1. Welcome! This is our first webinar ever - be nice! http://info.helpattack.com | @helpattack | support@helpattack.com Ehren Foss @ehrenfoss [email_address] Vanessa Swesnik @vswesnik [email_address]
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7. What to expect 2,500 followers ≈ 5-10 donors http://info.helpattack.com | @helpattack | support@helpattack.com How do you figure? If you have around 2,500 followers, you’ll probably get 25 hits to the page to which you're linking, and five or ten people finish the action (donate, like, etc)
16. What is the most economical way to keep your donors happy? Thank supporters/donors right away on social media . It's free and powerful . http://info.helpattack.com | @helpattack | support@helpattack.com
17. For reflection... Do you send your donors receipts promptly , or do you save a few bucks with some lousy process that makes it take weeks to thank your donors for their gifts? http://tinyurl.com/764shr3 http://info.helpattack.com | @helpattack | support@helpattack.com
18. For reflection… Do you go to the trouble to find and tell inspiring stories about what donors are accomplishing with their giving , or is your fundraising vague and statistical? http://tinyurl.com/764shr3 http://info.helpattack.com | @helpattack | support@helpattack.com
19. For reflection… Do you have a newsletter that's designed to make donors feel good about the great things they've made possible , or is your newsletter all about how great you are? (Or worse yet, do you fail to report back at all what's happening?) http://tinyurl.com/764shr3 http://info.helpattack.com | @helpattack | support@helpattack.com
20. For reflection… Are you figuring out really cool specific actions you can invite your donors to take, or are you only raising undesignated funds and saving all the good stuff for foundations and mega-donors? http://tinyurl.com/764shr3 http://info.helpattack.com | @helpattack | support@helpattack.com
Hi there, thank you for joining us. We're going to mute everyone to start so that you can all hear us clearly during the first half. We do want your questions and feedback the whole way through. Please use the chat feature which is located... I'm Ehren Foss, CEO of HelpAttack! I'm Vanessa Swesnik, Director of Business Development at HelpAttack! Our contact info is on this slide, and HelpAttack!'s is on the bottom of each slide. Don't be shy! Again if you're just joining us, you're all muted for now but please ask questions in the chat window.
We're going to talk about two general topics. How do social media fundraising campaigns work? How do smaller causes succeed when using social media, and what does that mean for fundraising? Then, we're going to do a very fast tour of HelpAttack! - we area always working on it so things may have changed since you last looked. I hope that will take about 30 minutes, hopefully no more than 35. Last, and perhaps the most valuable part, we're going to just talk about this stuff for the remaining time. You're in the driver's seat. If we don't pay attention to what you're interested in, and what you need to fundraise effectively on social media, then we aren't doing our jobs.
There has been a lot of talk about social media and nonprofits in the past 5 years. Many, many nonprofits are doing amazing things online. So this slide is about what makes social media fundamentally different. Social media is easy to share. Unlike snail mail, personal conversations, phone calls, and events, there is almost no cost and no delay to information that spreads through social media. I strongly feel that email is social media. It's the world's biggest social media network. At its best, email acts like a social network. Social media is still growing and changing, but no longer at the furious pace of a year or two ago. The biggest networks are saturating in the first world. That said, things are still changing EXTREMELY fast. Features are added, or changed, on a weekly or sometimes daily basis. As I mentioned, the two aspects of social media that really matter are the speed and ease of sharing, and the fact that these tools connect just about everyone. That graph at the bottom is of Google Trends data for people searching the term 'social media'
