According to a 2011 report from www.NonprofitSocialNetworkSurvey.com:
- Fundraising on Facebook is growing but it’s still a minority effort
- Nonprofits generally allocate very few people to social networking
- The number of groups successfully generating a small fundraising revenue stream ($1 to $10K annually) has risen each year from 38% in 2009 to 46% in 2011
- The number of organizations raising $100,000 or more per year on social networks doubled this year from 0.2% to 0.4%, but obviously this still represents a critically thin slice of the sector
- Heading in to 2011 most nonprofits (92%), regardless of organization size are using at least one social network such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. The industry giant, with 89% adoption among nonprofits is Facebook
- Higher Education organizations are among the most likely to allocate significant budget and staff to commercial social networking, but only 6% of them raised more than $1,000 on Facebook in the last year. International Service groups, by contrast, are more likely than their peers to have raised more than $1,000 last year—likely due to their penchant for deploying the resource (budget and staff) to make it happen combined with a history of smart and effective use of the Internet
- 30% of the best performing fundraisers were small organizations ($1 to $5MM annual budget) and 8% were Medium-sized ($6MM to $50MM)
- 30% of Master Fundraisers dedicate 2+ staff to managing and fundraising on their social networking presence, compared to just 2% for the industry as a whole
- Online is the fastest growing fundraising channel for nonprofits, according to Convio. In 2010, Convio clients raised $1.3 billion online – an increase of 40% over 2009
You can download and link to free resources and original research on online marketing opportunities for nonprofits here:
- 2011 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report (Download PDF)
- 10 Tips for Non-Profits on Facebook
- “A Field Guide to Facebook for Nonprofits” (Download PDF)
- Facebook Best Practices (Download PDF)