I have bad news.  Facebook Giving Fairies don’t exist.

giving fairies?

There aren’t billions of people waiting to give you money through social media just because you put a donate tab on your profile.  Just as with any other form of fundraising, you have to be smart, strategic, and even patient.  The great news:  it’s worth it!

A sage of social media fornonprofits and friend of HelpAttack!, Justin Ware at Benz Whaley Flessner, took the time to read Blackbaud’s 2011 donorCentrics™ Internet and  Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report and passed along this gem of information in an recent article:

“Among the many findings in this study are the statistics that show a growing number of first-time donors are finding organizations through the Internet as opposed to direct mail. In fact, more donors made their first gifts online than via direct mail for every age group under 64 years old. The study also says online-acquired donors make much larger gifts than direct mail-acquired donors.”

Regardless of the tools and software you use to complement your social media fundraising, there are a few tips to keep in mind. When embarking on fundraising with social media, try implementing some of these ideas to make your campaign successful and stress free.

1. Set Realistic Goals If you have 2,500 Likes, you can ballpark around 5-10 donors  for the first ask.  Why? If you have around 2,500 followers, you’ll probably get 25 hits to the page to which you’re linking, and five or ten people finish the action (donate, like, etc.).

Here are some great goals for your Facebook Fundraising campaign: ·        Get 10 new donors ·        Learn who they are ·        Thank them personally ·        Stay in touch with them

2.  Reward Participation FreeArts NYC ran a successful HelpAttack! campaign in January by offering two free round trip Jet Blue tickets to one lucky pledger.  The result?  Their conversion rate was 28 times better than the average for email fundraising.

Here are some ideas for rewarding participation: ·        “Like” for a chance to win… ·        Non-monetary gifts (feature your picture, story, idea, etc.) ·        Gifts from a corporate sponsor ·        Shout out from your celebrity ambassador

3.  Leverage a Special Event Last year, the American Red Cross leveraged Red Cross Month (March) for a social media campaign.  They raised money and awareness.  You can do the same!

Here are some well-known and lesser known commemorations to celebrate: ·        Earth Day, Valentine’s Day, TV Turn-Off Week, Join Hands Day and more ·        Monthly health observances ·        …or create one! #oceangiving

4. Thank Donors Ask supporters for interesting and specific ways to help and then thank them right away on social media.  It’s free and powerful.  Provide inspiring stories about what donors are accomplishing with their giving.

Do you have any other tips?  Please join the discussion and leave a comment below!

Your organization should be prepared to use or defuse public sentiment generated around a controversial event.  It’s no exaggeration to say that rebranding is sometimes the accidental result of a scandal, destroying years of hard marketing and PR work.A timely example of such an event is the recent announcement that Susan G. Komen will not provide new grants to Planned Parenthood for breast exams.  The impetus behind the decision is based in pro-life/anti-choice sentiment: Komen states their decision to stop funding is because Representative Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, is investigating whether government money was improperly spent by Planned Parenthood on abortions.  Many others believe the decision has more to do with Komen’s senior vice president for public policy- who is openly against abortion and even ran a political platform based that stance.

We think both organizations have a great impact.  In the past five years, Planned Parenthood and funding from Susan G. Komen have provided over 4 million clinical breast examinations.    Our business HelpAttack! is not to choose sides, or hold up one particular cause as more worthy of donations than another – donors make their own decisions. We do, however, have tools for supporters to help Planned Parenthood, or another organization, respond to an event like this.  Here are some examples of using HelpAttack! to harness public sentiment and create additional support.

1.  Give to Planned Parenthood every time Representative, R-FL, Cliff Stearns Tweets (@RepCliffStearns).  His investigations are cited as one reason Komen is pulling funds.  In fact, you can give based off of any anti-choice group’s or person’s tweets.  Here’s how: http://info.helpattack.com/campaigns/give-each-time-someone-else-tweets/
2. Give to Planned Parenthood with a hashtag such as #komen http://helpattack.com/support/3740/Twitter+Tag?tag=%23komen or give with every “For the cure” http://helpattack.com/support/3740/Twitter+Tag?tag=For+the+Cure
3. Give every time Planned Parenthood Tweets http://info.helpattack.com/campaigns/give-each-time-someone-else-tweets/
4. Give every time Planned Parenthood updates their Facebook page with news, information and resources: http://info.helpattack.com/campaigns/use-rss-or-atom-feeds-for-giving/
5. Give with foursquare check-ins to Planned Parenthood locations: http://info.helpattack.com/campaigns/use-rss-or-atom-feeds-for-giving/

If you are looking for ways to help Planned Parenthood, or if your own organization is developing a plan to respond to a PR crisis, we hope the above ideas are useful!  If you work with a nonprofit of any stripe or color, this is a reminder to ask yourself if your organization is prepared for polemic news and attention.  What’s your plan?

When I go to the mailbox, I open and file the few pieces of actual mail that are important to me: bills, invitations, bank statements.  The rest of it goes straight to the recycle bin.

