Social Ch@nge

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I will give you some actual nuts and bolts, but let me first say this: all good online fundraisers have two basic directions they work in - in and out. ‘In’ is a webpage, where people visit you. ‘Out’ is as in reaching out, through emails, smsing, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook etc etc etc. You are aiming for flow between the two directions. Because - just like all really successful fundraising - this is not so much about asking a bunch of people for money. Actually, it’s about a personal exchange - exactly what the internet was made for. Hold that thought, here come the nuts and bolts…

Inviting people to come to you: The Web page

Your web page is, first of all, personal - this can mean a lot of things but at the very least it has a picture of you on it and it has a statement from you about why you are involved in this fund raiser. It has a giant, easy to find donations link or button (see ‘Surfer, Can You Spare A Dime?’ if you are stuck for how to do this). It is also easy to update. The best templates update your donations as soon as someone donates so that they see instantly what a difference their donation made. Better ones allow donors to choose whether or not their names show on your pages. Some also allow the donors to post messages to you.

Some mainstream fundraisers provide you with all of this - for example, the Walk for Life or the Weekend to End Breast Cancer. These fundraisers also let you start teams - essentially social networks of people you know all working together to raise a certain amount of money (the team goal).

If you do not have the ways and means to do all this, relax. It is fairly easy to jury rig these elements on something like Facebook. The only thing you’ll be missing is that giant progress thermometer that every mainstream fundraising page has, and we’re all sick of those anyway - finding a more personal way to update people is always better. I’d even vote for scribbling your results on a white board in an amusing way and making that your cover picture every day. Hook this up so your progress photo instantly updates to a new photo when you get a donation and you’re golden - though you will need a geekier friend than I for this, it can be done.

Reaching Out

The other essential online fund raising tool is, of course, email. And Twitter. And Facebook. And MySpace, but you get the picture. This is the bit where you are reaching out to your friends, so whatever you do, make it personal and do not waste their time. For me, this means:

- making sure my cause is credible. Actually do the research. Get some stats (Better: get some outrageous stats!) Get some quotes. Show your friends that you care about this issue, and that you are a smart choice in terms of doing something about this issue. They are already convinced you are a good person, so you’re halfway home.

- this also means personal emails. A personal email is NOT this email:

“Hello. You have been invited to support (your friend who didn’t care enough to write you an email) in the Extremely Good Cause Walk on Sept 26! Did you know this Extremely Good Cause is Awfully Important?”

Cue donate button!

Wretched.

Instead, if you write me an email and you tell me what you are up to these days, and you mention this fund raiser you’re involved in and you tell me this outrageous stat that got you interested in it in the first place and you link your web page up to me - I am going to donate to you. Especially if you have put an ambitious goal on your page, one that makes me think that you will never ever make this goal if I do not give you a respectable donation. (If you like these things laid out: ambitious is over a $1000)

- If you are panicking right now about hundreds of catch up emails…. no. For this reason, BCC was invented. That’s the button above ’send’ that allows you to send an email to a group without the group members seeing that they are part of a list. Because I hate large group cc’d emails and you do too.

- Regularly update people by email. If they gave you money, they want to know how it’s going, especially if it’s looking a bit tense as to whether you’ll reach your ambitious goal. If they did not give you money, you’ll want to be giving them more chances to donate. Send at least three rounds. One to introduce your fund raiser, one halfway through, and one in the terrible last minutes before you do whatever it is you are doing to raise money.

- Three rounds? I meant four rounds, because you must send thank you notes. Immediately. And send them after the event as well, with links to pictures of you doing your fund raiser. People gave you money because they believed in you, and you owe it to them to show them what you did.

That’s the basics. Now, back to ‘fundraising is not actually about asking a bunch of people for money’.

It is actually about telling your donors a story. This story is about the kind of person they are, and the kind of good person you are. When you make it personal and tell people why you are doing this, you are telling people about your values. You do this because your friends share these values, and they think you are a good person - and you are asking them personally to help you find a cure, end the war, feed the kids.

Whatever it is you care about - let it be an exchange. Let your friends write you congratulations, let them worry with you about whether you can climb the mountain, make over a $1000, swim the strait. Let them receive thank-notes and pictures. This is a story about you and them, so make it a good one.