Increasingly, people are looking for ways to connect with others in a meaningful fashion through social media. The days of simply having a long list of vaguely connected friends and posting updates about what music your are currently listening to are numbered. The trend is toward meaningful connections that translate into meaningful relationships.

The more interactive you allow your communication to become, the more dynamic it seems. And constant updates and activity encourage individuals to devote time to your communications and to return on a regular basis  — to see who has responded to their comment, to learn what others think, and to continue to be an advocate for your mission. This, however, requires some effort. Setting up a Twitter feed or a Facebook page is meaningless if you don’t have a clear plan for how you will use it and who will be responsible for ensuring the frequent updates required to keep these tools fresh and engaging. An online forum seems like a great idea. But it requires work to foster good conversation, moderate effectively, and, generally, keep things on a productive track.

It can be a little intimidating to open yourself to public comments from the public — everyone fears the inappropriate advertisement comment or the random person who leaves inflammatory comments. But online communication tools have become quite sophisticated and there is no reason to allow fear to silence your supporters. Everyone has dealt with these issues and the tools, policies and procedures are out there for you to take.

It is one thing for a person to feel that they are a donor to your organization. It is another, entirely more powerful thing, to have a person feel as if they are a part of your organization. It is so much easier than ever before to foster that sense of connection and community through online tools and social network media. All it takes is a little work, some courage, and a willingness to listen to others. Engaging supporters, building community, and taking the time to foster connections will pay off in both advancing the message of your organization and your fundraising.

Let’s look at a traditional way of soliciting entry-level gifts from donors: direct mail. In a direct mail campaign, a letter must be designed to have broad, non-specific appeal to as large a group of donors as possible. Segmentation based on donor interest is possible, but is very expensive and so must be limited to the broadest possible groupings. Letters are sent and the die is cast. Updates to the information in the letters would involve doubling the cost of the campaign. Donors respond (or don’t) – reminders are, like updates, expensive. Those donors who do respond are sent a thank you letter with, perhaps, some additional information. The cost of keeping the donor informed as things progress is prohibitive and so, generally, such contact is limited to quarterly newsletters and the like – and future solicitation letters.

In a social network fundraising system, however, a volunteer fundraiser selects a particular programmatic area that speaks to their concerns and values. Such program divisions are limited only by the imagination and mission of the organization. Keeping them modest and tangible helps donors understand how they can band with others to make a real difference. It is one thing to say that your organization wants to provide curricular enrichment for at-risk youth in under-performing schools. It is another to say that a donation of just $1,000 will allow you to provide one class of at-risk students with music education for two weeks. A single donor may not be able to give $1,000, but almost everyone can imagine that together with their friends and loved ones, they can raise that amount.

Once the fundraiser has identified a particular interest and selected a fundraising goal, they can make their own donation but equally important, they can share their passion for your cause with everyone they know, encouraging everyone to make their own contribution. In addition, they have identified their particular interest to your organization. It now becomes easy and cost-effective for you to send an e-mail to this volunteer fundraiser updating them on your efforts. You can let them know how fundraising is going, how close you are to your overall goal. You can send them links to pictures of the students with the musical instruments they made possible, for example. And, of course, you can encourage them to remind their friends and relatives that donations are still being accepted. All of this can be accomplished at relatively little cost.

Perhaps equally importantly, the next time your organization has a similar effort underway, you already have a proven network of volunteer, peer funraisers ready to go.

Connecting donors to the change in the world isn’t just about helping donors understand the importance of their generosity, it is also about helping those donors be as generous as possible.

You can discover a lot about what sort of social network might arise around your organization online by examining the blogs that cover similar material. You can also offer the bloggers access to your organization’s unique resources and insights – many will be enthusiastic about the opportunity to interview your staff by phone or through IM or email.

If you are using the 3G platform, you can also offer bloggers a way to put their influence in the community they have built to work creating change in the world. Like anyone else, a blogger can start a unique webpage to raise money for selected programs of your organization. Don’t underestimate the power of blogs to drive attention towards your organization and to raise money for selected causes.

And don’t be shy about reaching out to blogs that relate only tangentially to a particular program. For example, if you are raising money to buy soccer equipment for children in urban schools, don’t just hit up the “do-gooder” blogs related to education. Reach out to the soccer blogs as well.

Blogs provide you with a wonderful way to find new communities of individuals already aligned with your cause. Make allies with your bloggers and you’ll find it rewarding in many ways.

