Power Up Your Social Fundraising With These Tools

As the number of nonprofits continues to grow, so does competition among these organizations. In order for your organization to thrive in this ever-growing environment, it needs to increase its retention rate by better engaging supporters and giving them more memorable experiences. 

With GiveSignup | RunSignup, nonprofits can leverage a comprehensive suite of social fundraising tools that will help them attract, engage, and activate more supporters. With free and unlimited access to event websites, an extensive rewards program, and so much more, your nonprofit will save time, widen its reach, and raise more than ever before. 

Through your retention efforts, your relationship with your supporters will strengthen and grow, and their role within your organization will start to evolve — from one-time donor or event participant to fundraiser and advocate. Especially with GivingTuesday right around the corner, you want to get your biggest supporters more involved with your organization, furthering your fundraising potential this year-end. 

If you have made a good impression on your supporters and your mission and values truly resonate with them, they will want to support your nonprofit beyond donating or participating in events. Through your cultivation and stewardship efforts, they will feel empowered to share your mission and why it’s so important to them to others in their network, and then raise money on behalf of your organization. This is called social fundraising, and it’s becoming increasingly more foundational to nonprofits.  

Share Your Website on Social Media

Social media marketing is an incredibly powerful tool in gaining more exposure for your nonprofit for its upcoming fundraising events and campaigns. In fact, social media usage in adults has grown from 5% in 2005 to 72% in 2021, according to Pew Research Center. Additionally, the “Global State of Digital 2021” found that in 2020 alone, there were 490 million new social media users, where 98% access social media on a mobile device. 

So, in today’s digitally powered world where nearly everyone has access to a smartphone, it’s undeniable that social media will play a critical role in helping you promote your nonprofit’s mission. By skipping over social media or not utilizing the tool enough, you’ll miss out on a big opportunity to reach more supporters. That’s why we recommend promoting all of your upcoming fundraising events and campaigns on social media, as well as encouraging your loyal followers to donate to your nonprofit and share your posts to their networks. More importantly, always remember to highlight the importance of your peer-to-peer fundraisers! Let your followers know that they can start their own Facebook Fundraisers or take it a step further and create fundraising campaigns that are attached to your fundraising event website or donation website. 

With GiveSignup | RunSignup, your nonprofit can create free event websites feature your nonprofit’s critical mission, along with clear calls to action, simple donation forms, and your own domain to elevate your brand and convert visitors into supporters. With our modern website builder, you can effortlessly create an engaging website, with the option to add custom content sections, like images, videos, playlists, a donation thermometer, and so much more. 

Promote Facebook Fundraising

Facebook is the most popular social platform for nonprofits, specifically for fundraising. It has the Facebook Fundraisers tool that both nonprofits and their supporters can use to create fundraising pages. In 2019, Facebook reported that people have raised more than $2 billion for nonprofits and personal causes, which includes more than 45 million people who have donated or created a Facebook Fundraiser.  

According to GiveSignup | RunSignup data, 48.7% of fundraisers reached their goal when Facebook Fundraising was enabled, compared to 29.7% who reached their goal with a GiveSignup | RunSignup fundraiser alone. One of the biggest challenges many nonprofits face with the technology is that the Facebook Fundraising integration can be overly complicated. It could take days for their Facebook Fundraiser to get approved by other peer-to-peer fundraising platforms. GiveSignup | RunSignup simplifies the process so that as long as nonprofits have a Facebook page approved for payments, they can be approved the same day. 

Interestly enough, our data shows that 5.88% of fundraisers created a connected Facebook Fundraiser in 2019. This increased to 6.93% of connected fundraisers in 2020. The data tells us that there is growing demand for the Facebook Fundraiser integration from users. Fundraisers want to reach their goals and asking for donations via Facebook makes that much easier. Additionally, our data shows us that donations per fundraiser increases from 5.1 to 9.9 with a Facebook Fundraiser connected.

