Most Charities Still Do Not Raise Much Money Via Social Media

Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn represent a potentially powerful opportunity for many nonprofits, but few big groups are raising much money through them yet, a Chronicle survey has found.

Still, a growing number of the groups are investing in ways to use the networks for fund raising.

Some 79 of about 150 big charities said they were raising money through social media. Only one reported raising a substantial sum: the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which raised more than $4-million. The next highest was just $400,000, raised by the Nature Conservancy, which brought in far more—$650-million—from private sources last year.

Far more groups—113—said they were using social networks primarilyto spur interest among new supporters.

Experimental Stage

For most charities, social-media fund raising is still such a new idea that this is mostly a period of experimentation, says Laura Cobb, manager of e-philanthropy at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Foundation.

“There’s not a guidebook. We’re doing a lot of things and testing—kind of seeing what the results are.”

Among the efforts she has tried: using Twitter to raise more than $28,000 during a four-week campaign involving the professional golfer Stewart Cink.

Ms. Cobb was pleased with the result but said it could have worked better. She says the campaign could have been shorter, and the donation form wasn’t ready to take gifts from mobile devices. She had to tweak it so people could send text messages to donate.

“We made this up as we went,” she says.

Success Stories

While many groups are moving slowly, some organizations report that they are putting a lot of effort into using networks like Twitter and Facebook.

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society, in New York, spent about $50,000 to hire social-media experts to train a corps of staff members who were then encouraged to teach the rest of the organization’s employees how to incorporate social media into their work.

The organization has a Facebook page that’s exclusively available to its staff members so they can share what they have learned and solve problems.

“It was really important for us that our future work force had social-media skills that are going to be required of everyone. This is what this business is all about: building powerful relationships with people, people who are going to advocate for change,” says Graham McReynolds, the organization’s executive vice president for marketing and development. “These are the tools that our entire work force has to become comfortable with and know how to work in a professional way.”

Along with this investment in training has come a concentrated effort to incorporate social networks into the group’s well-established fund-raising events, such as Bike MS and Walk MS.

The charity offers participants easy-to-use online tools that allow them to encourage their friends to sponsor them on Facebook or on their personal blogs and spread the word about the charity in networks like Twitter and YouTube.

That effort is paying off not just in donations but also in an expanded pool of online supporters: The organization now has more than 216,000 people who follow it on social networks.

One reason for the success: “We really made an investment in engaging people,” Mr. McReynolds says, and took pains to be sure “we’re not wasting people’s time.”

Still, the Multiple Sclerosis Society is unusual in its ability to use social networks for fund raising.

Among big groups, one of the most successful is the United States Fund for UNICEF, which raised more than $250,000 last year. It uses social networks to promote its well-known campaigns, such as Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF.

It also set up a project called Haiti 365, which raised money on the first anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, taking in more than $10,000 through social networks.

Other groups are relying on less ambitious efforts.

The antipoverty group Feed the Children undertook an innovative campaign last year called Take Action 10-10-10. The humanitarian charity told followers and supporters to take 10 minutes to join social networks and follow the charity, to donate $10, and to tell 10 friends on social networks about Feed the Children.

It grabbed supporters’ attention and was easy to remember. Feed the Children raised more than $25,000.

To learn more about what a range of charities large and small are doing to use social networks to raise money, The Chronicle offers snapshots in the Related Content area above.

Noelle Barton and Peter Bolton contributed to this article.