Does social media have to generate donations to be successful?

A recent Washington Post article reported that Facebook Causesamounted to next to nothing in terms of real donations for most charities. According to the article, less than 1% of the people on Facebook who've joined a Cause have ever made a donation and the majority of participating Cause charities have received no donations through the site.

I can't refute the stats but I can easily counter the overall sentiment that assumes Causes is something of a failure simply because it's not generating millions of dollars for millions of charities. I found this observation in the article very telling about the true nature of getting the most out of Causes:

The idea behind Causes was to take advantage of the vast circles of online friends connected through social networks to reach potential donors and volunteers on a more personal level. People will donate money, albeit in small amounts, to help a cause that a close friend or colleague supports, the application's developers say.

"People are much more altruistic if they get social credit for it," said Joe Green, one of the founders of Berkeley, Calif.-based Causes, who said the application has raised $7 million overall. "The social incentive is to show on your profile how many volunteers you've recruited or how much money you've raised."

For all the Causes I've been invited to, the ones that mean the the most to me, the ones I'm likely to join AND donate to are the ones that a good friend in my network sent to me. And we should all be honest, we all have friends in our social networks who would be better referred to as "that girl/guy I went to high school with and haven't seen for more than 15 years and I'll be your friend because we went to the same high school but I know we have nothing but our hometown in common these days" or the "colleague that I vaguely remember from 6 years ago and I should stay in touch with if even on Facebook because in this economy, I might need a reference or help with a job search". With these degrees of friends, it's unlikely that everyone is going to join or give to every Cause that comes their way.

Another angle on this aspect of the Causes design is that charities on Facebook asking constituents to give is simply never going to be as successful friends asking friends to give.

So really, is there any way for a nonprofit to really get something out of Causes? I say yes, definitely! But here's what you need to plan for:

• Set reasonable expectations. Is money the only thing you'll measure? Is there value in word-of-mouth marketing or growing awareness of your brand?

• Is this going to be your field of dreams? If you're only plan is to build it and think they will come, then you're going to be about as unsuccessful as putting a giant Donate button on your home page but never marketing your website. Do you have a plan to let your constituents know that you are on Facebook? Does your website utilize simple tools like a share bar?

• Who's making the ask? Do a little research. Find the influential people in your networks who have a following of friends and who will have a strong interest in your Cause. That dog lover with hundreds of friends who trade status comments about the need for a dog park is more likely to give to your animal cause and ask their friends to give than others rarely mentioning their family pet.

Comments

[Suzanne L. Seiter CFRE]

A significant point that your article does not address is the time and resources required by non-profits to set up and maintain social media networks. Most non-profits have limited people power and they need to calculate whether the ROI spent on social media is worth it. In nearly every case, the ROI spent by staff on identifying, cultivating and soliciting individual people of wealth will be much higher.

[Jenn Thompson]

Suzanne,
I definitely agree that measuring staff time and resources needs to be factored in but also hope that it's all part of setting reasonable expectations. And if you're measuring staff resources against just the donations that may or may not come in, I think you'll most often get a completely undervalued ROI. But if you factor in increases in awareness, however you want to look at # of new fans or friends or followers and then exposure to their networks, it's starting to look more realistic for what you're really getting. Overall though, I think the better opportunity for ROI is not to just spend a lot of time building a Cause/Fan/Group page, send messages out to those who connect and watch no money come in but to build the opportunity for community to grow and leverage existing networks to help build out the communities and make the asks for you. I think the ROIs related to enabling those friend asking friend asks will be much more reasonable when the staff resources are focused on that use of social networks.

[Lateef]

Through Facebook Causes - The Brigham and Women's Hospital received around $100,000 so far for their Cancer Prevention efforts - and another Cause dedicated to SIDS research only earned about $800 since I wrote an article on them in April -- but here's the kicker, their Cause's membership rose by about 25,000 people since April...that's more than 8,000 people per month. This statistic speaks for itself as to the potential for success on Causes - but it also solidifies the importance of a well-nurtured online community in general.

Here's my original article: http://www.gummyprint.com/posts/internet/fundraising-with-social-media-facebook-causes-and-others/