Even if the mission of your nonprofit doesn't have anything to do with adorable cats or precious babies, you can still raise money using social media.

When the earthquake hit Japan in March, nonprofits of all sizes, budgets, and national reputations put up Fundraising Projects on Causes. When we pulled the numbers two weeks later, a small nonprofit community center called the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California had raised over $400,000, while the American Red Cross had raised $322,540.

This is a trend we see frequently: small, unsexy, or unknown nonprofits are having significant fundraising success and larger, better-known nonprofits are wondering why.

Social media is leveling the playing field in the nonprofit sector. To understand why, we have to delve into what social media is, and what it is not.

I attended a workshop recently about "Fundraising using Social Media", and I was shocked when the conversation headed directly toward advertising. What are all the channels you can use to get your nonprofit name out there with a big donate button? Facebook ads? Hulu? Groupon?

But thinking of social media as solely a direct marketing channel limits our understanding of what's possible through this medium.

Most of the activity on social media sites is not top-down communication but peer-to-peer sharing—creating, sending, and consuming information between friends, family, and networks.

This dynamic is why social media is such a powerful tool for small nonprofits and for nonprofits with important, but unsexy missions. These nonprofits don't have giant marketing departments and expensive communication tools, but they do have a dedicated group of supporters and the ability to tell compelling stories about the tangible impact of their work.

Consider this simple comparison of potential reach for campaigns run by two very different nonprofits:

Large Nonprofit Using Direct Mail

Small Nonprofit Using Social Media

Focusing on social media is a smart strategy for small nonprofits.

One of the figures that inspired the creation of Causes was how much money nonprofits spend on building lists and on fundraising and marketing technology. Many spend over 1/3 of their budgets on overhead costs to direct marketing and fundraising.

When comparing their direct marketing reach to the direct marketing reach at a large organization, small nonprofits will never get ahead. But on social media, creating a small active community of supporters that is engaged and active provides an alternative.

But reach is not nearly as important as engagement on social media. 1,000 fully active, engaged people on social media is a more valuable resource for any nonprofit than 10 million people who don't do anything to help.

How do you build a community of even 1,000 people engaged enough to share your campaigns with their friends?

Be supporter-centric.

Give them what they want—campaigns they can get excited about, understand, and want to share with their friends. As Seth Godin says in his e-book "Flipping the Funnel", nonprofits that take advantage of social media focus on:

Turning strangers into friends

Turning friends into donors. And then, most importantly,

Turning donors into fundraisers.

One thing's for sure: you can't inspire people to tell their friends about your nonprofit unless you figure out what inspires them. Some things I see helping nonprofits create community online are:

• Send a survey asking what they want to donate to. It can be a simple Survey Monkey survey, but suggest several projects to see which one resonates the most with your community.
• Communicate regularly. If they don't hear from you in months and then you pop up and ask for money, your community won't be likely to respond.
• Close the Loop. Don't forget to follow up with donors, telling them where their money went. Send them a picture, do a profile of a person who was helped by your work, or just take a quick video from your desk saying thanks.
• Make your message understandable to the outside world. If you want your supporters to share your message with their friends, they need to be able to understand it. Ask yourself, "If I had never heard of my nonprofit before or the issues we work on, would I be able to understand this post?"
• Run project-based fundraising campaigns. Use something like Causes Fundaising Projects to create campaigns that are specific, inspiring, and have a tangible impact.
• Figure out which of your members/Fans/followers are exceptional. They are not all created equal. Some community members comment on your posts, re-post your messages, ask their friends to take action, etc. Build relationships with the most engaged members of your online community.

Your nonprofit doesn't need to work with cute cats to build a powerful community on social media. From child abuse to local community to arts programs, small nonprofits have been finding they can have success at fundraising online.

They all have one major thing in common: they treat their social media audience as a community, not a direct-marketing channel.

Susan joined the Causes team back in March 2007, long before they had fancy things like catering, a blog, or even a name. Before that, she worked as a political organizer, communications specialist for a women’s nonprofit in Cambodia, and leader of an organization providing outdoor activities and mentors for rural youth in New Hampshire. She received her B.A. in History from Dartmouth, where she focused on issues of race, ethnicity, and immigration.