Is Social Media Working For Fundraisers?
I know, I know … what an impossibly broad question.
What I’m really fishing for is some great fundraising success stories … examples of where use of social media has yielded real, measurable dollars.
I’m moved to ask because of the question posed yesterday by Cindy Courtier’s Comment to my post on retention. She asked simply:
“As donor retention rates fall, I wondering if anyone has done any research correlating retention and presence on social media.
It seems that there should be a link between putting out lots of “here’s what’s happening” information and donor retention/involvement.
For example, do organizations like The Hunger Site, which posts almost daily, and sometimes several times a day, have a higher retention rate than those who never or rarely post?”
Any Agitator readers have a response to that question?
And what about lead generation?
Much of the social media enthusiasm I read about concerns attracting leads, likes, followers … not necessarily raising money.
So what’s the story on converting leads to funds? Any Agitator readers want to disclose their success?
I’m in the midst of a test of my own, where I made a free gift offer via Facebook. 2% of those exposed to the offer requested the freebie (an old-fashioned print magazine), sending along their email and postal addresses. They’ve now received their free mag … next I’ll see how many of those will pay for more! Stay tuned.
OK, that’s ‘commercial’. But at least I’m testing and measuring my use of social media against a dollars and cents outcome.
Are you?
Tom
14 responses to “Is Social Media Working For Fundraisers?”
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This is a really interesting question Tom. There’s not much research out there as yet, although I have come across this paper from academics at the University of Toronto and Johns Hopkins University: https://www.sociologicalscience.com/download/vol-3/march/SocSci_v3_202to238.pdf
From their results – “although the campaigns reached approximately 6.4 million users and generated considerable attention in the form of clicks and ‘likes’, only 30 donations were made.”
They conclude “these platforms may instead stimulate costless (and less impactful) forms of involvement.”
However this may be down to methodology – set against that the extraordinary success of Thailand’s Soi Dog Foundation: http://sofii.org/case-study/the-soi-dog-foundation-acquiring-regular-donors-through-facebook
I think that as of now the charity has c.13,500 sustaining donors and brings in AUS$6M annually, largely through Facebook advertising.
But their secret sauce is old-fashioned direct marketing discipline – just in a different environment.
hi, I think you hit on a great point. Sean Triner’s comment: Using good old fashioned direct mail on facebook hinges on the ASK.
So many social media posts forget to ask. Nonprofits are afraid to oh boy, i don’t want them to stop liking me, I don’t want them to stop sharing… but the reality is that we still want them to give too…
and when you ask: asking for small donations on social media is easier than big ones.. hence (In my rose colored monthly donor view) the number of sustaining donors Soi Dog brought in…
cheers, keep up the great posts… Erica
Tom,
See if the folks @ Charity Water have info they will share. They are the “guru” re all things Social Media.
I haven’t seen 2016 stats, but 93% of 2015 gifts came via direct mail, and the average of a donor was 72. They are heavily into Facebook and looking at grandkids!
I look forward to your results.
I think the folks to talk to are at M & R Strategy http://www.mrss.com/lab/benchmarks-x-is-here-get-it-now/ They publish the Benchmarks study of nonprofit online fundraising. See Benchmarks X: “Online revenue was up 19% in 2015, and email revenue grew even faster with a 25% increase. But it’s not all sunshine and roses: email open rates, click-through rates, and response rates all declined. Benchmarks X will clue you in to the metrics you need to watch.”
Erica, the other part of that may be the FB algorithm which seems to suppress posts with an ask. I’ve noticed those posts get fewer eyeballs.
I highly doubt that there is a correlation between social media engagement and donor retention. Facebook themselves has written, “Engagement rates do not correlate with the outcomes ultimately used to judge the success of your marketing efforts. While clicks can be strong indicators of success for online direct response campaigns, research by Nielsen shows very limited correlation between clicks and offline sales lift; the same is true of clicks and standard brand metrics like awareness. Given these findings, the success of advertising campaigns should be measured through business results and not via engagement rates. The same KPIs and metrics you use in other channels, and you know drive your business, should be used to assess impact on Facebook.” (Source: https://www.scribd.com/doc/210734144/Engagement-on-Facebook-When-It-Matters).