The main goal of a sign-in sheet is to get names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, for everyone at the event.  You can solicit these supporters again and engage them in your organization.  Here are some best practices that GGG recommends for every event:

• Have a standard sign-in sheet that you can copy and use. It looks more professional than a blank piece of paper.  If you don’t have one, feel free to take ours (Word | PDF); you’re welcome to edit it.  If you develop your own, here are a few tips we implemented on ours:
  • The top right of our sign-in sheet has a short inspirational message about why this is important.  This supports the goal of collecting data by helping people connect their signing in directly to helping the cause they’re supporting.  Otherwise, people may be disinclined to sign in, or may leave out information.
  • The ordering and spacing of columns is intentional.  We put e-mail address and phone number first, right after the name.  We’d like for everyone to fill in all the information, but if they’re going to leave something out, we’d like to capture the e-mail address.  We also made sure to leave plenty of physical space for people to write in e-mail addresses.

• A check-in table is a good way to get people’s information as they enter the event.  If you do a check-in table, it needs to be staffed (try using volunteers).  Plan the layout to manage traffic, and make sure people don’t take too long at the table, or attendees will start skipping sign-in.  You could have many sign-in sheets at one long table, with only one person staffing it.  Having people write name tags can be a nice touch, but also could be more time-consuming than it’s worth.

• Have volunteers or staff roam around the room with clipboards asking attendees to sign in.  (Buy clipboards! Having worked here and there in politics, I don’t know how anyone would ever get elected without clipboards.)

• “Prime” each physical sheet of paper by filling in one person’s information (yours, maybe, or a fictitious name) on the first line of every sheet.  This will encourage attendees to sign in below with their full information.  You’ll notice that if one person leaves out the e-mail or phone number at the top of a sheet, others will often follow suit.  Priming reverses this effect with an example line including full information.  It can’t hurt, and people will get the message that it’s an example line.  You can prime one sheet and then use photocopies of it for sign-in.  Be careful not to enter these priming lines into your database after the event - this is why I use a standard name, like Avery Allen or Judy Weiss.

With a good sign-in sheet and good management, you’ll leave the event with a gift that keeps on giving: an expanded database of supporters.  So don’t forget the sign-in sheets.  Your next big fundraiser or major volunteer leader might have just walked in the door!

E-mail and other online communication has a much greater sense of urgency and immediacy than direct mail. This can be advantageous when attempting to link a fund-raising effort to a current event. A non-profit can actually use a combination of web-based information, e-mail communication, and social networking tools to become a part of the news cycle from the point of view of their constituents. It gives every organization the ability to reach out to their constituency and make them feel a part of the events unfolding in their community or in the world as they happen. This can be a powerful fund-technique and when skillfully deployed can, correctly, give the impression of an organization responding deftly to unfolding circumstances.

The downside is that it is extraordinarily rare for any online communication to be set aside for future consideration. Response to online communications tends to be either immediate or non-existent. Direct mail, in contrast, “hangs around” and can be consumed and processed on the donor’s time schedule. Organizations that code their response slips so as to tie the reply to the appeal know that donors respond to appeals in a sort of bell-curve pattern with some seemingly writing checks as the letter carrier delivers the appeal and others apparently having filed the appeal for later consideration – sometimes delaying response by a year or more. Online communication, however, tends to either grab attention or vanish into the aether never to be considered again.

So, how do you grab attention? First and foremost is to make sure that your communications are timely. Find the hook in the world that makes your organization’s mission particularly relevant and important at this time. Secondly, don’t ask for funds just to ask for funds. People see giving money as a rather uninteresting form of engagement. Instead, make it clear that by giving money, donors are taking action that will translate into a real difference in the world. Consider the difference between these two paragraphs:

Your gift today will be used to purchase bicycles for children in rural Africa so that they can more easily and more safely attend their schools, which are often located at great distances from home. Please give generously so that we can help these children get the education to which they are entitled.

Every day, children in Africa walk great distances to get to school, often risking dangerous conditions after dark to get the education they know will help improve their lives. Something as simple as a bicycle can reduce travel times, help ensure they can continue their education and make their travel safer. Take action today by donating to our Bikes for School Fund. Let these children know that when they set off before dawn to go to school, they aren’t going it alone.

It’s true that the same technique can be used in traditional, direct mail fund raising. However, online communication seems particularly suited to viewing the “gift as action,” especially when the cause is timely.

Possession of an active e-mail address provides a means of staying in contact with potential supporters at a very low cost. Whereas sending a printed newsletter requires paying for the printing at the postage, an e-mail newsletter is, by comparison, either free or nearly free. Whereas sending a printed newsletter requires lead time for printing and mailing, e-mail newsletters are nearly instantaneous. Having an e-mail address allows you to stay in closer, more timely contact with your supporter.

E-mail also allows you to reach out to a supporter with timely information in order to urge that particular action be taken. Political campaigns, of course, capitalize on this by pointing out that the other candidate made some statement sure to cause a reaction and then urging that those who receive the newsletter to give generously to avoid having someone who holds such opinions elected to office. Non-profits, however, must keep a careful eye on current events and stand ready to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves.

