Social Media Strategy in
Businesses & Nonprofits
MRKT E-122
David Karp
Firstgiving.com
18 February 2009

Agenda
Introductions
About Firstgiving
A case: Twestival

Who’s here tonight?
Social media types?
NPO types?
Business types?
Marketeers?
Consultants?
Tweeple?

About David Karp
Director of marketing, Firstgiving
Blogger, limeduck.com
Board of directors, Photographic Resource Center
Social media fan
Social media skeptic

About Firstgiving.com fg
A private, for-profit company (“social enterprise”)
Founded 2003 from Justgiving UK
15 employees in US
$80 million raised for 20,000 nonprofits
1.5 million donors and fundraisers

Fr
Fundraisers?
Fundraisers are people who raise money
They connect causes and organizations with the
donors and donations they need
Some are paid (“development officers”) and some
are volunteers
Fundraisers are key to Firstgiving’s model

do
do
do do
do do do
do
do
do
Fr
Fr
NPO
Fr

Our web 1.0 math
1 NPO -> 21 Fundraisers -> 160 Donors
Average donation ~$55
Average fundraising page ~$300
Average premium account NPO ~$30,000

“The leading social
platform for fundraising for
any nonprofit cause”
Nonprofits raise money with Firstgiving by asking
their supporters to ask their friends and colleagues
for donations
Firstgiving provides the social tools, security and
financial accounting
We help turn donors into fundraisers

“Dedicated, dynamic
fundraising experts”
We’ve learned a lot about fundraising in five years,
and our fundraisers and nonprofits look to us for
information and ideas

How do you make money?
5% transaction fee on donations
Optional $300/year fee for nonprofits

Who pays?
Who feels like they pay?
fg do
NPO Fr

Firstgiving in action:
Fundraiser drives
Make a fundraising page
Ask your friends
Get donations

Firstgiving in action:
Charity drives
Get an account
Make a start page
Ask your supporters to set up fundraising pages
Get donations

Which channel generates
more activity, more
revenue?
NPO Fr

The social media stuff

Email
Email is the most important mode of
communication
Fundraisers use Firstgiving’s email tool to reach
out to their address books for donations

Facebook
Links on walls are best
There’s also a Firstgiving facebook app

Blogs
Firstgiving’s flash widget is embeddable in blogs
and websites
Firstgiving has two blogs
www.onlinefundraisingblog.com
www.teamfirstgiving.com

Twitter and the rest
More ways to promote a fundraising page or a
fundraising event
Digg, Stumbleupon, Flickr, Vimeo, YouTube, etc.

A case: Twestival

Twestival
All-volunteer, Twitter-based, global fundraising
event for clean water (Charity:Water)
200 cities
$1M target
Each city to raise money for a well, $4-12k

Tweet and give
Tipjoy, a micropayment service, donated their fee
$5 ask, no minimum

Listen and give
Artists donate songs, people download them

Ebay and give
A handful of charity auctions
Autographed stuff
Consulting time with social media stars

Drink and give
Each city hosted a party with ~$25 door fee
Boston event was at OM in Harvard Sq

That’s a lot of social media

So, what happened?
How much do you think Twestival raised?
Where did most of the money come from?

We’re not sure what
happened
No central accounting?
Post-event letdown?
Volunteer fatigue?
Transparency fail?
Just disorganzied?

Some figures
Charity:Water says $250k
Tipjoy says $25k
Twestival.fm says $5k
(did only 10% really come through twitter?)

That’s not $1,000,000
Make no mistake, $250k is a lot
Did Twestival overreach or underperform?
What did it really cost?
How repeatable is it?

Some of my theories

Ask for more…
it’s for a good cause
$5 is too little to ask, even with huge distribution
Actual average gift thru Tipjoy more like $20-25
Small donations make most marketing unprofitable
Small auctions can leave money on the table
Was sponsorship available?

Chickens
vs.
Pigs
In order to make a ham omelet, you’re going to
need a chicken and a pig…

Involved
vs.
Committed
The chicken is involved.
The pig is committed.

What’s the level of
commitment in a social
media ask?
How important are Facebook statuses and tweets
compared to emails and phonecalls?

Facebook’s Causes app
500,000 daily active users
17 million total installs
In 2008, raised $2.5M for 20,000 charities
That’s $125/charity on average
Less than a dollar per active user?

Dunbar’s number
..the theoretical cognitive
limit to the number of people
150
with whom one can maintain
stable social relationships.
[wikipedia]

Do volunteers outperform
paid professionals?
See Dan Pallotta’s book, “Uncharitable”

How different are NPOs
from business, really?

Thank you
David Karp
david@firstgiving.com
David Karp
@limeduck