helps nonprofit clients produce online and social media communication and fundraising strategies.

HOW TO Produce More (Cheap) Video for Your Nonprofit

This could finally be the year.

Thanks to a seemingly endless stream of posts touting the life or death cruciality of video content, 2015 might finally be the year we video producers have been waiting for – the point in time when organizations and companies make investing in video content their top communications priority. But you don’t have to take my word for it…

There’s this recent Ad Age piece that says users are posting 75 percent more videos to Facebook than they were one year ago.

More importantly for those of us who make our livings working in communications is this Guardian piece that, among other things, highlights an Axonn Research study that tells us seven in 10 people view brands in a more positive light after watching a video produced by those brands.

And finally this post by Recode that lays out the magnitude of the whole thing – Facebook users watch about 3 BILLION videos on Facebook everyday.

Among other amazing video stats, a recent Google study tells us 57 percent of those who view a nonprofit’s video will go on to make a gift to that nonprofit.

Simply put, an investment in producing your own video might be the most important decision you make this year. And the good news is, with amazingly high quality video cameras built into everyday items like the phones in our pockets, that investment doesn’t have to break the bank.

The following are a few tips to help your organization create more quality, engaging video content without pushing your organization’s budget into the red…

Hire a social media manager with video experience

Social media managers should do more than sit in front of a social network dashboard all day. They should be involved in strategic planning, help train staff and volunteers on using social media to advocate for your cause, and they should be content producers. And because video is quickly emerging as the top form of content, they should be video content producers.

Work with internal and external (volunteer) content producers

In higher ed, this is a no brainer. There are students on your campus who know how to do video and will do it at a small cost or no cost at all if they can add it to their nascent resumes. Find them and work with them.

For other organizations, the volunteers might be difficult to find, but they are out there. Do you know any board members who love talking about their beautifully produced videos of a weekend at the family lake cabin? How about a video blogger who often links to your organization’s website? …or a local video production company employee who also happens to be a repeat donor? There are video producers out there in your supporter base. Find them and work with them.

Select willing staff and provide them with video training

Again, thanks to inventions like the iPhone, most of us are carrying high quality cameras with us everywhere we go. So put those cameras to use! There’s a good chance a small handful of your staff would welcome the opportunity to receive (free) video production training. Thankfully (SHAMELESS PLUG AHEAD) organizations like BWF_social provide our clients with video training workshops and services. Regardless of the approach you take, find your willing staff and provide them with the training they need to become video evangelists for your cause.

Justin Ware is a Emmy-winning and Webby-nominated video producer who helps BWF_social‘s clients produce transformational online and social media (and video) strategies.

The Ice Bucket Challenge’s Impact on ALS Association’s Year-end Giving

Millions of videos generated a buzz storm of awareness for the ALS Association in 2014 during the Ice Bucket Challenge.

The “Ice Bucket Challenge” led to a $115 million infusion of fundraising support for the ALS Association in late summer 2014. And those robust fundraising numbers are only part of the story.

According to the a recent Chronicle of Philanthropy article, end-of-year fundraising for the ALS Association is up three fold over the numbers from the year prior. In December 2013, the ALS Association processed 9,618 gifts for $1.6 million. In December 2014, those numbers jumped to approximately 44,000 gifts for $4.8 million.

Volunteer and event fundraising was also up in a big way. According to the same article, revenue from the charity’s fundraising walks brought in $32 million in 2014, up from $22 million in 2013.

According to the ALS Association, the reason for the big numbers beyond those raised during the Ice Bucket Challenge, is the buzz and awareness generated for the Association by the Challenge. Also from the Chronicle of Philanthropy article, here is what Lance Slaughter, chief chapter relations and development officer at the ALS Association had to say about communications success driven by the Ice Bucket Challenge…

“No ad campaign, no public relations push, no news coverage, no celebrity endorsement – nothing could have raised the specter of the ALS Association more dramatically than the Ice Bucket Challenge. And the result is much wider, energized, and healthy base of donor support.”

And that is why nearly every nonprofit organization needs a strong digital strategy coupled with well-promoted digital events. Sure, online fundraising events raise a lot of gifts from new donors (that should be reason enough to invest in digital strategy).  But more importantly, online is often the most powerful communication tool a nonprofit has at its disposal. Which is why now is time to invest in this channel appropriately – not just for your annual fund, but for the long-term survival of your organization. Here’s how:

Draft and implement a digital strategy

Email, social media posts, content on your website, location based activity during live events – all of this activity should be purposeful. When a strategy is produced and implemented, when everyone knows why you’re doing social media, it leads to significant boosts in several measurable categories. Dollars raised and donor acquisition are just the tip of the iceberg when a strong and coherent digital strategy is guiding the effort.

Develop an online ambassador program

It’s not just about leveraging your biggest online supporters as volunteer fundraisers – online ambassador programs are at their best when helping to communicate your organization’s message throughout the year. Stories of impact, thank you messages, information about new programs and initiatives – just like a fundraising ask, all of this content reaches a larger audience and is more effective when it is being distributed virally by online ambassadors. Remember, the Ice Bucket Challenge happened because of an unofficial online ambassador’s concept for supporting ALS research.

Invest in the best technology you can afford

Your website is your organization’s most visible (digital) facade … Your online giving form’s ease of use (or lack there of) is often the first impression your organization makes on new donors … Your digital content captures the interest of the world and tells your story to new audiences … Good online infrastructure and technology is not cheap, but can pay for itself quickly. Investment in this area is often something a major gift donor would gladly support (because the companies they own are already having success with digital). Donors expect functional, attractive online properties – don’t disappoint them.

Do the above three things. Do them now and do them well. If you’re not sure where to start, find a partner with experience (there are a growing number of us out there) and make 2015 the year you transformed your organization’s digital presence and positioned it for success in the decades ahead.

Justin Ware is the Director of Interactive Communication at BWF_social, where he helps clients implement digital strategies that lead to successful online fundraising.

 

 

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.