Do tweeting and twitter make you think of birds or micro messaging? You’re not alone if you said the former; according to a New Zealand internet report, just 10 percent of people over 50 have ever used a social networking site. Only those aged under-30 are regular users: of this age group, 40 percent (and rising) visit social networks such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace daily.
You might think that social networking is a fad with silly names and that it’s not worth your time, but there is one very good reason why your church should have its own social networking pages: they offer new opportunities to raise money.
Far from being short lived, it looks like social networking is here to stay; Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo have now been running for more than five years, and New Zealand non-profit organisations that use them are reporting fundraising success stories.
One has described the process: you make a request on your page for volunteers and donations of goods and money. You start a conversation on the discussion board about your project and why it needs help. You join in the discussion and then a few people commit their support. Their friends see they are supporting you and also offer support, as do their friends’ friends, and so on.
Because each person on the site has their own network of friends (often hundreds and even thousands), a snowball effect unique to social networking sites can occur. It sounds simple, but successful users of the sites have a word of caution: the one thing that is essential is time. If the discussion and content on your page is not fresh (which means updated at least weekly), people will not return and your network of potential donors will not grow.
Before you jump into social networking, you might want to read the advice of social media expert Beth Kantor. Her highly respected blog, called “How non profits can use social media” (http://beth.typepad.com/), is updated daily.
Social networking is not the only new form of media being utilised for fundraising. Organsiations are finding creative ways to use YouTube, blogs and online auctions to create new sources of income.
The charity auction is far from a new fundraising idea for churches, but an auction every week attended by all of New Zealand is!
One of New Zealand’s most accessed websites is the online auction site Trade Me. It has over 2 million active members and over 5 million unique (not repeat) visitors every month. Its auctions combine fundraising and promotion; because auctions might be viewed hundreds of times, there is an audience to promote your project too.
Recently, Trade Me set up a programme to work with registered charities to run fundraiser auctions. Items for auction could be donated by the parish, local community, businesses and personalities, or you could use a social networking site to request them. (The expression one man’s junk is another man’s treasure was never truer than on Trade Me!).
There are costs involved in running an auction. Trade Me charges a success fee, but this has been reduced for fundraisers (the success fee is usually 6.9 percent, up to a maximum of $149; for fundraisers, Trade Me donates 50 percent of the success fees back).
Parishes interested in running a fundraising auction can contact angela@presbyterian.org.nz for advice.
By Angela Singer