When nonprofits use multiple strategies during their online fundraising campaigns, such as thanking donors for their support, telling the public about their missions and conveying how they are helping people, they receive more donations than if they stick to only one kind of post.
That’s what I, a nonprofit management professor, found after conducting a study with Diarmuid McDonnell, a Scottish statistician.
We figured this out after analyzing data from 752 nonprofits that participated in Omaha Gives, an online 24-hour fundraising event in 2015 and 2020. While reviewing the Facebook posts shared during those events, which have since been discontinued, we saw that these appeals fell into six categories:
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Beneficiaries: Explaining how the group helps people.
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Goals: Encouraging donors to help reach a fundraising goal.
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Gratitude: Thanking donors for their gifts.
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Mission: Focusing on how the organization helps people.
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Social media engagement: Asking donors to share the post or change their profile picture to boost the campaign.
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Solicitation: Asking for donations.
We also considered the size of the nonprofits’ budgets, what they do, how long they’ve been operating, their prior experience in online fundraising, the total number of likes their Facebook profiles have garnered, the number of posts they made during the fundraising events, and how many times these posts were shared. The impact of having a mix of fundraising messages was consistent regardless of these other factors.
In addition to determining that using different types of messaging works best, we found that when nonprofits frequently share messages of gratitude or that highlight progress toward their goals, they tend to raise more money than if they just ask for donations.
Why it matters
Previous research, including our own, has found that when nonprofits frequently post on social media platforms, they can encourage donations by engaging followers as well as their extended networks.
Taking the strategy our study supports – making different kinds of posts – could help nonprofits beyond simply getting more donations. We suspect that it may also reduce donor fatigue. That is, it could make it less likely that donors will become so overwhelmed by the repetition of the same requests that they stop supporting a group they used to fund.
Online giving has grown in importance in recent years. It amounted to an estimated 12% of all nonprofit fundraising in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available. Social media campaigns are an important part of online fundraising strategies, even though nonprofits still raise much more money through email.
What still isn’t known
It’s unclear how much of what we found is specific to Facebook. Had we examined fundraising data from other social media platforms, the results might have been different. We also didn’t assess the nonprofits’ other fundraising activities, such as how engaged their board members were in these campaigns, or the extent of their other strategies, such as direct mail.
We aim to conduct a future study that will look at both offline and online fundraising efforts to isolate the impact of social media posts on fundraising.
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
Abhishek Bhati does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
