The NonProfit Times - August 15, 2008 - (Page 24) LIMITED ‘FACE’ TIME Continued from page 23 of that action because the niches within Facebook are bigger than the other markets that are out there. Facebook is just today, it might not be tomorrow, MySpace is yesterday’s thing,” Christ said. “It’s possible that some of your charities don’t know about the gift yet. It’s not a knock, it is however, a built-in flaw in the process,” Christ said, and something that time will probably resolve. Since anyone can create a Causes section regardless of whether they work for the nonprofit, it’s usually a volunteer or supporter who starts it without having access to the nonprofit profile, and hence to donor contact information, according to Randall Winston, director of nonprofit relations for Causes. Being a nonprofit partner with Causes gives a nonprofit employee access to a system through which they can create a nonprofit profile and manage the Causes benefiting them, which allows them to disassociate from causes they don’t want benefiting them, thank donors, or contact creators of a cause. A critical step in the Causes process is where Network For Good asks donors if they want to share their personal information with the individual charity. A “yes” and the nonprofit can continue to communicate directly with the donor, but a “no” and the nonprofit only gets the donation (a minimum $10 and a recommended level of $25). Though he didn’t have any statistics compiled on how many donors share their information with the nonprofit,Winston estimated about 40 percent. Donors have only had the option of sharing their billing information with the individual nonprofits since February, when Network For Good took over processing donations from JustGive. Ben Tanzer, a spokesman for Chicagobased Prevent Child Abuse America, which benefited from almost $10,000 donated through the “Society Against Child Abuse” cause, said the vast majority of donations have been anonymous, estimating as much as 90 percent. Network For Good takes an administrative fee of 4.75 percent from each donation before passing it on to the nonprofit (which would make NPT’s $25 donation about $23.81 to the charity). Nonprofits are alerted immediately of a Causes donation through online donation tracking reports and the contributions are processed on or around the 15th of each month, Andresen said. However, becoming a partner does not give a nonprofit direct control over administering Causes, Winston said. They must reach out to the Cause creator and be added as an administrator, which is what the largest Cause on Facebook did.“Support the Campaign for Cancer Research” benefits Brigham and Women's Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard University in Boston, and has raised almost $70,000. The collaboration between the hospital and the Cause creator likely gave them a bit of a head start compared to other nonprofits. Creator Eric Ding was working at the facility and started the page to see how it might help, and continues to monitor it, said Lindsey O’Neill, development officer for the hospital’s Biomedical Research Development. She started to keep a closer eye on donations coming through Causes as early as last summer. The hospital’s average gift, based on almost $70,000 from about 2,500 donors, is roughly $28. The cause itself has more than 3.2 million members, meaning that less than 0.8 percent of the membership has made contributions. “In terms of our stewardship of a Causes donor, I have to say that currently, and unfortunately, our touch points are limited,” said O'Neill. Since she also manages a portfolio of major gift prospects and donors ($25,000+), smaller gifts such as those made via Causes “often don’t get as much time spent on the follow-up as we would like,” she said.The development office has a staff of almost 60 and aims to raise $80 million this fiscal year. O’Neill estimated that a majority of the donations through Causes come in without donor information. When larger donations are received with donor information -- usually $750 to $1,000 -- she replies with a personal email.“Everyone gets the tax receipt and a couple of sentences [from Network For Good], but I would love to develop something more personalized,”she said.Developing a more strategic standard system for handling Causes donations, including thank you and acknowledgements, is on the agenda for this year, O’Neill said. While it would be nice to get donor information, O’Neill said it’s not unlike an anonymous donation. “We’re grateful to even have this source of support because it’s not something we thought would be as successful as it has been,” she said. Causes donors are not added to a house list, O’Neill said, as the organization believes the best way to connect with them is electronically, rather than conventional direct mail.“We also feel that this is a relationship where solicitation isn’t something that we want to be heavy handed about with this group, though we would like to maybe excite donors to make gifts again by providing them updates on our progress,” she said.