Why Using Social Media for Fundraising Isn't Effective

You couldn't look anywhere on Facebook or Instagram without seeing it. There were countless posts of people dumping ice water over their heads for the ALS ice bucket challenge for Lou Gehrig's disease. The 2014 challenged raised over $115 million for ALS research. Hence, you would think that Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram are effective ways of marketing for fundraising. Wrong. These challenges aren't effective in actually getting people to click and donate. Obviously, these challenges help because it gets issues on the radar. "It's useful because people are seeing your issue," says Michael Ward, a principal at strategy firm M+R that publishes the Benchmark, a nonprofit industry guide to online fundraising and advocacy. "But then to actually get them to divert that knowledge into a donation, it really takes other channels, such as email marketing or even direct marketing to close that loop." It is said that only 3% of people donate due to social media channels according to an Adobe. "Adobe collected data for a year from websites. But the Adobe findings also echoed the results of a Red Cross survey also done in 2014, which found that online solicitations and engagements helped sway people to donate; however, people didn't report them to be as motivational as in-person requests or emails and direct mail, which remain the bread and butter of fundraising."