Nonprofits Setting the Pace, Reaping the Dollars in Social Media

by Stacy Armijo

February 09, 2010


What are the keys to social media success? Chickens, earthquakes and diligence — just ask some of today’s most successful nonprofits.

Today’s nonprofits are setting the pace in adopting social media and even that ever-elusive holy grail: monetizing it. Read on to learn how two of them — one Texas-based and one international organization — are making sense (and cents) of social media.


Delivering hunger relief, one update at a time

The Capital Area Food Bank of Texas can attest that necessity is the mother of invention, at least when it comes to social media. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike in 2008, the CAFB began supplementing traditional communication tactics, like media relations, with social media to solicit assistance from the community.

“After Hurricane Ike, we found social media to be very effective in touching people quickly and ensuring the correct information was shared about what was needed and how people could help,” said Kerri Qunell, Vice President of Communications for CAFB.

But it didn’t stop there. CAFB worked to integrate social media into its broader communication strategy. Today, the organization uses social media not only for crisis response, but also as a tool for long-term donor cultivation. In fact, social media is helping to expand the organization’s donor base.

Qunell explained, “The food bank’s primary core of donors is women ages 35 to 60 who donate about $50 a year. Social media is helping us expand that reach to new groups who haven’t known or supported us in the past.”

So are dollars flowing in from some Twitter account somewhere? Not exactly.

“You can’t do one-off fundraising on Twitter,” says Qunell. “Social media is just another tool to keep us at the front of donors’ minds and position us as experts in hunger relief.”

But that doesn’t mean social media hasn’t impacted the bottom line. In fact, for CAFB, it’s delivered chicken – truckloads of it.

“Tyson Foods is now a fantastic partner for the food bank who found us on Twitter,” explains Qunell.

For example, one way Tyson supported CAFB is through a Twitter campaign tied to the organization’s Souper Bowl of Caring. For this year’s Souper Bowl of Caring kickoff, Tyson donated 100 pounds of chicken for every tweet featuring the hashtag “#FBOT,” which stood for “Food Bank of Texas.”  According to Qunell, “It produced lots of awareness and lots of food.”

So, what can corporations learn from these successes? Qunell offers this advice:
       • Talk with your audience, not to them. Engage in conversations and demonstrate you’re an expert, but also show you’re willing to learn from others.
       • Focus on personal stories to create interaction, not organization initiatives and projects. If you’re constantly just pushing what you want, you won’t be effective.
       • Share your personality, because, “No one wants to have a conversation with a logo.”
       • Follow your colleagues, customers and competitors to gain valuable market intelligence.
       • Put real resources behind it. If you try to hand social media to an intern or add it to someone’s job description, you won’t be successful; and
       • Approach social media with an open mind, because you don’t know what you’ll get out of it until you see how good you are at it.


Social media – from global to local – by one of the world’s largest aid organizations

The earthquake in Haiti last month was a terrible tragedy that shocked the world. As one of the world’s premiere disaster relief organizations, the American Red Cross was among the first to respond and immediately thrust into the global spotlight.

Fortunately, luck favors the prepared and, this time, the Red Cross was prepared with a social media strategy that has helped the organization raise $30 million so far from text messaging alone for the victims of Haiti and other international disasters.

Texting has long been of interest to the nonprofit community. If American Idol can do it, why not the Red Cross? Well, until very recently, substantial fees from text message companies and cell phone service providers made this a less attractive fundraising option than most would assume.

However, the technology is improving, the prices are dropping and – in the case of well-recognized nonprofits like the Red Cross– partnerships with service providers are improving to make this a more viable option.

So, if you’re thinking, “I’m glad that’s working for them, but I’m not an international disaster response organization,” don’t tune out yet.

Marty McKellips , Chief Marketing Officer for the American Red Cross of Central Texas, explained, “Though social media gets a lot of attention during high-profile disasters, we’re discovering it can be a valuable tool to create awareness for the work we do everyday, too.”

Many don’t know that the Red Cross of Central Texas responds, on average, to a house fire every other day, providing victims with emergency shelter, access to life-saving medications and much more. In December 2009, a tragic rash of house fires in Central Texas exhausted the organization’s disaster response fund more quickly than expected. In response, staff members recorded videos explaining the situation and requesting donations.

“We really saw good response to those videos,” says McKellips. “Though we have no way of directly tracking how much it actually produced in donations, we saw many responses on Facebook pages from those saying they would give.”

McKellips also reinforced the importance of using social media to share personal, compelling stories, such as this one: “After Haiti, we had a little girl come to our chapter with money she’d been saving for a trip to Disney World. But when she learned about the tragedy, she told her parents she thought the victims in Haiti needed it more. After we dried our eyes, we got permission from her parents to share the news of her gift and did so through Facebook with a tremendous response from users who agreed to match it.”

McKellips’ offered this advice for corporations hoping to duplicate this success, “Like any communication campaign, just putting your message out there and relying on the technology to spread it is not enough. There must still be a compelling story and an easy way for the audience to act on it.”


Stacy’s take

Clearly, we have a lot to learn from nonprofits on using social media to deliver tangible value. While not every organization has heartwarming stories of victims saved from disasters or individuals relieved from hunger, our challenge is to think about what we do have.

Are we funny? Entertaining? Impactful? How do we change the lives of our clients, customers and partners and how can we tell those stories in a way that makes our audience care?

I especially resonated with the advice presented above about starting conversations rather than seeking new outlets to broadcast our message. I’ll even take it a step further: I think the first thing any organization should do in social media is to listen.

Just like I wouldn’t walk into a cocktail party and start spouting off about myself without any regard for who is already in the room, what they’re saying and how I can relate, no organization should enter the blogosphere or Twitterverse and just start talking. Think about who’s already there, what they’re saying and how you can contribute to – not dominate – the conversation. That’s how you’ll find social media success.

I would also reiterate the point about applying real resources to social media. In the same way we thought our nephew could throw up a Web site for us in the early 90s, we seem to think our newest interns can be our social media expert because they have a Facebook profile. Hopefully we can shorten the learning curve this time around and recognize more quickly that social media is not about technology, but about content, and should be treated with the same respect and budget we give to other powerful tools in our communications arsenal.