Strategy for effective fund "raising" & "giving"
Archive for March, 2010
The Secret to Social Media Fundraising?
Mar 28th
Photo courtesy Photos8.com
I admit it. The headline for this post is a tease used to get your attention.
The secret to raising money through social networking is that there is, of course, no secret.
Like offline fundraising, successful social media fundraising requires relationship – building, the development of a community of supporters. Fundraising is hard work. It is incredibly rewarding work, but work nonetheless.
Attracted by what appear to be the lower costs and ease of access to new supporters offered by social media, many nonprofit fundraisers are looking to online fundraising to solve all their fundraising challenges. But just as offline fundraising takes hard work, so does development success online.
NO KISSING ON THE FIRST DATE
Those nonprofits that are succeeding at social media fundraising know that all good fundraising is rooted in building strong relationships with your donors. First, you need to get to know potential supporters and get them excited about your nonprofit’s work. The most successful fundraisers will tell you that “there’s no kissing on the first date.” Build a connection with a prospect first. Ask for money only after you have properly introduced a potential supporter to your organization.
Allison Fine makes this point in her recent post “Social Media Fundraising Lessons” , noting that “organizations that are focused on friends first, funds second are doing better with social media.”
When you are tweeting or posting to Facebook, don’t ask fans and followers to give to you or ask others to give if you haven’t first tried to build a connection with them around your mission. People are following your organization because they care about the issue or cause you are addressing. Use social media to share information about your nonprofit’s work. Engage with your followers and fans, ask for their opinions, cater to their shared interest in your mission, and then ask them to spread the word.
ALL FOLLOWERS & FANS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL
In a recent post at Community Organizer 2.0 , Debra Askanase argues that social media fundraising “comes down to a combination of social media basics plus community organizing principles.”
Community organizing generally involves some form of power analysis. Organizers determine who in the community has the power to implement (or block) a community’s agenda. Debra points to power analysis as a key community organizing principle to apply to online fundraising.
For success in online fundraising, a nonprofit needs to analyze the power and influence of its fans/followers. The 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study conducted by M&R Strategic Services and NTEN, found that the the top 7 percent of online action takers accounted for a full 31 percent of all online actions taken, and 39 percent of the activists were responsible for 71 percent of all actions.
Those nonprofits that understand which of their followers are super-activists, which are inactive and which fall somewhere in between will be able to craft outreach strategies designed to work best with each group of fans. The 2009 eNonprofits Benchmark study notes that “successful programs work to ensure that super-activists continue to be satisfied, while simultaneously cultivating less active subscribers to increase their activism.”
PLAN, PLAN, PLAN
Finally, successful social media fundraising requires good planning. I wrote about the importance of fundraising planning in general here. Don’t just set up shop on a social media channel and start posting content and asking for support. First, think about the following planning questions:
What is your goal for using social media to fundraise?
Which online channels do the organization’s target audiences use most regularly?
What is your timeframe for the online campaign? Never-ending fundraising may exhaust and chase away online supporters.
What content do you plan to share? Can your supporters easily share your content with their followers? Do you make a clear and compelling case that giving to your organization will connect donors to the impact they hope to have on a cause important to them?
Online fundraising may ultimately save time and money compared with some offline fundraising, but that does not mean that it requires no work. No matter where it takes place — online or off — fundraising is hard work.
Six Great Blogs for Nonprofit Professionals
Mar 18th
All of us who work in the nonprofit sector are trying to do too much with too little — too little money and too little time.
When I started in the sector 26 years ago, we networked and learned from other nonprofit colleagues. However, we did not have the easy access to peers and quality information that social networking and the web now provide.
It is great to be able to Google almost any question about nonprofit management or about our particular issue and find pages of links to the latest research and advice. Social networking provides endless opportunities to connect with and learn from like-minded colleagues on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and more.
But what’s a busy non-profit professional to do? Overwhelmed with what is already on our plate, where can we find the time to keep up with the wealth of information available about philanthropy, fundraising, organizing, advocacy and social change? You can’t do it all, but here are six Nonprofit blogs that I read regularly. Each helps me to keep up with different parts of the nonprofit world. This list is by no means exhaustive. There are many other quality nonprofit bloggers out there. These are simply provided as a starting point:
- Give & Take: This is a summary page for all the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s blogs. The page also includes links to other nonprofit bloggers around the web. I find I get a good sense of “breaking news” in the nonprofit world by checking this site several times per week.
