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January 31, 2009, 06:10 PM ET
Borrowing Obama's Techniques to Raise Money
Nonprofit groups that want to emulate Barack Obama’s success in fund raising through social networks and mobile technologies should start by identifying the networks that are best suited to the organization’s needs and its supporters’ habits, advised experts this week at a session of the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation conference in Washington.
Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn are an effective way to reach large audiences at relatively low cost, said Scott Goodstein, who worked as a social-media strategist in the Obama campaign. But maintaining networks can be labor intensive, and their impact – especially in dollars donated — is often hard to quantify.
Mr. Goodstein urged fund raisers to examine the advantages of each network.
For example, he said, MySpace, which functions as an online bulletin board, is useful for broadcasting information to a wide audience, but doesn’t allow users to tailor content to supporters in distinct geographic regions. Facebook, on the other hand, is more oriented toward local and interpersonal communications, and therefore better suited to carefully focused messages.
Organizations with a well-defined demographic base might want to establish a presence on sites catering to niche audiences, such as Eons, a social networking site for baby boomers, or Disaboom, an online community for individuals with disabilities, he said.
Text messages – which were used widely in the Obama election campaign— can create a strong and immediate personal connection with supporters, said Mr. Goodstein, but are ill-suited for frequent or complex communications since text messages are usually limited to 160 characters and often can be costly for the recipient.
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