I was lucky enough to grab some rare time with Rebekah to catch up over a sushi dinner recently (sadly no ikura – one of our joint favourite things – but otherwise very good indeed).
Among the things we talked about was a presentation Rebekah was doing on emergency fundraising using social media, as part of her MA, my recent panel at Media140 Third Sector event on 4 February, entitled ‘The Future of Giving’, and the agenda for the next NFPtweetup.
As is so often the case in life, things seemed to be coalescing around a theme, without us really having planned it: charities using social media for fundraising, measuring, quantifying and understanding success and the contributing factors (more of our favourite things). [Many ‘social media experts’ would start talking about ‘serendipity’ at this point, but I’m not going to because it’s adding nothing new to the conversation and the word’s always used incorrectly anyway 
]
Anyhow…
I put my panel for Media140 together on fundraising because I wanted to explore social media’s place in fundraising and have an informed debate on our perspectives about such things as emergency fundraising, raising unrestricted funds sustainably, scalability and whether results from fundraising through social media would ever be replicable.
I made that the focus because I felt the sector has surely had it’s fill by now of generic presentations about how brilliant social media are and how charities should be making the most of them, and that there was a real need to elevate the conversation and grapple with some of the real strategic challenges and opportunities, based on quantitative data, and a genuine understanding of fundraising and the financial models of most charities, among other things!
Even on a more tactical level, don’t you agree that we should have moved beyond the ‘cool tools’ conversations by now and be at the point where we’re measuring success, creating benchmarks and at least be able to begin to quantify the value we can generate using social media and share some insights about how to optimise that? I’d hoped the conversation would only start there, before moving on to imagine what fundraising might look like in 5-10 years.
In retrospect, it was probably a bit ambitious for a 40 min session, including questions from the audience, so we didn’t even get halfway there and getting stuck into that is going to have to keep for another time.
What is really worth mentioning is that, in the run up to the event, I had asked representatives from British Red Cross and Merlin to join me on the panel to talk about the support they’d received for their Haiti fundraising appeals through social media – because they’d be able to share some genuine insights into how ‘social fundraising’ compared to the traditional channels they were using, as well as whether they raise funds via social media on any significant scale at times other than emergencies. Sadly, they couldn’t join me at Media140, but they have both agreed to come and speak about this at the next NFPtweetup on 4 March, instead.
We’ll also be joined by UNICEF, who will share how they helped to turn Charlie Simpson’s sponsored bike ride into a fundraising phenomenon, so it should be a great night – and it’s all come together quite nicely around a theme of ‘Generating, and Measuring, Value’, or something like that (it’s still a bit of a working title!).
This seems to be a good point to mention Rebekah’s presentation again, as it was inspired by a press release the DEC released about the role social media played in their Haiti earthquake appeal. I have to say, I thought the presentation so good it would be a shame not to share it more widely, so here it is and over to Rebekah for her perspective:
This presentation was for a class of 15 MA students who didn’t know much about charities and their use of social media. I chose the DEC Haiti earthquake appeal as a case study because the class were familiar with both the disaster and widely publicised appeal. Focusing on DEC’s mobile giving campaign via Twitter, there were examples of how they engaged and encouraged supporters to donate, ending with lessons learnt from the appeal, personal thoughts on the topic and a few questions to kick start class discussion.
I knew it would be hard enough for my classmates to absorb all the new information they were going to be exposed to (most of them don’t have any fundraising experience), but they made a good attempt at giving me considered comments about the questions on the last slide. The final question was left unanswered though:
“Which benchmarks are best to gauge whether or not social media channels make good fundraising tools?”
Maybe the words ‘benchmarks’ and ‘gauge’ made it too scary for my class to approach. Maybe they didn’t feel qualified to offer an opinion on fundraising – which would be quite fair enough. But then I’m not sure the charity sector has managed to answer these questions satisfactorily yet either.
