You Need Qualitative Goals before Leaping to Quantitative Metrics
    In establishing a socially-enabled community, it’s important to keep the big picture in focus. Your objectives should be all about your organization’s constituents. Certainly, fundraising campaigns and dollars raised are the bottom line, but the members of your online community have agendas that go far beyond monetary matters.

    Albert Einstein (a rather smart fundraiser himself) voiced a memorable quote that applies very well to the social aspects of metrics: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Measuring Qualitative Community Success by the Relationships You Have with Your Members
    If your community succeeds in strengthening the ties between you and your advocates, as well as reinforcing the bonds between members, you will set the stage for healthy fundraising in the long-term.
    Examples of qualitative success in a branded, social networking community:
    -You are able to learn something new about your members that redefines your relationship
    -You are able to effectively deliver a message to the community and your members are sharing the message with each other and with the outside world
    -Your blog posts are building momentum in the number of quality comments
    -Members are actively sharing knowledge with each other and meaningfully supporting fellow constituents’ concerns, passions and goals
    -Your administrative experiments within the community are  teaching you how you need to adapt your practices for future objectives
    -You are learning significant insights from the two-way communication in the community
    -You are able to communicate a fundraising success narrative to your advocates by linking online donations to the compelling, real-life stories of your members
    -A modest but encouraging number of connections with members are powerful and instructive—they are providing you with valuable feedback about the community and your organization’s overall objectives

Selecting High-Quality Metrics to Track Quantitative Trends in Your Social Networking Community
    First, plug in standard web analytics, including...Search Terms, Referring URLs, Content Popularity, Home Page Visitors, Site Overlay Clicks, and Bounce Rate.

Stage one, establish these essential social networking metrics:

What should you look for to reinforce basic analytics within your community?
    -Membership growth (number of new members by week + month + quarter + annual change)
    -Number of page views in comparison time periods
    -Average duration of web site visit
    -Number of blog posts/comments to number of members by time period
    -Conversion rate of member to member-donor
    -Average donation in comparison time periods
    -Number of days from community registration to first donation
    -Loyalty quotient—number of multiple donors

Stage two, concentrate on these additional fundraising-specific social networking metrics and marketing strategies:
   
How often are community visitors finding your fundraising pages?
    -Number of hits and unique visitors to your designated fundraising pages
    -Determine which causes are most followed by your members. Use these data to create causes that resonate best in the future. This action can also help determine if your marketing is working

Which pages produce the most donations?
    -Once people visit certain pages, which pages produce the most transactions and biggest total dollars? This is your conversion rate.
    -Accordingly, test different pages, layouts and causes to determine the best setup for your causes

What types of causes trigger the biggest monetary result? When you call for a routine donation size, which one evokes the greater response?
    -Which causes produce the most robust response? Are the high-return causes linked to a larger campaign?
    -Do larger donation requests produce a smaller percentage return?
    -If your request for $20 produces 60% fewer transactions than a call for $10, consider lowering your average request

Which member profile has the strongest history of donating?
    -What is the trend among your more generous donators? More or less frequency?
    -What are their profile characteristics? Age? Location? Background?

Are you mining your member information with a flexible donor  management system from our dedicated partners?

    -Which individual types are more likely to donate?
    -Can you deliver content to them and create causes that are tailored to their interests?
    -Are your active members also the most generous? Are they more likely to create content or simply view it?
    -Do your frequent donors tend to participate in chapters or pledges? Do they organize online events? Are they active on Twitter?
    -Are you integrating your email marketing?

Obviously, establishing fundraising metrics for nonprofits and associations in a newly deployed community is an evolutionary topic. Please feel free to comment about social networking and ROI-fundraising measurements in today’s competitive online environment.

5. Reach out to Donors with Regular Emails
    Socially-enabled private label communities should have a full palette of tools to help administrators connect with members regarding fundraising objectives. But email is still a viable and essential way to stimulate donorship. And it doesn’t have to be about asking for money. Moreover, email communications should be wrapped around a specific cause with a request for support. Accordingly, know precisely which causes are most important to your online membership. A weekly emailed newsletter is another productive way to tell your constituents about all of the new activity happening in your community. By integrating your email and social media activities, you’ll drive more supporters to your community and create more engagement.

4. Make Click-to-Donate Simple on Highly-Trafficked Pages
    It may seem that this advice would be self-evident, but be certain to give donation buttons major priority in the design of your community pages. First, engage online visitors with compelling content in the form of a mission goal, popular campaign or ongoing cause. Communicate clearly what a member’s donation is for, where it is going and why it is critical to the mission’s success. Once that message is succinctly relayed, position the donate button in close proximity—always above the fold. After clicking, your member should discover a process that is as secure, quick and simple as possible.

3. Supplement Online Donating with Additional Methods
    Even in 2009, everyone isn’t comfortable with donating online. People have preferences about technology and performing a monetary transaction. Believe it or not, some donors may want to send you a paper check in an envelope with a stamp. Why should they be left out? They shouldn’t. So make it easy, painless and  of corporate matching programs that their employers might offer. worry-free for your constituents to use snail-mail, toll-free number, online click, or even instant message, if possible. Remind them too of corporate matching programs that their employers might offer. Make every method convenient.
    You can also consider having a button for people who wish to be contacted by phone. With a click on “Please contact me about donating,” your supporter can specify a date & time to speak with you. With all of your donation pathways, include an option for a flexible payment plan.

2. Highlight Real Donors within Your Online Community
    Connect openly and honestly with the empathy and sense of belonging in  your community. Display profiles and photos of committed members who have given generously. Let them tell their story—why they believe in the cause, what they are doing about it and the feeling they have after donating. Inspire your constituents. Give them ascending tiers of recognition such as silver, gold, platinum and so on. Display real donor stories linked to multiple levels of donation.

 

5. Make the Most of Chapter Activities in Dedicated Groups
    Fire up grassroots enthusiasm by setting up individual chapters in your social networking community. Local chapters can gather offline, then network online to continue the conversation, follow up on issues and plan ahead to the next local event. Cause-driven or goal-driven chapters who are nationally-directed can conduct business online, communicate important benchmarks and update group members about chapter-related news. Documents such as presentations and meeting minutes can spur collaboration and consensus.

4. Online Chapter Blogs: an Around-the-Clock Educational Platform
    Your association staff can communicate directly with chapter constituents in a group blog where a meaningful dialogue can transpire. Keep chapter leaders and the rank & file fully informed about local successes and inter-chapter collaborations. Form study groups that will appeal to local members and boost their learning curve regarding educational opportunities and major association causes.


3. In a Socially-Enabled Community, Chapters Can Link Social Events to Groups and Vice Versa

2. Communicate High-Level Association Policies to Local Chapters Quickly and Conveniently in the Community Setting
    Critical articles of policy need to be updated periodically, and a social networking community is the ideal destination to disseminate policy matters. CMS blog announcements will help community administrators communicate details regularly to regional, state and local chapters. Open commenting should provide a productive, interactive discussion related to major policy shifts or initiatives.

1. Reach out to Local Communities from the Association’s Online Community to Boost Recruitment
    A socially-infused, integrated social community can quickly become an association’s most formidable recruiting tool. Individuals interested in joining a chapter near their geographical location can connect with local officers instead of having to apply to administrators in the national headquarters. Local chapter heads can offer persuasive online incentives to retain existing members and attract new recruits. For any association, emerging or well-established, a fully integrated social networking community is at the core of membership retention.

Please feel free to comment on our blog topic about online social networking, local chapters and associations.