5 Tips for Successful Twitter Fundraising

We have posted before on how to use social media tools like Twitter to promote an event and increase attendance.  Increasing fundraiser attendance is one great way to raise more money, but Twitter can help you do more than just promote your event. It is a great tool to start raising money before your event.  Twitter has the capability of helping spread the message and raise funds faster than ever before.  It can reach a wider circle of people and appeal to those who maybe wouldn’t want to, or are unable to attend an event, but are willing to donate money to a great cause.
Asking for money can be tricky, especially since the rules of an online community may be different than those you are used to.  That’s why we’ve put together a few tips to help you use Twitter to its full money raising potential and ensure you don’t make any social media etiquette missteps along the way.

• Cultivate A Strong Community – It’s going to be extremely difficult to raise money if you’re only asking 5 people, and those 5 people really have no clue who you are.  In order to successfully use Twitter as a fundraising method, you need to first build a community of similarly minded people.  Long before you ever ask for money, use Twitter to advance news, messages, events and updates about what you’re doing.  Let them know what you stand for and if they agree, the money will come when you ask for it.

• Build Excitement – Would you want to give money to someone for a boring reason that you don’t really have any emotional attachment to?  Probably not and neither will your followers.  Make fundraising exciting and fun, offer incentives, offer an event, just make it something other than people giving out their cash and never hearing from you again.  Make fundraising FUN and you’ll find a lot more FUNDS in your account.

• Interact With Your Community & Build Relationships When you are working hard to build your community initially, you need to make sure you stick with those same principles.  Once the community is established, you have to show them that you’re always going to be interacting and available to them.  If you build them up and then ditch them you will lose the community you worked so hard to gain.  Be transparent, be open and be available…show those that trust and follow you that you’re worth both.

• Be Clear With Your Intentions – People don’t want to give money without knowing exactly what that money is going to be used for.  Be clear, be up-front and be honest with your intentions and explain to people exactly how the money raised will be put to use.  When you DO use it, show your followers how with photos, videos or presentations.

• Harness Event Technology With Your Events – There will come a time, or at least there should, when you give individuals who have contributed the chance to attend an event in the honor of whatever it is you’re raising money for.  When that event comes, don’t make it the same humdrum fundraising event that everyone has been to; use event technology to transform it into a modern, fun, and interactive event everyone will talk about.

If used properly, Twitter can truly be a powerful tool that can help raise money and awareness like never before.  Use some of these tips to help get the most out of a tool that is waiting to be tapped.
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