10 Social Networking & Fundraising Lessons We Learned from 500toys.org

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Wow!

We had a blast yesterday @ our BIG GIVE for 500toys.org! Seeing the culmination of so much hard work made it all worth it! See the NBC NEWS video here!  I have received dozens and dozens of questions on how we did what we did and wanted to take a few moments out to share some key lessons we learned about social networking & fundraising from our efforts this year.

1. Everything starts with a huge vision that will capture the hearts of people.

This is what we do well.  We knew when we launched 500toys.org in 2008 & again in 2009 that we had the vision thing down! We did the same thing with hopeATL.com during the Atlanta floods. My friend Jon nailed the big vision factor with this project.  Is your vision big enough, urgent enough, captivating enough to break through the noise and cause someone to say “I think I wanna find a way to make this project a success”?

2. A pre-exisiting social network of real friends, family, supporters, followers, etc. is required.

Creating a social network for the sole purpose of raising funds is not absolutely impossible, but almost.  If you launch a website designed to raise funds for a project (even a very compelling one) people will think you are using them for money.  People are very skeptical of fraud as it is and the idea of supporting a stranger does not lend itself to ease this skepticism.  I generally work very hard to stay highly connected to a very large network of people.  When I ask for money or a tweet or a blog post, people feel like a neighbor is asking.

I wrote about this on the Official Corporate Facebook Blog just days after we launched Courageous Church.

3. It’s hard. (That is an understatement.)

It took everything I had to help us hit our goal @ 500toys.org.  Literally – I am still near exhaustion over it.  I leveraged every relationship, every email address, every family member, every social network, etc. to make this work.  I put in HUNDREDS of real work hours and basically became a virtual beggar for this cause.  I actually strained my marriage a bit over the past few weeks in the name of this cause and my wife is a trooper.  Are you prepared to work that hard? Are you willing to ask strangers for support in person and online?

4. The market is now a bit saturated.

When we first launched 500toys.org a year ago for Christmas 2008 we were called innovative.  We were literally one of the only groups in the country leveraging Facebook & Twitter for a good cause and we ended up on the news all over the world because of it.  This holiday season I have tracked dozens and dozens of groups doing the same thing.  Furthermore, the big name non profits like Salvation Army, Red Cross, YMCA, etc. are seeing this success and wondering if they can jump in.  Celebrities were hardly on Twitter last year and they are now promoting causes as well.

In a saturated market, if you have the three things I listed first, you can still succeed.

5. Push the creative envelope.

We had a skilled professional develop the website for 500toys.org, a professional photographer took the pictures you see on the website, and a professional film producer did the YouTube video you see there.  Some of them donated the services, but we knew that we could not use our shoestring budget as an excuse to lack creativity.  Many people told us they trusted us more because we built a project that looked like we really cared.

6. Celebrities will probably not help.

Celebrities are very skeptical of commoners like me and you. Most of this is because they don’t know us – not because they don’t care. We asked dozens (maybe hundreds) of celebrities to donate or tweet about our project and only Gary responded (and he responded when someone he knew asked him).  Asking celebrities to get involved wasn’t worth our time.

7. Early bird gets the worm.

We worked hard to beat the crowd to the punch this year.  Although we only raised a very small portion of our funds in November when we launched this project, we created a good deal of buzz, traffic, chatter, awareness, etc. before any other group.  This competitive advantage absolutely made a difference.

8. Personal requests mean way more than big (impersonal) blasts

Over 70% of our funds came from personal (online and in person) requests of people and not generic tweets or facebook updates.  Now, don’t get me wrong – the tweets & facebook updates created awareness and are needed – but the majority of our donors responded after they were asked directly if they would consider making a donation.  Even if we asked a stranger to give they felt way more compelled to give than when they simply read a mass message.

—– These final two lessons are very Christian.  I feel like they were essential to our success and I would advise you give them a try, but they are faith-based.

9. Do what the Bible already asks us to do.

Our goal of helping to bring hope to poor children and families fulfills hundreds and hundreds of verse in the Bible and gave me the confidence to know that God would bless our efforts. In other words, it was important to me that our mission was not a fad, but was rooted in something timeless that tugged at the heart of God.

10. Pray!

I asked for God’s help, wisdom, intervention, provision, and more on a regular basis throughout this project.  Our church is not even a year old yet and I knew it would take hundreds of people from all over the world to make this project a success.  My prayer was always that God would make the burden that I had for the kids of inner city Atlanta real to others.  It worked.