Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve seen the Ice Bucket Challenge. The ALS Association has said that they’ve received $41.8 million since it started as compared to $2.1 million during the same period last year, plus they’ve made it from 700,000 new donors. That’s an amazing increase in gifts.

Based on that, you can bet that all across America there are nonprofit leaders trying to figure out of they can make their own version of the ice-bucket challenge. Most won’t catch on–you can never truly predict what will go viral. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a shot.

Here are five lessons your nonprofit can learn from the Ice Bucket Challenge

1. Be interesting. The Ice Bucket Challenge was funny, quirky, easy to shoot with a smartphone, and something people were willing to do during the depths of summer, but probably wouldn’t have agreed to in early March. Finding something that gets people talking is hard, but if you do find it, it will really pay off. Here’s a tip though–the model of the “challenge” will have worn off within in months, if not weeks. Just like an email chain letter, pretty soon people will tire of new challenges from their friends.
2. Your friends and donors are your biggest supporters. To start a viral fundraising campaign, you need a core group of people to start with. ALSA had thousands of donors and friends willing to start this and tag their friends in videos. You might only have a handful, but you should start with them. It’s tempting to think that if you could get LeBron James or another famous person to take your challenge that you will succeed. But that’s the reverse of how it works. Celebrities come after people embrace your message, not before. Build from the ground up.
3. Make sure the tech is in place. Is your website ready to withstand several thousand visits in an hour? (Has it been updated since 2002?) Is your email program ready to capture emails? Some nonprofits get the cart before the horse. To go viral in today’s world, you have to be ready to cater to the online crowd. If people need to call in to give a donation, if they need to register for an event via email instead of a modern service like Eventbrite, this just isn’t going to work. Even the best idea will fall flat if you don’t have your ducks in a row on the technology side.
4. Awareness is often enough. Some people have held up their nose at the ALS ice bucket challenge as “slactivism” because only a few donations came in for ALS versus the number of people who posted ice bucket videos. Ignore the naysayers. As I write in my book, The Little Book of Gold: Fundraising for Small (and Very Small) Nonprofits, it’s very hard to tell people about your nonprofit and ask for money at the same time. ALSA found a way to do it, and good for them. But while the money they’ve raised is nice, the awareness they’ve built is probably just as useful for future fundraising efforts. In other words, getting people to pay attention to you is hard. Even if the money doesn’t come, getting noticed is often prize enough.
5. Don’t break the bank trying to go viral. Going viral is very hard. So don’t plan for it and budget to have twenty times your regular donations, just because it worked for ALSA. Remember, if your pitch doesn’t go viral, it was still a creative way to ask for donations from your current donors, which is a pretty good result at the end of the day.

The Internet rewards efforts like these, when thought and care has been put into them. They don’t have to be national or international to get noticed either. Sometimes just getting a good percentage of people in your local community to change their Facebook profile picture to an image you suggest will tip the scale.

If your nonprofit has ever had a campaign go viral, email me. I’d love to hear more about it and possibly feature it on this site!