Latest on New Media Fundraising

I hope you have heard of New Media Fundraising. I am sure you would have at least heard of something called online fundraising or Internet fundraising.

If you have not, don’t despair, for in the next 15 minutes, you will have! Are you wondering if there is any real difference between new media and online fundraising? Yes, there is a bit of difference. In fact, online fundraising is a part of New Media Fundraising.

In the years gone by, online fundraising meant that you created a website with a payment gateway and sent emails to people asking for contributions. While this form of fundraising continues to exist, over the years, due to increased ease in sending out bulk emails, effectiveness of this tool is being seriously questioned. The other aspect of online fundraising used to be buying or bartering online banners. Here, you could advertise your fundraising message and motivate people to click and donate on your website. I am sure all of us have seen if not clicked on such banners!

In the previous decade emerged the trend of user-generated content. This meant, an NGO’s online presence was incomplete unless it gave opportunity to users to express themselves. Therefore, some NGO websites started giving opportunities to people to put their comments, which would be moderated by the NGO and published later. But user-generated business was not stopping here. With the advent of blogs, the ‘publish’ button went to the user. The user became the king. One could write whatever one wanted without being at the mercy of an editor. This increased the number of online publications several fold. While earlier, media houses and organisations had portals for people to visit, this power got transferred to users now. It sure increased the clutter in the cyberspace. It also augmented the relevance of search engines like Goggle. People could search and reach a website or blog of their choice.

With this shift of power to people, also came in social networks – Orkut, Facebook... People now not only had the publish button, they also had their network of people. These people read what their ‘friends’ put online and even reacted to it. And then Twitter arrived. People no longer wrote something and waited for people to visit and read. They became broadcasters.

With such power in the hands of people, it was increasingly felt that whatever people blogged about or shared with friends on Facebook and Orkut or even broadcast through Twitter, could carry fundraising or awareness messages for NGOs. That is how the staid online fundraising became New Media Fundraising.

New Media Fundraising today is about having your fundraising message on blogs of people, their social networks and tweets so that it reaches audience in their networks and even networks of people in their networks. This increases chances to motivate more people to donate. It also makes donors get involved. They not only give but also advocate.

What is the cost for all this? Well, nothing! But as you know nothing in this world is absolutely free. While there is no fee for capitalising on this medium, you have to invest in specialist manpower and development of certain online promotion material like widgets. Widgets are button-like display banners that allow people to put your message in an easy, cut and paste manner on their blogs or Facebook and Orkut pages.

New Media Fundraising today is also about managing search engines like Google. A very critical factor is, how high in the search results your website or fundraising message is. For example, if you are an NGO working for the cause of women and if people search ‘India women NGO donate’ what is the number at which your website emerges? If it is not right on the top, chances of your being a beneficiary of generosity of the searcher reduce.

Managing the search engine broadly involves two aspects – search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM). SEO is inexpensive and meets a long-term goal. Through various tools available even free of cost like Google Analytics, you can analyse what ‘key words’ people use while searching. In the example ‘India women NGO donate’ that we used before, the analysis would show that these are the most popular key words on the subject that people use. Then you have to ensure that these key words feature in most important sections of your website. In the case of fundraising, it is donation and other allied pages. I say long-term goal because this is difficult to achieve overnight. It may take months of analysing and monitoring popular key words and incorporating them on your website.

SEM costs money. These are sponsored links, indicated separately on the top of all search results. With SEM you can link your website across blogs and websites through ‘Google affiliates network’. Please see the adjoining picture on how these appear visually. The costing mechanism mostly followed for these links is called ‘pay-per-click’, which means you pay when someone clicks on your fundraising link.

In India, NGOs like Greenpeace, UNICEF, Save the Children, World Vision, Save the Tiger and CRY have been quiet active in New Media Fundraising. Greenpeace uses the medium both for campaigning and fundraising. At the click of button, a person can join a campaign, sign a petition on environmental issues or even donate. UNICEF has recently launched a new media campaign on universal right to education called ‘Awaaz Do’. In its first few months, it had more than 200,000 people signing-up. This campaign also added a new dimension; that of mobiles and telephones to online campaigns.

Similarly, the ‘Save the Tiger’ campaign used TV, print and outdoor advertising in addition to new media, which made people sit up and take notice.

Is new media raising money? This is a question on minds of people, especially those involved in fundraising. What has become clear is that new media campaigns generate a lot of leads that can be converted. This has to be done as a system; people are called, sent emails and donations are attained from them. This does not mean people do not donate directly. Greenpeace actively gets campaigners and supporters through their new media campaigns. World Vision is also getting child sponsors using the new media. But the key here is follow-up, otherwise you just warm-up people and no fundraising happens!

This article is written by Anup Tiwari for Raisers' Ask