EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN Step One – Be Good at Fundraising

Build a campaign – urgency, goal, reason What’s your story? Tell stories using multiple forms of media, and focus on outcomes and impact (not

outputs) Online, everyone looks the same size – play to your strengths: smaller organizations can often be faster and

more nimble than big ones, and that means responsiveness and fresh content which is critical in online communications

Learn from others, subscribe to sites you think are good – you don’t need to come up with all the ideas yourself

Step Two – Be a Great Marketer Be good at marketing: get the fundamentals right – do you have strong brand and communications

messaging? Do you know who your audience is? How are you speaking to them? What do they want to hear? Keep it fresh and simple – online content needs to be changed more frequently

Step Three – Let Go Build relationships, engage in dialogue Stop thinking about offline as distinct from online People will always talk about you, whether online or off – you can’t control them, but you can engage them Keep your messaging strong and consistent

Step Four – What’s Old is New Social networking is the basis for strong peer-to-peer fundraising and communications – this renews the

essential components of building a community (the fundamental work of almost any nonprofit) Get data, make mistakes: Do your research – play and have fun with various online tools before committing Try tools out with test accounts, or see what other are doing, start simple Most tools online allow you to collect lots of data about users and usage patterns – test, experiment, and

use the data to build a case to convince others to buy-in to an online strategy

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR FUNDRAISING Busting Myths

Social media is not a silver bullet for fundraising Social media does not necessarily engage or attract younger donors and supporters Social media is not free, even if the tools are available for free

Best Uses of Social Media To tell stories To have conversations Leveraging peer-to-peer fundraising Allowing others to tell their story This means we have to start listening more to our donors Donors are more likely to engage their stories with their peers, not institutions

Social Media Strategy

Social media has costs:

o You and your staff/volunteer time: researching, communicating, listening, planning, doing, exploring

o Consultants, experts, contractors o Technology o Promoting: graphic design, advertising, print outreach (direct mail, newsletters)

Social media requires a plan Good social media plans have three components:

o Base station/broadcast centre: website, blogs – somewhere you control the content and message o Ambassadors or embassies: Facebook, Twitter, other social media sites – places that give you

permission to connect to others, spread your message o Listening posts: Google Alerts, comments, RSS news feeds, twitter mentions – where people are

talking about you, or about issues of interest to you Measuring impact

o Like a lot of marketing, impact can be hard to measure o Direct fundraising results can be measured – set up your campaign to be able to measure your

effectiveness by tracking online giving o There is both an ROI – return on investment, and an ROE – return on engagement

You are building the happy ending to your donor’s stories

Slides will be available online at www.slideshare.net/mycharityconnects .

Resources: Websites & Resources

www.mycharityconnects.org – CanadaHelps’ resource centre for charities www.canadahelps.org – If your charity isn’t already registered with CanadaHelps to receive a free

Donate Now button, weekly bank deposits, and more, don’t forget to sign up today. www.google.com/analytics/ - Google Analytics are a powerful way of viewing what’s happening on

your site beyond simply counting visitors www.flickr.com – photo sharing website www.google.com/sites - Google Sites, allows users to create a free, hosted website with limited size and

storage, includes templates, wikis, etc.

Books Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug Get to the top on Google by David Viney (Search Engine Optimization)

Social Media Tools www.blogger.com – Free blogging site (hosted by Google) www.wordpress.org – Customizable, free blogging platform E-mail newsletter tools:

o www.convio.com o www.imninc.com – imakenews o www.icontact.com o www.constantcontact.com o www.verticalresponse.com o www.cvent.com

www.hootsuite.com – tool to manage multiple twitter feeds www.google.com/alerts -Google Alerts let you stay on top of what’s happening on the web related to

any key word, such as your organization name\

Articles www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/obama-finance - ‘The Amazing Money Machine’ in The Atlantic

Monthly about Obama’s social media fundraising