Social media and fundraising; learnings from corporate world

The final session of day one at the WA state conference was with a young entrepreneur award winner, Tenille Bentley.
A very interesting session, beginning (like all social media sessions) with all the huge numbers but refreshingly localized for Australian market. Mind blowing numbers; I loved one analogy - as Australians continue to give up cigarettes they become addicted to Facebook. The infamous unfair break, the smoko, is replaced by the facebooko (or face-o).

Some good tips-
- Only worry about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.
- 80% of your social media communications should be about your topic, indirectly about you - only 20% about your products (something I call 'Fluff and Bite')
- don't think of social media with a 'what is the ROI' approach. That is like asking 'what is the ROI on my mobile phone'. It is about relationships
- gave example of peril of ignoring social media; someone working at Dominos spits in a Dominos Pizza, video goes viral, Dominos no idea why or what to do about it. Eventually they counter on YouTube and begin to recover sales
- always have policies that people agree to to allow you to remove inappropriate comments. But be aware they will just post them elsewhere
- all charities should have a Business Facebook page. Allows for analysis.
- great use of you tube, blender manufacturer blends things like iPads.
- how often should you update?
** Facebook 2 x a day on business page plus 5+ conversations on others walls
** twitter 5-10 days
** LinkeDIn once a day, business focus
** YouTube when you have something good and worthwhile
- biggest growth on Facebook is 55-65 year old women

Frightening end- managing a social media brand takes about 26% of a working week.

So if you haven't got time to do it, see her because that is what her company provides. Nice, subtle pitch!

Good stuff. The challenge for the fundraisers here is, of course, what role social media can have with their fundraising.

For me, social media is still best used for retention strategies, particularly for online and face to face recruited donors, and overlaying it with Game Layer is the best idea.

Tenille Bentley,

Ted Hart at Pareto Fundraising

Digital Integration, Ted Hart

Following Kate from Google, Ted Hart from p2pfundraising.org is telling us all about social media and fundraising.

Some key points:

- for all the technology out there, it doesn't change the fact that people give because they are asked. Online you kneed to ask or you can't fundraise.

- it is all about integration. You need a real strategy; these free tools - Google, Facebook etc are free but they are not the strategy.

- Think about your donors. He says that, in Canada (and probably same here) only 30% of online donors are gen X. Nearly all the other 70% were born before 1962.

- Regardless of how good your online stuff is, it is no good if you are not an organisation that looks after donors, and understands the importance of relationships

- Whatever you do or don't do online, on social networking sites someone else is talking about you. And on these sites people have a desire to connect.

- Good communications online give you an instant larger audience - if they are good communications they could get forwarded

- True measure of a fundraising professional is not shaking people down for $1000 now, it is getting them giving $25,000 over the years

- Don't worry about about the fact that non email based communications (like Facebook)are growing. Be aware, plan for it but for now your audiences are still using email.

- Amazing tool for Outlook, xobmi.com, when an email comes in it tells you if they are on Facebook etc

- Forget social networking completely, until you have a proper website strategy. He was lovely here and plugged Pareto to help charities do that, thanks Ted!

- Reckons that of the $15.48bn raised online in 2009, a third was generated online the rest was things like people following up an offline promotion and just signing up online, or printing out a form and sending it in

- Website should give the full complement of you, not just your online stuff
- ASPCA shows that people who supply their email give 112% more on and offline. He thinks because they've received more communications. They also gave 85% more donations and 15-20% higher average donation

- Nearly half of annual giving happens in December, in America

- Ted says email is not direct mail, electronically. It is more than that, use it to build relationships, engage and inspire.

- check out Nonprofits guide to Facebook, and Executives guide to Twitter

- Facebook, according to iStrategylabs has plenty of old people on it. Old people = good donors, but reiterated that you need to get the basics right first. Like website design....

- Websites have ten seconds to get across to the browser who we are, what we do and what we want you to do

- Note that according to Marketing Sherpa 79% of visitors don't come in through home page

- Privacy policy does not need to be complex, but should be here. Saying what information is collected, who can access it and how it will be used

Ted then went on to 'review' (slaughter) several charities' websites. People from Vision Australia, Wilderness Society' Wild Endurance event, Starlight, Centenary Institute, Cancer Council NSW and House With No Steps were all brave enough to get publicly ripped apart, especially Martyn Hartley at Vision Australia who really got some flak!

I am not going to be cruel enough to write up here what was said, but it was very, very useful...

More information on Ted here. Bottom line, if you are 'doing social media' and are a fundraiser then read his books.

Fundraising debate is a fundraiser itself

I am enjoying myself in 'Sunny Nelson' at the FINZ  fundraising conference in New Zealand.  Last night we had welcome drinks and I hosted a 'Pareto hot potato debate' on the subject of online social media.  The motion was “Investment of time or money in [online] social media is a distraction for fundraisers”. 

A bit of fun was had, along with a 'worm' giving instant feedback as people voted (and changed their votes) on the fly.  But we tried a unique voting system based entirely on 'bribes'.  The two sides had Dianne Armstrong (Arthritis NZ) and Errol Pike (Bible Soc) arguing against the motion and Steve Bramley (SGL Group) and Brendon Veale (Wellington Zoo) arguing for it.

To 'vote' people had to put money into buckets, and the bucket with the most money would win - and would get a bonus of extra cash.  The prize money would go to a nominated charity (Wellington Zoo or Arthritis).

The arguments were interesting, and fun - pretty mean about each other too (Kiwis have a very thick skin, it would appear) but boiled down to:

For motion:

•             Online giving  is still tiny compared to offline (3% v 97% according to Brendon, with no quote for his source but it is comparable to what Pareto Benchmarking finds).

•             Online social media-ites are the wrong audience

•             Online social media is not really building real relationships

 Against motion

•             It is huge and 'I want a slice'

•             It is the fastest growing method of fundraising

•             We have brought a dog who will get you with his tail if you don't vote for us (they really did bring a cute guide dog training puppy)

So, not a lot of substance in the arguments - but more important was the fact that it was fun - and a very interesting fundraiser.  You see, the votes were really, really close - there was just $9 difference which allowed me to get another $50 in donations by asking for extra, but not telling people which charity was leading.  In the end we raised about $580 - not bad from 80 fundraisers just throwing in a bit of cash.  And there is something liberating and motivating about good old fashioned fundraising, face to face!

(Oh dear, I am beginning to  sound like an events fundraiser again).

Sean