Here at Make-A-Wish, we include social in our attribution models in order to understand social’s value. As a result, we know that social influences about 8% of online conversions.
I also agree with the comment above about social media stimulating “costless involvement.” We’ve found that only about 10% of our donors are active users of our Facebook page.
BBDO has also written about the fact that engagement does not correlate with business results for
branded content & that tailoring messaging towards ‘fans’ is in contradiction of marketing theory (http://wiredrive.bbdo.com/facebook/AboutFace-ANewApproachtoFacebookforBigBrands.pdf).
When I was at Defenders of Wildlife, we measured the value of donors engaging with us on social media vs. donors not enaging with us on social. Donors in the former category had a 30%+ higher LTV, but here are two caveats: a) we didn’t measure retention explicitly, and b) correlation isn’t necessarily causation (i.e. are folks engaging with a cause on social naturally more valuable or does engagement with a cause increase their value to the org?).
As a follow-up to my comment and your original question, Tom,
I would say that I’ve never seen any nonprofit run a net-positive social media fundriasing campaign (with the exception of the hyper-viral ice bucket challenge, but I’d argue that the likelihood of that happening again is very low, and not worth investing significant time and cost in trying to replicate). In my experience, those that do raise noteable $ on social are doing so at an astronomically high cost that makes the effort net-negative. So I would say social engagement brings indirect value to OTHER fundriasing activities, but is not a good direct source of donations.
And of course the power of focus. Soi Dog had an individual who was devoting his full-time attention to Facebook. Soi Dog also spent a considerable amount on FB advertising. Should your focus on FB be on the ASK – or on list-building?
This campaign has been going around Twitter quite a bit (not sure what the criteria for ‘going viral’ is). Another interesting use of celebrity endorsement and social media. It would be interesting to follow up with W. E. Can Lead in a few months and see if it was a successful fundraiser for them and if they’re able to convert Idris fans to long-term donors! https://www.omaze.com/experiences/Idris-Elba
For a look at the correlation between giving and social media check out today’s post by Nick Ellinger of DonorVoice: “Do You Want Likes or Loves”
http://bit.ly/2k4Yqex
Tom,
Wonderful! The responses here are interesting and varied, and provide much food for thought.
Water of Life is a great example, and I will continue to look for information on the results of their use of social media to educate and involve donors and prospects.
As an aside, I notice that while my original question was retention, many folks went right for the gift.
Perhaps that’s symptomatic of the money vs. relationship question – and why retention rates continue to fall. Or, as the quote you provided today (All You Need is Love) says, “Let’s be as rigorous, curious and disciplined about stewardship as we are about ROI.”
Cindy,
Retention and donor value are indeed affected –on the upside. In Nick Ellinger’s post that I cited yesterday ( http://bit.ly/2k4Yqex ) he reports on finding by Kevin Schulman, among them:
“We also know that the people who interact with your cause on Facebook or Twitter are disproportionately High Commitment. For one recent client we discovered that roughly 8 out of 10 Facebook likes and Twitter follows are High Commitment donors. A relationship unattended eventually withers and dies. Social media can help assure this does not happen. It is a relatively low cost (maybe one FTE and some opportunity cost) and highly scalable way to engage those who you have strong relationships with already. To borrow Seth Godin’s term – your tribe can be found among your social media audience. Not all your tribe, in fact, not even most of it. But, it is a very findable, reachable, meaningful slice of your constituency who is waiting to be engaged.
“To recap, your social media audience contains your most loyal donors. They are historically your best donors and as long as the relationship is maintained, will be your best prospective donors. Social media is a care and feeding opportunity to not only preserve their 131% lifetime value delta but also, to increase it. That’s right, the social media channel can be used to target your High Commitment donors and derive greater share of wallet. This money won’t show up in this channel and frankly, who cares.”
Thanks Roger for calling this to my attention. I had totally missed it. Will continue to look for other support and perhaps propose some testing among the clients with whom I work..