2013 NTC: How 2 Nonprofits Utilize Social-Media Data, Part 2

[Editor's note: This is part 2 of a two-part post. View part 1 here.]

At NTEN's 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference last week, four fundraising professionals discussed social data and what nonprofits should do with it, including how the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and CARE leverage their social data. Here is what Casey Golden, CEO of Small Act; Mark Davis, director of technical solutions at Blackbaud; Danielle Brigida, senior manager of social strategy and integration at NWF; and Ken Bess, manager of Web development at CARE, shared during their session, "We Heart Social Data: But What Do We Do With It?"

Attempting social integration
One of the things NWF explored was where to use social data. Brigida offered the following areas:

• Social engagement history in social media of the donor, related to your donor relationship management system
• Employer matching to reach out to find matching donations
• Sustainer gifts
• Local events and advocacy
• Major events, like NWF’s Green Ball gala

Integrating social media into events
NWF has what it calls Hike & Seek events nationwide. The goal is to get people outside to set a good example for children, and to raise awareness and support of children outdoor activities.

In order to do that, NWF wanted to identify and engage its key influencers on social media to help spread the word about Hike & Seek. But what Brigida noticed is that you need to include more than just key influencers because she found that key influencers also tend to be the busiest supporters. So she suggested using key influencers sparingly for when you really need them. In this instance, NWF tapped both key influencers and engagers to spread the word.

How? By allowing participants to send in photos and enter into a chance to win prizes.

The three goals were to get new participants, re-engaged lapsed donors and increase retention. While the results are still being tabulated, NWF is paying attention to how people engage with its content to identify those key influencers and engagers … and Brigida constantly examines that to better communicate with supporters on social media.

“It’s kind of creepy the way we’re monitoring it, but it’s creepy for good,” she joked.

Then at its inaugural Green Ball this year, NWF incorporated social engagement before, during and after the gala. Beforehand, NWF encouraged attendees to send in “green wishes” to be displayed at the ball. During the event, attendees were encouraged to tweet the green wishes and tweet about the event using the #GreenBall2013 hashtag. And after the event, there was some follow-up and analysis.

What NWF found is that people actually did tweet about the Green Ball. Brigida and her team weren’t’ sure that attendees would actually tweet during the event, but they did, utilizing the hashtag and all. Further, there was a higher level of engagers and key influencers at the event spreading the word. It proved that social media does have a real place in event fundraising.

“You can use social media to allocate resources and integrate it into campaigns,” Brigida said. “Going forward, we’re going to monitor the behavior of our social-media followers to see how the relationship goes.”

CARE
According to Bess, CARE is just starting to get a lot of its social programs going, but the social data so far has been invaluable to the organization. It began with what it called a “skunk works” project by the Web team with the goal to determine how many of its donors were on social media and then to increase social-media engagement appropriately from there.

What he found is that with the more than half a million active e-mails CARE had on its file, 100 percent of those e-mails were on social media as well. That proved to be extremely valuable because once CARE locked down its e-mail subscribers’ social accounts, it could conceivably cultivate those donors for the duration of their lives.

“The data is pretty straightforward. People don’t really change their social accounts, whereas they change e-mail accounts much more frequently due to new jobs, etc.,” Bess said. “So once you make that social-media connection, you got them.

“… And when people are socially engaged, they give more,” he added.

CARE is using this data to enhance its fundraising programs. Bess found that its donors on LinkedIn were the highest level of donors, with a higher lifetime value and higher average gift.

With that information, CARE has decided to take a look at major gifts through social media, changing the mind-set that major-giving prospects must be cultivated through traditional direct-response channels only. But, Bess cautioned, you shouldn’t only tailor your social messaging to major donors or current donors.

“The person who has given $0 is just as important as the major donor on social media, because they have an impact on those networks,” he said. “It’s just about messaging them in a different way. They can amplify your work and your messages.”

CARE has also started to integrate social media into its e-mails. E-mail is the lifeblood of CARE’s fundraising, sending 2 million e-mails a month, and, “If a campaign doesn’t have e-mail for us, it fails,” Bess said.

So it has been undergoing e-mail A/B tests, sending different versions or comparing results between e-mail donors vs. key influencers and engagers.

CARE is also testing how to modify its messaging through Facebook advertising to engage in a more personalized and powerful way.

Bess is still awaiting results, but he said the data is definitely helping CARE become better social-media stewards and better fundraisers. And he stressed that your organization can start doing this too.

“We’re just a four-people team, so anyone can do this,” he said. “It’s not scary. Just sit there and play with the data, and you’ll find invaluable information.”