Theo Socmed's Musings

JustGiving extendes text donations to individuals

Really good news today that JustGiving and Vodafone have extended their text donations facility to individuals who are raising funds for their chosen charities. This is a real leap forward, bringing text donating to people like you and me. The best thing of all is it’s a free service, so no longer does mobile phone company take a hefty cut of the donation.

To read a fuller report on this development, check out Third Sector magazine’s article: Third Sector

Segmentation using Google+

Following an excellent webinar on Friday afternoon led by Jason Falls of Exploring Social Media about the new Google+, I am getting excited at the potential this new app from Google has for segmenting people.

As an ex database manager, I know the power of segmentation for charities and businesses in targeting the right people with regards to raising cause awareness, marketing, fundraising, etc. Segmentation, in database terms, is where you tell the database to look for people who match certain criteria, for example: women who live in Surrey over the age of 35 who have bought or dontated something in the past 12 months.

The database cleverly searches the records to make these matches. The result is a very specific target audience.

Now, Google+ cannot do this. (Sorry to disappoint you!) But what it does offer is something that Twitter and Facebook don’t. It has a function called Circles, whereby the user can create any number of circles to sort their contacts into. Not only this, but people can be put into any number of your circles. So let’s say you create the following circles for your charity:

•  Donors
•  Donors – male
• Donors – female
• Donors – local
• Donors – not local
• Donors - corporate
• Volunteers
•  Volunteers – male
• Volunteers – female
• Volunteers – local
• Volunteers – not local
• Staff
• Trustees
  
• Friends Group
• Suppliers
• Beneficiaries
• Beneficiaries – families

It would not be too difficult to add people to the relevant circles as you link with them via Google+. You have then built a Google+ database of sorts, where you can target specific messages to specific groups of people. For example, you’re summer fayre is coming up, you need to ask for helpers, donations of goods to sell and raffle, commercial people to book stalls and people to attend the event and spend their cash!

You can target various circles with each of these asks. Volunteers to help; Suppliers & corporate donors to book stalls; Donors, Friends Group, Volunteers, Trustees, Suppliers to donate goods; Donors, Friends Group, Trustees, Staff, Corporates to attend and spend money.

Yes, some people would get more than one message, but the messages would all be different, according to the particular circle you are informing.

OK, it’s not as smart as a regular database, but it is a great improvement over Twitter and Facebook, where one message goes to all. Anyway, who knows what Google+ developers will come up with in the future. Maybe it will be possible in the future to pull circles together and then search for those who are common to each?

I think Google are on to a winner with Google+. It’s still in the Beta stage at present, but the early signs are that it could be very powerful and it is important, therefore, that you and I are in there and ready to run when it goes official!

Social media plays key role in record-breaking fundraising appeal

Following the devastating earthquake in Haiti earlier this year, the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), the coalition of several key aid charities, has received a record-breaking £70m+ in donations for its Haiti Appeal.

A staggering 48% of the UK population has made a donation, according to the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). Never has a disaster appeal had such an overwhelming response from the public.

One of the charities involved in meeting the needs of survivors in Haiti is the children’s charity, Plan UK. Their director of fundraising, Jeremy Cooper, said that social media played a key role in mobilising support. “Within 24 hours of the emergency hitting Haiti, we sent an eAppeal to our supporters.”. He added, “Just minutes after the earthquake Plan staff were using social networking sites to circulate content and updates.”.

In the first week after the disaster, Plan UK alone raised over £100k and puts much of this down to the use of social media to get the message across to supporters.

No wonder then that more and more charities are looking to developing social media strategies to support their more traditional forms of communication and awareness-raising. One of the major factors that social media has over other more traditional forms of fundraising is its immediacy. Just as new services are discovering, people with access to sites such as Twitter can get facts and information out in a matter of minutes to hundreds of thousands of people.

This form of viral communication is not only fast, it is virtually cost-free, using applications that we all have on our mobile phones, PCs, iPads, etc. It’s also two-way, employing both messages from charities to supporters, but also feedback and input from supporters, something traditional communications lack.

However, it isn’t just specific disaster-led appeals that can make good use of social media. Charities are learning how to harness Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other forms of social media to develop their campaigning, nurture potential new donors and grow their relationship with existing supporters.

Whatever your view of social media, from being a glib time-waster to being an incredible communications network facilitator, we will never return to just the old ways of raising funds and campaigning. Social media is here to stay and we ignore it at our peril.

Apple: still playing sour grapes to charities

It’s sad to see that Apple, a company with such high standards and ideals, is still refusing to allow charities easy access to online donations via its iPhones, when every other mobile phone system does.

According to Third Sector magazine (14 Sept 2010), a company called GetGiving has developed an app that would enable donors to make donations simply via their iPhones. But, yet again, Apple refused permission for online donations to be made via an app (which I assume means it doesn’t go through their preferred financial system) and insitsted that apps must link potential donors to  a website where they can then make donations. The latter probably means they want it all to go through their iTunes shop/site.

Come on Apple, this isn’t doing much good for your cred and is making your sweet Apple flavour (or flavor, for our friends over the pond) turn quite sour as a result. Surely it isn’t going to harm your empire that much to allow generous individuals who want to do a bit of good in the world by donating small sums of money to charity via your incrediable phone devices?