Much of the early discussion of social media fundraising focused on the differences. However, As before, the more people hear or see your message, the more people will act on it. This goes both for the number of people who hear it, and how many times, and in how many different ways, each person hears it. This industry has spent decades measuring and improving email marketing and email fundraising, and that process is just beginning on social media. We all have to take risks, experiment, test, and improve. Just as before, organizations will focus on building their "house file," or database of contact information, donor, and history. Make sure you are always collecting information from Facebook, Twitter, and other online sources to complete your picture ofyour supporters. As we all gained wisdom, we realized that the reasons people give haven't changed. People give because people they know are doing it. People give because they feel there's an immediate need, and a way they can help with that immediat eneed. And finally, people give because they are asked. This graph? This is also from Google Trends, measuring searches about 'email' for the last 8 years. It's flat, and constant! Image from Dog Training Secret http://www.thedogtrainingsecret.com/boxer-puppy.JPG
So when you set out to fundraise using social media, at first it doesn't live up to the hype. You post a link to your donation form, and... nothing happens. Why? First, not everybody sees each message. If people aren't online when you Tweet, they might miss it. Maybe Facebook decides not to show your message to everybody who liked your page. Maybe your post went out just before a Tsunami hit, and suddenly nobody pays attention. If you send out one social message - and this is a very general guess - you might expect a third of your audience to actually see it. Of those who see it, not everybody is going to retweet it, share it, or click on it. How many do that depends on you, and them, and the message. A conversion rate measures how many people can do a thing, versus how many people do that thing. Each "thing" someone needs to do to take action and support you, in sequence, filters some people out. This is usually called your "funnel." If you ask people to log into your website and then donate, that's two steps. If you asked them to do it from Twitter, that's three steps, since they weren't already on your website. You can measure each step, but in our experience the conversion rate is usually no better than 10% - again, this is a vague ballpark figure. So if you want one donation, and donating means clicking, logging in, and then donating, then you need to reach 1,000 people to get one donation. Plus, your community isn't as big as the numbers suggest. Some people just don't log back in, or filter our your messages on Facebook, or are, in fact, spam bots. The good news in all this is that your community is also bigger than the numbers suggest. People share what you say, and that sharing is frictionless. It's also so easy to reach new people, and for them to find you, that the larger your community is, the quicker it grows. Think of it as compounding interest in your bank account. Image from: http://www.moneychimp.com/features/simple_interest.gif http://www.flickr.com/photos/9968016@N02/5849739737/
http://goodorbademail.com/plain-text-email/sample-thank-you-letter-for-donation/ There are two reasons why this is good: 1. HelpAttack! is here! (to help you swing way above your weight)
and 2. That's still a lot of money. If only 1,000 people know who you are, you aren’t going to get (and retain) all 1,000 as recurring donors this year. Thank them ON social media, right away Network affect Each of these slides smashes doom and gloom and reaches further
Google grants:In-kind advertising for non-profit organizations Google Grants is a unique in-kind donation program awarding free AdWords advertising to select charitable organizations. We support organizations sharing our philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts. (from Google Grants site) http://hope140.org/case-room-to-read Tell story of National Parks Conservation Association at SM4NP
Do you see other best practices being utilized by the Natl Parks and Conservation Asso? Engaging audience with live chat. Celebrating the 77k mark Sharing beautiful photos from supporters Peoples' faces, speakers, not numbers Commemorated a holiday, Rushmore pics for Presidents Day TAKE ACTION tab- send letters to congress News articles on the Natl Parks Way engaging for people who care about parks.
Before you start a campaign, reach out to partners, other nonprofits, volunteers, media, and other folks who participate in your community. Give them a call (works better than email), introduce yourself, describe what you’re up to, and ask if they can retweet, repost, blog, or send an email when your campaign launches – and be ready to do the same for them. Make it easy for them by supplying the message in different formats, your logo, or whatever is relevant to your campaign. Picture: http://kenyaworkspace.blogspot.com/2011/01/artist-audience.html Go on Twitter and search for keywords in your "industry". Who write about them a lot? Use hashtags in the same way. Make friends, follow them, introduce yourself For novices, I can walk you through.
