Facebook and Twitter, oh my! As you push your way through the rapidly growing digital world, you’ll see that there’s a lot more to the social media fundraising jungle than Facebook and Twitter. While these two sites are valuable platforms that should be used, it’s important to cultivate diverse social media platforms to see which ones help your nonprofit grow.
Use YouTube to Tell Stories
YouTube is a powerful visual medium for your organizational storytelling. If you aren’t integrating video into your social media posts, you’re missing out on an opportunity to talk with your donors and truly show them the need for and impact of your work. You can pair YouTube with Google Hangouts to livestream and record your webinars as well. YouTube’s content is flexible: it can stand on its own, be embedded into your website, or feature on another social media platform.
Create Links Using Visual Media
When you’re considering online fundraising, reach out to new audiences on visual social media platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram. Pinterest is an ideal venue for infographics, “how to” pictures, or inspiring photos of your work. It reaches an audience that’s primarily higher-income, female, and often family-oriented. Instagram reaches an entirely different audience: its audience contains more racial diversity and more Millennials. Choose inspiring photos of your work and encourage others to share their experiences through photos and relevant hashtags.
Reach Out Through Online Fundraising Platforms
You probably have a donate button on your website, and you may have an entire section of your site that’s devoted to finding donors and describing the achievements you’ve made using past donations. However, a donate button on your site only works if people are actually visiting your site. Get engaged with social media and develop an online fundraising campaign on a platform like Give2Gether, Crowdrise, or GiveForward. Campaign participants have the option of spreading information about the campaign through email or through social media platforms. Look for crowdfunding sites that allow you to easily track your progress with custom forms and reports.
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Incentivize Your Social Media Fundraising
If you’d like to tie your fundraising efforts to a specific product, incentive programs such as Kickstarter work very well. Let’s say that your animal rescue nonprofit is developing a new publication that will connect with children who love to care for animals. This publication will be a social enterprise and give you revenue on an ongoing basis after the project has been completed. You can use this book as an incentive to draw in an audience of child care workers, teachers, and others who work with children. Spread the word on social media sites, and more interested people will support your campaign and join your community.
Convert Text to Dollars
There are many crowdsourced fundraising opportunities out there in the world of nonprofit fundraising, but TapFunder is different. It works on a text by text basis, connecting directly with your donors to encourage them to donate. The donor receives information about a mobile site that they can access to process payments. If you’re hosting an event, combine text-based fundraising with other outreach activities to encourage people to donate on the spot.
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