You don’t have to worry about Donations or Dues income, Right? Not likely. As donations dwindle due to economic downturns and government officials continue to cut funding, securing donations for your nonprofit is as important as ever. Although most nonprofits are loath to admit it, competition between nonprofits to secure funding closely resembles the competition businesses engage in to attract customers. In this article, I discuss how using social intelligence along with other data (like Financial, CRM, Profile) can used as a competitive advantage in your nonprofit organization.
In order to adapt to this business mentality, nonprofits must get any advantage over competing organizations they can. At a minimum, your nonprofit could obtain an advantage over the competition with the use and practice of customer relationship management software for nonprofits.
Today, one of the least known components of some CRM software tools is the ability to utilize social intelligence insights. Social intelligence insights identify a potential donor’s digital footprint. In other words, this allows you or your staff to connect with the people most interested in your nonprofit in more meaningful methods through “listening” to their feeds on various social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram).
The Advantages of Social Intelligence
There’s too much data
Social media is huge, and donors realize this. Many foundations and other large donors utilize social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter. And of course, many potential donors such as individuals also use these platforms. The sheer amount of social media users makes it impossible to gain any real insight from social media sites without storing the data in a customer relationship management software program for nonprofits.
Social intelligence insights doesn’t just rely on hashtags
Social Intelligence goes beyond hashtags. While searching for hashtags and keywords related to your nonprofit helps narrow your data, it may narrow your search too much: a 2015 study found that nearly 66% of social media posts during the Superbowl had no hashtags or relevant terms related to the game. Imagine how losing 66% of potential donors could affect your organization.
Location Based Donor Campaigns
Since funds are limited, you want to get the most out of any fundraising campaign. Using social intelligence insights software, you can map out where social media posts regarding your mission most often made. This enables you to target areas for potential fund-raising events to maximize the amount of money your organization raises.
Influencers Engagement
Armed with Social Intelligence, you can find existing influencers based on network reach, topic relevancy, prior interactions. With these tools, you are able to see what your influencers are saying in real-time about your campaigns on social. Further, you may monitor for opportunities and engage at the right time. Also, know which terms, hashtags and media and your influencers use most. With engagement history of influencers you can tie this into your CRM segmented groups such as current donors, past volunteers or recent event attendee. Yes, engagement is real-time value!
A Few Social Platform Players
Sadly, most donor database technologies and membership systems are falling behind in this area. But, there are many best of breed social intelligence tools on the market today which may still help. Therefore, you may find value through using a Social CRM tool like Nimble CRM in your donor or member acquisition efforts which could be integrated into your programs and campaign efforts with minimal effort.
Alternatively, one intriguing announcement, Attentively, is now integrated to Wealth Engine, a leading provider of predictive marketing analytics and audience development services. Through this relationship, Fundraisers will now be able to leverage rich social behavior and proprietary wealth insights to segment donors, personalize messaging and inform donation requests.
In my opinion, the use of tools such as these offer very fascinating and beneficial insights. In a nutshell, Fundraisers and Development Directors could potentially have access to both WealthEngine and Attentive.ly directly into an organization’s CRM for Nonprofit platform. Thus, allowing fundraisers to identify the best supporters and create compelling, personalized, and targeted messages to boost the reach and impact of their donors and retention strategy.
For more information about how customer relationship management for nonprofits along with social intelligence can increase your organization’s ability to raise funding contact us. Until then, keep SmartThoughts in mind.
