For political campaigns and non-profits, there are now few good options when it comes to fundraising online. For a while, digital advertising was the most cost-effective option organizations and campaigns relied on to pull in the amount of attention necessary for a successful fundraising campaign.
Yet with Twitter’s prohibition on the promotion of political content, Facebook’s recent announcement on de-emphasizing political ads, and with majorities of Americans holding antagonistic attitudes toward political advertising on social media, it’s clear that advertising isn’t where the future of digital fundraising lies.
Here’s my pitch for a more efficient alternative: an organic social media strategy that focuses on quality content and audience engagement to build a community around your candidate or group. Essentially, it means applying traditional campaign tactics in a digital space.
At an online summit in November hosted by the Center for Digital Fundraising, political advocacy non-profit DemCast USA announced they had raised $1.4 million for candidates and grassroots organizations in critical swing states exclusively from organic social sharing.
In a conversation I recently had with DemCast Co-founder Lori Coleman, she highlighted ways organic social sharing provides value above and beyond digital advertising. Here are some ways you can implement your own effort:
Start with community building.
Before even engaging in fundraising efforts, a crucial first step is to invest in community building. This will be the backbone of your future fundraising efforts, and what differentiates an organic social share strategy from just going on Twitter begging people to donate to you online.
Determine what unique qualities your campaign or organization brings to the table that set it apart from the crowd and then foster engagement around these qualities. Tying this story back into the audience’s everyday lives is also essential to getting people to care, as well as having them identify with the online community you’re trying to build.
Coleman and her team accomplished this by emphasizing their advocacy for Democratic, progressive candidates and grassroots organizations in swing states, thus unifying the audience around an identifiable, achievable mission.
Once the story has been established and your campaign begins fostering engagement and conversations among your online communities, it’s important to lower the barriers for your community members to contribute to conversations and activities. This means engaging across a variety of platforms and mediums and tailoring content for each medium to boost the likelihood the audience will engage with the content.
Build trust with transparency.
Building a community must go hand in hand with building trust, which relies heavily on transparency. The cornerstone of every successful organic social fundraising campaign is an engaged community that’s fully aware of how their dollars are spent and why these donations are important.
When formulating copy for a fundraising campaign, make sure totailor the ask and be as specific as possible as to what you’re asking for and what will be done with the donation. While the copy will vary, it should generally specify where the money will be used and what impact it will have, i.e. “with a donation of $20, we can reach X number of people in Y place.”
Another strategic tip from the organic social share conversation: avoid splitting donations among numerous candidates or organizations. Small-dollar donors generally want to see their dollars make a heavy impact in one particular area, rather than be spread around numerous areas where the individual impact of their donation is lightly felt. Fundraising campaigns showing individual contributions spread too thin might dissuade those donors from donating.
Have a strategy for pre- and post-donation engagement.
One major element that needs to be considered as well is sustained engagement. Campaigns need to avoid getting prospective donors to the finish line and not following up with donors afterward. It’s important to continue to engage donors through a variety of methods, including engaging in one-on-one messaging with top supporters, establishing private social media groups for further messaging and engagement.
Leaving non-financial avenues of community engagement open both for prospective and current donors will keep overall community interest high, reinforce the campaign’s authenticity and increase the likelihood of future fundraising opportunities.
One thing to keep in mind however is being smart about the content you’re putting out there.
Utilizing, at the very least, built-in social media analytics tools to see what posts have the most success will allow for the crafting of more impactful content moving forward. Coleman’s organization, using social media campaign toolkits we created, was able to pinpoint copy and images that best suited both the platform and their audience, generating 18,000 clicks on their ActBlue campaigns.
Give supporters the ability to customize and share your content.
Finally, another great element of organic social sharing is giving followers the ability to craft their own messaging centered around the organization or campaign’s brand.
Having community members independently sharing content related to a campaign is the pinnacle of grassroots community engagement online and presents a massive opportunity to fundraise. Also, it would be useful to provide an avenue for supporters to share post-donation, allowing your campaign to tap into numerous networks to authentically generate campaign interest.
Again, the best way to move forward with sparking this kind of engagement is to remove as many barriers to making it as easy as possible for supporters to participate in conversations. Coleman’s team achieved this by utilizing one of our toolkits that provided online supporters with pre-written social media posts which they could then customize and share with friends, resulting in $300,000 of organically-raised funds.
Allowing the audience to craft their own message and share it with their friends will lend a great deal of authenticity to the campaign and allow for more fundraising opportunities in the future.
Construct a campaign with these four principles in mind and you’ll be able to build an organic audience that will have tangible connections to both your campaign and fundraising efforts.
Michael Roach is the Content & Communications Lead at SpeechifAI, an embeddable digital platform that enables organizations and companies to create and manage digital campaigns & toolkits.
