With the COVID-19 pandemic halting in-person fundraising events, nonprofits have to think outside the box when it comes to fundraising in 2021. With this in mind we wanted to highlight some tips and tricks nonprofits can use to fundraise through social media, because, let’s face it we’ve all been spending A LOT of time on our phones lately.
Let’s get down to business
Make sure your nonprofit Instagram account is marked as a business account. This allows you to access certain features that a personal account won’t. A business account also provides you with insights into your performance and audience, useful information as you get more sophisticated in your campaigns.
Facebook Charitable Giving Tools
Facebook has resources that can help you create immediate actionable steps for your audience. Once you’ve switched your Instagram account into a business account, make sure to sign your organization for Facebook’s Charitable Giving Tools. This will allow you to sync up your Facebook and Instagram fundraising efforts. Once you’ve signed up you should set up these simple one-click ways to fundraise:
- Set up a donate button on both Facebook and Instagram. It’s an easy place to direct people when posting.
- When you’re posting stories, add a donate sticker. This allows people to donate with just a few clicks. Make sure when you create your stories, you tell people what the money is going tobe used for.
Set-up Shop
If your nonprofit sells things, like apparel or tickets, set up a shop in your instagram profile. This allows you to link your posts directly to a shop, making it easy on your audience to purchase.
Make it a thing
If you have a specific campaign you are raising money for, utilize Facebook to create a fundraising page. It’s shareable and shows the fundraising progress.
Content tips
Having engaging content is key to getting likes, shares and ultimately donations.
- Quantify It: Create content that shows your audience what their donations actually do. If your platform is youth education, calculate how many dollars it goes to support one child through your program and create a post around it. For example, a $10 donation supports one child’s tutoring program for a month.
- Matching: This sometimes gets overlooked but it’s important to remind your social audience that some companies will match employee donations.
- Videos: These are a great way to put a face behind a cause. Whether it’s a staff member, beneficiary of your non-profit or volunteer. With cell phones, it’s easy to capture a short video (under one minute is ideal) to rally support, thank or update followers. Instagram stories are also a great place to upload a short video.
- Graphics: Great imagery always catches the eye. Posts photos of the impact your nonprofit is creating. If you’re asking people to take action, don’t hesitate to include it in your graphic. Keep text to a minimum with the call to action for example “Donate are matched today!” “Fundraiser on Thursday” and provide more details in the body of the post. Use third party apps like Canva or Adobe Spark to create easy graphics that are visually appealing.
Use your network:
Word of mouth is the best tool a marketer can have. As your in-person engagement with your supporters may be at a minimum due to the pandemic, it doesn’t mean you can’t ask them to show up for your organization in other ways.
- Brand Ambassadors: If you have the resources or connections, find local and micro influencers who are passionate about your cause to support your nonprofit. Ask them if they’d like to get involved and/or ask them to post about your nonprofit to their audience. In exchange highlight them as your champions on your platforms.
- Sharing is caring: Send an email to your network or volunteers, partners, past supporters and board members so they can help spread the word. Make it easy for them by providing the tools they need to create a post on your behalf:
- Graphics for all social platforms
- Copy for the post
- Tags & Hashtags to include
- Link to where people can donate
Following these tips is a great start to get your social media fundraising off the ground, but if you should need any help, feel free to reach out. We specialize in community-based, socially-impactful marketing and we’d love to lend a hand.
