Is social media about crowdraising or fundraising for nonprofits?

Trying to divine the correlation between the effective use of social media and professional nonprofit fundraising has become one of the key buzzes in the industry in recent years. The consensus view is that social media must be integrated to allow a nonprofit to compete effectively which I fully endorse, where the debate gets hazy is just how much fundraising is ‘accomplished’ via social media. The debate has taken up new dimensions this week with the release of one of the best benchmarking reports in the industry as the NTen/Blackbaud ‘Nonprofit Social Network Survey’ results have been published. As usual many have leaped all over the hard data that reveals that perhaps fundraising success doesn’t equate with a creative and logical approach to social media.

The report is fascinating and I’ll take a good long look at the data and share those numbers with you, they reveal a lot about how the industry is embracing social media in some arenas and succeeding or ‘failing’ in some cases. It is that definition of ‘failing’ where I think there is a disconnect in many parts of the community, the application of social media to nonprofit fundraising is just phase one the dividends rest in how effectively it is used. While I think its important to benchmark the penetration rate of tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn its only providing an unfocused illustration of the current geography of social media use for nonprofits. This week a number of articles have been written saying “social media impact is in question” citing the statistic that only 3% of those nonprofits raised more than $10,000 via Facebook.

To make that statistic truly define something you need to apply more variables:

• What percentage of nonprofits raised more via Facebook in 2010 versus 2009?
• What percentage of nonprofits are using Facebook in a more creative fashion than simply an online advert?
• What percentage of nonprofits truly understand and practice methods of engaging that audience once a Facebook page is built?
• What percentage of nonprofits raised between $1,000 and $9,999 via Facebook?
• What percentage of nonprofits have developed a coordinated strategy about the use of Facebook in years 1,2 and 3?

The same conversation can be had about the effective use of Twitter and LinkedIn which rank 2nd and 3rd in penetration ratio for nonprofits and once more the surface results should lead to more probing questions about how the tool is being used and what specifically the expectations are in conjunction with a strategy. The huge benefits of social media are underpinned by these two undeniable facts: 1/ Effective use of social media has very few associated costs, there are no membership or design fees to create a presentable platform on the ‘big three’ networks 2/ Managing a social media campaign doesn’t take the amount of time you might imagine if you develop an effective strategy.

There is one other debate that is lingering as a result of the report and that is about perception. I’ll focus again of Facebook/Twitter as they have many core similarities in terms of networking. The perception is that they aren’t as effective as was hoped for ‘fundraising’ but I don’t think that fundraising is the greatest value. The real value of social media for nonprofits is ‘crowdraising’, connecting with new and existing people who may or may not become donors. Bridging the gap between donations and actions and becoming more responsive, public and accessible are the biggest benefits of social media. The fundraising piece comes later; it may be via online donations on your website, direct mail response, event support, lotteries or the word of mouth that makes a person decide they want to support your nonprofit in 2011. Social media isn’t the conduit to accept donations although it can be, its best and most suitable role is to be the voice and the ears of your organization. The fundamental purpose is a social one and success should be measured in ways beyond ‘x numbers of donations via a facebook page’. It won’t work as effectively for everyone and naturally social media will continue to evolve, but the difference between lamenting what it could have done and celebrating what it has achieved may be a matter of developing a strategy and evaluate it for its primary purpose – to develop, increase and engage your audience.

I’ll be back with a detailed look at the NTen/Blackbaud survey later this week.