Social Networking and Free Fundraising IdeasFacebook, Twitter and Widgets – Oh My! Don’t let the social networking terminology deter you from this fast growing avenue for free fundraising ideas. It’s time to jump on and understand why this approach should be part of your organization’s overall development strategy. Fundraising is all about telling many people about your mission and reaching them where they are – and right now many are networking online. The reach of member communities, which includes social networking and blogging sites, increased 5.4 percent in active reach in the past year, according to a Nielsen report. Nielsen Online has NetView panels in the United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Australia. Just from these countries alone, there was incredible growth of 18% of time spent online between December 2007 and December 2008. That number is significant but what’s mind blowing is the time people are spending online in these member communities. According to the Nielson Online report this number exploded 63% to 45 billion minutes. In the case of Facebook, time increased by a mammoth 566%, from 3.1 billion minutes in 2007 to 20.5 billion minutes in 2008. These communities even beat “email” once seen as the new frontier just a few short years ago, in active reach by December 2008, according to the survey. So, you know this “technology” is worth looking into but if you need some clear definitions of what these things actually are here are the basics: Facebook is a free social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, pictures, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Most importantly…people can join “causes” (your non-profit organization) or support individual fundraising efforts. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Tweet to your constituents about your organization’s great work, inform them of an upcoming fundraiser, call for volunteers – it’s positively tweet-a-rific! Widgets – a widget is anything that can be embedded within a page of HTML (in other words a web page). A widget adds some content to the page that is not static. Generally widgets are originated by third parties but they can be homemade. Embeddable chunks of code have existed since the early development of the web. For purposes of raising funds: widgets can be associated with different campaigns within your website or direct people to your website from another location, like Facebook. Go on – it’s time to step into this new reality for raising money and awareness. The great thing about these tools is that they are virtually free and in the case of Facebook and Twitter, completely free. Don’t think of abandoning traditional methods of course. But consider how social networking can enhance your overall strategy, by bringing fresh free fundraising ideas, attracting new audiences and potentially new donors!
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