 Hi, everyone. This is Susan Hope Bard at TechSoup. And I'm happy to be here today. We are going to be presenting a webinar, a half hour webinar, on nine tips to maximize your fundraising with social media. And I'm happy are going to be presenting a webinar. So what I'd like to do now is introduce Molly Bacon, who will be taking us through these nine tips. The video that you'll be watching today, it is recorded. So we will be posting that in the course. You'll be able to watch this again. And all of the resources that Molly will reference today, I will be chatting out to you. And they will also be in the course in this module. It's just the third column over. And so if you're in the live event right now, if you go back to the tab for today, June 6, you can see all of the resources that she'll be mentioning. And I'll also chat out her Prezi address, her Prezi link. Also following Molly will be our Jim Lynch, who will give us a roundup of our newest articles. And he'll navigate through those for you as well. So welcome. And I'm going to get started and turn it over to Molly. I'm there. Hi. Welcome, everybody. So today, I'm Molly. I'm the social media manager at TechSoup. And today, we're going to talk about social media and fundraising. And I have nine tips. So let's get started. OK. So I've condensed, like I said, nine tips. So we're going to go through those. So let's start. So first, we're going to start with why. So social media fundraising can help your cause. So in 2016, 7.2% of total nonprofit fundraising came from online giving. And this is from BlackBod's charitable giving report in 2016. And as you can see, fundraising online and online giving has increased over the years, but also just stayed a staple of how people get funding. And we also see that this impacts small to large organizations. And then in 2016, 17% of online transactions were made using a mobile device. So we know that mobile is continuing to rise. And the statistics for that only are increasing. So you can expect even more and more people to be on mobile devices in the coming years. In 2017, this year, 92% of NGOs use Facebook. And 34% have actually paid for social advertisements. So this is from a 2017 Global NGO Online Technology Report. So you'll be provided all the links, Susan, to be sending those out to you right now. But as you can see, it's really interesting because almost every NGO around the world that opted into the survey said that they are using social media. And specifically, Facebook is the largest one. And you can also see that this is on a trend to increase over time as well. And different levels of people are managing the social medias, but there's even a lot of full-time and part-time social media managers. So let's start with the tips. So tip number one, choose the right platform. So it can seem like a hard task because there's so many different platforms out there. But today, we're going to focus on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And we're going to focus on these ones because in Facebook, there's over 1 billion, or yeah, 1,871 million followers. And then there are 1.8 billion, sorry. And then there are 600 million users on Instagram. And on Twitter, there is 317 million. So these ones have the largest amount of users around the world, so you can really start using these right away to reach your target audience. There's some others I listed below that you could consider. But some of these are going to be different advertising strategies, and you're going to have to really think about how you want to use those ones specifically. So today, we're going to focus on the top three that I suggest you focus on as well. So tip number two is choose your channel strategy. So when you think about what channels you want to use, you also need to think about of the three that we talked about, how are you going to implement the social postings? How are you going to implement fundraising? So it's a little bit different than if you're seeking out a grant, obviously. So you can start by asking these questions. What are your donation goals? So how much do you want to raise? Why should people donate to you? So just think about a few things of reasons why somebody would want to donate to you. They support your cause. How you're going to deliver your message. So this is through what kind of medium you're going to create, what kind of digital assets you're going to create. How often will you post? So are you going to post seven times a week? Are you going to post five times a week? How will you engage and maintain relationships? So you have to think about how you're going to follow up every day. You can't just post and then forget about it. So make sure that you have a strategy on how you're going to actually follow up. And then who's going to manage the channel? So are you going to have somebody part-time? Are you going to have somebody full-time? Or is this going to be somebody who's already doing fundraising? Will you use paid advertisements? We suggest you do. You don't need a lot to start. And especially with Facebook, it's become very saturated. So you can even just invest a small amount. So you can set aside a budget for that. And then how will you track your progress? So there's many different ways you can track your progress. And we're going to get to that in this presentation. So stay tuned for that. And we also have a social media starter kit. So if you're just starting out and you really need to think about your full social media strategy, we suggest using this link that we have, this e-book that we created. It's very helpful. And it helps you establish all of your different goals. So tip three, tell your story. So this one is don't