Crowded roads ahead for charity 2.0
Way back in February, the Web's elite were all abuzz over the "Twestivals," a series of events around the world that were organized online to benefit Charity Water, an otherwise small nonprofit organization that funds the construction of wells in developing countries. They ranged from small in-home gatherings to massive nightclub bashes, but there was one general, common hook: spread the word, donate, and tweet about it.
Months later, with Twitter practically bursting at the seams, is this strategy still sustainable?
One part fundraiser and one part publicity blitz, the big-picture hook of "Twestival" was that social-media tools like Twitter and Facebook--with their unprecedented capability to spread the word--could potentially change the face of the nonprofit world. In challenging economic times, the inexpensive use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social outlets to solicit small donations from the masses rather than relying on a few deep pockets has drawn extra buzz for Charity Water and its founder, former New York nightlife promoter Scott Harrison.
Charity Water's message: that one in six people on the planet don't have access to clean drinking water.
(Credit: Charity Water)"We really maintain a presence on about ten of the social media platforms," Harrison said to CNET News on Tuesday. "We're sort of everywhere we need to be, because it's as simple as a sign-up."
"Leveraging social media is absolutely the right way to go," commented Toby Daniels, director of the Think Social initiative at New York's Paley Center for Media, a research project dedicated to applying the past few years' social-networking craze to real-world problems. "The message travels at lightning speed through Twitter, through Facebook, through any of these different channels. People love to share (it) because it's part of their social identity--things that look good, things that make them look good. Everyone is motivated to increase their social capital, and they do that by donating money, by visibly supporting a cause, by donating their time, by recommending other people to donate."
The new-media community has welcomed Charity Water with open arms, and in turn, the nonprofit--which uses Google Earth to map locations of wells and has a Web site full of photos and video taken in the field--has reached out to the Web's luminaries as some of its charter supporters. Last fall, Charity Water hosted a campaign to encourage people born in September to solicit donations from their friends in lieu of gifts. Prominent figures in social media, like Facebook exec Dave Morin and Mashable founder Pete Cashmore, participated in the drive and spread the word to their massive Twitter and Facebook followings, who were eager to jump on the bandwagon. The September campaign raised about $965,000, Harrison said.
"The reason why Scott's been so successful in these areas that people are challenged on is that he's done the most progressive thing," said Elliot Bisnow, organizer of the "Summit Series" entrepreneurship group, which promotes young business leaders' involvement in nonprofit efforts. "He's kind of ahead of the curve on every step." And in this case, being ahead of the curve has meant seeking out the Twitterati rather than Hollywood to spread the word.
But this was before Twitter's growth really began to explode. The latest numbers from traffic firm ComScore peg the microblogging service's June traffic at 44.5 million unique users around the world--in February, when the Twestival events were held, it was less than a quarter of this size--and Facebook has rocketed past a quarter of a billion. Charity Water has been joined in social-media prominence by nonprofit efforts and initiatives from the Bob Woodruff Foundation's Tweet to Remind project to support injured war veterans; to the Twitter-prominent Acumen Fund, an investment organization dedicated to alleviating poverty; to the "Facebook for Good" campaign that kicked off when the social network hit 200 million active users.
As the Web is flooded with more and more charity initiatives, both large, well-established ones and new nonprofits created specifically with harnessing social media in mind, problems can arise. At best, donations could be spread too thin, rendering many organizations less effective.
Of more concern is the fact that the influx of charities and nonprofits to platforms like Facebook and Twitter could result in noise, congestion, and outright apathy. Spreading awareness of a good cause grows difficult when that good cause starts to seem like spam. If one tweet after another is seeking donations, people might just get fed up.
"My filter is set pretty high," Toby Daniels said, "even though I think I'm very connected to the nonprofit space, and obviously invested in the social media component of that."
"I am a little concerned," Elliott Bisnow said of the potential for the "Charity 2.0" trend to reach a tipping point sooner rather than later. "People are more careful with scrutinizing what they give to now...There were way fewer nonprofits even ten years ago than there are today. There are tons and tons more organizations, and you can't just have a fundraiser anymore or send out messages or a newsletter or an e-mail. You can't just do that and expect to raise money."
The Acumen Fund is another nonprofit organization that has gained a prominent following on social media services like Twitter.
(Credit: The Acumen Fund)We may already have a case study of what can happen when, for better or for worse, there are too many people out there trying to do good. In April, The Washington Post published an investigation into the actual effectiveness of Causes, one of the applications to gain early prominence on Facebook's platform. At the time, there were a whopping 179,000 nonprofits with Causes profiles, which allow for easy online donation transactions that are then broadcast in donors' news feeds, but the Post noted that the majority had not received a single donation.
Experts in the nonprofit space say that while any upstart organization--like any start-up business--will want to have a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter, that it's dangerous to rely too heavily on them. In order to be successful on Twitter, or on Causes, or with a Facebook fan page or YouTube channel, there needs to be legitimate promotion and effort, not to mention physical resources.
Toby Daniels pointed to the case of Charity Water.
"They're big in social media, but they're small in the scheme of things, and their biggest problem now is scale," Think Social's Toby Daniels said. "You cannot scale a business, or any type of organization, if you don't have infrastructure, and you don't gain infrastructure by having a Twitter strategy or a Facebook strategy or anything. You need staff, you need operational resources, you need to have all your business systems in place."
The truth is that Twitter and Facebook may fall from favor in the charity world if they grow so big and crowded that it puts a damper on effectiveness. Organizations that want to stay on top of a social media strategy will have to look elsewhere. And Scott Harrison said that Charity Water is already making its next steps.
