Last year I wrote a post for NTEN about four social media fundraising tools. This year I’m going to take a vertical rather than horizontal approach, and identify several important types of tools you’ll want to consider when raising money online – either through your website or on a social network.

Shareable visual content like this Bearsharktopus relates to several important facets of social media fundraising: Is it easy to share on social networks? Does it link back to a page with a donation form or other action? Can you track who likes Bearsharktopi in your CRM?

Website Donation Form

I think humble donation forms are the bedrock of online fundraising: You can steer people to them from elsewhere on your website, from email, from QR codes, and of course from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social networks. These forms can be great lead generation tools at the same time they are bringing in necessary revenue.

While it seems like donation forms were “solved” years ago when our sector turned its attention to social fundraising and social media, many organizations are still struggling. Some causes who have invested in building their own forms find them difficult and expensive to maintain. I can see why; simple forms are harder than they seem: You should…

• maintain a high level of security for PCI compliance
• ensure mobile friendliness and easy social network sharing
• provide flexibility for varying needs of campaigns and programs
• measure, tweak, and improve conversion rates by altering images, copy, and other attributes of the form

The alternative used to be directing your supporters off-site, to PayPal.com, Authorize.net, or other secure but not as flexible (or branded) donation flows. My favorite tools these days embrace the best of both worlds. Let someone else worry about HTML5, standards compliance, scalability, and usability while still enjoying the benefits of hosting the form at your own domain. “Embedded” forms usually have easy to use form building kits too. Kimbia and FormStack are good examples, and both are starting to integrate with large CRM platforms like SalesForce.com.  Blackbaud, Salsa Labs, Fundly, and other  nonprofit tradeshow regulars offer embedded forms too.

Help The Social Web

Everything you put on the web can help, or hurt your overall results. Does your website CMS (content management system) automatically create the proper meta tags for the big social networks? When someone shares a URL on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, what image, blurb, and text is included automatically? When someone pins a great image from your website, where do clicks on it end up?

If you view the HTML in a socially shareable webpage, you’ll see a set of A good CMS (perhaps with a few plugins) should allow you to set up defaults for this kind of sharing, while allowing you to override titles, primary images, and other shared attributes if needed.

Your supporters will share the page you want them to, but they will also share pages buried deep in your site that you haven’t thought about in months. When they do, make it easy and effective.  These four “open graph” tags make Facebook and Twitter happy.  The “title” tag is very important (it’s what shows up as the tab name in your browser).  The “image_src” one helps your image show up in LinkedIn.  Along with the description and keywords tags, they all help with search engine optimization too.

<meta name=”og:type” content=”cause” /> <meta name=”og:image” content=”http://helpattack.com/images/helpattack_logo_200x121px.png” /> <meta name=”og:url” content=”http://www.helpattack.com” /> <meta name=”og:site_name” content=”HelpAttack!” /> <meta name=”fb:app_id” content=”117175691682196″ /> <meta name=”title” content=”HelpAttack! – Social Media Fundraising” /> <link rel=”image_src” href=”https://helpattack.com/images/helpattack_logo_200x121px.png” />

Social CRM

This is another foundation of online fundraising. Consider adding new fields for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, or other social network URLs that are important in your community of supporters to your CRM (constituent relationship management) system. That way, social data you collect can inform your direct mail, email, volunteering, advocacy, and other efforts. You might be surprised to learn that your funders, board members, and partners are on social media too.

There’s lots of talk about the ROI of social media. Adding social data to your supporter database is a very important step in making sure you can increase and sustain the return on your invesment for years to come.   The simplest example of this is figuring out which people hate your paper mailings and want to hear more tailored messages from you online instead.  Save money on your mailings and have happier supporters too.

Getting this data out of Facebook and other networks can be a challenge. If appropriate, allow your users to share this information with you in other channels or with apps. Consider using apps that allow you to retain ownership over the data.

SmallAct provides a lightweight social CRM platform called Thrive, and also allows organizations to mass update their contacts with social data. Blackbaud recently launched a “social score” tool, similar to Klout. Many other data sources are more focused on for-profit data and sales needs, but it’s worth checking out Rapleaf, Rapportive, their competitors.

Platform-specific Donation Apps

For most organizations, the Facebook tab donation form is still one of the only options out there. Twitter offers advertising, sponsored Tweets, sponsored #hashtags. Few organizations are asking for donations directly through LinkedIn (a much better place to find skilled volunteers or build your network, IMHO). Pinterest and Tumblr are great places to share visual content, and a best practice is to make sure that content is linked back to a donation page or another place where supporters can take action.

While quite useful, tabs ain’t what they used to be. Tab engagement dropped more than 50% after the shift to Timeline. Remember, most supporters will interact with your content in their feeds, and won’t visit your page frequently. Expect low numbers from your tab apps, compared with your posts.

