tothepoint: Online Fundraising Changes to Make Now
What is special about you? The answer can't simply be that your programs need support. It must be that with your donor, together you can achieve a difference that no one else can.
5. CHANGE TO MAKE:
Switch up your messengers to attain social proof
Everyone (from your funders to your donors to your volunteers to your constituents) expects participation. No one wants to have you talk and tell; donors want you to listen and enable.
This is an enormous power shift. We are no longer the mission control of our message. Our supporters are building their own centers of control. When they talk about us, act on our behalf or, increasingly, raise money for us, they are creating millions of message outposts for our mission online.
Technology makes it easy to highlight nontraditional messengers. Your website, social media, e-mail outreach all can highlight voices other than your own. In addition, through features like tell-a-friend and personal fundraising pages or widgets, you can even put the fundraising message in the hands of these messengers.
6. CHANGE TO MAKE:
Think portable in all outreach
This is the year you need to think inside out in your online outreach. You've spent the past decade or so getting a website together and trying to drive people to it. Now is the time to drive the content on your site out into the Web — and not just through your own efforts but also through your supporters. Instead of looking at Facebook, Twitter, widgets and other tools as mechanisms for you to start conversations about your organization, also think of them as tools for your supporters. The ultimate power of these applications is not what they can do, but who is using them.
Every single thing you do has to include a way for people to take your message to their own circles of influence. You want people to pack up anything they like and transport it online.
