When planning your nonprofit fundraising strategy, don’t overlook the power of social media platforms to increase donations. According to Classy.org, Facebook alone drives a staggering 83.4% of traffic to fundraising campaigns, making it a critical component of any successful fundraising strategy for foundations and nonprofits. By leveraging both organic and paid social media across platforms, you can further engage existing donors, reach new donors, drive website traffic, and increase donations. This Giving Tuesday, consider launching social media campaigns to support your fundraising efforts.
Here’s how to get started:
First, identify your campaign goals. Your nonprofit’s social media campaign can help with donor acquisition, donor retention, donor cultivation, and more. If this is your first time using social media advertising for your nonprofit, we recommend focusing on a single goal.
Once your goal is defined, establish your target audience, timeline, and budget. Review your previous campaign data, audience info, and organic content to inform these items. What types of users donated in the past? On average, how many touchpoints does it take to convert your donors? On which organic platforms do you see the highest engagement rates? Consider these questions and more.
If this is your first time using social media ads to support fundraising, you can use prediction tools in your social media ads manager of choice to give you a starting point. In your ads manager, enter any demographic data you have for your audience. The tool will provide an estimated audience size, daily reach, and minimum spend based on your parameters. Use those estimated metrics as a foundation for your campaign timeline and budget.
The most effective social media platforms for nonprofit fundraising will depend on your target audience, organization, and goals. When launching your campaign, look to your existing paid and organic platforms before exploring new ones. These accounts maintain relationships with a primed audience of potential donors. Your organic accounts can also boost your paid campaign performance. For example, Meta can use information about your organic audience to better target audiences for your paid social media campaigns.
When your goals, audience, timeline, and budget are clearly defined, you are ready to craft content for your campaign. Begin by developing a range of messaging. Start with messages that educate users about your organization, then transition to content that highlights human stories and the impact of giving. Establish a schedule of supporting organic posts that emphasize storytelling.
If you are focusing your fundraising efforts on Facebook, take advantage of Facebook’s Nonprofit Manager. 501(c)(3) organizations can register to create a Facebook fundraiser or fundraiser challenge, post with a donate button, add a donate button to their profile, and share fundraiser creation links for easy peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns. Meta no longer takes a cut of these donations.
Before you launch your nonprofit marketing campaign, ensure you have the appropriate tracking in place to measure success. For paid ads, use tools like Google Tag Manager, pixels, and APIs. For organic campaigns, use UTM codes with your URLs to track traffic from campaign content to your website.
According to the 2020 Global Trends in Giving Report, 37% of online donors say that social media is the communication tool that most inspires them to give. Integrate these social media strategies into your next campaign to tap into this powerful resource for your nonprofit’s next fundraising effort and capitalize on major giving events like Giving Tuesday.
Need help getting started? Contact us.