Are Nonprofits Raising Money Via Social Networks?

The 2011 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report provides some incredible data on how 11K+ nonprofits are using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. The study also answers the biggest question on everyone's mind. Are nonprofits raising any money on social networks?

Big Picture Data

• Facebook is the most popular commercial social network for nonprofits.
• Nine out of 10 nonprofits have a presence on Facebook .
• Facebook usage levels are at 89% with nonprofits versus only 57% usage of Twitter.
• LinkedIn is used by 1 in 3 nonprofits.
• MySpace hit an all-time low with only 7% of nonprofits utilizing this platform.

Though it's assumed that Social Networks, besides MySpace, just keep growing, it's the amount of growth that may surprise you. Facebook has increased its community by 161% in 2011, and while Twitter is not used as often by nonprofits, the Twitter community only grew 2% in 2011 - not a drop in the bucket to its 535% growth from 2009. While the usage isn't static across the board, the majority of nonprofits (4 out of 5) agree that their social networking efforts are valuable to their growth and community engagement.

For the first time this year, quite a few newbies were added to the list of Social Network platforms: FourSquare, Jumo, Vimeo, Yelp, Picassa, Ning, Delicious, CrowdRise, FirstGiving, Razoo and Causes. FourSquare had the most substantive presence among the newcomers with 4% of nonprofits utilizing the platform.

Are Nonprofits Raising Money Via Social Networks?

While the number of organizations raising between $1 to $10K annually has risen each year from 38% in 2009 to 46% in 2011, the number of nonprofits raising $100,000 or more per year on social networks doubled this year to 0.4%, a very thin slice of the sector.

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eNonprofit Benchmarks Study Reveals Latest Metrics for Advocacy, Fundraising and Social Media

Do you know the average click-through and open rates on action alerts and fundraising appeals across the nonprofit sector? Are enewsletters still worth your organization’s time? Are nonprofits experimenting with mobile more? Check out the 2010 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study from M+R Strategic Services and NTEN which surveyed 40 nonprofit organizations and analyzed all of this data and more.

Key Benchmarks: How Did Your Nonprofit Measure Up?

Online Fundraising

Online fundraising grew 14% from 2009 to 2010. However, it’s important to note that the 2010 fundraising response rate was actually 0.08% and fell 19% on average from 2009 to 2010. So how’s it possible that online fundraising actually grew 14%? The study said that the International sector drove this growth, which experienced a 163% increase in donations  spurred by disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti and the flooding in Pakistan. Many nonprofits also saw an increase in the number of donations, a sign that that more people feel that economy is recovering.

Out of all sectors in the nonprofit community, International groups had the highest average gift size ($117) for a one-time gift and monthly donations ($33 monthly gifts). This is likely due to their on-the-ground work in critical disaster areas and where donors feel that their donations are making a big difference.  The average one time donation across sectors was $60 and $20 for monthly giving.

Across all sectors, one-time donations made up 90% or more of all online revenue. Nonprofits need to pay special attention to this stat. On average, only 10% of your online members are making more than one donation. Why is that? Are you online fundraising appeals compelling enough? Are you doing a good job telling your story and not getting caught in organizational red tape? Are you donation pages optimized for the user? Or is the donation flow clunky and confusing? Are you treating your donors like an ATM machine or do you have a well thought-out strategy for cultivating them and moving them up the ladder.

Online Advocacy and Email

Advocacy emails had the highest open, click-through, and response rates of any type of email, as well as the lowest unsubscribe rate. Fundraising emails had the lowest click-through rate. These stats are not surprising and show how many more people on nonprofit’s list are willing to take some sort of action on behalf of your organization, but they require a much deeper level of nurturing and engagement to turn them into donors.

The 2010 advocacy response rate was 3.3%. From 2009 to 2010, advocacy response rates declined 7% on average.

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Membership Renewals Take a Dive

It’s been three years (perhaps more depending on which economist you ask) since the recession hit. Nonprofits and associations have faced tough times as they struggled to raise money, recruit new members, and retain old ones. As organizations continue to plan for 2011, it’s important to examine 2010 benchmarks such as the Membership Marketing Benchmark report that surveyed over 400 association executives.

“Associations reported that they were having trouble acquiring new members, renewing the members that they had and growing the overall membership count compared to last year,” concluded the report.

Check out these Stats:

• In 2009, 31% of associations reported that membership renewal rates decreased in the previous year. In 2010, 44% of associations saw a decline in membership renewal rates. Trade associations have had a much tougher membership year than have individual membership associations.

• On a positive note, 57% of associations reported that membership was up over the past five years and 36% said that membership numbers were up for the past year.

• 43% of individual membership associations experienced membership growth in the past year, but only 26% of trade associations saw membership growth.

Why is membership not growing as much as associations had hoped? Lack of value NOT membership fees! 36% of respondents cited value as the key issue that former members expressed for not renewing memberships. This is an 80% increase over last year.

If your association or nonprofit is seeing a lower response in membership renewals, you need to take a deep look at your membership program.  Are you spending the necessary time and resources to research and talk to members to better understand:

• What they are looking to receive from your organization that is personally important to them and makes your organization valuable.

