July Workshops on Social Media and Fundraising, originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg.
To tell you the truth, it is not something I am especially effective at. And I just don’t have the chops for the whole on-air pledge-drive routine. My hat goes off to those dedicated co-workers holed up in a glass-enclosed studio for hours, the electric ether transmitting their calls to action to thousands of listeners.
I just contemplate the possibility and sweat starts crowning the brow.
And, truth be told, I have mixed feelings about asking for contributions in the social media space. This doubtless stems in part from considering myself a newbie, especially in comparison to the countless others who have been there much, much longer than I. My uncertainty is also borne of fear of trespassing on whatever agreed-upon etiquette has taken hold in these very dynamic online communities.
Over the last half year or so, you have graciously helped guide me through what was (and actually still is) for me very uncertain terrain. That my footing has a little more purchase as compared to when I first started is testament to your spot-on advice and assistance. Thank you.
So, before I Tweet another reminder of the upcoming fund drive, or ask you to get a jump on it and contribute now, tell me what you think. Do pledge Tweets (and mind you, I will be very conservative in this regard) make you feel as though I’ve crossed a line? How about YouTube-hosted videos asking that you give? Pledge-themed Flickr photo galleries? And what about Facebook? Is requesting that you forward along a pledge link violating the unspoken code of contact?
Let me know what you think. I value your candor and advice.
Thank you.
Off the top of my head, I can think of a few issues. For any service, a careful reading of the Terms is probably relevant. If I recall, Facebook isn’t a fan of soliciting money without using one of their semi-official organization channels, as an example. I could imagine a lot of them are overly cautious in this area to give them weapons to fight scammers, but it’s still something to consider even when you’re a legitimate non-profit.
I’m the chair of the Stewardship Committee at my church, and we’ve recently (well, mostly our awesome Treasurer, but) provided online pledging as an option. The links to that are shared in the weekly e-mail newsletter, and also through various student-specific Facebook groups related to the congregation.
My layman’s experience setting up our annual appeal at church, and hearing pledge drives from various organizations (including WBUR), makes me think that the biggest thing you have to be careful with is frequency of contact.
One thought would be to figure out some way to encourage a little competition among supporters in the social media space. For example, those thermometer posters that schools often use for fundraising competitions between class years. Translating that to Twitter, encourage station supporters to tweet (once!) with something like “#wburpledge $50 “, and have a site using the Twitter API to grab those and increment a thermometer widget. There are some privacy issues, and some might feel uncomfortable talking about their donations, but that might be outweighed by the advantages in them spreading pledge information to their followers.
I’ve already stopped listening to WBUR, WGBH and WGBH-TV because of the seemingly non-stop pledging. It used to be a few times a year and I gave. Then the solicitations got aggressive. The phone calls started coming. And the pledges are now about 25% of the time if not more.
You have to ask yourself if you haven’t passed the tipping point. I think you have. At least in my case.
If you start trying to do this through web2.0, you risk being labeled a spammer and everything that goes with that. People who are going to give are going to give. People who aren’t are only going to get p’d off.
I’ll not leave my real e-mail because of the risk of be added to a mailing list.
Your query raises a couple of thoughts:
First, given your business model, I can’t object to asking for donations via Twitter and other social media channels. But please limit the frequency to one or two requests per day per channel.
Secondly, didn’t you recently complete a fundraising drive that raised $1-million, one that was heralded as a major success? If my memory is correct, I find your coming back so soon a surprise and seemingly disingenuous.
I would post the fundraising messages but limit them on social networks for two reasons:
1. You provide value and it’s ok to remind folks about that and how to support it.
2. social media is an asynchronous delivery system; what I mean is that it’s just as likely for your audience online to see only a few of the many posts you make on social media. If they see mostly fundraising pitches, that will be a turnoff in this economic environment and in the way online users see information.
so: once a day? great
every hour? a turnoff.
