In our previous article we wanted to demonstrate ways in which your charity or not-for-profit could use financial technology to improve reporting. We covered a cloud accounting tool, Xero, and how it can be used to assist in payroll and processing donations. We also covered Giftcoin, which could be a great way to improve transparency within your charity.
In this article we’ll be exploring different marketing tools that can help improve your charity’s brand, fundraising and awareness campaigns. Again, this doesn’t have to be expensive, especially if you’re a small charity with little to no budget. Most of the tools covered will either be free or relatively good value for money.
Social MediaIf your charity isn’t using social media already, now would be a great time to start! Most, if not all, social media channels are free to register with and a few have great tools embedded to help your charity with fundraising.
Facebook is a great channel that has over
2billion monthly active users (over two billion chances to be seen!) and they have really stepped their game up when it comes to helping charities and their fundraising efforts. They launched a set of ‘
Charitable Fundraising Tools’ which allows charities to add a ‘Donate’ button to their page as well as posts and even live videos. You can even create ‘
Fundraisers’ for a specific cause within your charity where users can donate directly without having to leave your page. Facebook doesn’t charge a fee for using these tools or processing the donations.
Does your charity take on a lot of projects that are camera worthy? Are you good at capturing great visuals? If so, then
Instagram would be a great place to showcase your charity’s activities and some of the great results you’ve had from your fundraising efforts. A picture can say a thousand words, plus with a mix of great hashtags, the correct filter and a compelling caption, you can make sure your image gets seen by hundreds, if not thousands of users. Instagram has also followed in the footsteps of Facebook by creating a
new donation sticker. The release date of the donation sticker is not yet known, however with this function, users can donate directly to the cause through Instagram stories. Like Facebook, there is no processing fee, so the full amount raised would go straight to your charity. This blog has
25 useful tips for charities who want to make the most out of Instagram.
YouTube would also be a great place to raise funds if your charity is big on creating captivating video content. In August 2018, it created a set of
tools for charitable giving:
Fundraisers, Community fundraisers, Campaign matching and
Super Chat for Good. The Fundraisers function allows fans of your channel to send money using a ‘Donate’ button and YouTube covers all of the transaction fees. You can find an example of how the video would look
here. The Community Fundraisers function is a great way to collaborate with others to raise funds for the same cause and could serve as a great marketing strategy if your charity decides to work with influencers that have a large following. Campaign matching allows you to receive matching pledges from other brands and Super Chat allows YouTube creators to raise funds via live chat for your charity. On top of this, YouTube has a website dedicated to creating
greater social impact which contains how-to’s on topics such as storytelling.
Images and VideosPutting out great content in the form of blog posts for your charity is great, but when all is said and done, nothing quite beats photos and videos on social media. Studies have shown that people can recall
65% of the visual content that they see almost three days later. This is in comparison to about 10% of written content three days after it’s read. Content containing images get shared more on social media and get more views.
One free tool to create professional looking images is
Canva. The platform already comes with pre-set templates and designs to make creating content easier for the average person. It’s a fantastic tool to have if your charity doesn’t necessarily have a graphic designer on the team. You can design social media images, presentations, flyers and invitations. Canva also have a tonne of free stock images and icons that you can add to your design to make it more visually appealing. Another great thing about Canva is that its premium service is absolutely free for charities.
Video content seems to be ruling the internet and will become important in every organisation’s marketing strategy.
Statistics show that Video marketers achieve a 54% increase in
brand awareness and that they also get 66% more qualified leads per year, meaning that this is a great tool to raise your charity’s profile and attract more donors. If your charity is looking for a simple, worthwhile application to use for creating videos, you should look into
Adobe Spark. The app allows you to create graphics, videos
and web pages. You can use the app on the computer or download a mobile app so you can create videos on-the-go. Similar to Canva, Adobe Spark has pre-set designs and templates that are easy to customise and even easier to share to your social media.
This concludes the second part of our ‘Charities and Technology’ series. If you had any questions on the tools mentioned or wanted some advice on your charity’s marketing, please contact Ingrid on
ingrid.beya@raffingers.co.uk or 020 8551 7200.
