Social networking refers a breed of websites which build communities of people with shared interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.
They are of interest to civil society organisations for the ease with which messages can be circulated to a large number of individuals, whether for the purposes of campaigning or for fundraising.
Notable sites include Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Bebo.
The Advertising Standards Authority looks set to extend its remit to include communications on websites, and other non-paid-for space online, such as social networks.
Fundraisers cannot apply traditional campaign methods to the new breed of online community fundraising, says Bryan Miller
In a competitive legacy market, some charities are thinking outside the box to get at potential legators. NSPCC turned to pay-per-click advertising on Facebook for a legacy campaign, and beat forecasts by 300 per cent.
We’ve had new philanthropists, philanthropcapitalists, Felicity donors and now, strike the drumroll, the sector has a cute new catchphrase to describe another new kind of donor.
Civil Society’s search for a blogger competition will be drawing to a close in two weeks.
Asking a female the colour of her bra in real life may result in angry or startled faces, however, it appears that the online world has ditched such social decorum and is revealing all, in the name of raising awareness for breast cancer.
Civil Society is searching for two new bloggers in a nationwide competition to find fresh voices in the sector.
Missing People has secured a corporate partnership with social network Friends Reunited, opening the charity up to an audience of over 20 million.
Stephen Fry’s support for I CAN’s Adopt a Word campaign sparked an avalanche of donations and showed the huge potential of social media fundraising.
Farm Africa has used social media to launch a quirky fundraising campaign called ‘Pimp this Goat’. The campaign, which launched on 29 October, sparked a frenzy of activity on the social networking site Twitter.
The World’s Biggest Coffee Morning is Macmillan Cancer Support’s flagship fundraiser. It is 19 years old and has grown each year since its conception in 1980, raising over £7.5m last year. It is integral to the communications strategy for the event that we look for new ways to engage existing supporters as well as new audiences. Knitting has seen an enormous revival in the last couple of years, and is one of the most popular crafts in the UK with a celebrity following that includes the likes of Madonna and Julia Roberts.
It's the biggest fundraising conference in the world - and this year Twitter's playing a large part, 12 months after being unheard of.
The second real-world Twitter gathering has raised nearly one and a half times the amount as the first one held just seven months earlier. A simultaneous series of Twestivals, held in hundreds of cities around the world over a couple of days in September had raised more than $362,000 as Professional Fundraising went to press, a significant improvement on the $250,000 raised by the same event held inFebruary.
This month the virtual world of Twitter becomes more tangible, as dozens of cities plan ‘Twestivals’. Between September 10 and 13 twitterers around the globe will attend fundraising events comprising music and entertainment, with all money raised going to charities selected by popular vote on the microblogging site. There are high expectations for the fundraising potential of the Twestivals following a pilot event in February which raised $250,000 for charity:water from just a fraction of Twitter’s current userbase.
People often want to mark the death of a loved one with a tribute, so Kevin Kibble suggests charities brave in memoriam fundraising and set up a strategy It is increasingly common in the UK to make charitable gifts to mark the death of someone close to us. Donations are frequently given in lieu of flowers at funerals, often to a cause relevant to the deceased person, or to an organisation related to the cause of death.
What do your supporters think about your emails?Are you sending an email for the reader's benefit or yours?
Facebook is to launch a charity gift scheme, according to an announcement at a US conference. Randi Zuckerberg (pictured), Facebook's director of development, told the Social Good conference in New York on Friday that the social network is planning to expand its gift shop to include a facility for users to send virtual charity gifts to their friends.
Is Facebook the answer to our stewardship prayers? Or would a charity's time be better spent doing something, anything, else.
Using Facebook Connect can make your website more interactive, and help people spread the word about what you do to their Facebook network.
Social media has been the brave new world online for a while now, but meaningful statistics on usage rates are often hard to find. A fourth edition of a survey first run in September 2006 gives great insight into the changing patterns of behaviour.
A social networking application has raised US$10m for charity in two years, half of which was raised in the first six months of this year. Causes, which runs on both MySpace and Facebook, was launched in May 2007 to a slow start, raising just $2.5m in the first year of its existence.
An American charity sets out after a white whale, trying to raise money by auctioning off a Twitter account with one million followers.
An American campaign to "raise an unprecedented amount of money" for charities via social media has got off to a sluggish start. The Summer of Social Good, which aims to raise money for four charities – Oxfam, Humane Society, LiveSTRONG and WWF – exclusively via social networking and the internet over the summer has raised less than $5,000 three weeks after launch.
Of all the UK celebrities on Twitter, Stephen “National Treasure” Fry is perhaps the most widely known. He was certainly one of the first celebrities to use it and now boasts over 650,000 followers – but what happens when he tweets your link?
Conferences are an ideal time to try out the power of Twitter and connect with other people attending. And people *not* attending.
Engaging young people in philanthropy can be a challenge, but is one the Youth Funding Network is working to overcome as Tillie Sklair reports. The army of street fundraisers, who have become so ubiquitous in the past five years or so, have made a huge difference to fundraising and it is now fairly common for the 18-30 age group to have at least one monthly direct debit. What can be trickier is engaging young people in the philanthropic process and creating a dialogue between the projects that require support and the terrific financial and intellectual resource that is the twenty-something market.
While excitement about the new communication mediums the internet allows for charities is understandable, the humble 'old' email is often neglected. But emails are a great vehicle to tell a story, if not engage in a conversation, and charities can make more of them.
American super-retailer Target has taken to Facebook to help it allocate $3m to charity by the end of this month. It’s launched a two-week campaign to have Facebook users vote for ten different charities they want the corporation to support. The charities get a split of the $3m according to what percentage of people vote for them. Alongside that it’s trying to get voters to partner with local organisations as volunteers.
Like Twitter, charity: water was pretty much unknown to me six months ago. But like Twitter, charity: water, while somewhat baffling, is ignored at charities' peril. charity: water (yes – that is a purposeful and pretentious lack of capital letters despite the fact that it is clearly a proper noun) is only three years old but in its short life has come to set the standard for fundraising from social networks.
Hugh Jackman has split the A$100,000 he put up for grabs on Twitter between two charities in the first philanthropic exercise of the kind. Operation of Hope and Twitter powerhouse Charity: Water will each receive A$50,000 from the Australian actor. Jackman (pictured) provoked intense activity on Twitter after announcing on 14 April that he would give away A$100,000 to the one charity which presented the most compelling case for support in the Twitter format – 140 characters or less - on his page on the website. It was the first time a philanthropist had offered money to charity in this way.
