Social media plays a crucial role in modern digital fundraising. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like are playing an increasingly important role and are relevant in many different areas of life – including (donation) marketing. Whether it’s direct donation appeals and campaigns, influencer fundraising or raising awareness for your organization and projects: Social media fundraising enables fast and effective communication between project owners, grant giving foundations and private persons.
Here you can find out how the most important channels differ from one another, how you can make your social media campaign stand out with the help of influencers and what non-profit organizations should look out for in their social media presence.
Social media for NGOs & NPOs: How to get started on social networks
As a club or organization, you probably already have a profile on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. In social media fundraising, it is important to offer users real added value in addition to appeals for donations and campaigns. Simply posting donation links one after the other will generally not attract much attention. By maintaining active social media profiles, sharing engaging content about their organization’s daily life and projects, and actively engaging with other projects and private persons, organizations can significantly increase their chances of success in fundraising and membership drives.
These are the most important tips for NGOs and NPOs on social media:
- Submit regular posts with added value and activity
- Expand your target group so as not to compete with other organizations in only one group. Younger target groups will also develop donation potential eventually
- Nurture your community and leverage network effects within your target audiences through strategic campaigns
- Encourage your followers to share your posts
- Say “thank you”: show what was made possible by the donations and how many people took part in a campaign
- Link your channels with each other and choose the right approach for the respective audience
- Ensure a quick and uncomplicated donation option, e.g. with a link to your entry on the donation platform of stiftungschweiz.ch
Fundraising on Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok? The differences between the channels
A well thought-out fundraising concept is also the key to success in social media. Who are you addressing your appeal to? What is your goal? Do you want to collect donations for a very specific purpose in the short term or would you like to recruit new members who will support you regularly? The social media channels you should choose depend on your strategy. These are the most important social platforms for fundraisers:
Fundraising on Facebook
The world’s largest social network has its own donation tool, but it is not available in Switzerland. If your NPO is active internationally, you can activate the donation tool so that your followers can collect donations for your organization, for example, with a birthday donation campaign. This is how around 90 percent of all donations are made on Facebook.
Instagram Fundraising
Instagram stands for visual content. Therefore, Stories, Reels, and posts should be concise and informative, and feature compelling visuals. However, you can only include links in the profile description and in your stories. With a tool like StartPage or Linktree, you can make various projects accessible via your Instagram biography. Remember to include suitable hashtags!
“Reels” are currently the most popular format on Instagram. Thanks to the algorithm, they achieve a high organic reach. The short videos should be about 15 seconds long and always accompanied by music. App-native songs are the best choice. The videos also work on TikTok.
Instagram Reels from StiftungSchweiz:
Fundraising on Twitter
Twitter works mainly via hashtags. If you manage to go “viral” with a tweet, this is your chance for a very successful fundraising appeal. However, there is no secret recipe for this, it also takes some luck and perseverance.
Fundraising on LinkedIn
With its business-like, professional character, LinkedIn offers attractive opportunities for social media fundraising. The user pool represents an audience that is generally considered to be donation-friendly: Middle-class employees, freelancers and executives in small and medium-sized companies are particularly active on LinkedIn. With “LinkedIn for Non-Profits”, the platform offers a special program for non-profit organizations with many benefits such as discounts on LinkedIn marketing, recruiting, fundraising and training products. NGOs and NPOs on LinkedIn also have access to live events, discussion and webinar series as well as guides and e-books on the world of philanthropy and fundraising on LinkedIn.
Fundraising on TikTok
TikTok is the youngest, but also the fastest growing social media platform with a very young demographic. In times of “Fridays For Future”, however, the young generation has become increasingly interesting for NPOs. With creative clips and a strong message, you can reach young philanthropists. Compared to other social media channels, TikTok offers good opportunities for organic reach. A donation sticker and the option of displaying a charitable organization in the profile simplify fundraising on TikTok. With “TikTok for good”, the platform aims to support non-profit organizations: Accompanied and optimized account management, in-depth analysis and insights as well as sponsored hashtags help to achieve your fundraising goals on TikTok.
Influencer fundraising & social media campaigns
In addition to your own posts and organic growth on social media, there is also the option of placing paid advertising on all platforms. User-specific microtargeting allows you to achieve particularly precise targeting of your target audience. However, the use of such ads for social media fundraising should be well calculated and is more worthwhile for large organizations and projects.
Influencer fundraising also requires a certain amount of money to be invested before a fundraising campaign bears fruit. It is worth trying to contact profiles with high reach and many followers on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok and convince them of an unpaid collaboration. This should be preceded by precise information in advance about who would be suitable and how receptive this influencer is to charitable causes.
Influencer fundraising through an influencer marketing agency can be more efficient and convenient, but it also comes at a higher cost. The agency will identify suitable influencer accounts for you and reach out to them with paid collaboration proposals.
Social media for fundraisers & grant giving foundations
As a digital Swiss platform for charitable engagement, StiftungSchweiz is a (social) network for grant giving foundations, project owners and private persons. If you want to do fundraising in Switzerland, you’ve come to the right place.
In the Swiss foundation register, donors, fundraisers and volunteers can get in touch easily and efficiently thanks to clever filter and matching functions. The associated donation platform is the largest in Switzerland and enables fundraisers to present their projects and collect donations directly. With the online magazine “The Philanthropist”, an extensive knowledge hub and regular event announcements and news from the world of philanthropy, StiftungSchweiz also offers exciting content for all those who believe in a better world and want to help shape it.
