Over the month of March I ran an online fundraising campaign to benefit and organization I do some volunteer work with and really believe in (Wellspring Foundation). I was a little surprised at how hard it was to get people to give online.
I thought that because I was asking my friends to do something little it would be easy. But this was not the case. It takes a lot of work to teach your traditional networks to give and communicate online. The internet has created a lot of opportunities for nonprofits to reach a new audience but we are still learning how to maximize online fundraising.
As a blogger I’ve found that for every one hundred people that reads a post you get about a comment (sometimes more sometimes less). The rule is much the same with a new online direct mail campaign. You can train your donors and get better about segmenting your lists but your first campaign is not going to raise a lot of money.
When starting to promote your organization online be patient and persistent. Try and make your messages short and to the point, have a picture and personalize your communications. You can email more frequently if you are very concise and to the point.
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I guess I am your 1 in 100 here on this post.
What was your overall strategy?
What online communication tools did you use?
Mike, thanks for your comment. My overall strategy was going to be to have a team of people that together we would to go our friends that had a connection to the nonprofit and ask them to help and support us. I ended up started early because we wanted to enter a contest on Razoo.com before I had a team in place.
Basically my overall strategy was to email and Facebook my friends and ask them to give a gift equivalent to helping 1 student ($15). Tools I used were Facebook, email, a little bit of Twitter & LinkedIn, and Razoo.com.
Jason,
I did something similar, but had a lot of success.
At the time I had 340+ facebook friends, and wanted to use facebook exclusively to run this campaign.
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=41851705020
I had $1850 come in in under two weeks.
It came from a total of 68 donors.
The initial video I sent I uploaded 6 different times and tagged my entire list in one of the uploads. (facebook lets you tag as many as 50 friends in any one video asset)
I sent public video updates and tagged my donors in the thank you videos.
My thank yous worked as follow up asks, because I was keeping everyone updated on the progress.
If you want to friend me and look through the way my kids and I said thank you, you are welcome to.
As I analyze it. It was easy, not hard.
A couple of things that made it easy.
ACQUISITION -I know my audience, my facebook network are people I know.
CULTIVATION – I have been active in my facebook network, people were already responsive to me as a friend, becuase thats what we are.
SOLICITATION – I asked for a specific, small gift and gave them an easy link to follow and give online. I did not use the cause app. I utterly despise the cause app.
STEWARDSHIP – I actively looked who was responding, making gifts, saying thank you. It was 10 days of making a webcam video each night, but that was very natural in my work flow.
Sound fundraising principles, technology only made sense because that’s where my segment was.
Hello -
I am trying to find creative ways of incentive for donating. My 5 month old son was recently diagnosed with vision loss. The day after his diagnosis, I created a blog to keep out of state family/friends updated. That following day I found a fundraiser for the Foundation Fighting Blindness. I threw myself into this. In a week I raised close to $800 (word of mouth). I then came up with an idea to “thank” those that donated. I advertised on my blog to those that would donate would get a dozen of homemade molasses cookies (courtesy of my grandma). Within two days, the amount donated doubled. We ended up baking close to 130 dozen cookies. We raised close to $6,000 total. It helps that she has an AMAZING cookie recipe!
Hey Jason,
I’m sorry to hear that you had a hard time raising funds online for [your campaign]. Mike’s “Acquisition, Cultivation, Solicitation and Stewardship” model seems like an excellent way to ensure a successful online fundraising campaign. In addition to using the channels you said you used for the campaign (Facebook, email, Twitter, LinkedIn and Razoo) I would suggest that you use a website like Firstgiving.com to orchestrate it. My experience with online fundraising campaigns has been that using a site which allows you to use a fundraising thermometer and upload media for your donors to look at dramatically increases donation results. I found an article on which might help you when you run your next online fundraising campaign.
Good luck with your next campaign,
Stephanie
I also find online fundraising incredibly challenging! One thing I have discovered though, is that it really helps, to come up with creative solutions that are out of the ordinary. I find it’s a great way to get people interested, when it comes to online fundraising if you use new and interesting approaches. One example I found is having an online calendar builder where your donors can personalize their own calendars – one of the neat ways to raise money and get the word out about your cause. In case anyone’s interested, I found the calendar builder at http://micalendar.ca/online-fundraising-calendar-program.html
Jason,
You have inspired me to write a comprehensive post to line out the tips from the online fund raising effort I went through on facebook. It takes my above answer and expands it in all kinds of gory detail.
http://techhermit.blogspot.com/2009/04/comprehensive-facebook-fundraising-tips.html
Hi there,
I understand how hard it is to do online fundraising because I help people do it everyday. I work for GiveForward.org an online fundraising website. I have to say that the challenge motivates me. We are trying to get people to change the way everyone looks at philanthropy. I realize I’m preaching to the choir in this group, but if we could get people to forgo the cup of designer coffee for $5 to any of a number of extremely deserving causes, we’d really have something.
I think it will take enough people reminding others to give to get a movement started. Obviously, many of you won’t need this information, but we do have a tips and tricks section on our blog:
http://www.giveforward.org/blog/
Hopefully it will provide some of you with some new information or at least helpful reminders.
Good luck to everyone!
Ariana
Mike – thanks for sharing that idea. Uploading a video update and then tagging donors who made that possible sounds like a great way to thank someone! Also, this allows their networks to see the good things their friends are doing and to find out about your cause/organization.