I’ve also noticed that lots of organizations still have Causes.com’s tab on their Facebook page. However, Causes.com has deprecated this tab and simply redirects clicks to causes.com.

That said, once your page reaches a certain level of activity, tabs are still a worthwhile investment. It’s easy enough to add a donation form, a mailing list signup form, and perhaps one or two other action oriented tabs, and let them do their thing. Remove the default Likes app, since that information is available elsewhere. Assuming you’re sharing great visual content, keep the Photos app (you don’t have a choice anyway – that’s Facebook’s way of telling you how important visual content is).

Nailed It?

If you are totally kicking butt at all of the above, and you see how your website, your other online communities, and your other channels are all flowing harmoniously together to drive donations and other actions, then…. good for you!

I caution against building custom native (iPhone, Android, Facebook timeline) apps unless all of the above is aces for your organization AND you’ve run the numbers and are really sure your community is large enough or active enough to make a custom app worthwhile.  If you’re still tempted, I then suggest doing a simpler version as a proof of concept, or finding a similar app that you can borrow or customize.

In House Vs. Off The Shelf Addendum: If you’ve found a app or donation form vendor but you are concerned about an extra percentage being taken from the donation, make sure the math is on your side.  Let’s say the vendor is taking P percent above the typical 3% credit card fees.  Let’s also say you’ve spent D dollars (be sure to include technical staff time) building your own forms or apps in the past year.   That means you need to raise at least 100 * D / P = T total dollars from your forms to justify keeping them in house.  If you’ve spent $2,500 building forms last year and a new vendor who can do it for you adds 3%, you should go with the vendor unless you raise more than $83,333 per year (subtract any of the vendor’s fixed costs like monthly fees).  

Facebook Terms to Know:

Apps: a separate application that can be used through Facebook

Cover Photo: large image that appears at the top of your Page

Events: You can attend and create your own events, like a volunteer day, and invite your social media community to attend, also including details, updates, images, etc. about the event.

Groups: a community on Facebook that gathers around a specific cause or interest and can talk about that topic together. Here’s an example from Greyhound Friends. You must be a member of the group to post.

Highlights: Draw more attention to a post on your wall by Highlighting or starring that post. It will then appear expanded and remain at the top of your wall as priority.

Insights: Analytics provided by Faceboook on how your page is performing.

Likes: Like a post to give positive feedback. Like a page to subscribe to that page, so their posts show up on your newsfeed.

Messages: Private, direct messages between 1 or more people.

Milestones: Key moments from your past, such as the date your organization was founded, or the day you reached $10k in donations for your cause. When you go to post, click Event/Milestone and write in the Event, Location, Story, and upload/tag images to go with that story.

News Feed: List of updates from your friends and pages that you’ve Liked.

Notifications: updates about activity related to your page, such as someone commenting on or Liking your wall post.

Places: Facebook lets you check into places to let your followers know where you are. If you put your address on your Facebook page, then others can check into your organization when they visit as well!

Profile Picture: The smaller photo that lies in front of your cover photo. Your profile picture appears as a thumbnail photo whenever you post, comment or don anything on your own (or someone elses’) wall.

Social plugins: You can add a Facebook plugin to other websites and social media that you have, so people can “Like” that content on other sites and share it with Facebook. For example, if someone is on your blog, they can “Like” one of your posts they enjoyed and share it with their Facebook community.

Status: Content and updates you post on your wall.

Tabs: space holders for your applications. These also include the “Photos” and “Likes” boxes.

Tag(ging): You can Tag another page by typing “@” followed by the name of their page. Example: @HelpAttack. This allows you to mention others in your posts, so they notice that you’re talking about them.

Wall: The space on your wall where you and those that have Liked your page can post content, make comments and interact.

See more terms at The Facebook Glossary

Part 1: Why and How to Set Up an Account

Part 2: How to Set Up a Page

Part 3: Best Practices

Getting Started. Look and Listen: Search for nonprofits you respect or are similar to, and Like their pages. See what they’re talking about, what works and what doesn’t work and learn from what they’re doing. Then, start implementing these best practices…

Best Practices

1. Include others when you post by typing “@” and then the name of their page. They’ll notice you. If they have a bunch of Followers, they’ll be more likely to notice you, too! (Note- as a page, you cannot mention personal accounts.)
2. Link to valuable resources that your audience would be interested in. Include videos and images, which can be played directly on your Facebook wall.
3. Post consistently. Try to post at least once a day, but don’t send out five posts in 20 minutes. You’ll find a good balance.
4. Be aware of the conversations within the industry. If you place yourself around a topic (which is relevant to you) that everyone else is talking about, you’ll reach potential supporters.
5. Encourage interactivity.

