following the money: from social media to social fundraising
“Traditional centralized command and control fundraising methods are far too expensive and impersonal (…)Social fundraising is all about reaching more people more efficiently with a personal touch that inspires
them to take immediate action (…) allowing volunteers to draw on their own experiences to craft a personal message for their friends and networks, an organization can broadly expand the reach and effectiveness of their fundraising efforts.”
Coalition for Social Fundraising.
Years ago I was working on a strategy project and was asked to estimate the size of the nascent online social networking and social media space. That’s a “follow the money” exercise, which involves the peeling the value chain’s onion. Back then everything was free in the land of social networking, though a first layer of transactional activities was already surfacing:
- offering basic services for free while expecting paying subscribers for premium features
- voluntary contributions to open source projects
- processing donations to causes
- enabling peer to peer micro-lending
- capturing personal information, then offering data mining and analytics as a service
- collecting fees from sales referrals
- delivering personalized, targeted, behavioral advertising and coupons
- conducting online surveys and “tests” as part of market research
- gifts and sponsorships geared to get bloggers to influence public opinion
- enabling viral marketing campaigns leveraging online networks
- social media monitoring, listening and reputation management
Did I forget any? If so, please let me know.
In any case, back then, at the time of my study, 2, 3, and 4 did not have the critical mass that social fundraising is now achieving. The fact is that the 2008 presidential campaign made quite clear that a long tail of small online contributions can deliver a decisive fund rising edge.
The below pictures are all hyperlinked and are just provided just to illustrate a variety of services in this new space:
Related links:
- Democratizing innovation: online and social venture funding
- Innovator’s dilemmas: revenue vs. value [1] – [2] -
Other blogs:
- 24 tools for fundraising with social media by Vivian Ramirez
- Social fundraising site raises $2 million of its own by Rip Empson
- 5 social fundraising alternatives to facebook causes by Geoff Livingston
- Small Online Contributions Add Up to Huge Fund-Raising Edge by Michael Luo
J. de Francisco blogging from Chicago on April 23, 2011