Not even just the Stings of the world. Mommy bloggers, local politicians, athletes
raise awareness and funds with a special event from their blog: Here’s how: Starting today and all month long, we’ll be sharing some of the reasons we’re grateful for the oceans over on our Twitter page using the hashtag #oceangiving . Follow us, add your own reasons to the list, and see what other ocean lovers have to say. But wait, there’s more -- You can take it one step further and sign up with HelpAttack! to donate a little bit every time someone tweets with #oceangiving – no Twitter account needed. You can share your pledge to inspire your friends to join you in supporting the oceans. Ten or 20 cents may not seem like a lot, but every bit adds up and will help us keep working to protect everything you love about the oceans.
a warm, genuine. personalized, timely thank you picture: http://goodorbademail.com/plain-text-email/sample-thank-you-letter-for-donation/
These questions are from this excellent article on thanking donors: http://www.futurefundraisingnow.com/fut ure-fundraising/2012/02/how-skimping-on- your-donors-can-make-you-lose-your-shirt .html
This is a public pledge page, or a "joinme" page, as we call it, because the words "joinme" are in the URL. This is the page you want most people to see first. It's not that your cause page is bad, it's just that if people see this page, it means someone they know sent out the message to their friends. The page provides social proof - the primary supporter on the left, and a bunch of other faces on the right. It also shows, approximately, what HelpAttack! is all about with the recent activity slider on the right. You can see that if people aren't comfortable clicking on Facebook or Twitter to give, they can like you, follow you, just donate (if they don't use social media), or reach your website. This page is all about you - the helpattack stuff is down in the footer. What we want people to do is click one of the giant orange buttons.
Here's your cause page, where your campaign might begin. You can add additional content below the fold, and there are some steps showing you how it works. Otherwise, this is very similar to a pledge page, except that it doesn't feature a particular person.
If you decide to run a specific campaign - using only Twitter, or only a #hashtag, or something like that - that's great! The more specific you are about how people can help, the easier it is for them to figure out what they should do. We call this a "campaign" page, because it guides the supporter towards a specific campaign action, like using a hashtag to give. The same content shows up below as on the public cause page.
If someone clicks on any of the preceding three pages, they'll end up here after agreeing to allow HelpAttack! to use a little of their social data at Twitter or Facebook. Users can also make a conventional username + password account if they want. In that case, some additional fields would show up on this form. First time users will also see a term of service agreement here. This page does it's best to be smart. It shows you social proof of everyone else supporting THIS CAUSE. It uses whatever data is relevant to the campaign - Tweets, Facebook updates, etc - and estimates how 'busy' the pledge will be, and correspondingly, how much the person should give per update. We can customize the limit, the duration, and the broadcast messaging for your cause. So, if you're doing a 7 day conference and you want to make the updates very specific, we can do that.
Once the user clicks Pledge, they are "done" in the sense that's all we need them to do right now. We've experimented with then showing them the donation form right away, or a share page right away, or simply forwarding them to their dashboard. Currently users end up on a page which asks them to share their pledge.
Each supporter can approach things a little differently. Each supporter is different. This page is part of the cause cashboard - once you log in to HelpAttack! with your cause user account. It shows whether or not each supporter has a card on file for easy donations, whether or not they have a recurring pledge, and whether or not they are allowing HelpAttack! to send out messages on their behalf. If they are broadcasting, this page also shows how many likes and retweets those messages have. During an average pledge, which lasts 30 days, we usually send 3-5 emails. One email halfway, one when they're almost done, one when the pledge is done (or extended), and a couple donation reminders if needed. We do something a little different in each email, depending on what the supporter has done already, and what the most valuable next action might be. It's pretty fancy.
This shows a helpattack cause page living happily inside a nonprofit's website. Just about any HelpAttack! page can be embedded - in a Facebook tab, in a website. Just about any HelpAttack! page is also mobile friendly. We figure out if the supporter is on a mobile device, and remove some page elements so everything looks OK. Mobile devices are one reason why we don't require a credit card up front - who wants to type all that in with their thumbs?