Social Media? Using small wins to grow social media revenue

Date: September 2, 2014

Name: Social Media? Using small wins to grow social media revenue

Presenter: Shoni Field

This presentation is formed by Net2Vancouver and sponsored by TechSoup and Hive Vancouver. The primary objective of Net2Vancouver presentation is to share business knowledge in the non-profit organization perspective. The presenter is Shoni Field, the Director of Fundraising Innovation of BC SPCA. She implements many innovative strategies to help SPCA to increase revenue and donor base. This presentation will help organizations who are looking for online strategy to expand their revenue using social media.

Based on the current market trend, the online passive revenue is climbing dramatically from using social media; however, the spontaneous second gift rate is extremely low. The online active solicitations are under-performed, which shows there is no solid mechanism created for new donors and second gift rate contribution.

The symptom of social media is low engagement. Based on statistic, only 4.5% from 35,000 likes on Facebook have continued engagement. The success driving revenue through event registration is less than 3% of donors.

Shoni Field decides to shift the traditional model to innovative campaign model to improve the engagement of using social media. The campaign model includes the micro-site with goal thermometer, leader board, peer to peer capacity and social sharing. Field also implements new strategies to e-blast with their support lists and peer to peer fundraisers. Field redesigns the usage of media vehicles to capture new donors.

The campaign model has improved the online revenue. Field re-targets the model to make peer to peer as priority and create “home” page with goals, and it shows there is increased of visitors and new donors.

Field understands in average of 22% of gifts come from Facebook are guilt gifts. Roughly 66% of donations are from outside of the community. Organizations need to capture these donors information to improve their personal connection. In addition, Field uses contests and matching donation strategies to engage these potential donors.

Field emphasizes the key to increasing online revenue is to have “Home” for the campaign with goals. This will improve the personal connection to stimulate Facebook donors. The geographic is not the main factor in campaign, but organizations need to provide a reason for donors to prevent them converting to other giving platforms.

Most donors are giving their donation based on stories they are inspired. Donors are discomfort with making gifts to general. Field uses the tactic to release local stories to capture their emotion. Each story will have its own campaign page. When positive stories release, it raises social value and promote platform to fundraise for larger stories. Overall, Field has successfully increased the success rate of second gift and donor base.

Field suggests social media strategy must have quick gratification and clear impact. Organizations need to engage with donors when goals are met. The strategy needs to be about personal connection than transactional relationship with organization. In addition, organizations need to provide more comfortable sharing to their existing donors.