Social Network Fundraising - a new (old) approach?

Posted by irishg on February 20th, 2005 at 08:52am

Many nonprofits rely on small-donor fundraising, and much of that fundraising is done using direct response techniques. We’re all familiar with the format - a letter or phone call from an organization telling you how important their work is, and asking you to make a donation to support them. Direct response fundraising is a long-standing practice that many fundrasers (myself included) continue to rely on. However, it’s not the only way for nonprofits to engage their donors.

Alex Steffen posted a commentary recently on the worldchanging.com site reminding us all how limiting, and at times insulting, direct response fundraising can be. Here’s an excerpt:

Right now, most advocacy NGOs consider their members like you and me mostly as a source of small donations. By and large, they couldn’t care less what we think, how we act, who we know and how strongly we’re committed, as long as we keep writing those $35.00 checks for our “memberships.”

Ouch. The truth hurts sometimes …

The Howard Dean campaign for the US democrat nomination was one of the first large successful demonstrations of how things could be done differently by applying a social network model to standard fundraising practice. What was so interesting about the Dean campaign fundraising? It was the way that many of the donation pitches were delivered - from one friend or family member or colleague to another - using online word-of-mouth (word-of-mouse?) and peer-to-peer fundraising tools that made it easy for individuals who were committed to the campaign to go out and round up more donations from within their own social networks. Both the Kerry and Bush campaigns made extensive use of online social networking tools for fundraising and also for Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) efforts.

Social network fundraising is being used in non-political fundraising as well. One example is the Night of 1000 dinners, where private individuals use an online registration and invitation tool to hold a fundraising dinner party in their own home and invite their friends, family and neighbours to join (and make a suggested donation to support the global anti-landmine movement). It has also been used successfully in charity marathon/walkathon events.

Social Network Fundraising is a powerful fundraising model because it super-charges the “pitch” - it adds the power of the personal relationship between the “asker” and the “askee” on top of the message being presented by the organization, and in fact, many of those donations to the Dean campaign were likely made not because of the campaign message in itself, but rather because of the messenger who delivered it.

It makes sense when you look at psychological and social models of how people form political opinions and loyalties to causes — we rely very heavily on the influence of our peers and immediate social circles - so when a campaign/advocacy/fundraising message originates from within those relationships - it’s very hard to resist.

In fact, relationship fundraising (which is another term being applied to this kind of approach) is not new at all - it’s an old model of fundraising that was in widespread use when people lived in communities where you actually knew your neighbours and had regular contact with other people in your immedate surroundings. My mother, for instance, used to be a volunteer with the “Mothers who March” and raised money each Easter for the March of Dimes. She went door to door around the town, talking to friends and neighbours and asking them to make donation. And by all accounts she was a pretty convincing fundraiser — well known in the community, and a prominent member of the local United Church. I can’t help but think that when the March of Dimes centralized all their fundraising in the 1970’s and started relying on direct mail and telephone appeals, that they lost a powerful salesperson…

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