Blackbaud social giving report paints vibrant online fundraising landscape

Nonprofit fundraising’s growing relationship with online tools and social media may well provide the ability to grow your donor audience and strengthen existing relationships. As I wrote earlier in the week gauging just how successful the applications of social media can be in helping a nonprofit reach goals remains one of the more difficult aspects to measure but I maintain that with a strategy built around crowdraising first and foremost, the fundraising should be a natural by product if a little challenging to measure.

Image courtesy Blackbaud Inc (please click on image to enlarge view)

Being proactive and anticipating where donors are most likely to learn about a nonprofit is surely a key mission for charities and the internet coupled with social media are the avenues where higher exposure looks certain to grow, and at a low financial cost with the potential of higher exposure. I had intended to analyse the NTO/Blackbaud ‘Nonprofit Social Network Survey’ to look at the trends which I will probably now do at a later date as Blackbaud have created a fascinating infographic which provides a lot of the key data in one easy to read visual. My work may have been done for me. The Blackbaud creation is on the left, please click on it to expand the image size so that you can easily read it from top to bottom, you’ll need to click a second time in the new window for full zoom. The graphic has been posted online this week and is causing a stir; on the one hand people are sitting up and taking notice of the fact that adding social media to your professional fundraising campaign is an essential strategy for the coming months, whilst others are calling foul on some of the statistics calling them wildly optimistic.

As with all statistics I think allowing some wriggle room and caution is wise, in college I was taught that if 100% of the statistical data you read is 75% correct you’ll learn more than assuming it’s entirely accurate. I’ve used that rule of thumb ever since as a method of seeing underlying trends and no matter how you interpret the Blackbaud data there is a movement gathering steam for the effectiveness of social media. Developing a strategy that you can then use to benchmark is at the heart of this approach and I’d recommend spending far more time determining what method you will employ to track your networking success/expansion of potential donor reach than trying to demonstrate that a certain tweet resulted in a specific amount of donations or that a Facebook update saw last Wednesday’s online donations spike. I don’t think social media generally equates to immediate donations – I think the richest benefit is the potential to trigger wider overall awareness from a larger audience. Then the effectiveness of how you communicate and share information with that audience will equal donor support.

The Blackbaud report has a wealth of information that should be reviewed and in this format it is very easy to absorb, but one statistic above all the others stood out to me. Based on those surveyed when asked why they donated to a nonprofit some 50% answered ‘because a friend asked me’. I think that above all else demonstrates just what social media can do for a nonprofit, the very potential for friends asking friends in a casual way has been reinvented via Twitter and Facebook. Its informal and generates a transfer of knowledge, people will often bring attention to a cause that they care passionately about via social media in the same way that they might share vacation photographs or a favourite song. That circle of awareness continues to expand like ripples in a very viral way. Its not for everyone of course but looking at the donors of tomorrow and beyond the younger a person is the more likely they will acquire news, information and opinions from the internet and in turn via social media.

The infographic offers a lot of information that could be open to debate but the underlying trends are constant. The way that donors connect to nonprofits is shifting gradually. The report quotes that ‘social giving online’ has doubled in the last five years. I’m not entirely sure how that was defined but logic suggests that it is likely to double again in the next five years, probably sooner. Twitter is focused in as being the arguably the most effective and certainly the quickest and easiest way to grow donations. Its certainly the least expensive in terms of dedicating time to maintaining a Twitter strategy and growing a network. Remarkably according to Pew only 8% of US adults use Twitter, but those who do are very active with the tool. It is increasingly being used to build same interest social networks, a true benefit for nonprofits. Also worth noting is that 54% of those involved with fundraising due to social media are under the age of 39, with the vast majority of those being between the ages of 30-39.

The efficiency of using YouTube (or any online video platform) to generate funds still looks unproven. Much of that is to due to the fact that creating a video is still relatively expensive although significantly less so than a few years ago coupled with video marketing online still being in its relative infancy. I think the age of video being used far more efficiently by nonprofits is right around the corner. We may see something usurp YouTube or the overall approach change. The most questionable data on the report in my opinion relates to email campaign success rates which cite a 90% open rate (of the email itself) and 25% of emails resulting in a donation. Those numbers seem extremely optimistic to me so I’ll apply that 75% rule I mentioned earlier.

I’d be very interested to know what you think of the data Blackbaud have compiled and how it may compare with your own experience.

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