Exploring the Impact of Social Media on Nonprofit Fundraising

8 min read

February 11th, 2024

Social media has revolutionized nonprofit fundraising. With computers in almost every home and a smartphone in almost every pocket, your nonprofit can have a nearly constant presence around your constituents. 

 Social media gives organizations the ready ability to increase their reach, create engaging fundraising campaigns, and encourage their supporters to share. With social media, you can fundraise at the coffee shop, on the street corner, in the dentist's waiting room, on the sofa, or on a lunch break — all at the same time, around the world.

Are Your Constituents Using Social Media?

Social media's reach is unprecedented. As of October 2024, about 5.22 billion people (63.8% of the world's population) were using social media. In the United States, 77.4% of adults reported using social media. On average, people spend about two hours and 24 minutes on social media every day, and this means that your nonprofit has the opportunity to interact with these potential donors on a daily basis — not just at your next event.

The majority of social media users, access their social media accounts on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets), and this has led to an increase in mobile-based traffic and giving for nonprofits. The majority (51%) of nonprofit website traffic occurs on mobile devices. Over the last decade, online donations made on mobile devices have been growing on a steep and steady incline (9% in 2014 to 28% in 2020), and mobile donations increased 205% over just the past year.

Social media has been shown to be incredibly effective at increasing nonprofit engagement:

• 55% of individuals who interact with nonprofits on social media take action.
• 59% of those individuals make charitable donations.
• 53% volunteer.
• 52% give in-kind donations.
• 43% attend events.
• 40% purchase a product that benefits the nonprofit organization.
• 25% take political action.
• 15% organize community events of their own.

So, exactly how do nonprofits use social media to accomplish fundraising goals?

Read More: How Much Do Bookkeeping & Accounting Services for Nonprofits Cost?

How Social Media Strengthens Nonprofit Fundraising

Social media offers several fundraising benefits to nonprofits that use it well.

• Increased Visibility - With social media, your audience and reach are potentially worldwide for increasing awareness, recognition, and mission education. You have the potential to reach substantially more individuals through social media compared to traditional mailers, phone calls, or emails.
• Community Creation - Social media's purpose is to build community and connections. Your constituents and potential donors can communicate and interact directly with your organization on a daily basis.
• Storytelling Opportunity - Social media platforms are primarily visual, allowing you to share engaging narratives with pictures and videos that deliver personal stories.
• Targeted Reach - Most social platforms provide users with options for customizing their audience through paid advertising campaigns that push posts to select users based on interests and demographics.
• Cost-Effective - Social media can be completely free for nonprofits to use. With paid campaigns, the cost is still relatively low compared to traditional advertising channels. The beauty is that your organization can set the budget and implement spending caps within your social platforms.
• Real-Time Data - Social platforms track and report data within their interfaces, making it easy to view real-time statistics on posting and fundraising performance. So, you can easily evaluate how well certain campaigns or posts perform and quickly pivot to focus on the most successful strategies.
• Peer-to-Peer Fundraising - Social media provides the opportunity for your constituents to engage in peer-to-peer fundraising, encouraging their friends, family, and online connections to donate to your cause. They can do this by sharing your posts or even starting up a birthday fundraiser that asks for donations in lieu of gifts in honor of their special day.
• Viral Potential - The ability to like, comment, and share nonprofit posts on social media provides your organization and its fundraising campaigns with the opportunity to go viral, reaching potentially thousands, millions, or billions (!) of users with your message.

You've Probably Heard of These 5 Viral Nonprofit Social Media Campaigns

Several nonprofit campaigns have gone viral on social media to increase awareness and donations while strengthening the mission and serving the cause. Since they went viral, you might already be familiar with some of the following nonprofit social media campaigns:

1. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

In 2014, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge went viral. Three men living with ALS inspired 17 million people all around the world to film and post videos of themselves dumping buckets of ice water over their heads in addition to donating to an ALS organization. This viral social media campaign raised awareness and $115 million that was invested in care and research.

2. Giving Tuesday

Launched in 2012, Giving Tuesday is a global giving movement. It's still going strong with millions of people participating around the world every year on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.

3. No Makeup Selfie

The No Makeup Selfie challenge originally started in support of actress Kim Novak (who was criticized for attending the Oscards with a bare face). The movement quickly went viral, and a UK-based woman, Fiona Cunningham, married the trend to cancer awareness. After a few days, millions of women had posted photos of themselves without makeup and donated to Cancer Research UK.

4. Movember

The Movember movement transformed "No-Shave November" (a month where men refrain from shaving their facial hair) into a men's health movement. Since 2003, Movember has funded more than 1,320 health projects for men around the world. With the movement, men use social media to show off their flashy facial hair styles while promoting the organization.

5. Batkid

Batkid was an event sponsored by the Make-a-Wish Foundation where one of their benefactors got to be Batman for a day. With a clever online feature designed by Clever Girls Collective, the Batkid event leveraged social media to drive 1,000 website visits per second, almost 600,000 tweets, a 20,000-person live crowd, 600,000 tweets, and 1.7 billion impressions (campaign views on social media).

Read More: 7 Management And Board Reports Nonprofits Should Be Looking At

How to Use Social Media in Your Nonprofit Fundraising Campaign

Going viral isn't easy, but even with an average reach, a social media campaign can make a big difference in your nonprofit's fundraising efforts, helping you reach and exceed your goals.

To get it right, consider the following:

• Don't spread your presence too thin. If you have the capacity for a robust social media management department, then your organization can likely have a strong presence on all platforms. However, this requires a lot of time, planning, and effort to pull off, and you don't want to have a weak or nearly non-existent social media presence. So, select one or two social platforms where you want to have a strong presence and work on building a community there.
• Platform selection and focus are key. Different demographics tend to prefer different platforms. Think about which groups are your key fundraising demographic and focus on the platforms that they tend to frequent in the largest numbers.
• The key to getting the most impressions, widest reach, and most lucrative results is posting sharable content. This includes stories, videos, and pictures that captivate your audience and motivate them to share or participate. When you create content, ask yourself what your audience members will gain if they choose to like, comment, or share your post.
• Building an audience on social media can be a difficult and slow process. To quickly gain more traction, increase your audience, attract more followers, and increase support on social media, you might consider partnering with an influencer. A social media influencer is a person who has a large social media following. An influencer can promote your nonprofit for pay or out of the goodness of their heart (if they support your cause). Be sure to choose influencers wisely. Partner with influencers who have an image you respect and values that align with those of your organization.

From the Back Office: Measure the Impact of Social Media on Your Fundraising Campaigns

While social media's built-in metrics can help you track online fundraising campaign success, an automated back office can help you measure the broader impact of social media on your entire organization.

At GrowthForce, we specialize in outsourced nonprofit bookkeeping, accounting, and business management through an automated back office, advanced organizational management technology, and teams with extensive experience in the nonprofit sector. We can work with you to establish high-functioning systems designed to manage, evaluate, and improve your social media fundraising campaigns in addition to your larger organization.