Can you fundraise over social media? Can you both market and fundraise at the same time?

It’s so tempting. Some of the largest nonprofits can successfully blend these two. They put up billboards with messages that read something like: “Text this number to donate $10 to us!”

Or, on Twitter or Facebook, we push giving opportunities at the end of the year. Sometimes these things go viral, like the famous Ice Bucket Challenge a decade ago.

Good for them.

I will keep banging the drum that what works for big guys, won’t always work for the rest of us. We don’t have the money for billboards and it’s hard to plan on going viral.

So how best to use these platforms in our fundraising?

Know before you start: fundraising over social media converts terribly

Thousands of followers might only yield you a handful of donations. If that. It’s just an incredibly hard way to fundraise. People are scrolling. They see your message between updates from a childhood friend and a beloved aunt. You have to really stand out to get them to leave their social media app and go through the steps to make a payment. Of course, it’s hard.

You have to show up before you ask.

It’s at least a little bit easier if you understand that social media rewards consistency. If you show up every fall to post an ask but then let the account lie dormant until the next time you need money, you’re unlikely to make any headway. Think about it this way: months of consistent posting is what earns you the chance that someone will stop scrolling and consider giving you a gift for the first time.

There are some limited exceptions when social media can convert well.

When the need is great (not your nonprofit’s need, but the community’s need) social media will do better. Giving shot up during the pandemic because everyone intuitively understood the need. But you can’t always wait for outside circumstances to change.

You can also get social media to convert better when you can be nimble enough to grab onto a current trend.

I have had a Twitter fundraising campaign hit perfectly. The nonprofit raised several thousand dollars in a few hours. But that’s because we’d put in the time and I saw the opportunity that only existed in that moment. We stood up a special giving form and tweeted it that night, 90 minutes after I spotted the opportunity. Waiting a day wouldn’t have worked. So if you are extremely online, you might see these opportunities. But it requires even more understanding of the culture of the social media platform you’re on. You won’t just stumble into it.

Consider special one-time projects

Some nonprofits have found success with highly targeted campaigns on social media. Trying to raise $500 for a certain item or idea might do better than a broad request to support your nonprofit. First-time donors can respond well to those kinds of requests if they are compelling. And then you get them into your system! Now you have a relationship with them outside of social media.

A better goal: converting social media followers to email subscribers

Think about marketing and fundraising like a series of concentric rings:

• In the center, the smallest ring, are the people closest to you: your board and your best donors.
• The next ring out are other good donors and your volunteers.
• Next: one-time event donors and lapsed donors. They’re close but not that close.
• Beyond that are non-donors. They’re on your emails or you have their address but no history of donations.
• And beyond that are the social media followers.
• In the next, much larger ring, are people who know of you, but don’t follow you anywhere.
• And then there’s an even larger ring of people who would like you if they heard of you.
• Finally, there’s the massive ring that encompasses “the general public.”

It looks something like this:

The problem is that in both marketing and fundraising, the temptation is to focus on the outermost ring.

If you’re asking, “What if we could just get everyone in town to give us $10?” that’s a sign you’re too focused on the general public.

Or in marketing, if you’re trying to reach everyone, you’re likely reaching no one. It’s like setting up a lemonade stand on the side of a freeway.

It’s too hard of a challenge.

Break it up into smaller problems.

What could you do to move everyone in one level?

What could you do to encourage your social media followers to join your email newsletter?

What could you do to get your email subscribers to attend events or become donors? (In other words, get the primary relationship off of email).

What could you do to get small donors to step up their donation?

How could you bring your good donors even closer?

And so on.

Something more like this:

Small discrete actions moving people one step closer. These are much easier problems to tackle than “how do we get everyone to find out about us?” or “how do we get everyone to give us money?”

You might discover a good donor lurking in your social media followers. And it’s great when they can jump a few rings at a time! But don’t count on it. Build systems to bring people closer along this path:

• Audience
• Follower
• Email Subscriber
• Event Attendee, or another kind of real-world relationship. (Somewhere in here is the fuzzy line between marketing and fundraising.)
• Donor
• Major Donor

The other exciting thing here is that if you do a good job with communications on your newsletter, you throw good events, and you practice good stewardship with your donors, your community starts acting as ambassadors on your behalf, amplifying all your systems.

It’s a powerful model.