just pitch, tell your story, and make sure you update your donors. So this one's really important. Today, in a world where there are so many people on social media, it's really hard to even get your postings to show up in somebody's feed. So the way people are doing that is through storytelling, especially nonprofits. So charity water is one amazing example that I think you should go check out. They are really good at telling the story of how they're impacting lives through the clean water that they provide in developing countries. And they have great examples of that. And they actually show the people that they're impacting. And then below it, you can see they update their donors and they let their audience know about how much progress they've made in cleaning their water and their projects. So that's great because they're not only telling the story, but they're making people feel like they're part of it. And World Bicycle Relief, I also like the way that they tell stories. So they give bicycles to people in developing worlds and they show the direct impacts that they have through videos. So the top one is a great video and they just have a link there. And then in the second one, again, they're updating people on how far they have come. So that's another great example of showing people the impact that they're making by donating and participating. So tip four, create campaigns. So for this one, it's really great to think about a specific campaign and the way that you want to, so the way that you want to promote something. So for us recently, we did a campaign to promote Adobe products and to promote Adobe education and how people can design. So we called it hashtag make it awesome 20 days of Adobe campaign. So the first thing we did was we got together and we brainstormed. And we thought what is a great campaign that we can increase revenue on Adobe products for nonprofits. So we thought of the campaign, it's 20 days of Adobe and we were gonna do 20 days, 10 Tuesdays, nine Thursdays and one Monday. So then we selected the hashtag, hashtag make it awesome. We created and scheduled blog content for the campaign. So we decided what are we gonna write about? How are we gonna feed content into this? We decided that social media was gonna create their own content and link to a landing page. That's an optional thing that we did. Basically creating either a page on your website that leads traffic to this campaign or creating a landing page we use unbounce. And then include a call to action. So for ours, we wanted them to always go to our landing page. So that was our call to action. We always had the link posting it across channels. So we posted it across as you can see, Facebook, Twitter and we even did LinkedIn and we did Instagram and then you track your results. So we use different ways to track. We use Hootsuite to track our progress. So that's one way you can kind of track the results but there's different types of programs but really just tracking that hashtag can also really show the impact. So as you can see, we use different mediums here but we always kept it consistent with the hashtag. And the bottom here is a landing page and we even use paid advertisements. So make sure to feel like you are able and empowered to use paid advertisements even at the smallest amount because it really can help your content get viewed. And tip five, build relationships and trust. So obviously social media isn't just about saying what you want people to know or asking people for things. You have to also build a relationship. So first you have to find your advocates. So when you start seeing people engaging on social consider those people potential advocates for you and thank them. And if they repost something from your website or shout you out or tag you, make sure you follow up and you engage and you never miss any of those connections. And also continue to update them and let them know when you've made successes and you've reached your funding goals. So this is a great program called Communite. It is free and you can also get a paid level but I love it because it shows you who is a supporter, who is an influencer and who is engaged. So you, these influencers have a higher following than the supporters. But the supporters are still very important because they are still speaking on your behalf. They're retweeting you. This is specifically for Twitter right now what we're looking at. But you can see that it's really nice because you never miss a connection. So you don't wanna miss these connections of who's retweeting you, who's liking you. You wanna make sure that you know who these people are and if they have multiple engagements with you that you continue to engage with them and give them love and update them. So tip number six, activate your supporters. So once you find your supporters then you need to figure out ways to activate them. So number one, create a new member hashtag campaign. So this is what we do at TechSoup. We have a campaign called hashtag tech doc and when you sign up to be a new member of TechSoup it gives you a kind of prompt to tweet us and it's kind of has a template of what you can say and you can also obviously edit it, the organization who signed up. But this is great because we track this and we're able to have again, our members advocating and tweeting on our own behalf. Number two is create a brand ambassador program. So recently we just launched our brand ambassador program but this is great because you are able to empower other people. So our ambassador program allows these individuals to build technical skills, connections, a reputation but it also helps us grow our community and our voice and amplify what we need