Events -- especially the "a-thons" -- have been a huge part of fundraising in the nonprofit space for decades. One of the reasons they work so well: the appeal is extremely personal. Contributors are donating to their friends, brothers, sisters, and cousins as much as they are supporting your organization. 

This style of fundraising lends itself perfectly to social media, where everything is personal. So, the results of the study conducted by BlackBaud and Charity Dynamics aren't surprising, but they are extremely clear: If you're not providing your event participants with a way to use social media in their fundraising, you're missing the boat.

In Making Event Participants More Successful with Social Media Tools, several key findings are revealed:

• Event participants who adopted integrated social media tools increased their fundraising by as much as 40 percent compared to their peers who weren’t using the available online tools.
• Participants who used Twitter raised more money and reached more donors than non-Twitter users, tripled their personal fundraising goals, and raised nearly 10 times more online.
• YouTube users performed the strongest offline compared to participants who were using other social media tools and are more likely to balance their use of both online and offline channels to tell their stories and conduct fundraising activities.
• Donors attracted through social media are more likely new to an organization. On average, 75 percent of donors through social media are new to organizations versus an average of 50 percent of all donors in support of participants.