Building Community Using The Next Generation Of Web Marketing And Social Networking Tools

View more presentations from Sloane Berrent.

I was recently invited to speak at the Association of Fund Raising Professionals (AFP) Fund Raising Day NYC. It's their largest single-day conference dedicated to the development and fund raising professionals and a huge honor. I was invited into the Internet and Technology track and presented on emerging technologies and tools that nonprofits could use to help fundraising online.

Full details:

Emerging Channels, Emerging Prospects: Building Community Using the Next Generation of Web Marketing and Social Networking Tools.

Questions like "Why aren't you on Twitter? What's your Facebook or YouTube strategy? How do we monetize our investments in social media?" are increasingly common. It's not enough to just have a presence. Organizations need to have clear direction for maximizing their social media resources. Two experts in this emerging field will provide real world case studies for devising effective social media strategies and integrating these channels into your sustainable marketing efforts and what this all means for your budget and staffing. You'll Learn:

To look at social media as part of your overall donor cultivation strategy.
Strategy tips and case study examples for fundraising campaigns that have been a success, those that haven't and the why & why nots.
Tech tools, APIs and tools from the insider's toolbox to use at your organization, no matter the size or bandwidth.

A huge thank you to Steve Jacobson from JCA who invited me to present and to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, who featured me in a story based on my Cause It's My Birthday campaign to raise money for malaria nets through an online fund raising campaign and offline series of parties. It was that campaign that I used for the first case study in my presentation, which you can see above from SlideShare.

I was thrilled to be joined by Christopher Maddocks, Director of Information Management and Technology, Children's Hospital Boston as we split our presentations across different tools included listening and monitoring tools, social media and social network management, and ways to engage with donors.

I come from a traditional fund raising background and felt so at home at the conference all day. The keynote speaker during lunch was Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone and he was irreverent in his story telling and jokes that ONLY a fund raiser would get. We all laughed together and it was amazing to me to think it that room of 1,000 that we ALL look to the giving and philanthropy of others to push social action in nonprofits forward.

I was reminded of the ambient intimacy I feel with fund raisers. Though I'm not in their midst daily, I do always have my fund raising hat on and I think about PEOPLE and COMMUNITY all the time.

The biggest takeaways (technology examples and case studies were included with each)...

Fish where the fish are - use social networks to engage donors
Quantify giving - where does that $25 donation go?
Be transparent in where donations go and what you take for overhead
Customizing campaigns matters - spending the extra time targeting donors pays off
Use free technology tools to analyze your efforts. Every act online is measurable
You can never say thank you enough when acknowledging donors

So get out there and happy fund raising!