Social Media Week

The Secret Sauce to Social Media Fundraising: DC’s Give to the Max Day Story

Hosted by: Razoo and AARP

Category: Social & Environmental Change

Location: AARP

Thursday, February 16 at 7:30 AM - 9:00 AM

Give to the Max Day: Greater Washington raised $2,017,196 with 17,838 donations for over 1,000 nonprofits in the DC, suburban Maryland, and northern Virginia areas. In social media, this event generated over 8,000 tweets using the #give2max hashtag and daylong trending in the Washington region. The Give to the Max Day Facebook page had a 99.4% talking about rate (1,716 of the total 1,726) rolling into days after the event.

So what’s the secret to this event’s success? Join us for the discussion with players of last November’s giving day to see how they were able to leverage social media for fundraising and doing good. And why not treat yourself to a nice breakfast while you’re at it?

All attendees will receive a $10 Razoo Giving Card.

If you’re unable to attend, you can still be part of the discussion by catching the event on LiveStream at this link starting at 8AM (EST). 

Learn more here.

Public Diplomacy in the Age of Social Media

Hosted by: New America Foundation

Category: Politics & Government

Location: New America Foundation

Thursday, February 16 at 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM  

How does social media change how statecraft is practiced in the 21st century? Who’s participating and why? What have been some lessons learned from the pioneers who have logged on to listen and engage? Three representatives from the U.S. Department of State will share case studies and professional experiences gleaned directly from the virtual trenches.

Learn more here.

U.S. National Archives 2.0: Citizen Archivist Dashboard Demo

Hosted by: National Archives and Records Administration

Category: Politics & Government

Location: The William G. McGowan Theater, National Archives Building

Thursday, February 16 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

The U.S. National Archives launched its Citizen Archivist Dashboard in December 2011. The dashboard is a hub for the Archives’ crowdsourcing initiatives, including tagging, transcription, digitization of records and more. Citizen archivists, staff archivists, students and researchers together share insights and manpower to make the records and America’s history more accessible to all.

When your nonprofit is planning events, it is critical to build relationships both on- and offline, and relationship building requires follow up and reminders, oftentimes on multiple platforms. The survey also reported that event planners still rely heavily on email marketing, online event marketing tools, websites and print advertising to promote their events, indicating that traditional forms of event marketing still play an essential role, despite the evolution; which Chris Litster, Vice President and General Manager of Event Marketing for Constant Contact addresses:

Event marketing has evolved. It's no longer just direct mail invitations, phone calls and simply hoping that people will come. Now, it's social media conversations, real-time communication and online video--true engagement across platforms to create a holistic event experience from start to finish.

Survey results also showed that:

1. 97% of marketers believe that social media marketing benefits their business
2. 75% of marketers plan to increase media spending this year
3. 58% of marketers said they have seen an increase in sales and partnerships
4. 41% say that is has reduced costs

I think most nonprofits will agree social media has helped market their organization and their programs. Mnay also plan on investing more resources into their social media this year. But the majority of nonprofits aren’t raising money on social media. And the ones that are raising money, it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to what they raise through other channels. For example, 46% of nonprofits have raised between $1K and $10K on Facebook, according to the 2011 Nonprofits Social Network Report. And 52% are not fundraising at all. Out of five popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr) only .7% have raised more than $100K.

There are some other social action networks like Care2, which supplied about 5 million pre-qualified Direct Mail leads to nonprofits in 2011. Direct Mail still remains the dominating channel for raising money.

I also question if social networking has reduced costs for nonprofits. If anything, I’m hearing the opposite. Nonprofits (particularly the smaller ones) are feeling a lot of pressure to have a social media presence and staffing costs money. Also many organizations struggle to staff social media consistently since staff is so focused on other priorities.

The survey also showed that 94% of marketers ranked Facebook as their go to social network for marketing. Twitter ranked number two, followed by blogs, LinkedIn, and YouTube. I was a little surprised to see LinkedIn beat YouTube but it was only by 2%.

Will Facebook still be king in 2012? Wildfire says Facebook will have a lot more competition from Twitter’s branded pages, LinkedIn’s developer platform, Google+, and of course popular blogging communities and platforms like Tumblr.

The average gift size remained steady in 2011 at about $65 with more than $435M donated to charities. The donors in the most generous cities increased their total online contributions by more than 11 percent over 2010, which is pretty impressive considering the tough economy.

To 10 Most Generous Cities

1. Seattle, WA
2. Alexandria, VA
3. Washington, DC
4. Arlington, VA
5. Cambridge, MA
6. Ann Arbor, MI
7. Berkeley, CA
8. San Francisco, CA
9. Bellevue, WA
10. St. Louis, MO

The biggest movers in the top ten from the 2010 annual ranking are Seattle rising three spaces to number one; Cambridge, MA falling three spaces from number two to number five; and Ann Arbor, MI moving up three spaces from number nine to number six, said Convio.

Here you'll find a list of upcoming events that are sure to be buzzing with cause-minded folks. And wherever there's a cause to be championed, you'll find the Care2 Team -- this month delivering a trifecta of tips and tactics, with three of our Nonprofit Services directors presenting at three different conferences on three different topics over the next three weeks:

-Eric Rardin will be talking about Cause Marketing & High Level Engagement: How Brands Can Leverage Social Networks and Achieve High Level Engagement in Las Vegas on February 9th.

-Ryann Miller--back from maternity leave and now quickly back in the speaking circuit--will talk about The Basics of Growing Your List in Toronto on February 21st. (And back by popular demand, Ryann will also be speaking at Canada's Digital Leap in May).

-Dane Grams will be making his Care2 speaking debut at the DMA Washington Nonprofit Conference, on a panel called Follow that Donor! How to Succeed with Digitally-Driven, Multi-Channel Donor Stewardship on March 1st.

