So's Your Face-

NY Social Media Roundtable, Social Media and Nonprofits Recap.

Today, I went to the Social Media Roundtable: Social Media for Nonprofits hosted by Kate Miltner with panelists Soraya and Rachel, among others. I promised work I would take notes so I did, 6 pages worth sprinkled with my thoughts and remarks on some of the things said. It was a great panel and the ladies did a great job explaining their successes and challenges of integrating fundraising with social media.

There was a guy there also; Knell, Social Media for Social Change. He was great also!

Allison and I have the most in common; we both come from a traditional nonprofit setting and have been online for a number of years.

The biggest takeaway from this was to actually hear about small ideas that through social media have become big movements for social good.

Goods for Good is such a fantastic idea and the way that Soraya and her media collective have built it largely through the use of new social media is something that colleges and nonprofits will study in the years to come.

But the big take away from this panel is this and I am basing this on my 8 years of experience in the field:

Soraya, Knell, and Rachel have a very unique nonprofit experience. Essentially, through social media, they have built a nonprofit, a mission, and an audience. And through this they have actually learned traditional fundraising and nonprofit ideology.

What I told my boss is that the nonprofit sector has been looking at the social media world all wrong. It’s not this new shiny creation that’s going to save the sector; it’s actually a re-packaging of traditional communication that has yet to demonstrate sustainability over time. For example, you can raise $1000 dollars over twitter but we have yet to see it made into a yearly successful campaign and that takes time.

Some great ideas thrown out:

Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr:

-engaging people via hash tags

-creating online events that turn into spontaneous bar meetups.

-using twitter to ask for time, not money

-event promotion

-activism

-it is a clear and quick way to give

-it’s a way to make the messaging “sexy” and make involvement interesting

-engaging small advertising agencies to do pro-bono work for your organization, I can’t name ours, but they are regularly mentioned on Mad Men and a top five agency. They do some major campaigns for us as well as volunteer. They genuinely care about our organization and we are grateful for their partnership.

A couple of things that were said on “new trends” that I want to expand on:

Statement: (Knell) traditional marketing techniques are coming into the nonprofit world.

Reality: Nonprofits have been utilizing traditional marketing techniques for about a decade. Typically, it takes time to build a donor database and to see results. It gets lost in the administrative and creatively buried because some things work and others don’t. Historically, nonprofits only release their results for external stakeholders if they look favorable. Trend wise, it seems it’s coming into the nonprofit world because now we are mastering traditional marketing techniques, we are integrating offline and online and we are seeing results. Ultimately, through trial and error, we are creating better strategies that appeal to our different audiences. see demographic note.

Statement: “micro” is the key word for 2009 and (implication that it was new to the nonprofit world)

Reality: Traditionally, Micro-giving is an international giving concept that connects donors with recipients in poor third world countries and allows them to give loans and grants for entrepreneurship. That’s at least one example

Secondly, what they defined as micro-giving is actually individual giving. Donor’s giving and organizations receiving smaller donations to aggregate (Rachel’s awesome word) for the greater good, i.e. unrestricted dollars (my term), nonprofits have programs such as these called monthly pledge partners. In some organizations, they are absolutely underutilized and definitely need to be re-imagined.

However, I think they had some great ideas to revamp what they termed micro-giving. Soraya suggested that a fund be set up to aggregate change from online buying (such as iTunes, Amazon) and later you can designate it to the charity of your choice. Soraya, you need to move on this idea, it’s brilliant.

Demographic: This was a huge discussion that came about and a lot of statements were thrown out about the demographic not mattering.

I disagree with this statement, as a fundraiser, demographic factors very highly in my appeals. I measure every appeal and communication I put out. Through the use of statistics, I segment my audience based on age, constituency code, gift, and response rates to create personalized appeals that have been successful since I have been here.

Prior to my employment, my agency had never looked at the demographic closely and used mass appeals for everyone. And to be honest, they weren’t that successful.

You should know you’re demographic and you should target them accordingly.

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I find it fascinating that nonprofits are thriving largely through their entrance through social media. It may be the future of new nonprofits, but I think ultimately they will have the same relationship problems that the old-timers have, sustainability. And they might have to incorporate traditional forms of communication.

After attending, I have learned that social media is a repackaging of traditional communication and that with a combination of traditional and new, we can build the right kind of relationships with donors.