- Joanne’s Nonprofits Blog: Joanne Fritz’ blog is another resource for all things nonprofit. This blog will keep you up-to-date on many different aspects of the nonprofit sector. Joanne always includes plenty of links to related blogs and generously quotes other bloggers, so you will find your way to lots of new sites by starting with Joanne’s.
- NTEN Blog: This is the blog of the Nonprofit Technology Network and the place I turn for all things nonprofit tech.
- Pamela’s Grantwriting Blog: If your nonprofit has a small development staff, be sure to visit this site. Pamela Grow shares concrete and common sense tips and helps you to establish systems that are scaled to the small development shop. Pamela’s phone interviews (followed by transcripts of the conversations on her blog) will give you the chance to learn from many of today’s leading fundraising and marketing professionals.
- Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog: Kivi Leroux Miller describes her blog as the place for “do-it-yourself nonprofit communications and marketing.” This site is chock full of great information on how to position, brand and market your nonprofit.
- Beth’s Blog: If you want to keep up with what’s happening with nonprofits and social media, this is the place to start. I read Beth’s Blog everyday and feel as if I have just attended a social media training. Beth’s posts are packed with lessons she has learned during her years of training nonprofits on social media. However, this site provides much more than just ”how to do” social media. Beth is a leader in creating new approaches for nonprofit use of social media, and she generously shares her learning curve with her readers.
Which nonprofit bloggers would you include on your list? Please share your favorites in the comments below.
Fundraising Planning in the Small Shop
Mar 8th
I have worked in many small development offices, defined here as staff of three or less, and the majority of my consulting clients have small shops.
In my experience, it is the rare small shop that regularly draws up annual development plans. While they have fundraising goals and fundraising calendars, few small shop development directors annually assess their nonprofit’s fundraising systems, resources and past strategies and then chart a course for the new year.
The small shop development directors I know say that they are overworked and understaffed and cannot find the time to pull an annual plan together.
I know there is always too much to do, but if your nonprofit is going to be successful, you cannot afford to skip the annual development planning process. In fact, you might currently be wasting precious staff and volunteer time and budget pursuing funding strategies that do not work. Creating a plan helps you to focus the majority of your efforts on the fundraising strategies that have the most potential to sustain your nonprofit.
Annual fundraising plans are a key element of successful small shops in the best of times. In economically shaky times such as these, plans are even more important. Has your nonprofit lost government or foundation funding over the past year? How will you work to replace this money? What do you think will be your best funding sources this coming year? The focus required to create a plan will help you to answer these questions.
Many nonprofits are about to start a new fiscal year on July 1, so March and April are good times to consider how this year’s fundraising efforts have gone, and plan accordingly for next year.
Here are some key questions to consider:
1. Your Donors:
- Who are your current donors?
- What strategies are you using to cultivate and keep current donors, upgrade gifts where possible and recruit new donors?
2. Infrastructure:
- Do you have an effective database?
- Do you need additional technology to take advantage of social media and online giving?
- Do you have systems in place for regularly communicating with donors, sending timely thank you notes, and following up on new leads?
3. People:
- Do you have an active Fundraising Committee? Is this committee provided with adequate training and staff support?
- What is your development staffing plan, and is it working effectively?
- Do your professional staff need additional fundraising training?
- Is your Board of Directors actively engaged in fundraising?
- Does your Board recruitment process prioritize finding members with fundraising experience and connections?
- Does your nonprofit clearly articulate and communicate Board fundraising responsibilities to incoming as well as current Board members?
4. Strategies:
- Which funding sources might you have to move away from given the changing economy?
- Which fundraising strategies provide the biggest “bang for your buck”? Do you have plans to expand on these successful strategies? Do you have plans to drop the fundraising strategies that are not working?
5. Communication strategies:
- What communications vehicles might need to be added or upgraded in the coming year? Your website? E-mail and snail mail materials? Your newsletter?
- Do you have a plan for using social and interactive media to reach new supporters?
After considering some of these questions, you will need to prioritize. Which of the above require attention this year? Which should you find ways to address over several years? These are only some of the things to consider in planning. In future posts, I’ll talk about the Board and fundraising and the importance of having a revenue plan that includes individual donors.
Most importantly, find a way to create an annual development plan. I know you are busy, but you cannot afford to waste the time caused by a lack of planning. In the end, we all need to remember the saying credited to Alan Lakein, the time management expert: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
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