Facebook and fundraising in Singapore
Howard Lake | 27 April 2012 | Blogs
In a way this title is misleading as though I found mass use of Facebook among Singaporeans, i was surprised that more use was not made of Facebook and other social networks for fundraising; or at least for the building of those invaluable individuals supporters who will become the backbone of an organisation’s fundraising over time.
Let me put in a word for Facebook ads and LinkedIn ads right now, which I have used to build up surprisingly large groups of followers at little cost. Of course, we need to nurture these supporters but we would be doing this anyway – would we not? the problem organisations seems to have is not keeping in touch with these people but in knowing what to do with them once they are happily ‘liking’ the site, joining the group or reading the tweets.
This is really a failure of imagination and planning – our old strategies saw supporters as passive recipients of appeals for funds or in a separate category as campaigners to sign petitions and take part in real world events – new strategies need to end that separation which means ending internal silos too. New strategies need to think globally, as that is where you new supporters live, and this may in turn require you to rewrite (or better still abandon completely) those mission stratements we all spent so long crafting, but which now are merely shakles keeping us from participating in the changes our potential suporters are experiencing and want to influence.
Look at www.avaaz.org and www.38degrees.co.uk – don’t you just wish you had a website like Avaaz? And what is stopping you? The same thing that is stopping you from mobilising those Facebook supporters, letting them help you achieve your organisation’s goals.
There is a war emerging as Generation X takes over from the Boomers and fails to show their devotion to monitoring, evaluating, controlliong and analysing civil society organisations’ behaviour. Instead they want to see the speed of change picking up rapidly now and will take actions fast expecting to make mistakes and correct them quickly – perhaps counter-intuitively they are freewheeling Microsoft not uptight Apple in design philosophy.
And rising up is Generation Y that has already voted with its feet and is setting up their own social enterprises, because charities are not only not cool they are dreadfully boring to work for; with their ossified structures and lack of connectedness with the way things are moving. So unless Gen X wins iots own war with the Boomers, Gen Y will be creating an entirely new world – and good luck to them!
John Baguley
CEO
International Fundraising Consultancy Group
www.ifc.tc
www.sifc.ch
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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.