Cone, an agency known for its expertise in cause marketing, has released some findings from its 2009 study of how consumers interact with brands online.
The Cone study looks in part at the role of social media in generating awareness and support for causes. Cone notes that 80% of respondents say that social media provide additional ways for them to support their causes. BUT then …
"Despite new media users’ high level of interest and awareness of causes, their support is not yet being fully translated into bottom-line action. Fewer than one-in-five users (18%) have made a donation through new media, and a majority (72%) agree that such channels raise their awareness about causes, but do not motivate them to do more to help.
Why the disconnect? One of the primary reasons may be fear. Nearly four-in-10 respondents (39%) said they didn’t trust their effort would actually go to help the cause. Other barriers include:
- I’d rather spend my time and/or money supporting causes offline (31%)
- I didn’t see any existing results or impacts (27%)
- I felt overwhelmed by the number of causes on new media (22%)
- My favorite issue, cause or organization doesn’t use new media (19%)
- I didn’t understand the tool/application (17%)"
Trust. A very big deal. And a reason donors often say they don’t give more, irrespective of channel or fundraising approach.
That said, social media is about "friends" and "fans" … i.e., relationships, some obviously far more tenuous than others. Still, genuine relationships should involve trust and trust-building, so over time one would expect that peer-to-peer fundraising and recommendations abetted by social media would be immensely powerful. It’s just not there yet, as Cone’s data indicates.
Tom
P.S. Thanks to Joanne Fritz, nonprofit blogger at About.com, for pointing me to this study.
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No there is a surprise, trust is required in the relationship for the potential conversion of interest to financial support. Maybe we should all stop reading studies and go about the business of visiting people face to face and have conversations. Trust will not be given on an initial visit, who in your database is sitting and waiting to trust you?
This says loud and clear that we’re not using Social Media well.
There may come a time when we raise money directly through social media, but our focus should be relationship building, supporting events, identifying champions, extending online into real time/person to person meetings, and building our presence to give our sponsors and supporters a place to share their messages.
Every media has its place in an organization’s communication and fundraising plan. Thanks for this information. The site www. causecast.com is a website for fundraising but the sums raised for the charities will not allow anyone to abandon the tried and true.
The chorus of organizations singing that social media “doesn’t work” for causes because it doesn’t directly translate into increased donations reminds me of the argument in the Internet’s infancy that banner ads didn’t work because people didn’t click through and buy immediately. The mentality of “it’s a marathon not a race” was true of display ads too. No one would claim now that online advertising doesn’t work.
Increased donations are a benefit that an organization will accrue over time when relationships have been long established. In the meantime, causes can ask their social network to support them in other ways such as forwarding event information, or promoting campaigns. If social media “doesn’t work” maybe it’s because they are not doing it right.
Here’s some timely proof that raising $$ via social networks does in fact work. There are currently 46 nonprofits that use the Boundless Fundraising application from Charity Dynamics to support fundraising for more than 7000 events. The app enables individuals to raise $$ via their their Facebook networks. Since the beginning of 2009, these 46 orgs have now raised more than $10 Million directly through the social networking application. Even better — 75% of these dollars came from new donors to the organizations. $10 million in 10 months = real results. Read more at: http://www.charitydynamics.com/10million