How Social Media Drives Fundraising for Nonprofits

Social media has seen increasing adoption in our society and become a key component of fundraising for nonprofits. Fundraisers know the role social-media users play in raising money during crises and key events, but how social media provides these results has been a bit ambiguous. However, there are social scoring services to help nonprofits identify and categorize their social-media constituents.

Social-media users are very different in their online interactions. Identifying and understanding social-media constituents and influencers based on levels of interactions and the amount of influence they have in their networks has been difficult.

With social scoring, organizations now can discover which constituents use social media and engage them more effectively, integrate joint e-mail and social-media campaigns more effectively, and identify influencers and have them help "friendraise." This allows organizations to identify their most "socially connected" constituents and create opportunities to position themselves in mutually beneficial relationships.

4 social-media types
Using Blackbaud's Social Scoring, for instance, you can identify four categories of social-media users within your database: key influencers, engagers, multichannel consumers and standard consumers.

Key influencers: These are the people who make up about 1 percent of social-media users. They belong to all three major networks — Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — and drive many conversations. They have the ability to influence people within their networks and those outside their networks, have high call-to-action ratios, and if they know about you and care about you, they will help you achieve your goals.

Engagers: These are the people who make up about 5 percent of social-media users. They belong to all three major networks; generate unique posts, shares and comments; drive 80 percent of all the content and conversations; and share information and contribute significantly to the viral spread of messages.

Multichannel consumers: These are the people who make up about 45 percent of social-media users. They have known, active presences on at least two major networks, and although they do not often influence others socially, they are still critical for advocacy and other calls to action because they have high potential to engage in specific campaigns that resonate with them.