My Social Media for Nonprofits Manifesto* – Let’s Get Tracking: Five Charts on the Top Facebook Charities
While I am an old hand at fundraising, I readily admit to being a newbie in the world of social networking. Thanks to some wonderful mentors here in Milwaukee (thanks, Phil Gerbyshak, Wayne Breitbarth & Tom Snyder) I have been making huge strides forward. This blog is just one manifestation of my newfound appreciation for the social networking sphere of action, as my friends and colleagues who are being bombarded by my tweets and posts will attest.
When my fundraising colleagues find out about my new social networking obsession, they invariably ask if I know of any real results that real charities are getting from Facebook fan pages, Facebook Causes, Twitter and the blogosphere. How can we track this? How do we know if any of this is helping anyone raise awareness or money?
For now I am going to leave the question of how to calculate the ROI of a fundraising campaign for another post. There are a lot of theories being bandied about, but my concern today is more mundane: you can’t prove any theories right or wrong without data. I have looked all over, and I have found very little hard data on what is really going on.
To satisfy my curiousity I decided to take a look at Facebook fundraising statistics, since the first thing many nonprofits do to raise money through social media is set up a Facebook Fan Page and a Cause Page. There is information on the Inside Facebook blog and also on the Facebook Causes homepage (accessed from within Facebook once you have added Causes to your profile) that allows some tracking to be done. Using the information publicly available on these two sites, I have devised some simple charts that track the progress of the top nonprofits on Facebook. This is the first week I have compiled these statistics, therefore there is only data in the first column. I will look at the statistics every Sunday, update and repost. Eventually I hope to do some averaging and post trends month-to-month.
1) The Nonprofit Fan Pages with the Most Fans – still far behind the celebrities
The data in this chart was compiled from the Inside Facebook blog > Page Statistics > Page Leaderboard > Nonprofits. I only included organizations that were obvious 501(c)(3)s. A limitation is that only organizations which have created “fan” pages and tagged them with the keyword “nonprofit” will show in this list. Therefore, if, for example, an art museum places itself in the “museum” category their page will not be in the listing used to created this chart.
In any case, this week LiveStrong, AKA the Lance Armstrong Foundation, comes out on top with nearly 575,000 members. This is nothing compared to the 10 million+ fans that Michael Jackson’s fan page has, but it is the nonprofit site with the most fans.
2) Facebook Causes - Sheep in Sheep’s Clothing?
The data in this chart comes from the Facebook Causes Home Page > Find Causes > Browse Causes. This list, “The top 5 causes by total members,” is auto-generated by the site. N.B. all of these organizations list their georgraphy as “global.” However, if you put the term “global” in the search window, you get a completely different list of top Facebook Causes by total members. I am currently discussing this situation with Facebook Causes and hope to have an answer soon as to why this disparity would exist.
I found it extremely interesting that four of the Causes in this chart do not use the actual name of the charity as the Cause name. Rather than choose to use the power and name recognition of their brands, these formidable organizations have used a different approach on Facebook Causes. Four of them have used a name with an action orientation, hence “race” “prevention” and “stop” are prominent.
Here is a key to the Causes in the above chart:
- The Race to End Cancer = Donations go to the Arkansas Children’s Hospital
- Campaign for Cancer Prevention = Donations go to Brigham & Women’s Prevention Hospital
- Animal Rights = Donations go to PETA
- Stop Animal Cruelty = Donations go to the Humane Society of the U.S.
- Stop Global Warming = Donations go to the Alliance for Climate Protection
3) Facebook Causes – On the face of it, pretty dismal donations per member
The data in this chart is also taken from the Facebook Causes Home Page > Find Causes > Browse Causes. This list, “The top 5 causes by total members,” is auto-generated by the site and while it does include information on the amount of donations received by each of the top causes by members, there is no way to know if these are also the top money-raising organizations on Causes. As with the chart in #2, if you put the term “global” in the search window, you get a completely different list of top Facebook Causes by total members. Also, there is no indication of the time period covered by these donation numbers. These are details I am discussing with the folks at Causes and hope to clear up in the near future.