•  Content (online and offline) and products aimed at your members.

Reaching Members Through Word of Mouth and Websites

How did prospective members find out about associations? 91% was through word-of mouth recommendations and 88% was through the association’s website. 67% learn about associations through emails and direct mail.

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How Useful is Social Media to Nonprofits?

No matter where you look, social media is on everyone’s radar. The big question nonprofits ask is, how useful is social media? In an attempt to help nonprofits answer that question, Idealware, in partnership with NOI, recently released "The Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide."

 According to Idealware’s survey of over 750 nonprofit staffers:

• Almost 80% "think" that they reach new supporters using Facebook, Twitter, video sharing sites like YouTube, and blogging. However, only between 25% and 35% said that they could confirm that they are truly reaching new supporters via these social networks.

• About 55% think that LinkedIn is a good source to reach new supporters.

• Less then 40% think using MySpace to reach new supporters is helpful.

While many nonprofit staff were optimistic in hopes of reaching constituents and building better relationships with them via social networks, nonprofit staff clearly don’t think they are raising money through these channels.

• Approximately, 40% said that they “think” that they are raising some money via Facebook and blogging. But only about 10% to 20% could confirm it.

• About 30% said that they “think” they are raising money via Twitter, video sharing sites and LinkedIn.

"Most who have successfully used Facebook as a fundraising technique either use it as just one of many communication methods (like supplementing a direct mail and email campaign), or do very personal campaigns - for example, the [Causes] “birthday” campaign, where users ask folks to donate to a cause in support of their own birthdays," said the report.

Other tangible results include:

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Social Media Nonprofit Benchmarks

One of the biggest questions nonprofits have been asking for the past couple of years, is what benchmarks should they be using for social media? The 2010 Nonprofit Benchmarks Report released by NTEN has some great data that nonprofits can use for guidance.

Nonprofit Social Media Benchmark Data You Need to Know

According to 1200 nonprofits surveyed:

• Facebook is the number one used commercial social network by nonprofits. 86% said that they have a presence on Facebook, a 16% increase from 2009. However, nonprofits experienced a drop in their average community from 5,391 members in 2009 to 2,440 in 2010. 
  

• 60% of Nonprofits are on Twitter as compared to 43% in 2009.

• Twitter’s average community size (i.e. number of followers) grew the fastest and by 627%. In 2009 nonprofits had an average of 286 followers. In 2010 nonprofits average close to 1800 followers.

• LinkedIn (largely used by education institutions and professional associations) and YouTube usage remained steady over the last year. YouTube moved up slightly from 46.5% in 2009 to 48.1% in 2010, and LinkedIn stayed steady at 32.9% in 2009 and 33.1% this year.

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2010 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study Reveals Surprising Stats

Thanks to Allyson for inviting me to guest post.  I’ll try to keep it short and just sweet enough to fill you in on everything you need to know about the new 2010 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study from M+R Strategic Services and NTEN.

(This stuff fascinates me – which I guess is good since it’s my job. But I won’t be offended if you just want to skip straight to the report itself!)

If you’ve worked with us before at M+R you know we’re data nerds—and with this year’s benchmarks report we’ve embraced our inner nerds at a whole new level, working with 31 nonprofits to figure out what worked, what didn’t, and why it matters when it comes to online messaging, fundraising and advocacy. 

When we started analyzing the results of this year’s study, the nonprofit world was still licking its wounds from 2009.  True, it was a challenging year for online fundraising and advocacy – half of the nonprofits in this year’s study saw their online fundraising revenue stay even with or drop below last year’s revenue numbers. 

But our study revealed some interesting – dare I say surprising – results:

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2009 Nonprofit Benchmarks: How Does your Organization Measure Up?

If your nonprofit is not developing yearly benchmarks for its fundraising program, website visits, email and e-newsletter open and click-through rates, start now. Establishing benchmarks helps organizations better leverage supporters, engage activists and keep websites dynamic with compelling content that drives people to take action. While benchmarks should be set realistically based on each organizations goals and year-to-year metrics, it’s always important to know what the average benchmarks are for the nonprofit sector and compare how your own metrics measure up.  Don’t know where to look? Convio just released their latest benchmark report that examined over 500 nonprofit metrics in 15 sectors.

“Online fundraising and engagement continues to grow at robust double digit rates despite a challenging economy, where most other vehicles are in decline, said Vinay Bhagat, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Convio. “Capturing constituent interest is getting harder, as witnessed by lower website visitor to subscriber conversion rates.  Offering compelling reasons to join the file is critical.  It’s not sufficient to just offer an email newsletter – who really needs another e-newsletter?”

Online Fundraising

Even in this dismal economy, online donations grew 14% and 69% of nonprofits raised more in 2009 than 2008. The study also noted that 49%of online mid-level and major donors visited a nonprofit's website before donating money online or offline for the very first time. 92% of organizations that grew their fundraising in 2009 had an increase in the number of gifts they receive and 43% of organizations that raised more in 2009 had an increase in their average online gift amount. However it’s not all good news. The economy certainly took its toll. 61% of organizations’ average gifts dropped in 2009.

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