Philip King, Artez Interactive

There may come a day when your Facebook fan page has more traffic than your actual website. Hard to believe? Just talk to the people at Coca-Cola. A recent Advertising Age article notes that Coke has one of the largest brand pages on Facebook with 10.7 million fans (placing them in second, after Starbucks' 12.7 million fans). Consider this in comparison to their own website, where U.S. unique visitors in July fell to 242,000, down more than 40% compared to a year ago.

With trends like these, it's important to consider your own approach to social media. It's easy to see how social media and online communities can be effective platforms for sharing stories and getting feedback from supporters, but what about the money? As soon as fundraisers gets involved, they're going to want to know how to convert conversations into donations.

Many believe there is a risk of moving too fast with online communities.

Jono Smith, VP of Sales & Marketing at Event 360, states:

"When we think about social media, it is focused on people using tools to share content and have conversations online. It's about listening and having a conversation. It's about community building first, fundraising second. The Golden Rule of any online outreach is that on average it takes 5 to 7 different touch-points for an online supporter to become an online donor. Don't jump the gun."

This sentiment is echoed by the team at World Society for the Protection of Animals. "Our approach to social media at this point is that it isn't about generating donations today, but developing relationships with people for donations in the future. We're nurturing tomorrow's donors," states Misty Meeks, Online Communication Manager.

Others, however, see it differently.

For the Canadian Olympic Foundation, it's a two-part process. "Direct online fundraising on our website and online donations are the first part," says David Armour, President.

"Then we have a need to provide stickiness to that donor or online fundraiser. Everything the nonprofit sector has learned about donor stewardship can be achieved through online communities. We see it as the opportunity to provide a continuous call to action. In our case there are lots of places to watch the Olympics but we want to be the destination when someone wants to take action either by making a donation or setting up a fundraising page themselves."

So, in the case of Canadian Olympic Foundation, donations & fundraising form the core activity of the online community.

At Artez, we're seeing more and more traffic to our online donation and online fundraising servers coming from social media domains. YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are all growing in popularity as referral sites for online donations. Many participants in walk-a-thons, bike-a-thons, and other online fundraising campaigns have naturally started linking their personal fundraising pages to their Facebook profiles, status updates, and tweets.

We see online fundraisers using social media channels to augment -- or in some cases replace -- what they have done in the past with email. Providers of online fundraising technology are responding to this trend by making it easier for people to cross-link their social media spaces to their online fundraising places. Simple and effective tools such as "AddThis" allow online fundraisers to bookmark their online fundraising page quickly across a variety of social media systems.

Is it effective?

Meredith Campbell, Director of Fundraising & Marketing for the Royal Children's Hospital Foundation of Australia, thinks so. She and her team recently tested a Facebook application in an online fundraising campaign managed by the Foundation. The "Virtual Everest Climb" encouraged online fundraisers to track their daily steps using pedometers and collectively amass the equivalent of a Mt. Everest summit. The virtual climb was an excuse to solicit friends, family, and colleagues to sponsor them through their online fundraising pages.

"We did a study of the online fundraisers who downloaded our Facebook app" says Meredith. "We were excited to find that on average, people who downloaded the app raised 2.4 times as much money as those who didn't, and as well brought in 2.8 times as many donors." Whether the Facebook application was the cause of those enhanced results, or an indication of the exuberance of a group of committed online fundraisers, it's clear that modern digital supporters will use a range of tools to reach their goals -- if provided the opportunity.

Getting Started 

Facebook Causes is a good place to get your feet wet. It's a built-in donation-processing system that leverages the GuideStar database and Network For Good's payment infrastructure. The advantages of Causes are that it's inexpensive (4.75%), and relatively easy to get going (if you're a registered 501(c)3 and listed with GuideStar).

We've found that fundraisers outgrow Causes for a few common reasons: they want additional security, and more control over branding, tax-receipts, and donor data. These organizations use Facebook -- or their other online communities -- to drive traffic to their own donation processing systems. One challenge to this approach is that donors must re-direct to a secure website, often resulting in drop-offs or 'bounces'.

By making the donation form look and feel like the referring Facebook page, we have found organizations can increase their online donation conversion rates.

Wherever you are on the social media fundraising curve, it's important to start testing concepts now and refine your approach as you go. There's no cookie-cutter approach that will work: even though the tools are similar, your communities are not.

What we have found is that social media can certainly be used to drive online fundraising and donations -- in the right campaigns.

Good luck growing your online fundraising in the last half of this year.