Does asking all your social media contacts for donations actually work?
Kevin Baughen | 10 February 2011 | Blogs
Just a quick thought for now in-between research for other articles…
Since the start of this week, I’ve received nine separate asks for donations or sponsorship from different people doing all sorts of cool things for the causes they support. All of the asks have been via social media and all but one are from connections I have, but that I wouldn’t call close. I checked a few individual’s tweetstreams and it appears that they sent quite a number of (the same) asks to their contact lists.
I have no problem with people asking for support, I just wonder how effective it is when we try to scale-up our social media contacts like this?
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Sure, it’s cheaper than direct mail, administering sponsor forms or indeed blasting email campaigns but I think it misses one key asset that these other media all have; no opportuntiy to engage me with what the cause is all about. I can’t easily see (or hear) the stories of how these charities are making a difference to people.
So it’s tough for me to be compelled to give.
As it turned out, I’ve sponsored the one person I know and made a donation to one other charity whose work I know. But that’s because of prior knowledge, not the asks themselves.
All opportunties to ask are precious and perhaps someone can prove me wrong but I’m just not sure that this approach is going to pay dividends in the long run. Do you have any experience of this kind of fundraising? Did it / does it work for you? Please feel free to share.
- Social media as a fundraising tool – some hard facts (13 February 2012)
About Kevin Baughen
Kevin is the founder of Bottom Line Ideas and has a deep-rooted passion for ideas that actually work in the real world. Those ideas help charities of all shapes and sizes to get their stories and messages to the audiences they need to hear them. And then persuade them to act!