PEOPLE
North Texas (Wichita Falls):
Announced the retirement of
Betty R. Brown, executive director, effective in the spring.
Starlight Children’s Foundation (Los Angeles): Appointed
Jacqueline Ibrahim, senior
vice president at Neuberger
Berman (New York), to be chief
executive officer.
Trine U. (Angola, Ind.): Appointed Kent D. Stucky, vice
president for university development at Loyola U. Chicago, to
be vice president for alumni and
development.
U. of Connecticut Foundation
(Storrs): Appointed Kevin Edwards, associate vice president
for treasury services, to be vice
president for finance and chief
Continued from Page 23
investment officer and Frank
Gifford, senior director of development for the university’s
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, to be vice president for
development.
U. of Vermont (Burlington):
Appointed O. Richard Bundy
III, vice president for development at the Iowa State U. Foundation (Ames), to be vice president for development and alumni relations.
United Way of New York City:
Appointed Kevin M. Taylor,
managing director for development at the Robin Hood Foundation (New York), to be senior
vice president for institutional
advancement.
Voices for Children Founda-
tion (Miami): Appointed Rich-
ard (Jeff) Greene, business-
development executive at the
Greater Miami Chamber of
Commerce, to be chief develop-
ment officer.
Grant Makers
Arcus Foundation (
Kalamazoo, Mich.): Appointed Yvette
Burton, managing global-busi-ness-development executive at
IBM (Armonk, N.Y), to be chief
executive officer, effective January 4.
The California Endowment
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Q My organization wants to begin using social media for fundraising. It’s all a bit confusing
to me, but where does social media fit in a
comprehensive fundraising program?
AWe understand how social media can seem confusing, overwhelming or even intimidating to many fundraisers. If
you’ve spent most of your career doing face-to-face fundraising,
it can be difficult to make sense of the virtual “community” and
how it can translate into financial support. Social media has
become the buzzword in online fundraising and the land rush is
on to set up Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. But keep in
mind that the old rules of fundraising still apply. All of the
widgets and social networks in the world won’t make up for
bad fundraising. An ineffective case for support in the physical
world is still an ineffective case for support online, and no
website can ever make up for it.
With a validated and approved case for support, you can
begin the work of incorporating social media into your overall
fundraising program. The truth is that Facebook Cause pages
still trail traditional methods like direct mail, events, and
major gift cultivation in generating dollars. Therefore, it is
essential to think about how social media can complement
your fundraising rather than become the sole focus of it. So
consider how you can utilize social media along with your
traditional fundraising strategies to reinforce your case for
support, create awareness, and involve people in your
mission. Social media can not only be used for solicitation,
but also to support events promotion, volunteerism, donor
acquisition and renewal, donor cultivation, prospect research,
recognition and stewardship. There are seemingly endless
possibilities, but having the right perspective on social media
and a solid fundraising plan are essential for your success.
Q I’ve set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account for my organization. We’re
beginning to get fans and followers, but I’m
not sure what else to do. Any suggestions?
A It is very important to think about your overall goals for online fundraising and social media. Do
you want to recruit volunteers, acquire new donors,
engage existing donors, all of the above? Defining your
exact goals will help you determine if the appropriate
social media applications are being used. With your
goals identified, you can determine your target
audience(s) and their needs and interests. Do some
market research, formally or informally, to determine
which social media applications your constituents
use and prefer. You may find they gravitate toward a
particular one or to many. But it’s important to know
this upfront so you can engage them accordingly.
The most unique aspect of online fundraising and social
media is that it allows you to communicate “with” your
donors and not just “to” your donors. So what do you
want to communicate “with” them about, and how will
you handle their communication back to you? Think of
this as a continuous dialogue rather than a series of one-way updates. You will also need to seriously consider the
amount of time and staffing available to maintain your
online presence so that your content is fresh, relevant,
and engaging, and your dialogue with constituents is
timely and responsive. Finally, consider how this fits
with your overall online strategy. Do your website and
email communications align well with your social media
presence? Is your website user-friendly? Can you accept
online donations?
Taking time to deliberately plan your use of social media
in conjunction with your overall fundraising and online
strategies will lead to greater success in achieving your
desired goals.
Contact us today about our newly expanded course entitled Using Social Media in Fundraising.
800.962.6692 | The Fund Raising School | www.philanthropy.iupui.edu
(Los Angeles): Appointed Marlon Cuellar, a legislative assistant for California State Assembly Member Mary Salas, to
be program manager for health
systems and Albert Maldona-do Jr., senior director of programs at the Youth Leadership
Institute (Fresno, Calif.), to be
program manager for the Building Healthy Communities in
Fresno project.
Charlevoix County Community Foundation (East Jordan,
Mich.): Appointed R.A. (Chip)
Hansen, superintendent of the
East Jordan Public Schools system, to be president.
Lumina Foundation for Education (Indianapolis): Appointed Sheri H. Ranis, former senior program officer at the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation
(Seattle), to be program director.
McCormick Foundation (Chi-
cago): Appointed Rebekah
Levin, research associate pro-
fessor in the College of Educa-
tion at the U. of Illinois at Chi-
cago, to be director of evaluation
and learning.
AWARDS
Charity and NBA Team Up,
Score Public-Relations Prize
DIKEMBE MU TOMBO, A RETIRED NBA STAR, DIS TRIBU TES NETS IN SENEGAL
The award: The Nonprofit Public-Relations Award for Best
Fund-Raising Campaign
Who gives the award: PR News
The winners: The United Nations Foundation’s Nothing
but Nets campaign, which purchases and distributes anti-malaria bed nets for Africa, and the National Basketball
Association
Why they won: For their “Send a Net. Save a Life. See a
Game” promotion last December, which gave two tickets to
an NBA game to people who donated at least $10 to Nothing but Nets. The promotion, which was initially supposed
to last for six weeks, ended after two weeks because all of
the approximately 10,000 tickets provided by the NBA for
the effort were snapped up quickly. Nothing but Nets raised
$300,000 from the effort, averaging $40 per donation.
About the promotion: Adrianna Logalbo, director of
Nothing but Nets, says the NBA—which had worked with
the organization in the past—approached her last holiday
season with the idea of offering the tickets. Ms. Logalbo
says the timing worked out well because Nothing but Nets
was in the midst of a campaign to cover more than a million refugees in Africa with bed nets. Basketball teams promoted the ticket offer in their hometowns, and the NBA
announced the campaign on its Facebook page, which at
the time had 3 million fans. She says Nothing but Nets saw
spikes of 1,000 percent in its daily Web traffic during the
promotion and a similar increase in donations. Scott Van
Camp, editor of PR News, says he was impressed by how
much people gave per donation and says the effort was the
“perfect blend of cause with the perfect vehicle to promote
it.” —EUGENE MCCORMACK
