'Tis the Season for Online Giving - Cause Communications

At Hershey Cause Communications, we’re committed to helping our clients achieve their goals and be more successful. This often includes helping nonprofits meet and exceed their fundraising goals. As development pros know, the holidays are a time when people are in a giving mood, so it can be a great time for causes to make a case for their share of the good cheer that’s in the air. One great way to keep the funds rolling in with relatively minimal input of organizational resources is to leverage web and social media-based tools to capture attention and get financial support for your cause.

Here are some of our favorite tools and programs you can use this season.

AmazonSmile

AmazonSmile is a free program available to 501(c)(3) organizations year round. When shoppers arrive at smile.amazon.com they are asked to choose an organization to support. From there, they shop as usual and 0.5% of all their spending goes to the organization they chose. There is no additional cost to the purchaser, and, once registered, purchasers are reminded to visit smile.amazon.com – and make another contribution to their cause – each time they come back to the site. Payments are made via direct transfer on a quarterly basis to the bank account you provide when registering.

If you want to make AmazonSmile part of your overall fundraising strategy, go to org.amazon.com and click “get started.” All you need is your name or EIN number and a check or bank statement (to verify the account). Then make sure to share the information with your supporters. Amazon makes it easy for you by providing images and links that you can use in email newsletters, on your website or in social media posts. They also have a downloadable banner you can put on your website and sharing widgets to reach your Facebook and Twitter followers. All of this is housed in the “Marketing Tools” section of org.amazon.com.

Once you’re registered you can also apply to be included on the smile.amazon.com homepage as a Spotlight Charity. Simply sign in to org.amazon.com, then click the “Help” link at the top of the page, then under “General Program Information”, select the “Spotlight Charities” link to access the application form.

We’ve signed up. Our nonprofit arm, Cause Communications, provides free tools and resources – including our famous Communications Toolkit and Cause Clarity videos and worksheets – to help increase the communications capacity of the nonprofit sector, if you’d like to support Cause Communications while you shop use our link here or choose “Cause Communications” at smile.amazon.com

Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday, otherwise known as #GivingTuesday, is the Tuesday following Thanksgiving. This year it falls on Tuesday, December 1. The campaign was conceived as a way to shift the focus of the holiday season from shopping-oriented occasions like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, to giving.

Giving Tuesday is huge for donations – $45 million in 2014 – but it does come with a few caveats, especially for smaller orgs. First, that large fundraising haul is divided amongst more than 15,000 nonprofits, which makes the average a much more modest $3,000. Plus, given that the largest portion of that total goes to bigger and more well-known nonprofits, smaller nonprofits likely bring in less than the average.

But Giving Tuesday is a worthy concept and a hot topic of conversation. The exposure that comes with being part of that conversation can be beneficial if it’s part of a broader fundraising and communications strategy (and if you already have an online giving tool established). And who knows – with the right messaging, your cause might just catch fire and knock #GivingTuesday out of the park!

If you’re interested in participating in Giving Tuesday here are some tips to do it right.

Use the weeks leading up to Giving Tuesday to engage with your potential donors, sharing information about your organization’s cause, mission and impact. Show how your organization is making a difference and make it personal with stories of those who have benefitted from your services.

Use a metric that is based on impact, rather than dollars. If people understand what their money is being used for it can make donating feel more fulfilling. Instead of saying we’ve raised $5,000, add that it means 25,000 hot meals for the homeless.

Consider social media to be just one of the tools in your toolbelt. Email, letters, dedicated space on your website and paid advertising are all great ways to communicate with potential donors.

Keep your expectations for donations modest, but use social media and #GivingTuesday to get some attention and drive people to your site. Plan for what they will see once they arrive; make sure the content is informative and compelling. And of course, do your best to collect email addresses because email is a great fundraising tool that you can use later.

Be sure all of your social media posts include a call to action and a link to the donation page on your site.

Know your donors. Did you know 30% of traffic to donation pages on Giving Tuesday comes from Facebook and that 17% of all donations processed by Blackbaud were made on mobile devices? Be sure that your donation page on your site is mobile friendly and that your Facebook page is helping direct people to the giving page on your site. You may even want to consider some paid ads on Facebook, at least for this one day.

Facebook’s Donate Now Button

Did you know that if your Facebook page is set up as a nonprofit organization you can quickly and easily add a “donate now” button? The button is simply a link to your website’s donation page, so you must already have a fundraising system on your website.

Follow these instructions to set it up. At the top of your Facebook page (next to the like button) you should see a call to action button. If you’ve already set one up you might see something like “sign up” or “contact us”; if you haven’t set something up you will see “create call to action.” Use the dropdown menu and choose “edit call to action” if you already have one, then choose “donate now.” Then simply include the link to the donation page on your website and save. Be sure to test the button.

Make sure the donation page on your website is mobile compatible since over 1 billion of Facebook’s active users access it from their mobile device.

Hershey Cause Communications provides clients with strategic counsel on communications, social media strategy, fundraising, capital campaigns and more. If you’re interested in learning more about our services contact Nishith Bhatt at nbhatt@causecommunications.com

‘Tis the Season for Online Giving