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When was the last time you were approached by a stranger in the store asking for you to donate to a cause they cared about? Well, sure – it does happen. Especially around the holidays or for local events, but how often do you respond? For many people, the decision to give money is influenced by our peer networks and personal experiences. That’s why social media can be a valuable component of your online fundraising strategies. After all, it’s called “social” media for a reason!

You can think about online engagement as throwing a house party. Your website is your kitchen, where you can prepare the snacks, make the punch, and arrange all the utensils; in other words, that’s where you can create and store all your content. The social channels you set up are the various rooms in the house where guests gather, certain groups sticking together in certain rooms just as your community naturally segments across the web.

You can then offer up snacks and drinks or even start conversations or games based on who is in the room and what they might enjoy, just like you do when you share certain content on certain online profiles based on the sub-groups in your community engaging on each platform.

Social media, the place where you get to hang out with your party guests, is the social space where you not only connect with those you know, but you get to make introductions and meet new people. It’s your chance to have direct conversations with supporters, fans, and donors – conversations that happen in public so many more people can learn about and engage with you.

How does this support online fundraising? Social media is the place where you can change a donation ask from a stranger into a call to action from a friend. This is the space where you can equip your supporters with your message and help them carry your campaign to their own networks.

Here are three ways you can start using social media in your campaign today.

Find the Influencers: Social media is a great resource for identifying the champions in your community. For example, start following the common hashtags, watch for popular retweets on Twitter, and check out the commonly shared images and liked Pages on Facebook. You will start to see certain people and organizations rise to the top. Even if they don’t have big follower numbers, if they are the ones people in your community listen to and respond to, they are influencers. Invite them to participate in your campaign and share your call to donate.

Track the Flow: use social media to track how your campaign is being talked about and where the talking is taking place. Whether you’ve indicated a campaign- specific hashtag or not, use Bit.ly to check for those sharing your website or campaign uRl on Twitter and then see what the tweets say. check your website analytics to see which social platforms are sending traffic to your campaign page and follow the links to the people sharing your content.

Share the spotlight: Social media is an easy tool to use to say thank you to supporters and donors in public. By sharing recognition publicly, in real time, you can give people a feeling that you are excited for their contribution and see them standing out in the crowd. It also encourages others to participate when they see that the organization is there, interacting, and really engaging.

Those are just three ways to get started, but there are endless possibilities for building relationships, establishing trust, and truly engaging your community through social media to join your campaign.

Get the full ebook at: https://www.blackbaud.com/npexperts

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Constant Contact Survey Reveals Social Media is a Critical Marketing Tool for Event Planners; Usage Expected to Increase | Business Wire – "A new survey from Constant Contact® finds that social media marketing has become a critical marketing tool for small businesses and nonprofits planning events, with 77% of event planners currently using social media to market their events, and another 14% planning to do so in the next year. The survey also reports that event planners still rely heavily on email marketing, online event marketing tools, websites, and print advertising to promote their events, indicating that traditional forms of event marketing still play an essential role in promoting an event." Get the free ebook "The State of Event Marketing" at: http://img.constantcontact.com/docs/pdf/EVM-EBOOK.pdf
• Upgrading Voter Registration – "Approximately 24 million active voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or have significant inaccuracies, according to the Pew Center on the States. Research in Pew's report, Inaccurate, Costly, and Inefficient, underscores the need for registration systems that better maintain voter records, save money, and streamline processes. This is an effort that eight states are spearheading with Pew’s support." Registering people to vote, so long as you allow anyone to register for any party and do not advocate for specific voting actions, is not outside your 501c3 status. I really wish more organizations included voter registration efforts in their community work!
• What We Talk About When We Talk About Digital Activism | The Meta-Activism Project – "Usually when we talk about digital activism we talk about concrete anecdotes (the Arab Spring, the 2012 presidential race, the Koman/Planned Parenthood blow-up) or abstract trends (slacktivism, cyber-war, hacktivism).  What we rarely talk about is how we talk about digital activism: Is our focus in the right place? Do we know what we’re talking about? Are we being honest?"
• Jillian C. York » The Arab Digital Vanguard: How a Decade of Blogging Contributed to a Year of Revolution – This is a terrific piece from Jillian York – a must read on digital activism! "This article was first published in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs Vol. 13 Issue 1 (Winter/Spring 2012), “Language, Identity and Politics” and is re-published here with permission."
• The Age of Mobile Email Has Arrived. Are You Ready? | NTEN – "What if you found out that one-quarter of your subscribers were reading your emails on their mobile phones? There’s a good chance they already are. (And if they’re not, they will be soon!) As of November 2011, 89.6 million Americans are using their mobile phones to access their work or personal email. That's an increase of 28% in the last year alone."

Download the free ebook 7 Habits of Effective Personal Fundraisers

Here’s an excerpt and overview of the 7 Habits:

1. Personalize your fundraising
The most effective online fundraising campaign is a personal one. The most effective fundraisers use their personalities to promote their campaign as well as personal stories. Your relationships with your friends, family and coworkers are compelling enough reasons for your network to give to your cause.

