Turning tweets into cash - how to make money out of social networking?
Submitted by Ros Jenkins on Thu, 01/10/2009 - 15:26
Social networking is the next big thing – but how do we turn it into cash?! Does anyone have any ideas or examples that can help the sector to make the most of the great opportunity social media represents for fundraising? (Do you agree that it's a great opportunity, or is it a waste of precious time?)
And, how are people measuring its impact and return on investment? Does anyone have social media (and fundraising over the internet more broadly) written into their fundraising strategies and targets? In which case, how are you finding it?
In the Sustainable Funding team here at NCVO we're thinking of developing some resources around this issue, so it would be really good to hear people's views and ideas!
Social media are a range of communication channels and tools that millions of people use, so it makes sense to test it out as a fundraising tool. Follow the donor.
More significantly, many charity supporters are already using this channels and tools to fundraise for charities from their friends, colleagues and family. If charities do nothing else with social media, they can simply support and encourage these activities.
But like other media - TV, direct mail, radio, telephone - it's how you use it that matters. It is possible to waste time and money using social media just as it is with direct mail, if you don't know what you're doing.
How to support the sector in making the most out of this opportunity? Those interested have been supporting each other and welcoming new users for years via forums (charitywebmanager forum since 2000-ish, UK Fundraising Forum since 1996 etc), and via the social networks themselves. The volume of free helpful advice from charity staff on Twitter alone is astonishing.
There are also meetings set up like the four NFPtweetups that have been held in London in the past 10 months, focusing purely on Twitter, plus another in York.
There are many training courses and seminars - Jude Habib of sounddelivery.org.uk is one of several fine providers. I've been running 'Fundraising with Twitter' practical courses since March around the country, with the next course on Monday in London. The Institute of Fundraising is also running its first social media training course, although interestingly it's featuring a US speaker (who presented at the IoF's National Convention in July), not a home-grown UK practitioner.
So, I'd say there's a huge amount of resource, information and advice already. What were you thinking of that could add to that or improve what is out there?
Thanks Howard. It’s great that there’s loads happening out there. It’d be really useful to hear from organisations that have direct experience using social networking for their fundraising, so that those who are not sure they are ready to take the plunge can see how others have managed.
I’ve been keeping an eye on Twitter for a long time and know there is a lot of expertise and ideas being generated that it would be great to pull together – especially for those who are new to social networking or who need a hand making it a meaningful part of their strategy. It’s interesting that the IoF are using a US speaker at their training.
The Sustainable Funding Project has loads of information and guidance on this website around the full spectrum of fundraising and income generation, so we will pull together any tips and other sources of help there so that they are always easy to find.
If you are looking at how online fundraising could affect your organisation in the future, have a read of this recently updated Driver on the Third Sector Foresight website:
http://www.3s4.org.uk/drivers/online-revenue
In the post, the author Guy Yeomans makes an interesting point about what the user values,
Just to reiterate Olof’s point, Guy’s driver on Communities is very good on this; you might also like to look at his Online Revenue driver and also the thread on Social Lending.
Aside from this, my brief thoughts on raising money from social media follow:
Why use social networking
Combining existing tools with existing models – to good effect
Tailored online tools
A note on games
Implications (This is copied from a comment I posted on Karl’s recent blog post)
I got some good responses when I asked for examples of uses of social media for fundraising the other day (take a look at, for example, the beat cancer campaign) . These make use of new media to encourage traditional financial and non-financial donations. But they are also used to leverage exisiting transactions (such as searches) by driving traffic and interest through a particular platform. […] It may be that the window for these kind of opportunities may be quite brief (ie while advertising and other sources of online revenue is low) and the model is still young - so worth non-profits and charities in the UK jumping in and getting involved now.
If you’re interested in this area, Social by Social is likely to be extremely useful. You can see the piece I wrote for this relating specifically to membership organisations here.
As a result the role and model of VCOs may change from being deliverers to facilitators and market makers.
Opportunities
Risks
(You can still download the report for free from the link above.)