The following is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Social Media for Social Good: A How-To Guide for Nonprofits. These best practices serve as a foundation for your online fundraising campaigns, but much of your nonprofit’s success also depends upon the service you choose to process your online donations and the design and frequency of your e-newsletter. That said, these online fundraising...
Many of us will purchase hundreds of dollars in holiday gifts over the next six weeks, and with some conscious consumerism those dollars could also help some of your favorite nonprofits continue their work in 2012. Now in it’s third year (View the 2009 Edition and 2010 Edition), the 11 holiday gift programs listed below benefit nonprofits and thus help make...
Mobile Wallets are going to dramatically transform how consumers purchase goods and services. Many predict the end of cash and physical credit cards for both point-of-sale and online transactions within the next five years. Not one to shy or fear new technology, I’ll be one of the first to ditch cash completely and transfer my credit cards to a...
This holiday season your friends, family, clients, work colleagues, and major donors will likely be deluged with hundreds of tweets, status updates, and emails wishing them “Happy Holidays!” That’s the Web we all now live and work by, but this year a good old-fashioned holiday greeting with a hand-written note sent via snail mail would likely make a very...
For all the buzz about new media in the nonprofit sector, it is somewhat surprising how few nonprofits have integrated their new media campaigns into one of the most important pages on their website – the “Thank You for Your Donation!” landing page. That is, the page your donors land on after making a donation. Donors pay a lot...
Source: Social Good: Charity and Technology in the Online Universe Written for the March 2011 issue of Fundraising Success Magazine, where I am writing a quarterly column throughout 2011. * * * * * * * * * * * In the summer of 2000, I launched an e-advocacy portal called eActivist.org. It was a fiscal project of the...
You got to give it to the social good entrepreneurs. Seemingly every week a new fundraising or cause awareness tool hits the Web for nonprofits to experiment with, and though donation processing fees must be applied or ads sold for these social enterprises to be sustainable, it’s clear that their motives are altruistic. That said, here are six new...
People are often surprised when I say that if given the choice, I would choose 10,000 e-Newsletter subscribers over 10,000 Followers on Twitter, 10,000 Fans on Facebook, or 10,000 Friends on Foursquare… combined. Any day of the week and without hesitation. And though some reports claim that email use is dropping, others claim its use is steady and even...
Last year’s list of nonprofit holiday gift programs has been getting a lot traffic over the last two weeks thanks to Google searches. In addition to all those wonderful programs, I wrote up 11 more for 2010. Please use your purchasing power wisely and with compassion this holiday season by giving gifts that benefit nonprofits and make the world...
“A survey of 200 charity and foundation professionals revealed that nonprofits are finding it difficult to determine how valuable social media tools are for their organizations. Seventy-nine percent said they hadn’t found ways to do so.” – Chronicle of Philanthropy, November 12, 2009 For those 79% of nonprofits out there, I have listed 10 social media metrics below that...
1. Social media fundraising is built upon and empowered by the GuideStar database. 2. All 501c3’s in the United States have profiles on GuideStar. 3. Network for Good uses the GuideStar database to distribute online donations made on their website and on their partner websites. 4. Network for Good has partnered with Change.org, Razoo, Facebook Causes and Give...
If you are reading this now, then of the world’s 6.8 billion people, you are likely one of the lucky ones. You have Internet access, a computer, a roof over your head, and likely planning some holiday shopping this year. By spending consciously, your consumer power can change the world. Did you know that in the United States more...
Recent studies have revealed that the vast majority of nonprofits do not know how to measure ROI (Return on Investment) from utilizing social media. Below are 5 simple, low-cost ways nonprofits can measure ROI with a minimal time investment of only a couple of hours a month. 1. Monitor your website traffic. During the Era of Web 1.0, nonprofits...