2. Use multiple ways to raise awareness
Reach out to your personal network of friends, family, and co-workers. A personalized email is the best way to get donations. Social media is helpful to reach new audiences, too.

3. Keep up the human connections
Helping other people connect with the cause and need by focusing on being human. Meet people face-to-face to help them understand your passion for and commitment to the cause.

4. Emphasize how everyone can make a difference
Show that even small contributions will amount to big, tangible results. Let donors know exactly where their money is going and how much of a difference it makes.

5. Your cause is worth the effort
Getting donations for a cause isn’t easy. You’ll have to persevere through some dry spells and be assured that your efforts matter (because they really do!).

6. Remind others to contribute
Update and share progress with friends and family. This is an opportunity to remind others of your fundraising progress and how they can help.

7. Be appreciative
Always thank your donors and supporters! They want to be recognized and your appreciation goes a long way.

A big thank you to Rob Wu for including me in this resource!

What other habits, tricks, tips or trade secrets for personal fundraisers do you have? Would love to hear any other resources or tools you recommend!

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Nonprofits and Location-Based Services – "This past week Noland Hoshino of [B]Cause media was kind enough to give a presentation on Location-Based Services (LBS) at a PDXTech4Good event. The presentation covers a good bit of why nonprofits should care about LBS and then gets into some solid examples and tips for a few of the major platforms."
• Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog – "Nonprofit marketing is only worth doing if your aim is to get people to do something. Raising awareness isn’t enough. So make sure you have all the elements of a strong call to action…" I really like Katya's list of 5 elements to a great call to action. But, I also have a few that I would add – what about you?
• sparking creativity through cognitive distance – "I had the opportunity to speak earlier this week at the Innovators Improv. It’s a monthly gathering that brings together a variety of interesting folks from the community to share experiences, discuss questions, and raise ideas on a range of topics. I was invited to talk about “Sparking Creativity“. I wanted to share my talk as I think we all benefit from the opportunity to spark creativity in our everyday lives."
• 2011 Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami – Find news, follow real time content, get official warnings and information, and much more on the earthquakes and tsuanmi that hit Japan, and the tsunami watches in effect around the Pacific. There's also a "people finder" tool and information numbers to call. I'm really excited to see Google support crisis information in this way and hope that nonprofits can work with Google to identify ways we can integrate responder information as well as donation and other support mechanisms into the site.
• A think tank for the ages creates Goodness Engine – Microsoft Unlimited Potential Blog – Site Home – TechNet Blogs – Working with DonorsChoose.org, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, Google, Microsoft, REI, and WebTrends discussed how to most effectively use online tools and processes for maximum impact. The result? A free eBook called the “Goodness Engine: Driving Greater Social Impact in the Digital World” has been created to help other nonprofits learn about a whole range of topics from driving online traffic to creating dynamic content and managing online engagement.
• YouTube – goodwork’s Channel – "Through Good Work, YouTube is matching up nonprofits with expert creatives around the world, asking them to make video ads for nonprofits like yours. The best video ads, as selected by an esteemed judging panel of ad executives and Nonprofit sector leaders, will be featured at a showcase at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival and linked from the YouTube homepage, providing a huge amount of exposure for both the creatives and the nonprofits."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• FT.com / Weekend columnists / Tim Harford – Perhaps microfinance isn’t such a big deal after all – "Last December, I showed some unwitting prescience by worrying about a backlash against microfinance, the practice of providing small loans – or perhaps savings products or insurance – to poor people. I fretted that there was little compelling evidence that it worked. A year later, the evidence is arriving and the backlash has begun. The Boston Globe published an article in September, subtitled, “Billions of dollars and a Nobel Prize later, it looks like ‘microlending’ doesn’t actually do much to fight poverty.” " – I'm interested to hear what you all think about this issue, especially now during the 'giving season.'
• Open Source Is Dead! Long Live Open Source! | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network – "That's right, I said it. Promise to read the rest of this before you send me hate mail, though. What I mean is that open source, as we knew it, is dead. For the last decade, what we've been talking about when we say "open source" is "open code" — a set of zeroes and ones that we can configure to our heart's desire."
• Net2 Think Tank Round-Up: Best of 2009 | NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoupGlobal.org – Check out the diverse submissions to the December Net2 Think Tank that simply asked for the best blog posts of 2009! I'm sure there are some resources, conversations and pointers in here that are new to everyone.
• What Matters Now eBook – Get the ebook now for free! "We want to shake things up. More than seventy extraordinary authors and thinkers contributed to this ebook. It's designed to make you sit up and think, to change your new year's resolutions, to foster some difficult conversations with your team."
• Orchestras and Social Media Survey: Key Findings and Full Report | Dutch Perspective by Marc van Bree – "In short, the survey found that social media activities, familiarity and usage seem to be widespread among orchestras. Managers find social media important and organizations are generally enthusiastic. However, the efforts are far from organized and strategic. It seems many orchestras are dipping their feet in the social media pool, but do not have the policies, budgets, and metrics in place to effectively use the tools at their disposal, even if they do recognize the need for checks and balances."