to be amplified. So they advocate on our own behalf. And number three is really great example of World by Squirrel Life again is create a fundraising tab on Facebook. So if we zoom in here you can actually have individuals fundraise on your own behalf and you can support them through a tab on your Facebook. So on the right hand side here you can see that this person individually fundraised for this nonprofit but it shows up on the nonprofits Facebook page. So this is a great thing to encourage if it makes sense for your nonprofit at TechSoup we don't do this but it is a great thing for certain nonprofits that it makes sense to do because you can really have other people fundraising for you with people that really care about your cause. And then number seven always use images or videos. So create content that makes you want to stop and not scroll. So this is huge. Like I said, as the numbers only increase and into the billions of users on Facebook it's really hard to get engagement. So don't be discouraged but just try to think of ways that are gonna make people stop. Just remember the first thing people see is the image and or the video. So make sure that is the most compelling part of your content. Tip number eight is to be authentic. So this can be hard but I have some great examples here. So the story of stuff is a great example of being authentic. They're always storytelling and figuring out ways to be creative. So on the left hand side here it says each person, this was a Memorial Day posting and it says each person has their own way of honoring Memorial Day. Let your remembrance be gentle on the planet. Hashtag leave no trace. So they're kind of using the campaign strategy and obviously that's leave no trace, leave no garbage behind. But if you see in the comment below somebody just says how did you just make Memorial Day about picking up your trash? And that's the exact point. That's authentic. They're thinking of creative clever ways to reach people's attention, grab people's attention on days you're not even normally thinking about their cause. And on the right hand side is just another example. That image is really catchy. It says a lot just through the image. And then it makes you wanna press see more and read more. So it really, it sparks your attention. And Global Fund for Women is another example. I really like the work that they do as well. And they encourage people to retweet, which is great. This is a great example of how to again get people to speak on your own behalf. And this is great. It says, if you say a hell no to the status quo, retweet. So this is great because it's catchy, it's fun. And if you're into women's rights and you support their cause, you're gonna retweet that. You're gonna agree with that. And so tip number nine is try out e-commerce. So e-commerce is when you sell things online. So with a platform like us, you can add it into your website or you can use a platform like Shopify, which is one of our product partners. They're fantastic. And so in that link below, it tells you everything, how to raise money using e-commerce for your nonprofit. And so you can see on the top here, we do have a shop. So we sell things, obviously at TechSoup. And so we have a boost as one of our subscription services and we have a whole shop tab and you can see our products there. And below is another example. It's called Shopping for a Change. And this organization, they sell a lot of different handmade things and they're all a nonprofit. So they really utilize their shopping tab. In Instagram, you can really utilize advertisements for shopping and really it can be a great way to funnel in some extra money and promote your brand. So that is the last tip. So thank you so much for listening and please let me know what you think and if you have any questions. Great, thanks Molly. There were some comments in the chat box that some folks are using Facebook. Some folks had some other, just chatting out about what they're currently using. And I have sent everybody all of the links that you've shared with us today. So I wanna make sure that if anybody has questions, they can go ahead and chat those in now as I turn it over to Jim. Jim is gonna be taking us through the most recent articles that we've produced and we've published on our website and then we'll have the opportunity to address any questions that come in. So those of you that are online, it looks like we have about 45 or so folks. So go ahead and chat us your questions while I turn this over to Jim. Jim, take it away. Hi everybody, Jim Lynch here, senior writer for TechSoup. Here we go, I'm gonna switch over to my screen share. So hopefully this is coming up okay. Here's something new that's right dead on this topic, tips and tools to strengthen your fundraising and accounting. So I'm just gonna go through here a little bit. Now this is our fiscal end of year, time of year. So that's the time when people are basically spending down their budgets, probably a majority of charities out there in the world are doing that. And so we basically talk a lot about the really popular things we have on TechSoup. Here's a kind of a tidy little list of the cloud-based fundraising tools that are pretty popular, kind of new ones that people don't know much about. One is called Bluburang, which is what they call a CRM or constituent relationship management database. That's a mouthful, sorry about that. That essentially is one of these things that helps you automate all of your fundraising by knowing who's in your database, how often you're communicating with them, what you're sending them, what their responses are, so you don't overdo it, I think is one of the main things that they