Taking these donation totals and dividing by the number of members from chart 2 to come up with the following average amount donated per member for each of the top causes: between one and two cents per member.
This back-of-the-napkin analysis is woefully inadequate, failing to take into account a plethora of circumstances. We don’t know, for instance, how much time and effort went into creating these campaigns. If they were nearly completely viral, requiring perhaps a 1/2 day to set up and release, then I think any nonprofit would be happy to have an extra $30K – $100K coming in this year. Dollars raised by these viral campaigns could also be funnelled to the nonprofits via avenues other than the causes page, meaning more money raised but not all of it is being tracked by Facebook Causes. Add your own caveat here (or better yet, in the comments section) . . .
4) Top U.S. Charities on Causes – Going to the Dogs
The data in this chart comes from the Facebook Causes Home Page > Find Causes > Browse Causes > United States. I only included causes that accept donations in creating this chart. One caveat: any charity not using the geographic tag “United States” (i.e., if they are using the tag “Global” or only using their state name) they would not appear in this list.
As with the top global charities, the top US causes are using active words and phrases for their viral campaigns and staying away from using the actual name of their charity.
- Stop Dog Fighting Now = Pit Bull Rescue Central
- Fight Animal Cruelty = ASPCA
- Keep the Arts in Public Schools = Americans for the Arts
- The Right to Keep & Bear Arms = NRA
It would be fascinating to find out what, if anything, these organizations are doing to convert their Cause members into donors.
5) Top US Charities by Causes Donations – If an ask is made in cyberspace, does anyone act on it?
The data in this chart comes from the Facebook Causes Home Page > Find Causes > Browse Causes > United States. The same restrictions apply here as for chart #4.
I did not look up the membership numbers for the three causes on this chart that did not appear on chart #4. However, carrying out the same calculations that were done for chart #2, I find that these US causes are doing slightly better than their global counterparts, raising between 24 and 27 cents per member.
Assuming that a higher percentage of the members of the US-based Causes are in the US, this slightly better result may be because the technology for donating is more easily accessed by US-based donors than by international donors. Again, this is an extremely hasty sort of analysis and I would love to hear other opinions.
I plan on updating these charts both here and on my Facebook Fan Page at http://companies.to/julieink on a weekly basis. I willexpand the analysis once some trendlines have been established and after I can be sure I am analyzing what I think I am.
As the charitable sector moves further into friend- and fundraising on the internet, more hard data like this is going to be needed, not only to plan but also to evaluate the success of our efforts. I look forward to hearing comments and suggestions on the information I have provided here. Is there something you think should be included that you don’t see here? Do you know of anyone else who is attempting to consolidate these disparate data streams and plot them over time? Let me know!
*Manifesto = a public declaration of principles & intentions
Once I was asked to participate in a career fair for middle school-aged Girl Scouts, where there would be hundreds of girls circulating amongst tables set up by women representing dozens of careers. The organizers said they were inviting me because I was a female business owner and someone who could represent the nonprofit sector. I was excited and flattered to be asked, for who doesn’t love talking about how great their job is and indoctrinating young, impressionable minds as to the True Path in Life?
My excitement quickly turned to hesitation and then to actual dread as I thought about how I could set up a table about fundraising that would be interesting to 13-year-old girls.
I had no videos of fundraising; what would those look like, anyway? A film of two people in an office: one says, “We were hoping you’d consider a gift of $10,000 to our capital campaign, Ms. Big Philanthropist,” to which the other person replies “Why, yes, I was thinking the same thing,” at which the first person jumps up and down shouting “Yes!” Hmm maybe not.
I had no tri-fold presentation board to put on my table, besides, what would I put on it? The front page of a grant application? A turndown letter from a foundation? Even photos of people in programs that are funded by philanthropy didn’t really seem like they would be very informative for the girls at the career fair.
What about a computer set up and opened to a foundation search engine? “Here, girls, this is what an IRS form 990 looks like.” . . . Yeah, THAT would be popular.
