31 January 2017
The global population of social media users is set to grow, in 2018, to 33% of the worlds population. That’s is 2.44 billion users! This creates a huge opportunity for organisations to use social media fundraising to increase their donations & supporters.
Business from every sector are embracing various social media platforms in order to help enhance their business. The platforms allow companies to spread their message, products and services to a much wider audience. It gives their brand an opportunity to be spread across the world.
Every social media platform is designed to share information and unlike fundraising platforms such as JustGiving, The Big Give or Virgin Money giving that are specifically designed for donating money, social media channels enable you to tell people about those pages and essentially promote your organisation or event.
Social media allows you to spread your message through a digital word of mouth. The traditional method of word of mouth has geographical restraints, but social media allows you to tell the world. It gives you the platform to share you message to a much wider audience and reaching more people is likely to result in more supporters and increased donations.
Social media platforms make it easier to project your profile and message to your audience, but it also helps you to wider your audience though social sharing. Individuals often like to talk about their charitable donations, good deeds or participation in a event and social sharing allows supporters to share their donation or fundraising achievement to their friends online. Not only does this help spread the word of your cause and organisation but it can also encourage others to do the same.
In 2012, it was reported that post-donation sharing to Facebook generated an additional £1.4million in donations to charity. It was also estimated that JustGiving generates, on average, £5 in donations to charities for every share.
Another area of social sharing that can increase your donations is peer-to-peer fundraising. Peer-to-peer fundraising includes individuals setting up their own donations page to gain sponsors from their peers for events or challenges their taking on. Nearly a third of all online donations were a result of P2P fundraising and it seems all generations are receptive to the idea of giving to peers for charity, with 85% of millennials would consider giving. Social media can allow you to provide ways in which individuals can get involved and fundraise on your behalf. This can include how to take part in a physical challenges, host an office or school fun day or simply running a raffle for your organisation.
The act of social sharing is a very influential factor in spreading your message and increasing donations.
A key characteristic of all social media platforms is that it allows you to update and post information immediately. It’s instant and up to date. This means that organisations can easily keep their supporters involved in their latest news, targets and achievements. It creates a connection between the cause and the supporter.
The use of behind-the-scenes photographs, exclusive news or video clips allows the organisation to create a better connection between itself and it’s supporters. It allows you to be social and share more about your charity without geographical or monetary constrictions.
Regardless of the physical distance between your charity and your supporters it decreases the sense of separation and allows your to be more personal. This lends itself to saying a personal thank you to all your supporters, which has huge beneficial factors in increasing further donations.
The last key area in which social media platforms can help you to fundraise, is it can help you to promote your latest charity fundraising events. You can easily create event pages and post about your upcoming events to make sure all your existing and potential new supporters know how they can help. Whether the event is national or local, you can let your social network know about your event and hope that they share your information to their own networks to spread your message to as many individuals as possible.
If your charity, school, club or organisation needs help setting up their first Facebook or Twitter page to begin their social media presence we have a quick guide to help get you started along with top tips to keep your profile up to date.
Facts and statistics are from Nonprofit Tech for Good