We're also throwing a party at one of our favorite "Unconferences," New Organizing Institute's 2012 RootsCamp. So if you're in DC, don't miss it (the conference, or the party...but especially the party).

Will you be attending any of these events? Come and participate in our speaking sessions, and feel free to connect with our team at (or after) these events if you'd like slides (or video, when available) of the session.

Event	Dates	Who's Going	What We're Doing
Social Media Strategies Summit Las Vegas, NV	Feb 6 - 8	Eric Rardin	"Cause Marketing" 2/9 11:40 - 12:25
NOI RootsCamp Washington, DC	Feb 18 - 19	Clint O'Brien Ashley Hansen Molly Connors Ned Baker
Engaging Networks Community Conference (North America) Toronto, ON	Feb 21	Ryann Miller	"Growing Your List" 2/21 11:05 - 12:00
DMA Washington Nonprofit Conference Washington, DC	Mar 1 - 2	Dane Grams Clint O'Brien Eric Rardin Ashley Hansen Molly Connors	"Follow that Donor!" 3/1 10:15 - 11:15
19th Original GLBT Expo New York, NY	Mar 17 - 18	Dane Grams
AAPC Annual Pollie Awards & Conference Austin, TX	Mar 28 - 30	Eric Rardin

What are we missing?
Is there a great event we've overlooked? Let us know in the comments where else you'll be! 

1. Honesty, transparency, and being upfront.

2. Listening and being responsive to members of the community no matter how lame or silly you find the questions or feedback.

3. Thanking your community for their support, feedback and guidance. 

If you don’t practice these principals every single day somewhere along the way your community is going to revolt. And it won’t be pretty.

For example, yesterday, Planned Parenthood released a statement saying that the Susan G. Komen Foundation would not be renewing grants to support 19 local Planned Parenthood affiliates, which provided 170,000 clinical breast exams and 6,400 mammogram referrals to women in low-income communities through the Komen grant. According to Jessica Pieklo on the Care2 Cause Channel, last year’s grant totaled about $680,000.

Komen said that they cut their funding because Rep. Cliff Sterns (R-FL) launched a congressional investigation into whether or not Planned Parenthood was using public money on abortions. Since Komen has implemented more stringent eligibility standards to safeguard donor dollars “consequently, some organizations are no longer eligible to receive Komen grants,” said Komen in a press release yesterday.

How did the women’s community including many of Komen’s donors, Facebook fans, and followers on Twitter and Race for the Cure team leaders react?

They revolted.

Once the news began to spread, women and men of all ages flocked to Komen’s page on Twitter and Facebook and posted emotional and heart felt messages, expressing their sadness and anger over Komen’s decision to take away funding for breast cancer screening services.

What's more telling than this communal reaction is Komen's response to its own community's revolt. They went dark for 24 hours. Not a peep on Twitter or Facebook even as supporters continued to post thousands of messages on social networks and let's not forget the buzz that grew offline, around dinner tables, and office water coolers. Some members of Komen’s Facebook page even said that their comments were deleted.

The results below come from aggregate data from 14 organizations we work with – a big thanks to them for letting us include their data in this post. These aren’t necessarily the same organizations we included in our write-up last year; this analysis compares two years of data for these 14 groups.

So without further ado, here’s the scoop:

A lot more money – Every organization in this data set raised more money in 2011 than they did in 2010.

A ton more gifts – 93% saw an increase in the number of gifts made. Overall gifts in this group increased by almost 25% over 2010.

Lower average gifts – 79% had lower average gifts in 2011 vs. 2010. Compared to last year’s report, this is the one downward trend. Last year, this figure was pretty much split down the middle with half having higher and half having lower average gifts.

Better response rates – 71% had the same or higher response rates to their email appeals than last year. Of the organizations that had higher response rates, a majority (63%) had larger lists and sent to more people. Last year, most organizations saw lower response rates compared with the prior year.

More emails – 71% sent more appeals this year vs. last year. Last year this figure was 85%, so this trend may be slowing a bit.

Overall, this performance feels sunnier than last year’s. I’m particularly encouraged by the response rates to email appeals. When you look at M+R's eNonprofit Benchmarks reports, industry wide fundraising response rates have been falling regularly year over year. I don’t want to jinx it, but after looking at this data set, I thought, could the trend finally be halting or maybe even reversing?  We’ll have to wait until the new eNonprofit Benchmarks report comes out in April to know for sure (you can sign up here to make sure you receive the report as soon as it’s released) – but fingers crossed!

1. The ONLY bits that matter in terms of conversion are: 1. subject line 2. the first sentence 3. link copy 4. call to action. Write these bits FIRST. The rest of the email should proceed from them. These are also the bits which will have the largest impact in tests.
2. There should always be some version of the Call-to-Action above the fold.
3. The message must be about the recipient, not the sender. Always talk about ‘you’, never ‘we’. ‘You can stop the biofuels scandal’, not ‘We need you to stop the biofuels scandal’.
4. Email content is a less-than-zero sum game. Talk about three different things, and you won’t get three times as much engagement. You won’t even get the same amount of engagement, split three ways. You’ll get less in total. One message ALWAYS trumps two.
5. You have 3 seconds to convince someone to engage with your email. That’s all. If they read the first sentence, and they don’t know what you’re trying to tell them, they WILL delete your email.
6. Never, ever write a boring or cryptic subject line. Questions, or teasing ambiguity, can be very effective. But if you don’t mention the basic subject matter, it will get ignored by your most important audience: the people who actually care about that issue.
7. About a third of your readers will have their email set up so they only see the first 21 characters of the subject line. Frontload the best bit but don't try and cram everything in at the top.

What are your favorite email practices that have increased conversion rates?