Jen McClure originally ran this story on the New Communications Review site.
The social web offers a welcome place for individual philanthropic activity (original homeless image by jlmccoy). New research funded by the Columbus Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation and The Saint Paul Foundation demonstrates that High dollar donors — especially 30-49 year-olds — use the social web, but have yet to be engaged by strong, trustworthy philanthropic organizations. This was among the key findings of the new research study, “Community Philanthropy 2.0,” conducted by Beth Kanter, myself (I am a Society for New Communications Research Fellow), and Qui Diaz.
The full executive summary of the study is available for download. This version has much more content and statistics than the version we ran on Mashable last Spring! The following is a brief summary…
The Community Philanthropy 2.0 research study examined the use of social media by non-profits and causes, as well as existing donors and Internet “savvy” users’ traditional and social media usage patterns. The research was designed to determine if and how social media can be used to engage and cultivate high dollar donors. Objectives of the research included:
• To determine if high dollar donors use social media
• To see if those currently using social media could become potential high dollar donors
• To examine if cultivation of high dollar donations is possible online
• To determine what kinds of social media would serve this user base
Key Findings
The online world of charitable activity is highly social, but also fragmented. No dominant voice for charitable giving exists online, indicating the social web is still in an early phase of philanthropic activity.
Online conversations rarely evolve into meaningful discussions about how nonprofits are achieving their missions and impacting society. Donors don’t advise other donors, and generally, philanthropic experts from foundations do not participate in these discussions. There is a need for a trusted source, and a lack of authoritative philanthropic conversations.
The 30-49 age group represents the best fit to cultivate major donors using social media strategies. More than 50 percent of 30 – 49-year-old survey respondents are interested in the following topics:
- “Whether or not a nonprofit is successfully making an impact” (75%)
- “Learning about organizations that are actively working on issues and causes I care about” (62%)
- “Success stories and updates on the progress of nonprofits I support” (54%)
- ”Information/updates on the issues and causes I care about” (54%)
- “Financial accountability and governance of nonprofits I support” (51%)
Eighty percent of the Internet-savvy respondents aged 30-49 reported that they would participate in social media with nonprofits if the information was highly credible and of strong quality, and 77 percent said they would participate if it came from a trusted source. Online community-oriented social media is a preferred tool over most other forms of online conversation.
"The social web represents a tremendous opportunity for community foundations to shape local giving. High dollar donors use the social web, but have yet to be engaged by strong, trustworthy philanthropic organizations. Foundations and nonprofits in general simply need to determine the best means of participation," concludes the report.
In addition, I have published a paper based on the findings in the upcoming issue of the Society for New Communications Research’s Journal of New Communications Research and will present the findings at the Society for New Communications Research’s Annual Research Symposium, which will take place November 5-6 at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambr. I hope you’ll join me for that!
What counts as a “high-dollar” donor? All of your survey respondents were high-dollar donors? And were these donors annual donors or one-time donors? It seems odd not to mention what “high-dollar” donors are in an executive summary about high-dollar donors.
Also, why are “high-dollar” donors being studied more than other donors? To my knowledge, very few institutions have figured out how to get ANY money through their social media followings–via online solicitations or monetized, “exclusive” groups–so why are you already focusing on high-dollar donors? In other words: since there aren’t many successful social media-based fundraising structures in place, why focus on one specific donor group and not on how to implement a structure that could work for many?
This, to me, would be like studying a museum’s Major Gifts program when they don’t even have a Membership base yet, but maybe I’m misreading the summary.
-Will
Anyone making $1000 or more. Read the actual executive summary linked to above and here:
http://sncr.org/2009/07/31/community-philanthropy-20-research-study-executive-summary/community-philanthropy-20-research-study-executive-summary/
The irony of course is that high-value donors donate much much less, on average, than people from low-income brackets. People from low income, often conservative social classes are far more likely to give to a good cause than people from the wealthy classes.
Great to see anyone trying to get hard data on giving via Web 2.0. This is such a new area that there is very little real information out there. Rather than more anecdotes about what one or two nonprofits are doing in social media, this report provides solid data that really moves the conversation forward.