As part of our pre #GivingTuesday content, Candace Cody shares a special hands-on feature about engaging your community.
Community engagement is crucial for success in any type of fundraising, especially with peer-to-peer fundraising. Peer-to-peer fundraising requires connected and engaged supporters who are dedicated to your cause and willing to fundraise on behalf of your nonprofit.
With #GivingTuesday around the corner, nonprofits are planning peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns to create community engagement. #GivingTuesday is built around community and supporter involvement, making engagement not only nice but necessary.
Your nonprofit needs to engage and interact with supporters and the community in a way that feels natural and organic. Creating this type of genuine engagement is not always an easy undertaking.
Here are six tips to help your nonprofit community increase peer-to-peer fundraising this #GivingTuesday.
1. Listen
Listening to your supporters and community is essential in building a strong relationship. And, that’s exactly what you have with your supporters and community – a relationship. Listening gives you the knowledge you need to successfully engage them with your cause.
In order to effectively engage a community, you need to have your finger on the pulse of what they’re thinking. Consider these questions:
1) What is your community talking about online?
2) What are frequently expressed concerns?
3) What other causes is your community engaging with this #GivingTuesday?
4) What pieces of your story are resonating within your community?
Here are a few ways you can listen to your community:
- Utilize Twitter analytics and Facebook insights to discover how your audience is interacting and responding to your content.
- Read through recent social/blog comments and emails from your supporters.
- Track mentions of your campaign on Twitter to find out what your community is saying about your cause.
- Post questions on your social accounts and pay close attention to your community’s responses.
2. Tell a Powerful Story
The narrative of your cause is crucial. Your narrative gives supporters a tangible connection, and connection is essential for active engagement. People are not inclined to interact or fundraise for a cause that they don’t feel passionate about.
Before blanketing the world in marketing messages, lay the groundwork and develop your narrative by telling a powerful and impactful story that will engage your fundraising community.
Here are ideas for creating and enhancing your nonprofits narrative:
- Ask your fundraising community for their personal stories and how your cause has impacted them.
- Tailor your stories to include ideas and points that fuel your community’s passion.
- Find a story that really matters to your community.
3. Be Strategic with Social
#GivingTuesday lives and breathes on social media—just look at the hashtag #GivingTuesday, and you’ll quickly see what I mean. Active social media engagement is necessary to mobilize your community of fundraisers.
Be strategic with social media for your #GivingTuesday campaign. Using social media promotes your cause and demonstrates your involvement with the #GivingTuesday mission. Social media is a great platform to share your nonprofits powerful stories and to connect and interact with your supporters and fundraisers.
Here are a few ideas to help you be strategic with social media this #GivingTuesday:
- Show your involvement and brand your social media accounts using images provided by #GivingTuesday’s social media toolkit (or create your own toolkit! See tip #5.)
- Directly request engagement from your supporters and personal fundraisers. Encourage them to share their photos or use a specific hashtag to foster a social community around your cause.
- Create your own campaign that garners participation, much like #GivingTuesday did with their own #Unselfie campaign. Check out their Ideas for Nonprofits for even more creative suggestions!
When it comes to social media, there really are no hard and fast rules. So, get creative and come up with some unique ways to engage your community this #GivingTuesday!
4. Communicate Frequently
Keeping supporters and personal fundraisers informed about campaign updates and changes is extremely important. Lack of communication not only frustrates your supporters, but can also result in mistakes, oversights and the spreading of inaccurate information.
It is necessary to develop appropriate methods to keep your fundraisers in the know. Having a large group of supporters fundraising on your behalf is great, but it can also make communication difficult.
Here are tactics that you can use to support effective communication with your fundraisers:
- Create an email list that can be used to frequently update your fundraisers and community.
- Start a private Facebook group where you can post updates and allow your supporters to connect with one another.
- Assign a point-person within your nonprofit whose main responsibility is to inform fundraisers, answer questions and address concerns.
Regardless of what method works best for your organization, it is important to remember that you need to make communication one of your top priorities!
5. Create a Toolkit
Creating a campaign toolkit is an effective way to combine communication, helpful resources and engagement methods into one neat package for your #GivingTuesday peer-to-peer fundraising campaign.
Your campaign toolkit should include all of the need-to-know information that your supporters and personal fundraisers may require. Depending on your strategy, one large toolkit with different sections for social media tips, frequently asked questions, additional resources, etc. is sufficient. Or, you can create separate toolkits for each section.
A social media toolkit is especially helpful for encouraging engagement and interaction from your nonprofit community. Your social media toolkit can include infographics, images, logos, helpful links, campaign hashtags and suggested messaging. A social media toolkit makes it easier for your fundraisers to accurately spread the word about your mission.
6. Encourage Friendly Competition
Friendly competition is an excellent tactic to encourage fundraiser engagement and your #GivingTuesday peer-to-peer fundraising campaign is the perfect time to engage your fundraisers in a little friendly competition.
People have competitive tendencies and thrive on recognition. Inspiring friendly competition is great way to motivate your fundraisers, while fostering a fun and connected community around your campaign.
Use social media to frequently update your community about who the front-running fundraiser is and get your supporters engaged!
Final Thoughts
Although engagement is crucial for any type of fundraising, it is especially important when you are planning a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign for #GivingTuesday. Put these tips for increasing engagement to work and prepare to see more engagement from your nonprofit community this #GivingTuesday!
Candace Cody is the Fundraising Insights Editor at CauseVox, a platform that helps nonprofits create fundraising websites . She works to empower nonprofits with best crowdfunding practices and curates the latest fundraising insights on the CauseVox Blog.
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