Participation Fundraising: Raising More With Less

I recently discovered an excellent blog by Steve Borsch, “Connecting The Dots.”  Steve’s thoughtful and informative blog is dedicated to “Guidance, Insight and Ideas in a Time of Accelerating Change.”  My take is that Steve’s blog accomplishes his mission statement to perfection. 

Here’s why I’ve dedicated a post to Connecting the Dots.  Steve has written a FREE REPORT, “Rise of the Participation Culture.”  This report is “a high-level trend overview for strategists, leaders and marketers on why the Internet and a new wave of Web applications have been embraced by a tech-savvy generation and spawned a culture of participation.” 

Simply put, this report is the BEST primer I have ever read on the history of Web 2.0, Social Media and the related applications for any organization seeking to use this new media to further profit and NONPROFIT objectives. 

From the site itself, here’s a more detailed introduction to the report:

In the following pages, the three pillars which have already enabled the Rise of the Participation Culture will be examined:   1) Internet as a Platform: We will observe how core industry standards, hosted application developers and other technologies have already coming together to form ‘the perfect storm’ of enablers that Tim O’Reilly has called “the emergent Internet operating system.” This convergence has also been dubbed Web 2.0.   2) Participation Applications: We will discuss a few of the most powerful emerging applications — and trends - occurring, which have already created a myriad of compelling reasons for people to invest energy, effort, time and money into them.   3) We will present an overview of the People who use and rely on Web 2.0 in order to understand the demographic and psychographic makeup of those driving this culture of participation   4) Lastly this report will consider What’s Next as we acknowledge today’s Participation Culture trends and forecast what we might expect going forward.

Why do I think this is important?  The face of fundraising is a-changin’ and we will need to incorporate new concepts, new ideas, new strategies and new media if we are to do our best.  My career has been built on the back of a “nonprofit to donor” communications strategy.  That is, my client needs to raise funds, a strategy is then developed and the appropriate advertising/fundraising tactics (mostly traditional) are executed and measured against objectives.  The idea is generated FROM the charity TO the donor or prospective donor.  Do I think this will all go away?  Absolutely, absolutely not.  These principles are timeless, basic, foundational, measurable.

And yet we are beginning to see, with even greater clarity, how critical, important, powerful and increasingly more simple it is to have donors raise support our behalf.  Isn’t this just good ‘ol event or corporate or “friend-get-a-friend” fundraising?  Yes, it’s that and yet much more.  After all, isn’t a Porsche just another car?  ‘Nuff said.

Participation Fundraising happens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Participation Fundraising uses the tools of New Media (and old) to spin the flywheel of charitable support faster, with more inertia and will less effort. Participant Fundraising doesn’t need gobs of expense budget. Tell me again, how much did Dove’s spend on the Evolution viral video?  Participant Fundraising won’t require 6-month leadtimes. All of this, and more, will allow Participant Fundraising to play a larger, more significant role in the diversified fundraising mix. 

And yet there are cautions and things we gotta figure out.  Blogger’s Blog writes:

The problem for companies hoping to make a viral video is that most of them won’t work and it is getting more and more difficult every day to find success with viral videos. Simple ideas like the Subservient Chicken won’t work as well because everyone has already seen this idea used several times by now. The These Days blog explains viral marketing can be complex.

Nobody understands how online viral marketing really works. Worse: ever since big brands discovered its power, it’s becoming harder every day to succesfully create some buzz online. It’s true that a succesful “word of mouse” campaign is always cheaper to produce than, say, a street ad campaign. And yes, it’s a perfect way to support a bigger ad campaign, or reach a different, more “webby” target group. But if a viral campaign is not handled right, it might hit you in the face, and sometimes even harm your brand. Or worse: be ignored completely, like the majority of them. All you can do is: avoid common mistakes, unleash the virus, wait and pray.

And yet we can’t give up hope and can’t stop trying to make it work because intuitively we know that word-of-mouth has always been the best and most inexpensive form of advertising.  Read the Report and then think it through a bit.

Participation Fundraising, when fully mature, just may be our answer to raising more, with less. 

Tags: General Fundraising, Media, Nonprofit, Trends, Web