I was used to getting coupons for products I never buy, advertisements for services I don’t need, and catalogues addressed to the people who lived here before me “or current resident”.  But when I started receiving huge, meaty mailers from nonprofits I didn’t belong to, I started to pay attention.  And not for the reasons their membership development offices hoped.   No, they weren’t alluring me with their beautiful glossy images or compelling messages detailed on five sheets of bleached white paper.  They were turning me off from ever donating to their organizations.   I knew these unsolicited mailers cost a lot of money and wasted a lot of paper; I didn’t want to fund these efforts with my hard earned financial donation!

One of the more memorable pieces I received was a huge envelope from an organization I didn’t know.  (I’m not going to mention its name here because the point of this post is to talk about direct mail, not blast a specific organization.)  The envelope contained a number pages explaining the cause, a self-addressed envelope for me to send them money, and a petition to take action.  In other words, it contained a lot of paper.  Can you guess the cause for which they were advocating?  C’mon guess.  It was to stop deforestation.  I felt like the Lorax! I felt like I was taking crazy pills!  All this paper to say we want to save trees???

I went on a mission to the find facts about direct mail.  Could it be as bad as I thought?  The short answer is: yes.  Read on for details.

Environment

The Environmental Protection Agency has found between 44% and over 50% of direct mail is taken out of the mailbox and discarded immediately without even being opened, let alone read.  So no matter how brilliantly you craft your letter, about half of the people you send it to will bother to even open it.  

Wait, why is the EPA interested in direct mail?  Don’t they concern themselves with the environment?  It turns out direct mail IS an environmental matter.  That 44% of discarded  mail equals 4 MILLION TONS OF WASTE paper annually!

Cost

The United States Postal service does have lower bulk rates for nonprofits.  They also have Destination Sectional Center Facilities from which you can mail your campaigns for a cheaper rate.   I used these rates for my calculations below.  Let’s take the nonprofit, Livestrong, for example.  They currently have 1,552,505 Facebook likes. This means that by simply updating their Facebook profile  they can reach the newsfeeds of a million and a half people.  If they were to send out the cheapest possible postcard to those people with the same information the cost would be $122,664- just for postage!

That doesn’t include the cost of the postcards themselves, the man-hours of their employees to manage the campaign, the little extras (i.e. color ink and images) to make the postcard look nice, and the other hidden costs.  Remember, about half of all direct mail is taken out of the mailbox and thrown away without reading it. That’s like taking half of the money spent on postage and materials and throwing it directly into the recycle bin.  For an organization that spends around $100,000 on postage for a mailer, that equals $50,000 in the trash.  I don’t know about you, but I would rather see my donations go to feeding a hungry child, providing shelter for a pet, drafting responsible public policy, giving mosquito nets to families in malaria infested regions, or even hiring a new full time employee.

Conversion/Response Rate

Depending on whom you ask, conversion rates vary.  In fact, the definition of “conversion rate” also varies.  The consensus seems to be that breaking out of the single digits is nearly impossible and the average is often cited as low as 1%, “Direct mailers typically expect a 1% response rate on their mailings – some mailings see higher and some see lower depending on the quality of your list, your message, the design, your offers & your call to action.” http://www.getbrandwise.com/branding-blog/bid/18688/Rate-of-return-direct-mail-calculator-free-ROI-tool

Junk Mail

The unsolicited nature of direct mail has made it synonymous with junk mail, and not just in my opinion.  Wikipedia is not the end all be all, however, its readership is quite impressive and it is monitored by the public.  Try searching for direct mail and you will see it is in the same entry as JUNK MAIL.

Do you want potential supporters and donors to associate your nonprofit organization with junk mail?  No, of course not.  I also realize that direct mail is far from gone.   However, for the above reasons I am happy to see the online fundraising and especially social media fundraising industries grow.  It is a way for nonprofits and donors alike to enjoy low overhead and zero paper waste while advocating for their causes!  For more information on the conversion rates, check out this post by Ehren Foss.

Hi HelpActivists!

2011 will probably go down in history as the year of the Pope’s first Tweet and the birth of the world’s 7 billionth baby. Other notable accomplishments in human history this year: planking and the Swedes inventing “Extreme Hottubbing”.

We can’t compete with that. But we tried!

In chronological order, here are HelpAttack’s Top Ten Moments of 2011! Drumroll….

1.  We made it possible for people to give with their Facebook activity

2.  We helped the Red Cross raise funds and awarness for Red Cross Month

3.  Then Best Friends Animal Society knocked their campaign out of the park

4.  Holly Ross of NTEN mentioned us on stage at NTC.

5.  We added giving with #hashtags

6. We helped raise funds for the Texas Wildfires recovery in September

7. We made it possible for you, our lovely donors, to raise nearly $19,000 with more than 500,000 social actions.  Wow!

8.  We made it possible for you to give with just about anything online, by pledging with RSS.

9.  #givetober anyone?

10. We helped Oceana supporters be thankful with #oceangiving.

We thank you for being such wonderful donors and supporters this year, and for helping prove that social media really means something!

Ehren & Vanessa