• Ask questions. What does your audience think about a certain topic or event? There are Facebook apps that you can make polls that your audience can vote for directly on your Facebook page.
• Have mini contests- Example: How did you help the environment today? The best response will be featured as our “Supporter of the Week.”
• Always respond to Followers. If they comment on your wall, respond to them. If they send you a message, answer. Make every supporter feel like they matter

Did you already read Part 1: Why and How to Set Up an Account and Part 2: How to Set Up a Page? For must-know Facebook lingo, read Part 4: Important Terms to Know.

How to Set Up a Page:

You can click “HIDE” at the top right of your page to close the Admin panel while you set up the details of your page. Also, see the Facebook Guidelines to make sure your images meet requirements.

1. Upload a Profile Picture- This is often where you display your logo. The image will appear as a 160×160 px image in the left of your page. Make sure your dimensions fit the designated area. You can also change what part of the image appears in the box by scrolling over the profile picture, click “edit profile picture,” “edit thumbnail,” and drag the image to the area you want displayed.
2. Upload a Cover Photo- This is the larger image that appears at the top of your page. Here is a great place to include some inspirational images that depict your mission, along with some short copy which provides further explanation.
3. Fill out your Description Fields-

• Address: include your address so supporters can “check in” to your nonprofit when they visit. This will help promote your organization via other social media platforms like Foursquare and SCVNGR.
• About: a short sentence summing up your mission. Do you have a tagline? Here’s the place to put it
• Company Overview: What is your cause? What are your goals? Who/what are you helping? How are you helping?
• Description: More specific details about your organization such as company history, founders, etc.
• Mission: sum it up in a few words
• Contact Fields: add your website, email, and general phone number

4.  Add tabs/apps: Tabs are the four boxes displayed under your cover photo. Here, you can add applications that will help with interactivity on your page.

• Social Media Apps- What other social media sites are you on? Twitter, YouTube, SlideShare? If you’re active on another social media platform, add their app to your Facebook page. This will synchronize all of your online accounts, leading supporters to your various resources and also help build your following.
• Custom Apps- You can design apps specific to your cause, that display as mini websites within your Facebook page. Here, include images, videos, copy with a call to action. Here’s a great example from the Salvation Army.
• Donation Apps- Provide a way to receive donations directly from your Facebook page with apps like causes and HelpAttack!.
• Other Apps- There are hundreds of apps on Facebook. Some other good app type examples are RSS feeds, email signups, events, etc. See some more examples here.

5. Customize your tabs: Facebook lets you change the image and name of each of your tabs to better reflect your brand. Check out the examples below for inspiring ideas! Here’s how to change the name and image of your tab:

• Click the number to the right of your tab area to open all tabs.
• Hover your mouse over the tab you’d like to edit. A pencil icon will appear. Click it.
• There will be a list of options. Go to “Edit Settings.”
• A small window will pop up. Fill out the fields: “Custom Tab Name” and “Custom Tab Image.” The image should be 111×74 px and either a JPG, GIF, or PNG.

Examples of Great Nonprofit Timeline Pages:

To learn about best practices, read Part 3: Best Practices. Also, you can read Part 4: Important Terms to Know to get you familiar with the Facebook lingo!

Why use Facebook at all?

There are 845 million active users on Facebook, giving it the most traffic out of any social media site in the world. So, other than its huge reach, what can Facebook do for your nonprofit?

1. Build your brand: create your own unique voice, develop a personality, strategy, and story for your nonprofit, and then be able to share that with current and potential supporters.
2. Save money: 58% of businesses see a decrease in marketing costs when they use social marketing.
3. Increase search engine optimization: Once you have established a following and others begin to share your content, your website will be more likely to appear in search engine results on sites like Google and Bing.
4. Connect directly with supporters: You can reach out to specific supporters, recognize them individually by thanking them for their support, responding to Facebook comments, etc. This builds stronger relationships.
5. Fundraise: After you’ve familiarized yourself with social media, you can start to fundraise using Facebook applications. You’ll have the opportunity to reach a new audience and turn social activity into positive change for your mission, enabling your supporters as donors.

Before You Set Up an Account:

How to Set Up an Account:

1. Go to the Facebook homepage. Click “Create a Page” under the Sign Up box.
2. Choose the page type: either “Company, Organization or Institution” if you are a registered nonprofit, or “Cause or Community”
3. Type in the name of your organization. (If you picked “Company, Organization or Institution,” choose a category within that page type: either “Cause” or “Non-Profit Organization,” depending on your preference.)

YAY! Now you’re ready for Part 2: How to Set Up a Page for your next steps!

Other Useful Resources:

Small Act: Facebook 101 for Nonprofits

Mashable: The Facebook Guidebook

Facebook: Pages Basics