Social fundraising through digital platforms is on the rise. The average gift size for digital donors is higher than traditional donors. Most arts organizations now use social networks, with Facebook and Twitter being most common. Successful social fundraising strategies include getting followers first, setting a realistic budget, creating targeted content, integrating across channels, and tracking results. Popular social fundraising platforms allow donations through Facebook, crowdfunding of creative projects, grant competitions via voting, and event-based campaigns. Nonprofits face challenges with maintaining engagement over time, optimizing return on investment, understanding customer lifetime value, dealing with increasing social media scales, and accurately attributing donations to specific efforts.

1. Social Fundraising: the Rise of Digital Donors
Midwest Arts Conference 2011

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3. Agenda
Introduction
Best practices
Platforms
Measurement & Tools
Challenges
Q&A

4. Who am I?

5. social media platforms
YouTube
Twitter
Facebook
Google+
Flickr
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6. who uses social media?
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7. 96% of arts orgs use social networks
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12. Digital Donors

13. average gift size
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17. Strategy & Best Practices

18. 1. Get followers/fans first

19. 2. Set a realistic budget

20. 3. Create content for launch, updates, & thank you

21. 4. Know how you’re going to collect data

22. 5. Integrate across channels (but don’t duplicate!)

23. Social Fundraising Platforms

24. “Leverage Facebook for Fundraising”
6.7 million use Causes each month
$35 million raised in 4 years
Ave $1,300 per nonprofit
- 6.5% fee
Downloadable .csv file of donor info

25. case study
$0.80 per member
$50k = 1.2 million members
fans don’t overlap w/ donors

26. donation page

27. “Projects with a creative purpose & rewards for funders”
2 years old
$2 million funded/week
2,500 active projects + 600,000 funders
40% applications are rejected
43% of projects are successful
$88 per donor
$2,200 average project size
-8% fee
all or nothing funding
1-60 day cycles
* alternative = indigogo

28. shorter film & music projects work best

29. case study

30. “Popularity Contest”
Every month new grant cycle
$20 million awarded
1.5 years old
$5k-$50k awards
Arts & Culture or Education or Communities
Vote tampering

31. case study

32. “Event-based fundraising”
2 years old
10 of 2,500 A&C projects raised > $5k
50,000 average unique website visitors/month
-~5%
No project updates.
More game mechanics for users
*alternative = Razoo or FirstGiving

33. case study

34. “Donate tweets/Facebook posts to a cause”
30 days
$0.05-$1.50 per post
$14,000 donated by 1,800 people

35. “Find & keep tabs on nonprofits”
10k monthly visitors
1 year old
12,000 followers of “performing arts issues”

36. case study

37. Mobile Giving

38. “Crowdsourced Petitions”
4 years old
1 million active users

39. case study

40. measurement tools

41. Facebook Page Insights

42. Social Advertising

44. any public Facebook or Twitter account!
search term!
date range!
report type!

45. raw data! people! timing! content!

46. Suggestion: use Advanced Segments to combine sources,
also consider looking at how the behavior of this traffic
source differs from the average user!

47. View multiple streams at once!
import reports!
add multiple accounts!
schedule tweets!
assign staff members tasks!

48. Look for outliers!
Look for spikes! Look for influencers!
Look for engagement!

49. 5 challenges

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ROI
Customer 1 Customer 2
Spends $200 per year Spends $100 per year
Acquisition cost: $50 Acquisition cost: $25
Maintenance costs: $15/yr Maintenance costs: $50/yr
Loyalty: 5 years Loyalty: 3 years
CLV: $890 CLV: $175
Social Media Fan

52. Social Media has Increasing Returns to Scale
Print Digital Social

53. every stage of the conversion funnel matters
awareness
consideration
engagement
donation
promotion
repeat

54. attribution error
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55. Q&A