Social fundraising tools for nonprofits & causes

At the Vivanista Charitable Fundraising Summit and Bootcamp, held Saturday in San Francisco, Janet Fouts and I closed out the afternoon with a wide-ranging conversation with nonprofit representatives in the audience about social media tools and strategy.

The night before the summit, I put together a one-page color flyer in the visually pleasing style that has characterized these handouts from Socialbrite. Social Fundraising Tools for Nonprofits & Causes (a PDF found at bit.ly/fundtools) lists 10 platforms for raising funds, including:

• Stalwarts like Fundly, Razoo and Causes

• Relative newcomers like Rally and give2gether

• GiveForward, a new platform to help people who need financial support for medical purposes

And others. Be aware that your mileage may vary with some of these platforms — they differ not only in pricing but in placement (your site or theirs), effectiveness with social networks, metrics dashboards and rules governing data ownership.

We’re releasing the flyer under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license, like others in this series of handouts:

• 40 hashtags for social good
• 12 steps to mobilize your cause
• 10 iPhone apps for social good
• 12 social action hubs

Video of sessions coming soon

After a full day of sessions, the give and take turned out to be a good way to wind up the summit, held at the San Francisco Art Institute (following a wonderful reception the evening before at the 12 Gallagher art gallery). Questions covered a range of topics, but many centered on internal processes and expectations. For instance:

Q: What do you say to an executive or department chief who insists on hitting certain milestones, such as 1,000 Twitter followers within six months of launch?

A: That’s the wrong metric to emphasize. You can get 10,000 followers within six months, but they won’t be worth much. The quantity of raw followers is less important than the quality — even a few dozen followers can be more useful if they’re passionate and committed to your cause. In the end, what matters isn’t the size of your following in social media but whether those people are taking actions in the real world to advance your mission.

The sessions at the summit were videotaped and will be available to view online in a couple of weeks.

Related on Socialbrite

• Social fundraising tools: Our top 5 picks
• 24 tools for fundraising with social media
• What social fundraising means for your nonprofit
• Fundraising with social media — the right way
• How charity: water leads the way in social fundraising
• What’s your video strategy to raise funds?
• Fundly: Tap into your supporters’ social networks
• Rally: Raise money for your favorite cause
• 10 tips for a successful fundraising event
• More fundraisng articles on SocialbriteJD Lasica, founder and former editor of Socialbrite, is co-founder of Cruiseable. Contact JD or follow him on Twitter or Google Plus.