Boosting social for charities and NGOs

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Here at Miappi we get customers signing up from every walk of life but we’re always particularly excited when we’re asked to help out a charity or NGO where our tech can hopefully make a real difference. So we were very happy when Rotary International asked us to power the social media walls around their #Rotary16 conference in Seoul, kicking off on 27th May 2016.

With the guest list including some guy called Ban Ki-moon and the K-Pop star Psy, this year’s Rotary Convention promises to be bigger and better than ever, helping to boost the organisation’s many campaigns and initiatives. Miappi has been brought on board to help make the buzz even bigger, harnessing and showcasing #Rotary16 social media activity on big screens at Seoul’s huge KINTEX exhibition centre as well as on the Convention website.

The bigger picture

Rotary isn’t the only non-profit organization keen to harness social media to spread their message and we make it a priority to ensure we offer the advice and support which will help them get their story and their message out as quickly and as widely as possible.

In this blog we’ll be sharing some of our insights and ideas, developed to help boost charities and promote their causes via social media…

Social media for social good

There are two terms which really define the core success of an NGO or charity: awareness and fund-raising. Yes, awareness does drive fund-raising, but addressing both simultaneously to drive ongoing growth, is a crucial goal for any ambitious organisation.  Social media is a powerful tool which can help on both fronts, increasing awareness while encouraging donations at the same time. Here are a few statistics which reveal the medium’s potential positive impact:

Embracing social media isn’t just best practice, it’s now widely viewed as a necessity for any successful organisation:

  • 95% of charitable organisations around the world have a Facebook page
  • 83% have a Twitter account
  • 40% are on Instagram

But social media isn’t there for its own sake, or purely for brand awareness. It’s also a crucial gateway to donations. 75% of organisations now accept online donations, which means making the journey from social media to a website-based donation page smooth, swift and simple is a huge priority for NGOs and charities.

Opening the floodgates

Websites really are critical to this process, especially since they are rapidly becoming the dominant final destinations for social media campaigns. Today 33% more campaigns are driven to an organisation’s website, reducing Facebook and YouTube-destined campaigns by 15% and 23% respectively.

While websites have become an important tool for non-profits, social media platforms are proving to be effective in soliciting donations. In fact, approximately 30% of donors have made donations to a charity via social media, according to a 2019 survey conducted by GlobalWebIndex. A 2018 study by Classy, a fundraising platform for non-profits, also found that social media is the second most successful tool for raising funds online after email campaigns. The gap between social media accounts and organization websites is narrowing, and tools like Miappi are helping followers instantly connect to an organization's website while still remaining engaged on a regular basis with their social media presence.

Here are some helpful facts and statistics worth bearing in mind when developing a website for a charity or NGO, which will maximise donations:

Clearly, keeping visitors on site after capturing their attention via social media is crucial to boosting donations. A social wall for charities that displays content from the organisation’s own networks alongside UGC, however, doesn’t just increase the ‘dwell time’. Social media embedded on a website, expecially peer generated UGC, also has a positive effect on conversions, helping to convince visitors to donate.

Peer power

The fact that 33% of all online donations are now made through peer-to-peer fund-raising is a clear indication that sharing messages from contemporaries is a powerful way to increase charitable giving. It’s well worth noting that 39% of people whose friends posted about a charitable donation on social media subsequently donated themselves. Imagine the power of employing this technique directly on a website, right next to a convenient “DONATE” button.

For every 1,000 visitors a non-profit website receives, the organisation in question earns an average of $612. By cultivating and displaying UGC with a straightforward hashtag, organisations see an 11% increase in traffic, instantly boosting donations.

Getting seen, being heard

Awareness and charitable giving are inextricably connected. Being able to become more visible via The Almighty Google has never more relevant, despite the rise of social media. As luck would have it, UGC also increases a brand’s search visibility. The best example of this is the fact that UGC published by followers of the top 20 global brands makes up 25% of the search results generated when searching for those brands. Effectively, UGC is a win-win-win, both on SERPs (search engine results pages), via social media and when displayed on site.

Donations & demographics

Understanding your demographics is just as important for charitable organisations as it is for commercial brands. Here are a few statistics about your potential target market worth keeping in mind:

  • 62% of donors prefer to donate online
  • 67% of that 62% are either Millennials or Generation X donors
  • Millennials & Generation X donors are most receptive to peer-to-peer fund-raising
  • 84% of Millennials are positively influenced by UGC on websites when it comes to purchasing (or conversion) behaviour

Social in action

We’re ready to help Rotary embrace the power of social media using this knowledge. Having fought hard to eliminate Polio with the #endpolio campaign, the organisation certainly has a lot to celebrate and shout about via social media from its latest convention in Seoul.

And that’s where we come in. Our platform will enable #Rotary16 to share amazing moments, thoughts and ideas, collecting messages and connecting people all over the world with Rotary’s goals and inspiring projects, both physically at the convention and on the Rotary website.

Here are Rotary social and digital media lead Andy Sternberg’s thoughts about embracing our technology at #Rotary16:

“We’re excited to use Miappi as a way to bring the potential of social media to life at our International Convention. With more than a million members in 35,000 clubs, there’s a tremendous opportunity to leverage social media to create an online and offline bridge for our global community. We’ll feature the Miappi social wall at a Social Media Hotspot exhibit that will allow an opportunity to engage our members to use the #Rotary16 hashtag and to see it in action. It will also be a great opportunity to educate those who are not as active on how social networks can be used to amplify our message and create a movement like #endpolio while also building — and connecting — our global community”

  • Would you like to get involved with the great stuff Rotary achieve? Find out how to care more, do more and give more from anywhere in the world on the Rotary website.
  • Make the valuable visible. REQUEST A DEMO today to learn how to showcase amazing content which presents your brand at its best.

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