How sharing can inspire donations for free
Howard Lake | 17 April 2023 | Blogs
Sharing might be caring, but when it is sharing fundraising messages via social media and other channels, it can also be giving for free.
You’ve seen social sharing buttons and links on fundraising platforms, blogs and news sites like UK Fundraising. Do they actually work? Do they bring tangible results?
JustGiving has tracked these functions since 2011 and has publicly shared them from time to time.Indeed, every JustGiving fundraising page has 15 sharing options, both to inspire and make it easy for people to share the page in a moment.
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Who is sharing?
It’s 2023. Sharing posts has changed a lot since they were introduced. There’s been a long-term shift from social channels to personal messaging apps. Plenty of websites no longer bother with the string of colourful social channel logo boxes that indicate sharing buttons. The BBC for example no longer uses them. It seems that enough people now know how to share content from their browser or device’s functions, certainly on mobile.
SEE ALSO: Monthly focus: fundraising for free (April 2023)
Nevertheless JustGiving reports that from 1 January 2022 to 25th December 2022:
- nearly two million fundraisers shared their fundraising page on its site using the sharing icons.
- shared links generated over 22 million visits to fundraising pages on JustGiving. This is someone in the fundraiser’s network clicking on the link that they shared.
- nearly 3 million donations were made from these share links. In other words when someone who had clicked on the fundraiser’s shared link went on to make a donation.
And sharing is getting more popular. Either many of us have felt a greater need to share or, more likely, we are being asked better or perhaps more often to share a fundraising ask. Whatever the cause, JustGiving reports that 23% more people shared their fundraising pages in 2022 than 2021.
The value of a share
Brian Isaac shared (of course!) the results of social sharing on JustGiving in a blog post in March 2023.
The sharing of JustGiving fundraising pages generated some impressive results:
- Each share drove on average 12 visits to the fundraising page.
- An average of 1.5 donations were generated by each shared page that was clicked.
- An average of £47 was donated for every share click.
- Overall the sharing of fundraising pages brought in £151 million in donations
The quality of a share
JustGiving also learned which channels proved more popular for sharing and which were the most successful in terms of total money donated.
So, not all shares are equal, but you do need to offer the range of choices to benefit the most.
- The most popular share option was WhatsApp
- The most traffic sent to shared fundraising page links was from Facebook
- Shares sent via SMS text resulted in the most money donated.
Not surprisingly JustGiving has encouraged its users to share their fundraising pages, and invite others to share them, in its fundraising tips and in its automated email journeys.
It also advises users to prioritise Facebook, WhatsApp, and SMS (text) when inviting supporters to share pages.
- Captain Tom breaks records and fundraisers raise millions on JustGiving for COVID-19 causes (16 April 2020)
- JustGiving reveals individual fundraisers reach 562 people on Facebook (3 October 2012)
- How to marry social media with fundraising (14 March 2012)
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.