How are returning Iraq and Afghanistan war vets using social media and online giving? The answers may surprise you. This prezo was done for a group of nonprofits that serves this ever growing and under served group. More at http://www.thefutureofnonprofits.com.

1. THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL: ARE
YOU AWAKE?
David J. Neff
Author and Digital Strategy Consultant
david@thefutureofnonprofits.com
@daveiam
512-789-5672

2. FACTS
Some Quick Guiding Principals

3. FACTS
More than 500 million active users
• 50% of Facebook’s active users log on to Facebook in any given
day
• Average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• There are over 900 million objects that people interact with
(pages, groups, events and community pages)
• Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and
events
• Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
• More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories,
blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

4. FACTS
• People are watching 2 billion videos a day on YouTube.
In fact, every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to
YouTube.
• Our user base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly
divided between males and females, and spanning all
geographies.
• Fifty-one percent of our users go to YouTube weekly
or more often, and 52 percent of 18-34 year-olds
share videos often with friends and colleagues.
• Owned by Google

5. FACTS
Caution: Shameless Plug
@DaveIam
@NPFilm

6. WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?

7. WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?

8. ARE VETS RESPONDING?
Captain Nate Rawlings, 28, served two tours in Iraq with the Army’s First Battalion, Twenty Second
Infantry Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division. His younger sister created a Facebook profile for him prior
to his first deployment. He used the page through both of his deployments to tell his friends when he’d be
out, to check back in when he returned, and to find out how his parents were coping with his absence.
“If my dad felt that my mother really needed to hear my voice, he would put a message on my wall that
said ‘E.T. phone home,’” says Rawlings. “And so I would find a phone.”
After getting off the phone one late September morning with another Department of Veterans Affairs
representative who couldn’t explain why his GI Bill benefits hadn’t been processed, Iraq war veteran
Aubrey Arcangel tweeted his frustration:
@DeptVetAffairs I spoke w/ 4 reps and provided my certID and trans# for my #GIBill cert. 2
weeks and still doesn’t show on my file!
As he sat on the bus headed to the national Student Veterans of America conference in Washington, D.C.
the following day, his Twitter app alerted him of a new direct message. The VA had tweeted back.
“It’s almost liberating to know that you can contact them yourself through a different means and get a
response,” Arcangel said.

9. ARE VETS RESPONDING?
As traditional veterans organizations started reaching out online, they discovered that veterans of
previous wars are increasingly adopting the benefits of social media, too. Among the VA’s Facebook
subscribers, more than a third are 45 or older, while only 8% are under 25, according to Friedman.
When Raughter started working at the American Legion a decade ago, there was a huge difference
between younger members who used e-mail and older members who had never tried it. Now there are f
more ways to communicate online — and far more young veterans — but that gap has diminished. “No
just about everybody, from World War II veterans on to the current generation, they’re getting online,”
said. “It’s no longer this big generation gap that used to exist.”
Steve Wilkerson, a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran who blogs, tweets and checks into Foursquare, along
with occasionally commenting on the VA’s Facebook Page, says he’d like to see the VA or another
organization train older vets how to use basic social media tools so they can stay better connected.

10. ARE ORGS RESPONDING?
The Texas Veterans Commission social media initiative was launched in September of 2010, establishing
an agency presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. To date, Texas Veterans Commission
Facebook posts have been viewed 68,083 times and over 650 visitor comments have been posted.
One of the ways that IAVA employs social media is through their website’s Community of Veterans
(COV) feature. Though IAVA’s membership is approximately 125,000 people, only 55,000 are veterans,
of which only 5,200 belong to the COV. Jason Hansman, community manager for the COV says that
before he approves anyone for membership, the person has to submit paperwork “that proves definitively
that they were boots-on-ground in Iraq or Afghanistan.”
With only 0.5% of the American population knowing what it’s like to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan, the
therapeutic value of joining such a network can’t be overstated.

11. ARE ORGS RESPONDING?

12. ARE ORGS RESPONDING?

13. DO PEOPLE GIVE ON SOCIAL?

14. the overall market
• $15B was donated online to charity in 2009.
• this figure is growing 30-40% annually
• projected: $35 Billion market by 2015

15. the state of the union 2009
•
Online giving grew 14 percent despite a difficult economy. Overall, 69% of organizations
raised more in 2009 than 2008, while 31% saw declines in their online fundraising.
•
An increase in gifts drove fundraising gains. Of those that grew fundraising in 2009, 92% saw
an increase in the number of gifts in 2009 compared with just 43% percent of organizations
seeing an increase in their average gift amount.
•
Donors were still giving, but giving smaller amounts. 61% of all organizations saw their
average gift drop in 2009.
•
Regardless of mission, online fundraising continued to grow. The only exception was
Disaster & International Relief organizations, for which 2008 was a year with more significant
disasters than 2009.
•
Small organizations grew fastest. Organizations with fewer than 10,000 email addresses on
file, grew online revenue by 26%, and gifts by 32%.
•
Email files continued to grow strongly. The total avg email file grew 27% in 2009 to 39,100
constituents.

18. HOW DOES EOY LOOK?

19. UP UP AND AWAY

20. HOW DOES SOCIAL FIT IN?

22. meet “Jim X” & “Jen Y”
heavy users of social
media & text-based tech
highly motivated to give
Jim Jen no established, habitual
means for donating
Average Gen Y gives $341 annually
Average Gen X gives $796 annually rely on peer 2 peer
(Compare with boomers: $901 and matures recommendations
$1066)

23. TIME TO WAKE UP

24. the problem
• The old ways of donating to
charity arenʼt optimized for Jim
and Jen
• Nonprofits need help reaching
this growing community
• “Slacktivists” are passionate
but their passion isnʼt matched
by donations

30. CAUSES PROJECTS

31. social + people + fundraising

32. MOBILE PHONE GIVING

33. SELECT A QUEST
1. You work for an organization that provides assistance to young veterans who
have been laid off in the current recession. Design a social media campaign that
reaches out to this audience with the express purpose of making them aware of
your program.
2. Your organization provides kids the opportunity to learn to play music after
school as an alternative to gangs. Design a social media campaign that reaches out
to this audience with the express purpose of making them aware of your program.
3. You have been tasked with raising $2,000 so that your organization can
purchase a new computer system. Create a campaign that does this through social
media from an audience of adults.
4. You work for an organization that helps young women in rural India get an
education by providing scholarships. Design a fundraising campaign that raises
$2,000 from college students to fund one young woman's education.
5. A blogger has written a nasty article about your organization's executive director.
The story begins to spread throughout social media. What do you do?
6. Your nonprofit organization is hosting a 5K run. Design a social media effort that
gets the word out and produces a record number of registrations for the event.

36. Q&A
David J. Neff
Author and Digital Strategy Consultant
@daveiam
512-789-5672
david@thefutureofnonprofits.com