Best Ideas to raise funds for Charities on Social Media

Whats the best ideas to raise donations for charities on Social Media

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@shaun Thanks for posting…I just move this over to the Nonprofit mastermind area

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Hey @shaun!

I worked at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley for 2.5 years and the best thing that worked for us was to develop a themed social media campaign each giving year.

We would collect stories from our board members, volunteers, community partners, members, and visitors about how the money impacted them. We would then ask staff to talk about how the money is used within each department. After we filmed and wrote all of that content, we would sculpt our call to action posts that encouraged people to donate to the MSV.

One thing that was so important for us was to tell the stories of the amazing things that our donors have done and then ask them for more money. If you don’t tell a story and connect with people, they are less likely to donate. So that was always on our minds when planning out our strategy.

That is just a little story from my journey with a nonprofit! I have more too if you are interested. :blush:

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@corrie @taylor @dianaparadis think you might be able to give some suggestions too!

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Agreed with this! One of the things I focus on with my nonprofits & social is telling the stories throughout the year. Talk about your impact on the community, share what you are doing, and what donors money DOES - all year long. That way, when you do go to hold your giving campaign (we do a lot of themed campaigns too), you don’t have to share your whole story right away - because you’ve been sharing it all along. I actually find focusing on year-round posting paves the way for greater donations at the end of the year (or on giving days).

I wrote about this a bit in “Getting Out of The Donor Zone” - which focuses on what to talk about in addition to fundraising, but that ultimately, help show the picture of what donor money does, fully in your community: Getting Out Of The Donor Zone (Corrie Oberdin)

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This is soooo smart and true!!!

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This is fantastic! I know when I was at the museum it was tough for us to attempt to capture stories all the time because we had SO MUCH going on. We had formal gardens, a 3 mile free walking trail, the changing exhibitions, our standing exhibitions, the store, programs, concerts, and then community events. It was tough to capture stories all year. But, it was easier at the same time because we were able to post for all of those things throughout the year and that allowed us to leverage the content to show that the donors were making a difference because we were able to do all of those different things because of their support.

I am going to head over to read your article! Thank you so much for sharing.

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YES! I’m currently working on campaign for a Library Foundation, and we did some surveying and it turned out that many of our donors thought they were helping buy books. In reality, they helped support:

  • Events (big name authors and events like “read a book to a dog”)
  • New equipment
  • Remodels to the building
  • Archiving & preservation of town history materials
  • A teen drop in space
  • A book drop off program for the housebound

So now we’re turning that into an ongoing social campaign that we highlight and then also support via email, print & signage/talking points for staff. The best part about social is that you can support it with messaging elsewhere too.

(I’m a big believer in the long game!)

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This is great! I love that the donors though that they were only helping buy books when in reality they are doing A LOT more. I bet that helped with people giving as well.

Question… do you have listed on all the print and social copy what the donation goes towards? Maybe that will help clear up the “only helping with books” thought that your donors have. Another thing that might be worth thinking about is how does the community perceive the campaign? This would help you gain a better understanding of how they feel. This way you know if they feel the same way as your donors or not.

I worked for a museum for 3 years before taking on my organic social media business full time so I am sorry for all the questions but you have me interested haha.

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Unlike some Foundations, we don’t have specific funds for specific programs, so we (legally) can’t say “This donation will go here,” because if someone donates thinking it will support a specific program, and it doesn’t (because it’s a general fund), that gets hairy - instead we say “Your donations supports programs like X, Y, & Z” our collective social, print & other marketing focuses on telling the stories of everything they fund.

Our ongoing campaign is actually not just to donors and I wasn’t specific in my previous post - our surveys were of community in general, of which a subset was our donors. The general perception was that the Foundation just funded books. Now, 3+ years later, all Foundation messaging focuses on what types of programs we support at the Library, and the Library (in turn) will denote (both via social, print & signage) when programs and projects are funded by the Foundation. The new campaign is taking our message a bit further afield with more print & messaging programs.

We don’t detail (always) how much the support costs, because libraries also have city/government support, and that wades into politics in a way that we have to be very careful about (i.e., if we were to constantly say “This program was made possible with a $50K grant from the Foundation” - there have been people who will bring that to City Councils and want to slash budgets).

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