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2. Be Prepared for Katrina-like Moments.
In “Turning Your Social Networks Into Donations,” Care2’s Justin Perkins and Heather Holdridge featured the question, “Are you ready to reach several hundred thousand people who trust your organization?”
The presenters then shared an example of how in the week following hurricane Katrina, Care2 helped the American Humane Society raise $205,000 from 5,000 new donors to support animal rescue efforts in New Orleans. Without an online community of engaged supporters, Care2 would not have been able to assist in this way.
Social networks provide nonprofits with an affordable toolkit with which to build online communities. Maintaining these communities is hard work and might not appear to be in an organization’s short-term interest. And yet, as newsworthy moments arise, nonprofits quickly can turn a semi-dormant community of supporters into an active hub of fundraising and advocacy.
Change.org founder Ben Rattray made a similar point during his session titled “Group Fundraising: How Does It Work and What’s Out There?” After summarizing the pros and cons of wired fundraising, Rattray shared a diagram that places a nonprofit in the center of a networked group of supporters. This diagram illustrates how a nonprofit can both empower constituents and remain central to the messaging, orientation and direction of the human community that forms around it.
3. Not all social networks are the same.
In one of the more no-nonsense sessions of the conference titled “How Do Social Networks Fit Into Your Communications Strategy?” EchoDitto principal and founder Brian Reich summed up the differences of more than 15 social networks. His point: Success will come to the nonprofits that focus on niche social networks and communities.
Reich reduced his advice to five simple points:
1. Become a member of social networks where the people you want to reach already are.
2. Lurking on social networks is OK, but if you want to build a community, people have to know you are there.
3. Experiment with different communications styles. You can always recover from initial missteps.
4. Support what others are doing.
5. Succeeding on social networks requires that your nonprofit go outside its comfort zone.
“If you leave this session thinking, ‘My nonprofit needs a Facebook strategy,’ then I have failed miserably,” Reich said toward the end of his session.
Conclusion
Other sessions that dealt with Web 2.0 fundraising included consultant and blogger Beth Kanter’s session, “The Web 2.0 ROI: Are All These New Tools Really Delivering Value to the Sector?” and M+R Strategic Services’ Hilary Zwerdling’s session, “Fundraising in Social Networks: Are You Ready?”
(For more information on the Web 2.0 sessions, have a look at a See3 Communications blog entry called NTEN Does Web 2.0.)
In light of the mood at this year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, the foreseeable future of online fundraising will remain a balancing act between top-down and bottom-up processes for articulating and funding an organization’s mission. The challenge for nonprofits is to avoid over-hyped expectations of Web 2.0 fundraising while not shunning social networks and social media altogether.
Peter Deitz is a microphilanthropy consultant and founder of Social Actions, a service aimed at helping individuals and organizations use social media to plan, implement and support peer-to-peer social change campaigns.
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