Why is social fundraising so successful?

Social fundraising is a powerful tool that can help you meet your fundraising and awareness goals. While growing your list of connections may be challenging, social fundraising allows you to both effectively spread awareness and increase engagement. 

What is social fundraising?

Social fundraising consists of peer-to-peer fundraising and ambassador fundraising. Essentially, social fundraising is when you get your supporters to reach out to their own network to promote your nonprofit business or fundraising event and gather donations. In today’s world, this method often consists of social media shares and other forms of virtual outreach.

• Peer-to-peer fundraising: This form of fundraising is when you empower supporters to reach out to their friends and family to gather more donations and support. This process works well for standard online fundraising or to promote an upcoming event.
• Ambassador fundraising: This fundraising is when you strategically find and recruit well-connected supporters to serve as ambassadors and promote an upcoming event. Ambassador fundraising is a more deliberate method that’s great for promoting events like large charity auctions or annual galas.

When you follow these two methods, you’ll find that social fundraising can be a very effective promotion technique. Social fundraising will easily and quickly boost your reach and engagement levels.

Why social fundraising is successful

There are many reasons why social fundraising appeals to potential supporters and you can use it for a very successful campaigning method.

Easy involvement

Getting people involved in your organization is always a challenge. One of the best things about social fundraising is that it makes it easy for people to engage with your cause. When your supporters post on their social network, they offer others a simple way to donate, volunteer, or simply share the post to their network too. It’s also easier for people to get involved when they know their friends are already part of something.

Social fundraising allows donors to engage however they want, whether that’s on social media, online, or at events.

Social proof

Social fundraising increases the motivation for new and returning supporters. Peer-to-peer fundraising takes advantage of the concept of social proof. Social proof is when people look to how others behave to determine the correct behavior for a given situation. When many people, experts, celebrities, or friends take action, people are more likely to believe it’s the right thing to do and that they should do it too.

Gamification

Social fundraising can also take advantage of gamification concepts. You can design your virtual fundraising to offer challenges and rewards on top of the positive feeling people experience when they donate or volunteer. When people share your organization or donation goal with their network, gamification elements can make it more engaging. Incorporate elements like progress bars to complete levels, leader boards to climb, or badges to earn. These rewards give people even more motivation to get involved.

The benefits of social fundraising

Social fundraising is an affordable campaign plan that can increase your reach and involvement. Some people question the value of a social media share. However, a share from a supporter is similar to placing a sponsored ad on social media — plus, it comes with the benefit of social proof. Social fundraising has proven to be quite an effective fundraising tool!

Budget-friendly

Many nonprofits and charitable organizations have limited campaign budgets. Social fundraising utilizes your donors and supporters to do a lot of the work themselves, which means you can spend less time and money trying to broaden your reach and involvement levels. Social fundraising allows you to target the supporters you already have, too, which is much more cost-effective than trying to target new people. You just need to empower your current connections to reach out to their connections and you’ll expand your reach exponentially. 

Increased reach

One of the best benefits of social fundraising is that your supporters can connect with groups of people that you wouldn’t ordinarily reach on your own. They can get your organization’s name into the minds of their friends, family members, acquaintances, coworkers, and more. They’ll promote your event or mission to groups of people they may never have been aware of it before.

Let’s say you want to reach 10,000 more people on Facebook. According to statistics from 2019, the typical Facebook user has an average of 338 friends. With this math, you only need 30 supporters to share your organization to their Facebook network to reach over 10,000 more people. 

Increased involvement

Your organization will also benefit from increased involvement when you utilize social fundraising. When people see that their connections are involved with your organization, they’ll be more likely to get involved themselves. Your current supporters will also have a bigger opportunity to invest themselves. Instead of just volunteering or donating, they can spread awareness and help your organization raise money from others.

Scalable

There are many growth opportunities when it comes to social fundraising. You can encourage your supporters to share, and they’ll encourage their followers to share. This cycle can potentially bring in a lot of donors. With the right resources in place, social fundraising can be infinitely scalable. You can utilize nonprofit-focused software and technology to push your campaigns to the next level.

Choosing GiveSmart

GiveSmart is a cloud-based, year-round solution for all your fundraising needs. GiveSmart gives you easy access to all the technology you need for mobile bidding, ticketing and seating management, online fundraising, virtual events, campaign management, social fundraising, and more. GiveSmart is part of the Community Brands family, the leading provider of cloud-based software to donor-driven organizations.

Our peer-to-peer fundraising feature helps you empower your biggest advocates to fundraise on your behalf. It allows your supports have customizable, on-brand fundraising pages that they can easily share through social media and email. You can offer voting competitions, stand-alone fundraisers, and more with access to enhanced reporting tools. 

Our technology enables organizations like yours to increase donations, improve efficiency and engage supporters. Our mission is to help nonprofits and donation-based organizations reach their fundraising goals through an easy and engaging experience for their donors.

Contact us today

If you’re ready for a new fundraising platform, get started with GiveSmart. Our products help you raise more money with less stress. We provide 24/7 customer support and we hold the highest industry standard for security and privacy. 

Connect with us today and request a demo so that you can see if GiveSmart is the solution for your organization. One of our fundraising experts will evaluate your goals and customize a demo just for you. Contact us if you have any questions!