do. So we have a little link here on all of our fundraising solutions, and there are a lot. And then in addition to that hand and glove, we have accounting tools. QuickBooks, of course, is the one that's probably the most used and most popular, but we have one called Account Edge, which is pretty interesting as well. It's probably a more robust one for fund management accounting. So here we go to top TechSoup product donations for IT infrastructure. So we have a lot of computer geeks out there. One really fantastic one that just came out is called Linksys. Linksys is a producer of things to get you, hardware devices to get you onto the internet. So that includes things like routers and other kinds of networking devices, switches, modems, all kinds of security things that they have to firewall you, your website. Pretty great thing. It's a 25% discount for TechSoup members. Brand new, so I would really recommend you check that out. Then what we're hearing a lot from all of our members are security is a huge thing. Probably our most popular product donations are in and around this area. Symantec Endpoint Protection is our biggest donation product on TechSoup, period, both this year and last year. And then there's a mail security tool that we have that's super popular and that's a thing that protects your email in all kinds of different ways. Terrific because email is one of the, probably the most vulnerable area of IT that people have to look out for. There's a bunch more on this one as well, but I wanna kind of move it along here. We've got a couple more to show you. One thing that we're asked about a lot is how to deal with zero budget, no budget. People who make the financial decisions in an organization basically saying, well, we know that you need these IT things, but sorry, we have other priorities and things like that. So here's a few steps that I've basically lined out on what might work to try to break through things like that at this time of year when lots of nonprofits need to spend some budget down. So I hope that's a pretty useful thing that we have. And then finally, oops, here's a fun one we did. This is by our Glenn Hirsch, who's a guy who does a lot of stuff inside our office and nobody ever sees him outside the office. This is his account of how we actually use one of the product donations like crazy, something called Box. Box is a kind of an online document sharing thing that we have on TechSoup. It's free for charities if you join our Boost program that Molly talked about a couple of minutes ago. This is pretty interesting. One of the things we do with Box is that we have to share documents across how many, I don't know, 69 different partner organizations all across the world. I mean, all across the world. And this is actually the way we do it. This is a lot of how we work across lots and lots of different countries and share our branding documents and marketing documents and even lots of social media tools and techniques and things like that are shared through this thing called Box. And it's a great product donation program for you guys but boy do we use it at TechSoup. So that's it for our new content. Let me turn it back over to Susan to wrap it up. Great, thanks so much, Jim. And those are four really good articles and I've chatted those out. And I also, we did get a question from Julie and I'm going to actually ask Molly to, we have some time. There are some folks on the webinar today that really are just getting started. They're fresh to social media. And if you see me looking, I'm actually looking at Molly, she's in the same room as me. They're asking for like, what are some great first steps? You've given us nine fantastic tips but for someone that is starting at ground zero, where would you recommend they get their feet wet? And Julie, you can kind of chat in if that's your question or the gist of your question and I'll let Molly, I'll mute myself and let Molly address that. Yeah, absolutely. So we do have a social media TS30 coming up that will be a little bit more of how to get started with social media. So definitely join that one. I think it's on June 20th. And the starter kit that we created at TechSoup for social media is really great because it helps you identify kind of like your beginning steps and goals and it really like walks you through the process of kind of evaluating what makes sense for you and your organization and what strategy is going to be best for you. So I think that if you're just starting out, I think like I said, stick to those three platforms. If Instagram seems like too much, maybe start with Twitter and Facebook. Those are two to get started right away, but you might notice that if you're really like photo focused organization, you do and you have a lot of people volunteering or you have a lot of examples of being in the field and the impact like Instagram is gonna be a great one to get started. And so it's really just about kind of figuring out those things and kind of how, which one's gonna make sense for you. So that starter kit is definitely gonna walk you through which platform is the best for you to get started. So that's where I would start there and then come back around to my presentation once you've kind of like started those and then come back around to my presentation and say, okay, how can I optimize my social media channels now so that I'm making money? And like I said, a lot of people now on social media, they don't wanna be continuously pitched to. So a big takeaway would be like, think of how you can find out what your story is and how you can tell your story to the world. As a nonprofit, you're kind of in an advantage point because businesses, they're only really