If you’ve got any thoughts to share, please do, and if you’re from a charity and would like to come along to the next NFPtweetup on 4 March and have a good old debate about all of this, tweet me @rebekahhah. We have a few places left, but you’d better be quick!
Rachel and Rebekah
Tags: benchmarking, British Red Cross, Charlie Simpson, communications, DEC, Fundraising, Just Giving, measurement, Media140, Merlin UK, NFPtweetup, Presentation, social media, Twitter, UNICEF
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by rebekahhah: 1st @beautifulw collaborative post by @rachelbeer & myself: How do you measure social media success? http://cot.ag/ceoTPd...
Interesting post. I’m seeing this issue discussed often lately. Here’s my take on it…
I don’t think we’re asking the right questions and I think our expectations are a bit too high. We want answers and measurements similar to direct mail or other types of fundraising initiatives that have been around for decades. Social media is not direct mail or major gifts or an event…
One key difference in social media is that the audience is so varied. In direct marketing, major gifts, events (and more) we tend to know who the demographic is. We segment and test based on what we believe will appeal to that audience. Social media are reaching people across cultures, countries, ages, ethnicities, and more!
Even if we just look at emergency fundraising there are so many other influences that may or may not impact other forms of fundraising. The major media influences on a given “disaster” are (in my opinion) much more likely to impact social media fundraising than direct mail. If CNN or BBC Breaking news tweets a shockingly tragic announcement and I “retweet” that, or link to it through facebook causes, and add that to my appeal, I have a large, well respected news organization reiterating the importance and urgency of my appeal. That isn’t likely to have the same impact in a direct mail – or even an eblast. It’s immediately urgent.
There are so many variables that influence social media that must be considered when measuring social media and attempting to answer this question. It’s going to take time and maturity before we can adequately predict success for a given campaign – or know what lends itself to success in various social media.
We’re certainly learning more every day. But in reality, we’re barely scratching the surface. Charities must continue to explore these channels – but not just for solicitation purposes. If charities overload social media platforms with “asks” on a consistent basis, they will end up being largely ignored and perhaps even resented.
We must not mistake social media for direct response or treat the individuals who are socializing online as our donors. Some are our donors. Others are our beneficiaries, volunteers, people who just ‘kinda dig’ our cause, but aren’t ready to act yet.
Without the ability to segment in a clear and concise manner on social media, we must be ever vigilant of the diverse audience we are engaging online and work hard to find a delicate communication balance that engages each audience in a meaningful way. The “once size fits all” approach will not be successful here – and it may well be damaging to your organization.
Good lord – I didn’t mean to write a book… sorry!
Thanks for the thought-provoking comment, Laurie.
We totally agree that social media should not be treated as direct response media – they have far more value to add than that. Neither should they be dismissed as ‘fluff’ because they don’t generate a comparable response to other, tried and tested, traditional channels, at the moment. As you say, they simply haven’t been around long enough, or adopted widely enough until fairly recently, to make that benchmark a fair one.
However, I agree that most charities are still only scratching the surface in establishing the true potential of social media. That’s why we’ve been pushing the sector to take a more strategic and integrated view over the last year or so, and to see these channels as somewhere to be their ‘whole selves’, ensuring that their conversations and posts communicate their mission, vision and values, their key brand messages, the impact of their work, their campaigns, news, events etc. rather than segment their messages, just ask repeatedly or engage aimlessly.
We’re really excited that we’ll be digging down deeper at the next NFPtweetup, now that charities have started measuring results and achieving measurable success, and that we’ll be hearing from fundraisers who can share their perspectives on social media as compared to more traditional media, and share their experiences and insights. There is certainly a lot to learn from the way that UNICEF supported Charlie Simpson’s sponsored bike ride, and the way that Merlin and British Red Cross engaged with their followers, and their followers followers, on Twitter in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, as well as the contribution social media made to the DEC’s Haiti earthquake appeal.
I’m going to stop there before I write the next chapter of that book you started!
Thanks again for your comment.
Rachel