Through the use of technology that tracks recipient response, an organization can develop a profile related to an e-mail address that quickly will reveal what topics interest a particular constituent and allow the organization to segment appeals for maximum response. In addition, e-mail address collection is the first step towards bring a constituent closer to the organization so that, eventually, thee constituent will open their social network to the organization and become a volunteer fund-raiser.

Step one, however, remains getting that e-mail address. Consider all the places your organization captures physical addresses and ask why you aren’t also capturing e-mail addresses. Think about all the points of contact between your organization and the public and find a means of turning those points of contact into tools for building future relationships by collecting e-mail addresses.

Once an e-mail address is captured, it, of course, must stay “live.” On your solicitation response cards and other places where you verify a supporter’s current physical address, print the e-mail address and request that it be kept up-to-date.

Just add this simple question to the list of things you consider when reviewing communications with the public: Why doesn’t this ask for their e-mail address?

Reluctantly, many fund-raising professionals confess the truth. The names in the database come from an aging population. There aren’t as many young people in the mix as they would like. And this, perhaps, is a reason why social network fundraising won’t work for their organization.

It may, in fact, be that a failure to use social networking tools is one reason why the donor base is aging. Honestly, when was the last time you wrote a friend who lives at some distance a letter and mailed it as a way of staying in touch? It doesn’t happen much anymore. We pick up the phone, e-mail or remain in touch through social networking sites. But non-profits, for some reason, continue to send traditional mail to court donors as if the 18^th century marked the high point of fund-raising technology.

Then, too, there is an underlying and false supposition regarding older populations and their relationship with technology. While it is true that, at least according to most sources, many people age 65+ do not have internet access, it is also the case that a growing minority do. Some attribute the growth in older people accessing e-mail and social networking sites in particular to a desire on the part of grandparents to remain in touch with their grandchildren in college. Retired constituents are increasingly tech-savvy and many non-profits will find themselves surprised at how quickly their “aging donor base” have taken to the ‘net.

The social network fund-raising provides an unequaled tool for donor acquisition. Your supporters can lend their personal credibility to your organization by opening their social network to you. These new donors will have arrived through the internet and thus increase the number of individuals with technological savvy available to you. Cycle through this process a few times, and any concerns about the ability of your donor base to participate should be allayed.

The only thing standing between non-profits and reaching out to a new generation of philanthropists is a willingness to adapt the means to the times.

Explore some myths and facts about social fundraising with Jeremy Sher, president of Grassroots Giving Group, Inc.  Social fundraising works by letting nonprofits harness the strength of people’s connections with each other: People give more, and they give more often, when they’re asked to give by someone they know and trust. Technology makes this easier — but social fundraising is about people and relationships, not about gizmos and I/T.  Learn about the history of social fundraising, including its formative years in walk-a-thons and (separately) in politics, and how the field continues to evolve.  We’ll distinguish myths from facts, with a keen eye toward demystifying the field, and including a brief discussion on how to recognize a good consultant.  Emerge with a clear sense of what social fundraising is useful for, how it fits within your existing fundraising program, and how to get started.

The group discussion was fascinating and enlightening, and I want to share it here for two reasons.  One, I hope someone will read it who has an idea of what to do about it, and with any luck we might find ourselves with a discussion in the comments section.  Two, I want to offer our experience as an example to other worthy charities who might consider the “awareness raiser” format.

I just want to thank a couple of our business friends who came together to purchase the appetizer buffet for the evening.  TechNetworks of Boston, which provides I/T solutions to businesses and nonprofits; Parents Forum, a grassroots organization concerned with family life issues; and Kristopher Callahan, a veteran political campaign manager, all came together to help put the event on, and I’m grateful to them.

Between questions for Brian and discussion after the event, the group was impressed by Project HOPE’s success getting volunteer doctors, facilities and supplies to and from Haiti.  But we were concerned by the sheer enormity of the problem and the apparent lack of other infrastructure outside the operating-room setting, as crucial as that work is.  Participants wondered whether mental-health professionals were working in Haiti, as well as other types of professionals whose expertise and volunteer time will be needed in the rebuilding of that country.  One interesting idea was whether idling U.S. construction professionals could be brought to Haiti, Project-HOPE-style, in an effort to help Haiti rebuild, and build in a safer way with better materials.  I thought this was a very worthy idea and wonder whether anyone reading this might have an idea.

We did not ask for money at the event, though we provided online “donation stations” for those who felt moved to give.  Direct fundraising was not the point of the evening.  We created community, gathered ideas, and engaged with each other in figuring out how we could best help.  Everyone felt like it was a very well spent evening.  Multiplied across an organization at scale, with volunteer management, this Awareness Raiser is one way to build a strong supporter base for a cause we can all believe in.