I recently began volunteering with Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE) to promote the 2014 Baltimore FARE Walk, which will raise money for food allergy research and advocacy. Because of this, I’ve been reflecting on social media strategy for fundraising and nonprofit advocacy.
The main challenge for a fundraising event or nonprofit advocacy project using social media is to balance relevant, interesting content with calls to action. If your tweets are all educational content, no one will donate. If they are all calls to donate, people will stop paying attention.
Even those who, for whatever reason, won’t donate or participate directly can still spread your message. Just as with media outreach, building relationships must be the backbone of your social media strategy. There are so many worthy causes. Not everyone can or will give you a significant amount of their time or money right now. But they may nonetheless read and share meaningful information about your cause, helping you to reach a larger audience. People who are just followers now may stick around and become more involved later, if you consistently deliver more than just demands for money.
Some strategies to consider:
Interact with your community
Depending on your organization, this may be a geographic community or a community bound by a particular characteristic. Often, it is both. For example, the Baltimore FARE Walk team uses Twitter to interact both with the Baltimore community and the larger food allergy community. This takes a variety of forms. Locally, it has included highlighting allergy-friendly restaurants that sponsor our fundraiser, and promoting other Baltimore events that may be of interest to our audience. We follow elected officials and reporters in the area. We also follow a network of bloggers, allergists, dietitians, advocacy organizations and more around the world and regularly share and respond to their content.
Share educational content
Your organization can create value for your followers by promoting educational content, some of it self-generated and some of it from other sources. Self-generated content might take the form of blog posts sharing more information about how the money you raise is used and who it benefits. Or, try using graphics to highlight relevant statistics.
Also share top content from experts in your field. For the Baltimore FARE Walk, we have shared pieces on new medical research, allergy-friendly recipes and blogs about raising kids with multiple food allergies.
Remember, you are the fundraising expert
Most of the people who get involved in your efforts will not be full-time fundraisers. As such, it’s your job to help people brainstorm good ways to contribute or get involved. Present a range of fundraising ideas. Not everyone will be able to get involved at the same level, but every contribution of time or money is valuable to your cause.
Also be sure to highlight top fundraisers and sponsors. Not only will this direct more people to your fundraising site, it can get your message to a larger audience if these people and organizations share your post on their own pages.
Make use of the new pinned tweet feature. Pin a call to action to the top of your page, and anyone who finds your tweets and takes a look at your profile has a clear way to get right to the fundraising portal.
Over time, your organization can develop your social media strategy based on what drives engagement and contributions for your specific organization.
______
Combine your social media strategy with top-notch media outreach, and start identifying reporters who cover your field.
