How to Use Social Media to Reach Your Year-End Fundraising Goals

How To Use Social Media To Reach Your Year-End Fundraising Goals

‘Tis the season of giving! Do you have a year-end social media strategy in place?

Of all the channels you use to communicate with your existing and potential donors, social media is the one that allows you to most effectively engage with your audience and leverage the power of sharing.

Here are six ways that you can use social media to connect with and encourage your followers and donors to give.

1. Show & Tell A Story

When you’re scrolling through your newsfeed, you’re more likely to stop on an image or video than a text-only post, right?

Most people do!

Using visuals to make the most of each channel is extremely beneficial. It helps make a great first impression on donors, and it helps potential donors understand who or what they’re supporting with their gift.

In addition to using images or videos in your posts, you can also update your cover art and profile picture for your year-end campaign. If you’re running a major campaign, set visual standards for all of the graphics shared across channels. That will ensure everything matches your website, fundraising campaign, and brand.

If you plan on boosting your posts or creating targeted ads, consider segmenting your audience out and crafting different posts for each. This will ensure your money is well-spent and that your ads will be seen by the groups of people who are most likely to donate to you.

Say you’re an animal shelter and you want to craft a message for your dog lovers and your cat lovers. You can create two different posts and target each of them separately — one will go to dog lovers, one will go to cat lovers. This strategy requires a little extra time than creating general posts, but you’ll have more engagement when the targeted audience sees something that really resonates with them.

2. Get Personal

The end of the year can get busy. While lots of people love the hustle and bustle of the holidays, many are overwhelmed with the holiday season. Take the pressure off your more stressed-out supporters by sharing images and stories with a positive, uplifting tone. Whether that’s a funny video or heartwarming story, stories that your donors can relate to are more likely to be shared beyond your typical reach.

3. Share Play-by-Play Fundraising Progress

In addition to sharing your fundraising campaign’s progress on your website and through other channels (like email marketing or direct mail), provide updates on how close (or far away) you are to reaching your fundraising goal.

Donors love meeting goals — it’s why so many GoFundMe campaigns are funded at the last minute. If there’s a fun visual that you can use to track your progress, it makes meeting that goal more rewarding. It also makes things easier on your social media manager! Using something like a campaign thermometer can help your donors feel more connected to your cause and helping your organization reach its goal.

If you want to boost fundraising momentum even more, try publicly thanking your donors for helping you get closer to your goal. You’ll want to check with your donors first, of course, but sharing their involvement can inspire others to donate!

4. Go Live

During a live video on Facebook, you can host a Q&A session, perform an interview, or get creative and do something that your audience would enjoy.

When doing a live video for your year-end fundraising campaign, don’t worry about reading off a script or putting on a production. These videos are meant to be raw—a mistake or two is totally okay. Your subscribers might even appreciate it!

You can build up the anticipation with teaser posts leading up to the event, or you can just go live during an optimal engagement time for your audience.

When you go “live,” Facebook sends an alert out to all of your followers and tells them you’re going live. Plus, the video will stay on your newsfeed after you sign off, so those who missed it can still watch at a later time.

5. Influence Your Influencers

This could be your own employees or loyal donors, but Facebook Fundraisers is a really neat tool that allows individuals to start their own fundraisers.

It may be a bit much to post this ask on your newsfeed. But, if you have a select few individuals who would be willing to run a fundraiser for your organization, encourage them to do so.

Imagine if you could get five donors to each raise $500. That’s not only helping you reach your year-end goals, but it’s building brand awareness and relationships with new donors!

6. Take Advantage of the Pre-Existing Giving Events

There are many nationally-recognized events already focused on giving back. Giving Tuesday is probably one of the biggest global events encouraging everyone to give, and it’s just one of many! Make sure you have posts ready to share leading up to the event, the day of, and at least one thank-you post to put up after the event has concluded.

The best part about promoting your charity during these events is that you don’t have to promote anything other than yourself. The website and campaign already exist for the main event. These events also typically have a media kit available, so you will have the tools you need to create and schedule posts in advance!

Wrapping Up

There are many ways to utilize social media to boost your year-end fundraising efforts and help you reach your goals. To summarize, here are the 6 tips shared in this post:

• Tell your story and get on a personal level with your donors
• Share content that your donors want to share
• Keep your supporters up-to-date with the fundraising progress
• Try something new, like a Facebook Live video
• Encourage & support your fundraising ambassadors
• Leverage other well-known giving events

Social media is the perfect way to connect with your donors on a more personal level. Keep track of your efforts and make note of what resonates and what doesn’t, so you can replicate in future fundraising campaigns.

Best of luck with your year-end fundraising efforts.

Author Bio

Amber Ooley is the digital marketing manager at Thrive, a full-service digital marketing agency. Amber lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She loves creating engaging content and helping small businesses grow. When she’s not online, you’ll find her hiking through the woods or cozied up with a good book.