The problem, I soon realized, was that the girls probably didn’t understand the basics. How could I talk about fundraising without first explaining the difference between a for-profit and a not-for-profit? Did they understand what a donor was? Were they familiar with the word “philanthropy”? All of which were necessary prior to being able to talk about fundraising or grantwriting. So I ended up creating a couple of written handouts with a few vocabulary words, a list of nonprofit jobs sorted as entry-, mid- and upper-level, and a simplified sample grant proposal. The Big Day arrived. I walked into the Career Fair room and saw other women busily setting up their tables. Most seemed to be representatives from corporations with professionally created tri-fold displays, video loops, colorful tablecloths with corporate logos, etc. Still, I didn’t think about turning around and leaving with my pathetic handouts until I saw that my table was right next to “Mad Science.” The women at this table had actual working science experiments that the girls could touch and play with, they were wearing white lab coats and their hair was bunched up in weird rubber bands that made them look truly mad but also super cool.
What I didn’t realize at the time was even though those girls had absolutely no notion of fundraising—or even nonprofits—as a possible career choice, the truth is they were already fundraisers.
Principle #1: We are all fundraisers.
At any moment in time, practically everyone is engaged in some kind of fundraising activity, some obvious, some less so:
- If your job description includes the word “fundraising” “advancement” or “development,” that one’s a no-brainer . . . but anyone who works at a nonprofit is also a fundraiser; your efforts on behalf of clients and the results of those efforts are instrumental in the organization’s ability to garner support from donors.
- If you are on the fundraising committee of your church/temple/mosque, you know you are a fundraiser . . . but you are also a fundraiser if you have helped staff a booth at the annual summer festival, baked a cake for the spaghetti dinner, or greeted someone warmly as they arrived for a religious service; each activity contributes either directly to the institution’s bottom line and/or to building a relationship with a potential donor.
- If you are training for a triathlon for breast cancer and soliciting sponsorships from your friends, you know you are a fundraiser (and so do your legs!) . . . but you are also a fundraiser if you encouraged your network (whether through emails or Facebook or Twitter or word-of-mouth) to support someone else’s triathlon effort.
You’re probably way ahead of me on this . . . every one of those Girl Scouts at the career fair was already a fundraiser. Selling Girl Scout cookies is the most obvious signpost on the road to the adult world of philanthropy, but there are many others: a community service project, a visit to a nursing home, a donation of handmade blankets to the local children’s hospital. All are activities that these girl leaders of tomorrow will be able to look back on and realize formed the foundation of a lifetime of fundraising activities.
So now when someone asks me to talk about what I do, whether formally in a workshop or informally at a party, I turn the question around and find out what personal fundraising experience they have had in their own lives and build on that. No scholarly definitions or jargon-filled treatises necessary, just chatting about the everyday fundraiser in all of us.
Still, if anyone has any good ideas for a cool costume or fundraising-related experiment (preferably involving beakers and lots of attention-drawing smoke) that I could use at the next Career Fair, I’d love to hear about it!
* Manifesto = a public declaration of principles & intentions
- Making the Girl Scout Promise 1969 (that’s me on the far left)
My Nonprofit Manifesto* – Principle I: Front line workers should understand the mission
Nary a day goes by in which I do not thank my stars that I landed in a nonprofit career. It wasn’t intentional (believe me, no grade school kid says they want to be a fundraiser when they grow up) and it wasn’t strategic (no, I really didn’t take that part-time, early-morning job folding towels at the YMCA membership desk because I thought that it would directly lead to professional positions in program development/fundraising and finally into a satisfying consulting practice). But it has been joyful, challenging and fulfilling. Now that I have 25 years of experience in the nonprofit world, I can see a few overarching intentions in my work that have remained constant and that I try to incorporate in my work every day.
Principle #1: Never forget that front-line workers are the ones your members/participants interact with the most, therefore they need to understand the overall purpose and vision of your organization in order to embody that mission in every interaction they have with the public.
I learned this early in my tenure as a front desk attendant at the downtown branch of the Milwaukee YMCA. As a college student, the job’s schedule was what first appealed to me: working 5:15 am – 8:30 am, M-W-F left all day free for classes and evenings free for a second job. This schedule resulted in two important consequences.
