The basic principal of social media marketing is to engage people.If charities engage more people, more money will be donated.

But fund raising is only part of the picture for charties – they also have a cause (eg stopping cruelty to children, protecting animals, supporting victims of disease, providing supplies for those in need.)

So whilst raising funds is fundamental, there are other considerations like:

• service delivery
• membership engagement
• providing space for peer to peer support
• recruiting volunteers
• raising awareness
• behaviour change
• lobbying governments and so on.

This is where social media excels over other types of marketing. Used properly, it can reach millions of people and more importantly, engage them.

The great thing about charities and not for profits is that they have what it takes to engage people by their very nature and people want to be involved with them.

A recent Social Media for Social Causes study published on Mashable indicates that major donors aged 30+ want to be involved with their charities conversation about the following:

• organizational impact
• success stories
• learning more about the organizations they are participating with
• want information on causes they care about
• want information on financial accountability

The study also showed that donors want to interact with organization experts and with other donors.

This post is co-authored by Qui Diaz, Beth Kanter and Geoff Livingston, authors of the Community Philanthropy 2.0 survey and they state that:

“ What we found was a tremendous opportunity for nonprofits to participate as trusted providers of credible information and ultimately cultivate the next generation of major donors through the social web”

Pretty powerful stuff and quite compelling?

OK so there’s the theory and the research but what about non profits actually using social media successfully? Here are some examples I found from around the web, but please feel free to add to the list and spread the word.

Let’s start big with the seemingly over used example of Barak Obama’s presidency campaign using social media to gain votes and raise funds (I say seemingly ‘cause it was so successful I don’t understand why the whole world hasn’t jumped right on the band wagon) Check it out:

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/12/04/felesky-rahaf.html

Charity : Water has successfully raised $10 million (most of that last year alone) from 50,000 individual donors. This case study outlined by Mayank Dhingra explains how they use social media for relationship building, maintaining transparency, experimenting with new things and stakeholder involvement. Great stuff

http://mayank.name/2009/07/26/social-media-case-study-charity-water/

And here Qui Diaz lists a myriad of ideas and ways to donate time and money to charities. Really good for ideas and getting a feel for how the not for profit sector can benefit from using social media.

http://mashable.com/2008/12/17/digital-charities/

Yep it’s official according to the Neilson report. But last time I looked at the ‘Teens Don’t Tweet” trend, it was full of teens tweeting about how Twitter trends ‘suck’. Now that’s ironic Alanis.

With the remit to deliver 3% net cash efficiency gains per annum, local councils certainly have their work cut out. On the face of it this must seem like an almost impossible task, I mean where do you start?

The good news is that not only does the efficiency agenda mean cost savings, but according to a recent Audit Commission report, efficiency is one of the most important drivers of innovation as councils will need to break with established practices and try alternatives.

Image c/o Steffe's Photostream on Flickr

So what kind of Innovation is happening?

I came across this article published about the efficiency agenda in the States. “Social Networking Tools Stimulate Government Operational Efficiency and Transparency, Government Insights Research” which is about…well I think the clues in the title.

In a nutshell the big idea comes down to this. Using technology that already exists and is proven to work (i.e. social networks), connecting in and building relationships with communities that already exist and are reachable (using social media) has the potential to produce huge efficiency gains.

I have worked on a couple of projects that have used the idea of social media as a path to efficiency gains. I’ll be having a think about how they fit with the efficiency agenda over the next few weeks and sharing that thinking here. Stay tuned…

I attended the launch of  Child Protection Online – Best Practice Guide on Tuesday run by Tempero. Lots of interesting information and tips on the type of stuff we need to know if we are working in the social media space.

The one bit of info that stood out for me was:   If more than 25% of traffic to site are children (under 18) then Child Protection laws apply to you.

Here’s a Vox Pox Video from the event: http://www.vimeo.com/5638295

In a bid to check out best practice among charities and hopefully learn at least one new thing about social media for social good, I went to the Third Sector Cost Effective E-Communications, Social Networking & Blogging event on Tuesday.

It was a fairly small affair, about 110 delegates, with most presentations given by well-known charities and one or two brands such as Dell.

As always there were stand out presentations with the wow factor and there were some really well thought out and informative talks that are worth a mention.  One such example was the NSPCC who gave a good strategic overview of the possibilities social media has for organisations that ‘bring their budgets together’, crossing the departmental divide to build communities that are interested in fundraising, campaigning, volunteering etc.

The good stuff

This idea was nicely demonstrated by some inspirational case studies including The Dogs Trust and the Atheist Bus Campaign (wow factor coming up).

The Dogs Trust run their social media activity via their marketing department, but use Twitter as means to achieving their purpose;  placing dogs in good homes. I liked how this highlights the way social media can be used as a means of service delivery as well as promotion.

The Atheist Bus Campaign is one of those lovely gem like examples of social media in its purest form. Even though The British Humanist Association is the administering organisation, I think it’s fair to say that this campaign is so social media it’s ‘owned’ by the community who are involved with it.

Atheist Bus Campaign case study

It all started with the suggestion made by Journalist Ariane Sherine:

“[if all atheists reading this] contribute £5, it’s possible that we can fund a much-needed atheist London bus ad with the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and [enjoy] your life.”

This was followed up by blogger Jon Worth who set up a page on Pledgebank where by people could donate to the campaign.  It caught the imagination of bloggers across the net and, well you know how these things go. One thing led to another and next thing, they raised double their target and we were seeing buses carrying an advert with a slogan almost identical to the original suggestion made by Ariane.

So not only a lovely example of ‘people power’ but also a star example of integrated thinking in action.  This campaign raised it’s own money (mostly online) and whilst it’s momentum grew online, it was actually about achieving something tangible in the real world (i.e. adverts on buses) which helped gain the interest of offline media such as television and newspapers. It also saw no departmental divide – so everyone involved was either actively raising awareness, campaigning and donations or had the potential to do any of these. And it was started and taken forward by volunteers to boot. There every box ticked I think.

The other stuff

OK so that’s some of the good stuff.  So where does it fall down? Chatting with attendees from non-presenting charities there seems to be same barriers to social media you come up against in other sectors; misunderstanding of social media at decision maker level, silo mentality within organisations and issues around measurement.

I also noticed a lot of talk about campaigns and very little about long-term relationship management, which is a shame as it seems a bit of no-brainer to me to want to nurture a lifelong relationship with people who have shown interest in a cause.

So what did I learn about social media for social good?

Mainly that charities are finding their way in this space as much as every one else, some are much further down the road than others in their understanding and thinking and some haven’t even thought twice about it. The notable exception to this would seem to be big brand charities and those for children and young people who are doing some cracking work and are following the very simple golden rule – listen and respond (easy really).

Learning in nutshell

To achieve really great things you gotta grow a pair (of ears), cut through crap and get on with it.

This is a great example of how social media is being used to help forge positive social change for Indian women.

Indians employ Facebook and knickers to combat extremists