Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Getting the Most out of Social Media for Nonprofits: LASA Circuit Rider Conference Panel Session UK

This morning I got really early so I could participate in a panel for a conference with UK NpTechers organized by Laura Whitehead. (See the conference page at Lasa’s website for further details).  This social media for the nonprofit sector panel also included David Wilcox of Desigining for a Civil Society and Nick Booth from Podnosh.

I got Skyped in for 10-15 minutes for a Q&A with Laura and the audience.    I shared some learnings from the recent America's Giving Challenge Campaign which raised a total of $93,000 (included the $50K prize) from 1829 donors (1650 official count on 1/31 at 3 PM EST) in 50 days.   The points include:

(1)  In the 5 campaigns I've done, it has evolved to a personal, socially networked fundraising campaign.  Set up as experiments and learned and refined what works.

(2)  Make it personal - not a speech from an organization, but a conversation from the heart

(3)  If you really want them to love you, tell them a story.  I described the three story telling strategies I used throughout the campaign.

(4)  The hacked ladder of engagement - I'm noodling with this - it is a mash up of community organizer's ladder of engagement with personal fundraising campaigns and online social networks.    What's important is that people go through different stages of involvement and participation in your campaign and your strategy has to move them along.   You have to make it easy to participate.

The challenge is scaling your personal fundraising passion and getting other people to go out evangelize or instigate on your behalf.  I've been analyzing the campaign for examples and insights which I'll probably talk about next week at GSP as part of "Giving Good Poke."

(5)  The 3 R's Move Involvement:  Relationship building, Rewards, and Reciprocity.  I gave some examples.

(6)  Fun! Humor! Passion!  Urgency!  Competition!  work together to build momentum and can lead to tipping the tuna in the last legs of campaign.

(7)  Saying thank you in creative ways to build a bridge to your charity/cause.

I got some terrific questions that got me thinking.

A.)   Were donors from just the US?  Were they one-time?  Were they new donors?

The donors came from around the world literally.   I think in all my campaigns combined I have donors from every continent.  I have to do a geographic analysis.    Roughly 35-40% new donors - 20% repeats or donated to more than one campaign (I don't have all the numbers from the last campaign - and I had tabulate with a spreadsheet -- the limitations of the back-end of some of the systems we've used)

B.)   Was the effort worth your time?

I did this all volunteer, while still doing my day job.  I lost a lot of sleep, but it was worth.  How?   Let's talk about dollars.   Since my first campaign in November 2006, I've raised over $200,000 - half of that prize money from Yahoo/NetworkforGood and Parade/Case Foundation.   We've more than doubled our email addresses/names in our database - so for prospecting it was valuable.    Some softer benefits or intangibles - we have a great collection of stories about the impact of the work that we can recycle and use, the visibility for the organization has increased,  we're cultivating some of the new donors for major gifts (not from the recent campaign, but previous ones - we're in the middle of $3 m endowment campaign), and the attitude of people within the organization has become more favorable towards social media and online fundraising.

C.)   Was there anything that you feared by opening it up for your supporters to fundraise on your behalf?  Were you concerned that they would go message, not include your branding, etc?

The Sharing Foundation is an all-volunteer organization - so we're not a big institution with paid staff and logos and branding and messaging.   Also, I'm probably working more as an "extra organizational" activist - so I am unencumbered by these types of fears that might be imposed from within.

With that said, I did have a huge fear.  That I would miss out on winning $50K for the Sharing Foundation.  That drove me.

My advice to you is loose your fear gradually and incrementally over time.   I did this with each of my campaigns - trying a small step towards "opening my kimono" until I was comfortable being naked.  For example, my biggest fear in November 2006 was whether or not I should blog about or ask professional work colleagues to give money to my personal charity.  So, each experiment was a small lesson in fearlessness.

Can't wait to do this again in a few hours with the repeat of the panel. Right now they're playing the social media game!   

Welcome: Hajrë Hyseni a reader from Prishtina : Kosova : Albania

Hajrë Hyseni, Once You Start Dancing Blog

Today I got a comment on an older post, my interview with Carie Lewis about using social networking sites for campaigns. 

Last night when I was madly screencasting after midnight for Cambodian Bloggers Workshop, "Five Steps To Khmer 2.0," Nancy White pinged me about remixing the social media game.  So, I was thinking about Nancy and the way she has welcomed new readers on her blog.  Well, maybe Harje is not a new reader, but he is a new commenter.

And while I looking at the post about social networking sites in campaign, it gave me an opportunity to point over to FrogLoop's ROI Social Networking Campaign Calculator.  I wanted to capture some of the discussion threads for a workshop I have in development for November. 

Kira:

From talking about this last week, the biggest question this has stuck with me is how relevant ROI is for judging the value of a tactic that might serve goals other than fundraising.

Is it irresponsible of me to spend ANY staff time on social networks? These calculations say it is, but strategic interests that aren't meausured in dollars raised pull in a different direction.

So I'm really curious about how many folks in this field are measured on goals other than raising money. Thoughts?

Jonathan Coleman

I think this ROI calculator is a great means for getting down to the brass tacks of $$$-value that social networks generate per person-hour invested in them. Quantitatively, that's worth quite a bit as no one has been able to calculate this metric so thoroughly before. Job well done!

Justin

The metric boils down to cost per action as applied to advocacy or outreach (branding, education, etc) campaigns. And in response to the question of "intangible value," I think it's about being able to access as many people as possible when your version of a Katrina hits or you have a window of opportunity where the issue you're working on hits the headlines.

However, when you go to analyze the cost of acquisition for supporters, it's worth asking the question as to where you'll get the biggest bang for your dollar. Best practices to date indicate that's via email, both in acquisition and in response. Hopefully others will chime in on this point with their own experiences from adventures in social networks.

Beth's comment:

Have you done this analysis on other tactics, I'm thinking Internet advertising for one.

I know ROI is important, but you do think the numbers alone can guide the decision. How do you factor in the potential benefit/value of the other strategic issues you mention at the end?

Justin's Response

I'm working on the other analyses, too! I don't think ROI is the only factor, but I think it's important for people to have a realistic way to compare with other options at their disposal before jumping in with both feet. By breaking down to common metrics, development and advocacy and communications folks can compare with their cost for building a constituent base using other means. My mantra is to "be everywhere, but prioritize."

Social networks appear to be "free", but if you think about social networks as a microcosm of the broader world wide web (I haven't said that for years), the same rules, for the most part, apply. A lot of it comes down to a numbers game. It takes a lot of work to build a quality audience. It's really not that different from building an email list, except that it's a little easier for information to spread in fun and unexpected ways, and you can choose, more or less, who joins your list.

We saw people using Care2's social network to raise money during Katrina, and if the social network weren't in place, that self-organizing phenomenon couldn't have happened as easily. However, in the day to day, I have only seen a couple of examples of really successful nonprofit campaigns in social networks that have converted to "value" as measured by our current paradigm of what is valuable to nonprofits. I would love to see more success stories -- post 'em here!

My question to Justin is:  "How can you take this ROI or measuring approach and jump in with one foot?  A proof of concept or pilot and than use that learning to jump in with two feet?"

Back to SalesForce and Cambodia work.