By Erin Mays for GForce Sports
In my last post, I talked about what an important tool Facebook can be in driving engagement for charity sporting events and what I saw as a team co-captain for Ride for AIDS Chicago.
Aside from the ability to communicate important information and band together as a group, one of the most important things about Facebook and other forms of social media is what a powerful fundraising tool it can be.
A teammate of mine received her largest donation from someone she hadn’t seen in years but who was looking for a tax write-off and just happened to see her post. Many of the in-person conversations with my friends that resulted in donations started out with them saying, “hey, I saw your post!” after I posted how far I rode that day as part of my training. Other donations came when my friends shared my status updates with their friends – I had people I didn’t even know sponsoring me.
Let’s do a little math problem. I have about 400 friends on Facebook, but let’s say only 50 of them are true prospects, and I get an average donation of $25 each – I’ve already surpassed my RFAC minimum of $1,000. But, let’s say of those 50, a dozen love me enough that they would share my status updates once in a while with their own networks. The 12 I think would be most likely to do this have a combined friend count of about 4,200, give or take. Now, suppose just 1% of them, or 42, also each donated $25. I’m at more than double my goal without doing anything other than shooting a quick message to my network saying, “hey, if the mood strikes you, would you share my RFAC posts or a link to my Events.org page on your Facebook page once in a while?” This is an especially good idea if you have friends who tell you they can’t donate as much as they’d like – great trade-off.
For those of you who run events like Ride for AIDS or even those of you who want to be a better fundraiser, I highly recommend leveraging social media to your advantage – the beneficiaries of the funds raised for your event will thank you.
Editor's note: GForce Sports has a Facebook page with lots of friends. Spread the word about GForce and its programs by sending them to our website at www.gforcesports.org and encouraging them to donate. Or, as Erin says, encourage them to share the link. That's a trade-off we'll take!