“We clearly think the online/e-communications is just the best way to communicate with this group.This is a very unique group, we wouldn’t want to have any type of outside solicitation or seem less personal or less project-oriented,” she said. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which benefits from the third largest Cause (“Animal Rights”), has a huge social networking presence and a fairly wired population but no specific strategy for Facebook just yet because it’s so new, said Paul Phillips, online fundraising man- Let Your Group’s Friends Fundraise For You BY MARK HRYWNA auses celebrated its first year of operation in late May, crossing the $2.5-million mark in online donations, benefiting almost 20,000 organizations and getting more than 12 million users of Facebook involved. Most nonprofits have yet to realize how or if to use Facebook’s Causes application to raise money or reach out to potential supporters, while some might be having trouble adapting to the previous technology fundraising/networking phenomenon.“Should we be on Second Life?” “Should I be Twittering?” Causes has mainly been used as a mechanism for distributing information, said Randall Winston, director of nonprofit relations for Berkeley, Calif.-based Project Agape, which launched Causes.“We want to optimize the majority of nonprofits that use it and find it successful as a mechanism for building community for the long-term.” Some people are on Facebook anywhere from 12 to 20 times a day, and like email, have it open all the time, Winston said. “It’s a way of getting philanthropy and doing good before them almost all the time,” he said. Young people who donate smaller amounts might still be attached to that community as they grow older, and their donations might also grow. If you look at the evolution of Causes, anyone is able to create and grow communities, said Winston, and “after those communities reached critical mass, we wanted to build strong bridges to nonprofits.” Joseph Green, who founded Causes with Sean Parker, hopes the application brings interaction back to the nonprofit sector,which is much more heavily focused on direct mail now. It creates an unequal playing field, locking out small donors, he said, because it’s not worth mailing them if they’re only giving $10 or $20. The American Red Cross has raised less than $10,000 through Causes. “It’s not a huge amount but I don’t think anyone has really figured out how to raise huge amounts through Facebook.The entire sector is sort of figuring it out,” said Wendy Harman, senior specialist for interactive media. “This kind of giving will probably increase over time,” she said.“I don’t know that it’ll be on Facebook or Causes -- maybe something else comes along that’s a better program -- but I think social networking is here to stay in one way or another.” “The bottom line here for charities and Causes is not so much how nonprofits are using it but this fascinating profound shift in how fundraising works online through social networks,” said Katya Andresen, vice president of marketing at Network For Good, which processes the donations made through Causes for a fee of 4.75 percent.“The messengers for fundraising are changing,” she said. Someone who has experience with or an emotional tie to a cause will go to friends and family to support their cause. “That’s always happened to some degree for years,”Andresen said.“What’s changing is the efficiencies of doing that kind of outreach online,and planting that outreach online in the context of a huge social network like Causes. It really transforms the balance of power in not only who’s the most effective messenger but how amplified that message can be online very swiftly within these circles of influence,” she said. Andresen points to marketing guru Seth Godin’s metaphor of “flipping the funnel.” Fundraisers used to think of the world in terms of a sales funnel, seeking to qualify prospects until a few donors dribble out of the bottom. But online the funnel is flipped, taking the shape of a megaphone, which nonprofits can give to supports and have an amplified message. “It’s no longer just you and your funnel, it’s a megaphone that’s in the hands of millions of people. That’s a very apt anal- ogy to describe this fundamental shift. Causes is a great example of that,” Andresen said. “There’s a certain discomfort among nonprofits about losing control of the message, but the train’s already left the station on that one. It’s pretty clear you can’t control it anymore. “The good news is when you lose some control, you support the work of those who are fundraising for you online; they are experts on how they message their friends and family,”Andresen said. Within any group’s supporters are a small but not insignificant subset of “real champions,” she said. “What’s amazing about them, they’re small in number but they go out and recruit an incredibly large number of people,”Andresen said. S http://www.nptimes.com
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