"We're launching a brand new Web site," Harrison said, adding that it was built with the help of Michael Birch, who co-founded Bebo and sold it to AOL for $850 million last year. The focus, Harrison explained, is to make it possible for individuals to launch their own Charity Water donation campaigns.
"It goes into beta in a few weeks as part of the September campaign, so it'll allow people to 'give up' their birthdays again, but not just September," he said. "People can be creative. They can run marathons, they can skydive, they can give up weddings and anniversaries, they can get their schools involved, et cetera. And it will tie every dollar to a Water project. We're tracking each gift down to the project it's funding."
Harrison says he has no plans to give up on Twitter, even as it grows so big that it may be less effective.
"I don't think you'll see us pull back," Harrison insisted. "If anything, we'll be, maybe, creating more unique strategies for each of our (social media) presences."
And others in the digital charity space say that even if the power of a Twitter account and a Facebook fan page wane, that they'll have been well worth it.
"We've already spread the word to about 3,000 more people that we wouldn't have access to otherwise," said Melissa Kushner, founder of a small school supplies charity called Goods4Good, of the effectiveness of social media tools, "and so that would be a coup in and of itself."
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
I think that will happen if nonprofits, charities, and free agents are simply treating their supporters, potential supports, and others as ATM machines or transactional relationships - and not engaging them and building relationships.
You read some more thoughts here:
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/06/listening-leads-to-engagement-relationship-models.html
But my colleague Brian Reich, posted a great piece about how nonprofits need to think more strategically about their cause-related fundraising
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/06/guest-post-by-brian-reich-the-challenge-of-communicating-in-a-connected-society-and-what-that-means-.html
What's also needed is for nonprofits to work more like networks and build movements about their particular causes -- for example what planned parenthood has been doing
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/07/planned-parenthood-movement-building-leadership-engagement-stories-and-platform-for-selforganizing.html
The article from the Washington Post caused quite an uproar with nonprofit bloggers but lead to quite a productive discussion about strategy and scaling.
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/04/hello-washington-post-dolllars-per-facebook-donor-is-not-the-right-metric-for-success.html
And the last point about scaling, it requires that the whole organization get involved - one of the best examples is what the Red Cross has done with its social media guidelines and operations handbook
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/07/red-cross-social-media-strategypolicy-handbook-an-excellent-model.html
I recently started an online service (oh no, another Facebook app) to raise donations for small, passionate charities. I have definitely felt the fear of charity fatigue even among my friends, as I encourage them to donate to help reach a sizable user base.
I applaud Causes for being the prominent center of charity exposure on Facebook, but my goal is to work more intimately with the charities I support, precisely because of the future goal to have the organizations reach back to the donors and not just treat them as transactional money banks.
My service, We Give, has just barely hatched. There is a lot more I have planned for it, and I sincerely believe that social apps can have a meaningful place in the nonprofit world. I have spent a lot of time cogitating about the ideas behind 'We Give.' It is very refreshing to see these outside opinions validate but also enrich my thoughts about social giving and its challenges.
Kindly,
Mark
http://apps.facebook.com/we-give/
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/08/crowded-roads-ahead-for-charity-20-how-do-address-scaling-and-cause-fatigue.html
The question for charities is, "How can we raise money by not asking people for money?"
People are sick of micropayments - a dollar here and a dollar there - so don't ask them to pay.
Just get them there, and somehow monetize.
All you ever repot on is Twitter. We do not care about Twitter, as you can tell by the lack of comments on your second rate story. If you were a true journalist you would not report on one typic over an over again. Especially, if that typic was not of any interest to your audience. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Furthermore, the filtering of comments is even more reprehensible. To provide a forum for the community and then filter the replies to suit your options is called propaganda.
You and the editors are CNET are in need education on what it is meant to be called a journalist. At the current moment you and your organization is nothing more than a group of bloggers masquerading as a news company.
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/08/crowded-roads-ahead-for-charity-20-how-do-address-scaling-and-cause-fatigue.html
I think it is OBVIOUS the success of Charity Water is directly due to their use of current and modern media and networking sources. Great job reporting in a true journalistic way! ca5ter doesn't necessarily seem to know the value of Twitter.
It's a mistake for anyone to think the internet, no matter how it gets used, will take over as the only source of revenue for any organization, non-profits included. The success of the internet is that it has become an indispensable channel in the overall marketing mix.
http://www.facebook.view-private-profile.com
- by M_Cohen August 7, 2009 5:02 PM PDT
- Fundamentally, the strategy doesn?t have to change, but it does need to get smarter. In order to ensure lasting success, here are a number of considerations to keep in mind, both for social media and beyond:
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(16 Comments)1) Message ? Regardless of what channel you use to spread the word, that message needs to be abundantly clear. Any good organization needs to have a defined mission statement and reachable set of goals.
2) Audience ? Simply broadcasting to the masses without any consideration for who the people are you are trying to target, will result in a call to action that falls on deaf ears. Personalized communications that speak to your audience will show greater returns.
3) Community ? Of course, soliciting monetary donations is the lifeline for any good charity, both in achieving its aims and maintaining its longevity, getting people involved, as volunteers and advocates, are the true measure of success. Building a committed cache of members is important, but implementing a culture that can leverage their interest is essential.
4) Diversification ? While social media provides a cheap and effective way to reach large numbers of people, it can?t be the only platform through which an organization delivers its message. Traditional outreach methods ? events, mailings, and phone calls ? exist for a reason, they still work.
5) Scale ? Position your organization in such a way that it is able to grow. Keep your expectations reasonable in the beginning, but be prepared to expand to meet demand as more interest is generated.
6) Infrastructure ? An intelligent system that enables individuals to give and/or join easily is essential for charities of any size.
-MC
www.scribd.com/moulicohen