Ask Supporters to Create Fundraising Campaigns

Peer-to-peer fundraising activates the power of your supporters. It’s the ideal way to get your supporters involved in fundraising for your upcoming events and campaigns. With a great peer-to-peer program, your organization can reap the benefits of raising more money and providing more engaging experiences for your supporters. In fact, while the pandemic proved to be a challenging time for peer-to-peer programs, revenue from the 30 largest programs still brought in $900. 1 million last year, according to the PeerToPeer Professional Forum. Even though this was nearly a 34% decrease in revenue in these programs, this number will likely skyrocket over the next year with the return of in-person events.

So, how can you build a great peer-to-peer program and encourage your supporters to take action and fundraise on your organization’s behalf? The good news is that you’re already halfway there. You’ve built a great event or campaign for your supporters to fundraise for, so now you have to share why you need their support. To make your case, answer these questions:

  1. Why is your mission so important?
  2. How is your organization making a difference?
  3. What is the call to action?

We know that many people are altruistic — they want to support worthy causes, and they want to share their generosity with others. But with so many other organizations that also have important causes, you have to make your case and explain why your organization is deserving of their support and what you need them to do. Ask them to activate their support by creating a fundraising campaign to raise money for your mission. If you don’t encourage them to be the super supporters you need, then they won’t feel inclined to take action for your cause.  

Encourage Team Fundraisers With Discounts

You’ve set the proper groundwork for your supporters to begin fundraising for your event or campaign. To increase the fundraising momentum, we strongly recommend encouraging team fundraisers! Not only can your team fundraisers raise more for your organization, people are more encouraged to be stronger advocates for your cause when they are a part of a team of like-minded people who are also trying to raise more. In fact, our data tells us that 30% of participants join teams when they are available. 

GiveSignup | RunSignup lets you automate discounts for anyone on a team that hits a certain size, further encouraging fundraisers to join teams. For example, let’s say regular registration for your fundraising event is $39. To promote team fundraisers, your nonprofit is offering a $5 discount for members of groups of more than five. With our automated discounts, the first four registrants pay $39; the fifth registrant (and everyone after) pays $34, and the initial four members are refunded $5.

Reward Fundraising With Unique Incentives

By using gamification tactics, your nonprofit can encourage people to raise more for your organization. Gamification works because it promotes friendly competition, making the entire experience fun and engaging. Plus, by gamifying the experience, you’re empowering people to continue fundraising, and at the end of the day, they feel good about the work that they’re doing. 

At GiveSignup | RunSignup, our nonprofits have gamified their event fundraising and peer-to-peer fundraising efforts by adding features like goals, milestones, badges, and rewards, as well as showcasing leaderboards to show participant and fundraiser progress.

  • Milestones and badges. When your supporters sign up to be fundraisers, they should also set their fundraising goals. A great way to encourage them to hit those goals is by adding milestones, and then giving them a badge when each milestone is completed. A milestone for both fundraisers and event participants can be getting halfway to their goal (e.g., raising $500 or running five miles). GiveSignup offers customizable milestones and badges for virtual challenges that allow nonprofits to track their participant progress. In addition to giving participants badges for each milestone achieved, nonprofits can even award them milestone certificates. For fundraisers, we offer nonprofits the ability to celebrate milestones with confetti notifications every time a participant hits a fundraising milestone. 
  • Incentives. While people sign up for your events and fundraise on your behalf because they truly believe in the mission of your organization, by rewarding fundraising, you’re incentivizing people to raise even more for your mission. Common fundraising incentives, like swag, can get people motivated to fundraise because they’re getting something tangible in return. However, like many for-profit companies, offering monetary rewards for getting more people signed up for the event can be an even more enticing incentive for your fundraisers. GiveSignup | RunSignup’s referral rewards program allows nonprofits to give supporters money back if they hit a certain referral threshold (e.g., $20 back for getting five people registered for the event). 
  • Refunds. Another way to level up your rewards program: Incentivize and reward your fundraisers for surpassing their fundraising goals by automatically giving them a refund of their registration fee when they hit a set goal. For example, if you want fundraisers to raise more than $500, GiveSignup | RunSignup lets you set up an automated refund reward of their registration fee when they raise $500.

Interested in upping your social fundraising game? Click here to find out how you can gain access to GiveSignup’s suite of powerful social fundraising tools. In addition to getting top-of-line solutions for your fundraising, as a nonprofit, our technology is absolutely free for you to use.

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