I offer marketing support to Asante Africa Foundation, an organization designed to provide quality education to children in East Africa, specifically Kenya and Tanzania. It’s a good organization, small and efficient, founded by one of my former coworkers.
On a recent conference call, the marketing team discussed how to approach fundraising – the key to any nonprofit – in a recession. How do you keep interested donors informed about what the organization is doing in real time without appearing to be pestering people for money?
As a donor to a number of charities, it’s important that I feel like more than a checkbook. I want to feel like an investor. I want to understand the organization’s past performance (provided more than 2,000 textbooks), I want to be able to check in and see how the investment is doing (construction has been completed on a new classroom), and I want to see the results (personal stories from students).
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, one of my lifelong charities of choice, does a fantastic job of keeping me involved through publications that detail hospital events and growth plans, usually told through the eyes of a parent or child who has been treated at the hospital. Others, I’m sorry to say, waste their money by sending me pleading letters and return address labels, hoping that I’ll suddenly decide to donate. (A word of advice to nonprofits: if I’ve only donated once, in memory of someone, and haven’t responded to your first 50 follow-up requests for more money, chances are good that you’re throwing your marketing dollars away by continuing to contact me.)
But unlike a nationally ranked hospital for children, Asante Africa doesn’t have a marketing budget to speak of. Volunteers donate their time and expertise in writing and design to produce newsletters, annual reports and web content. A glossy magazine or mailer is an impossible dream.
Naturally, this leads us to social media. I think that this is likely the best and most cost-effective method for keeping our investors informed. We could offer monthly blog posts from the founder, or allow board members to be guest bloggers after they’ve returned from a visit to Africa. We could promote these new posts through Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. We could use Twitter to post facts and information that our investors might find useful – you don’t need more than 140 characters to remind someone that they can feed 100 children for a month with a $120 donation. 140 characters is more than enough to share a thank-you from a student in her own words: “Thank you very much for changing my life. we are very pround of Asante Africa. – Esther, age 13, Kenya” And Facebook and MySpace are great vehicles for posting photos and personal stories, giving investors a sense of connection to the lives that they touch.
There will always be a need for classic forms of communication, like newsletters, brochures and media kits, but when you’re looking for methods of real-time, personal communication on a budget, the power of social media can’t be overlooked.