Ken, as you know, I think you’re doing a fantastic job of promoting WBUR in the twitter-verse. Your twitter stream already adds value, in that you announce upcoming programming, etc., so it’s not unreasonable to ask for money at pledge time. What you want to start doing is to ask key folks who follow you to “re-tweet” your pledge-drive announcements to spread them to a wider audience. A few well-placed direct messages to regular followers will go a long way in this regard.
Another possibility: would it be possible to set up something on the website so you could push twitter users directly to their own fundraising page? Also, an on-air shoutout occasionally wouldn’t hurt. Twitter has over 6million registered users, but the serious ones consider themselves a bit of a club, as you know. tell people to DM @WBUR for a link to a twitter-specific donation page, and it’s like you’re giving them access to something exclusive.
Suggestion: have a look at @eMailOurMilitary’s twitter-stream as an example of a group that begs more than you’d feel comfortable with as an example of an upper-end. Trish is building up a solid following for her nonprofit, worth a look.
I think WBUR will be more effective with fund-raising efforts if it (1) drastically reduces on-air pledges and direct mail solicitations; (2) involves the popular radio personalities in social networking on a regular, non-fundraising basis; and (3) has a fundraising schedule that makes sense to everyone involved.
Here’s an example of how this might play out:
This American Life launches a Facebook group (if such a group already exists, then re-launch it). The purpose of the group is (1) to strengthen the community that loves This American Life; (2) to obtain creative input for fundraising ideas; and (3) to raise funds. Members of the group include Ira Glass, people who have been featured in the most popular stories, and TAL’s biggest, most vocal fans (find them by doing searches through YackTrack, Twitter, Facebook, etc., and also look at the show’s fan mail). Major fundraising campaigns should be limited to twice a year, and be based on ideas generated on the site,
with more frequent opportunities for members to make small donations (Obama style) (Treat WBUR to a virtual latte on Fridays, for example). If this model is successful, do the same thing w/ other popular shows — Wait, Wait, etc.
Wow – I see you have a huge TAL Facebook following. Seems like a group waiting to be mobilized!
[Came upon this conversation via http://twitter.com/khopper%5D
Asking people for money (donations, pledges, etc.) does not work along the “grain” of social media. It is more like a mechanical transfer of pre-web practices.
We (at People Networks) recently started a service (www.juicetorrent.com) which offers a more web-native way to engage social media into supporting nonprofits and causes.
I have a few posts about JuiceTorrent on my blog:
http://sotirov.com/category/juicetorrent/
Is the person above suggesting a WBUR TAL Facebook page? While it’s a good idea, there’s already a national show page and it would be nearly impossible to get Ira Glass to participate in multiple stations’ pages dedicated to his show. It’s hard enough for one person at a station to fully participate in all of the social media/networking spaces (I know; I am this person at my station).
I only tweet fundraising messages once or twice per drive at my station.
On Facebook, I just mention that we have drives coming up or need x dollars to go before meeting our goal and ending the drive.
All of our drives to date have been very successful. We are very aggressive in using direct mail (snail mail), less so online. Perhaps I’m missing some people or maybe we’ll have more concentrated online fundraising in the future.
Nicolas, ex-Listener, Gary, Michael, YatPundit, Jean, Emil, Madalyn:
I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving and thank you all for taking the time to compose clearly well-thought out posts regarding social media and fundraising.
My apologies for the delay in responding.
Given the extensive nature of your comment, I will use another post to respond.
Thanks again all.
[…] raised in the comments regarding the fund drive that I feel compelled to tackle before joining the fray about the station using social media to pry open […]
Beth Kanter (social media + non profit guru) just blogged about the upcoming Boston Social Media Breakfast which partly should address this topic:
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/12/on-my-givelist-social-media-breakfast-food-drive.html
…as well is the new #givelist tag initiative:
http://givelist.wordpress.com/
Thanks Keith. Great resources for us in the non-profit sector!
And folks, I am responding to some of the points raised above in individual posts. Here’s part one, and here is two. These comment windows are simply unable to contain my long-windedness.
Hope to see you all at this evening’s social media open house!
[…] do and leave it at that. For the morbidly curious, you can read my past posts on the topic here and here and […]