trying to pitch but nonprofits, they have impact, they're creating impact. So focus on that. And if you're trying to look for even just like followers to start off with, just search, it starts with kind of like hashtags and liking other pages on Facebook, following other organizations on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. So it starts there. Thanks Molly, quick follow-up. I believe that, and I just chatted out that social media starter kit. So we're definitely recommending that you just start there. So kind of you've gotten a little intro today. You can look at the starter kit, connect a few more dots in your head and make some determinations on where you're going to kind of begin and not take on too much at once. And Julie also wants to know, so those three different mediums, like could she post one place and that it shows up in all three of them? So I think she's talking about Hootsuite but I could be wrong because I am not the social media person. Let me get myself. Yeah, absolutely. So you could use Hootsuite. There's a lot of different tools out there. Hootsuite can be on the lower end for some people. I think that it's a more reasonable price platform to get started. Facebook allows for you to schedule posts ahead of time. Instagram does not and Twitter does not. So Facebook, that could be your, you could get started today and you could start scheduling posts within the platform. You don't need to pay for any additional platforms. So keep that in mind. If you've used Hootsuite, it will let you schedule across different platforms and it will help optimize times for when your audience is online. So that's a great option for people who don't want to think about all these other little metric things or oh, I'm not getting views because I didn't post at the right time. Those are things to think about. So Hootsuite automates all of that. And there's other ones. There's like Sprout Social and there's co-schedule and there's a bunch of other ones that you can use. But Hootsuite is just an easy one that a lot of people get started with. But like I said, you can even just do it within the platform. And I personally don't recommend pushing all the same content across every single platform. I think you can push the same content but say it differently on each platform. So just keep that in mind. That's like kind of a tip. Don't say the same thing three times the exact same way but try to think of a creative way to say it kind of different each time. But it can be the same similar content. And Hootsuite will allow you to do that and Facebook already has the scheduling. So you could schedule posts now doing that. I hope that answers your question. Thanks Molly. One other thing we did get a question from Karen. Karen's wondering if we have a class or tips on advertising campaigns through Facebook because they haven't tried it yet. And correct me if I'm wrong Molly but aren't we doing something about Facebook in July? Events in Facebook. So we're both looking at each other because we've scheduled a lot of upcoming events. So let me see if I can find that date for you because it will be in this camp in the TechSoup courses. So I don't have my whole schedule open but if you go to the calendar you should be able to see all of the upcoming events. But you know what Karen now that you've brought that up what I can do is I know we do have some resources on TechSoup.org that I can post in this module, right? In the course and TechSoup courses in this date. So June 6th on the third, have to do backwards on the third column there's a list of resources that Molly has recommended. I'll go ahead and pull some additional resources and post them in there. And I am pulling up the date for our Facebook live event practice. I know it is in July. So bear with me one second. I believe it is our first nonprofit event an actual event and overview is on the 11th but Facebook I believe is tips and tricks. Here it is on August 1st. Tips and tricks for hosting an effective Facebook live event. So that's a little different than what you're asking but that certainly could be part of a campaign. Karen, I hope that helps answer some of your questions and I'll try to give you some additional tips and additional resources in the course. Again, everyone should know that each of these events is recorded and I just repost it in the module for that particular date. So you can go back to when we first started this April 11th and watch them all at once if you want to or just pick and choose the subjects that you so desired to listen to again or for the first time. So I do want to wrap up. It is one of two. I want to thank everyone, especially Molly for putting this presentation together. She really is our social media maven and I'm not exaggerating at all. She's a fireball of energy and I think if you guys enjoyed this program and want more, let us know in the survey so that we can schedule more of these half hour events and maybe we can focus on a specific area that you want. So do take the survey. It is in the module. Go to June 6th. It's the middle column. You could take the survey. Give us your feedback. Give us your honest feedback so we can continue to serve you the best way we can. Thank you for your time and Jim, once again, thank you for providing us with those resources and continuing to keep everybody up to date on our most current offerings on TechSoup.org. And for everyone on this webinar, all 45 or 46 of you, I want to thank you for coming again. Join us next week on the 13th. Wes Hohling will be talking about infographics. So you don't want to miss that one. So thanks a lot, everybody. Have a great rest of your week and see you next week. Bye-bye.