6 Tips for Non-Profits To Build Your Online Community and Increase Donations
Last week I went over the 5 signs that your non-profit isn’t ready for social media. This week, I’ll discuss tips and strategies that can make a huge difference in your charity’s online and social media presence and hopefully result in a bigger community and more donations.
1. Use a Content Management System(CMS) for your website
The biggest issue that many charities face is that they rely on a supportive board member or local company to build their site for them and host it for free and/or they don’t have a developer on the team. This results in the organization being afraid to “bug” the company or take up their IT person’s time with updates, 99% of which are content changes. The best thing a charity can do is use a CMS system for their website.
The great thing about Content Management Systems is that they allow business users to add, edit, and remove pages and content without the need of a developer. It’s all point, type, click stuff that any business person can do. This allows the charity to easily add things like event pages, photos, videos, and updated information without needing to bother their generous hosting company or their IT staff. You can start simple by even using a blog platform like Word Press or Typepad. Most web hosting services now come with website templates that are easy for business users to use. A good example is Yahoo! SiteBuilder. Then there are the more robust platforms out there that allow you to build a community such as Pligg, Joomla, and Drupal. All of these can be hosted by the company or on a server of your choice. This should be on every non-profit’s 2010 check list.
2. Stay connected with monthly targeted newsletters
Monthly newsletters are a great way to stay connected with members and donors alike. My suggestion is to create two monthly newsletters; one targeted to members, and one targeted to donors. Let the members know what’s going on at your charity and how you’re there to help. Let donors know how their money is being used to help others by sharing inspiring stories from the previous month and thank them for helping to make a difference. At a time where so many charities compete for donations, educating sponsors as to how their money is helping your community and thanking them twelve times a year goes a long way to building a lasting relationship.
This year our event committee used newsletters for our charity running event to keep in touch, share why we were doing the event and provide tips on running. The number of runners doubled and we almost doubled our target donation amount. Think we’ll do it again next year? Better believe it! Great and affordable services for email campaigns include Constant Contact and Mail Chimp. They’re worth the money.
3. Share your photos and videos
Seeing is believing. Most non-profits only use a few pictures from an event to go on the invite to the same event the following year. Post all of your pictures on your site as well as sites like Flickr. Invite all of the event attendees to post their pictures as well not only to your site but their own social networking pages. Then when their friends on Facebook see what a great time they had, you’ve got that many more people interested in going next year.
4. Have calls to action on your website
Most non-profit websites share information and then tell the reader to call or email to see how they can participate or donate. If you’re telling someone how your organization can help them, have a sign up form right there on the page or a quick contact form for you to contact them.
Instead of asking board members and volunteers to email donation forms and memorize a script, create a landing page that they can email the direct link to the donor. Have the landing page explain the value that your charity brings to the community, share video tours of the club or thanks from your members, and most importantly allow them to donate right there on the page. Which of the following do you think your prospective donors would prefer?
Option 1: Receive email with multiple attachments to open, read, and fill out along with an invite for a meeting with the charity CEO and/or see the club.
Option 2: Receive an email with a link to a page that tells them everything about the club and has some passionate videos and club tour that they can view right there at their desk along with the ability to easily donate online.
I’ll bet the majority of busy donors would take option #2 70% of the time. Even if people like your non-profit, nobody likes another meeting added to their calendar. Make it as easy to donate as possible. If they are high touch, that’s great. The ability to meet the CEO and go through a live tour is still there as an option.
5. Start a blog
In addition to your monthly newsletter, start a blog where you post articles on topics and key words relating to your charity. This not only continues to foster relationships with your members and donors but it also builds up your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and allows people that have never heard of your charity to find you. The key to blogging is to stay consistent and focused on key words and topics around your charity.
6. Use Social Media
Find a person from your staff (not a volunteer or associate board member) and have them spend 30-60 minutes a day using social media to participate in discussions on your charity’s area of interest and build a community. Create a Facebook page. Create a Twitter account and participate in pertinent discussions. Post items or links that relate to what you do. Over time you’ll be amazed at how this can build up. Whatever you do, do not join just to post every time you have an event or ask for donations. You’ll have a better chance of pushing people away then attracting them.
Hopefully, these tips are useful to non-profits and small businesses alike. What does your charity do that works?