First, I frequently interacted with many of the city’s foremost leaders in business and industry as they came in for their pre-work racquetball games, fitness classes, and jogging sessions. Second, I rarely interacted with YMCA professional staff, most of whom arrived well after I had already left the building (well, there was that one time when I innocently barred David Dean from entering the facility because he didn’t have his member ID—how was I supposed to know he was the CEO and the guy who signed my paychecks?). Put those two things together and you have a condition which is still prevalent in nonprofits today: front line staff who regularly interact with clients and members but who have little to no understanding of the mission or purpose of the nonprofit for which they work.
When a few months into the job my supervisor recruited me for his fundraising team, I don’t think he did it because he wanted to teach me more about the YMCA and its mission. Nor do I think he did it because he realized I had unique access to lots of members, many of whom were able to make large donations. I think he did it because he was expected to have a certain number of people on his team and I was fresh blood. Even so, it was the beginning of my education on the inner workings of a nonprofit. At the frequent team meetings and campaign rallies, I absorbed information like a sponge and then turned around and spread that information to the hundreds of members I talked to weekly. The knowledge that I was involved in something that was bigger than a basketball court and swimming pool inspired me and I grew to understand that the YMCA contributed positively in many ways to the quality of life of not only its members, but of the city as a whole. I felt good about my part-time role in forwarding that mission, and as the only YMCA employee with whom many members ever had contact, I believe I had a big impact on their perception of the organization.
Oh, and yes, I made that first fundraising goal—$500—and will reflect some more on my intentions as a fundraiser in subsequent posts.
Do you work for a nonprofit that does a particularly good job training your front-line workers in the mission and goals of your agency? If so, I’d like to hear about it.
*Manifesto = a public declaration of principles & intentions
Me at the old Milwaukee Central YMCA Courtesy Counter 1983
Coffee? — check! Pile of articles? — Check! Ideas to share with nonprofit colleagues? — Check and double check!
And with that I am ready to plunge into the world of blogging. Why it took me so long, I’m not sure, but I finally feel like there might be a modicum of information and insight inside this brain that others might find useful. That, or I’m afraid I will start to forget stuff if I don’t write it down somewhere, so it might as well be where others can benefit.
After 25 years in the nonprofit sector–nearly 10 as an independent consultant–the number of people and institutions I have had contact with is large. While my primary area of concentration has been on youth-serving agencies, afterschool programming and adolescents in an urban setting, those interests have brought me to work with not only the stereotypical neighborhood youth agency, but also:
- arts organizations
- environmental agencies
- public school systems
- recreation departments
- religious institutions
- private schools
- child care centers
- nonprofit TV and radio stations
- and even zoos
to name just a few of my clients and employers.
I’ve worked with agencies that are
- local affiliates of national youth agencies (YMCA, Girl Scouts)
- statewide groups (Wisconsin Positive Youth Development, Wisconsin Youth in Government)
- independent agencies that concentrate their efforts on one neighborhood (Milwaukee Latino Community Center, Malaika Early Childhood Center).
I’ve even had considerable experience with international nonprofits, mainly through the YMCA but also through Hostelling International. Indeed, it was the two years I spent in Chile working for the Valparaiso YMCA that propelled me into the world of nonprofits, community development, and youth leadership in the mid-1980’s and I have never regretted the decision I made at that time to make this my life’s work. In the subsequent years, I’ve worked as a:
- Frontline Youth Worker
- Grant Writer
- Director of Development
- Public Relations Director
- International Program Director
- Program Evaluator
- Strategic Planner
- Advisor to philanthropists
- Board Developer
- Budget Analyst
Consequently, the situations I have experienced at ground zero in the nonprofit world are incredibly varied. I have a good grasp of the trials and tribulations faced by nonprofits, and I’ll try to share some insights here, a couple of times a week, or whenever the inspiration hits.
So if you are just starting out in the world of nonprofits, or if you are an old hand looking for new tricks, or if you just want to engage more fully in the nonprofit work you are currently doing through a back-and-forth discussion, I welcome you to the Julie/INK blog. Thanks for coming! Please let me know what you are doing, what you like about the blog, what you don’t like, and we’ll all learn from each other. I’m looking forward to getting to know you!
