Social fundraising is becoming a buzzword within the cause space. The growing trend allows citizens to create their own fundraising campaigns independent of, but still benefitting non-profits. These efforts use a middle platform or set of tools to create grassroots communications across traditional social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
While Facebook and Twitter continue to dominate the general social networking space, there is a need for middleware platforms to provide additional functionality when it comes to causes. These solutions also incorporate traditional outreach mechanisms like e-mail. Causes, Crowdrise, Jumo, and Razoo are some of the early leaders empowering individual fundraisers, donors and non-profits with grassroots functionality.
“Obviously, people/orgs want to capitalize on the best feature of Facebook — the wealth of social data,” said Holly Ross, executive director of the Nonprofit Technology Network. “What they don’t want to [deal] with is the Facebook UI etc. When Facebook is a platform and not just a site, you get the best of both worlds. An additional feature is that some of these third-party tools also integrate with your donor database, so you can actually track which of your supporters are participating, and what that participation yields for you.”
Here’s a look at how these early leaders are starting to shape the social fundraising marketplace, and some of the challenges the rise of middleware brings.
1. The Rise of the Independent Free Agent
Because these platforms support individuals engaging in their own citizen philanthropy activities, they are attracting free agents — people who want to operate outside the domain of a 501c3....
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