Let’s Have Some Fun!
Last night at our monthly NetSquared Houston meetup, Felicia Bates and I presented on Injecting FUN Into Your NonProfit through visual, interesting, shareable content! We discussed several new free tools to help you generate this content and connect your community online.
See the slides below and we’ve included a presentation recap in this post as well!
Why Does Fun Matter?
When we say “FUN” we mean interesting content that people want to share! The more fun content you create online, the more your community will want to share it and help you broaden your reach online.
Social Giving is on the rise. In 2002 4% of donors gave online, while in 2012 65% gave online.
Source: The Online Giving Study
The average donation through social media continues to increase each year as well, as people are more comfortable donating online and more non-profits are taking advantage of new online tools.
Source: 2012: It Was a Very Good Year in Social Giving
Sharing Increases Donations – And People Want to Share NPO Content
Nonprofits who incorporate Social Media into a fundraiser generate almost 10 times more money raised than those who don’t.
And the best part? People want to share cause related content!
A New York Times Survey found that the number one reason people share something online is to give others a better sense of who they are and what they care about. This includes nonprofit causes and content!
Content: Think Interesting, Visual, Shareable – And Strategic!
When planning the substance of the content you can create online using these tools, remember to always keep strategy first. Focus on the goals for your online efforts with every plan you make. Whether you are increasing donations, volunteers, or awareness – establishing credibility and showcasing your motivations are key.
Ideas for shareable nonprofit content to create:
- Show who benefits and the impact
- FAQs & Q&A topics
- Showcase your people – staff and volunteers
- Cover Events
- Stats & Education
- Think Real Time
- Say “THANK YOU!”
- Ask for help from your community – ask them to share their stories!
Tools to Produce Sharable Content
According to the Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, the most important Communications goals for nonprofits in 2013 are:
- Acquiring new donors
- Engaging our community
- General brand awareness
The #1 Communications Challenge for nonprofits in 2013 is lack of time to produce quality content.
We have gathered a list of tools we are enjoying using to create content that will hopefully help you create some FUN interesting visual shareable content in a relatively short time!
Imagery Tools
Vizify (Vizify.com) allows you to create graphical bios for your organization and your people by feeding in data from Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Wordle (Wordle.net) generates visual word clouds based on content you plug in. You can plug in an RSS feed like your organization’s Twitter account or Blog to show what topics you post the most about, or copy and paste text from any document like a press release or yearly report to see what topics are most prevalent!
360 Panorama is a mobile app available on iPhone and Android that helps you create an interactive 360 degree view of any space.
View a sample interactive 360 Panorama view
Tweet Charts (TweetCharts.com) provide real time data about any topic, hashtag, user, or phrase across Twitter. Use it to monitor and showcase what is going on around your primary focus topics or brand name – or to find influencers across those topics as well.
Video Tools
If YouTube were a search engine it would be #2 in the world. More people search YouTube each day than Bing or Yahoo.
Apply for the YouTube for Nonprofits program to gain access to additional features like graphics customization and clickable calls to action in your videos.
Don’t have video footage from your last event? Animoto (animoto.com) lets you quickly and easily turn images into video by creating animated videos based on images you upload. The interace is extremely easy to use – you choose the images, the transition options, and design theme and create a video that you can upload to YouTube.
This tool is free for up to 30 second videos and a pro account allows you create longer videos.
Vine (vineapp.com) is the newest Video Sharing app created by the team at Twitter. It is billed as the “Instagram of Video” and lets users post 6 second videos that play in a loop similar to an animated GIF. Videos are quick to make, watch, and share by your community!
Example Vine Video:
Schipul construction project 2013! Rodney tears down a wall! vine.co/v/b1J6TBWmlmr
— Schipul (@Schipul) February 1, 2013
Outreach – Tools to Connect Your Community
GroupMe (Groupme.com) is a group SMS text messaging tool. You can use it to coordinate volunteers, committees, and board members by creating groups for each of those audiences.
Causes (causes.com) is a tool for driving change. You can start a cause for your nonprofit and manage anything from petitions to fundraisers, to polls.
Google Hangouts are on air video chat sessions between multiple people. With Google Hangouts you can create Circles, have conversations, and get your community and nonprofit talking and working together regardless of location. automatically records your session and posts to youtube. More on getting started with Google+ Communities
Presentation Resources
- The 2012 Digital Giving Index Infographic
- 2012: It Was a Very Good Year in Social Giving – Charitable Giving Infographic
- 2013 NonProfit Communications Trends Report
What are You Excited About in 2013?
What tools and trends are you using to create fun content in 2013? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Join us for our next NetSquared Houston meetup March 12!
More details coming soon about the March 12 NetSquared event! In the meantime, follow our Meetup group at meetup.com/NET2Houston and follow us on Facebook facebook.com/NET2Houston!
