In This Edition:

• LinkedIn Your Prospect By Tweeting After Researching Them On Facebook
  
  
• Sierra Club Capitalizes On Sanford’s Shenanigans
  
  
• One Charity, The Potential For Thousands Of ‘Causes’

LinkedIn Your Prospect By Tweeting After Researching Them On Facebook

By Mark Hrywna

Facebook can be “the greatest time sink in human history,” said Sree Sreenivasan, multimedia professor and dean of student affairs at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. But the most popular online social network on the planet also can be an invitation into a prospect’s life to which nonprofits didn’t previously have access.

Sreenivasan led a session on how Web tools are transforming prospect research during the recent Fundraising Day New York, sponsored by the Greater New York Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Sreenivasan suggests friending people on Facebook whom you would invite to a garden party, such as friends and business clients. The mistake that’s often made, however, is that people give everyone access to the entire house, and not just the garden. “You’d like everyone at your party to use the Port-o-potty” outside, not have hundreds of people traipsing through your bathroom. Friending everyone you know on Facebook is like giving everyone full access to your bathroom, all the way to your medicine cabinet.

The key to Facebook is redefining your profile, creating lists and setting a certain level of access to your profile. “Re-establish in cyberspace the relationship in real life,” Sreenivasan said, suggesting that users constantly refine their Facebook profile.

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Sierra Club Capitalizes On Sanford’s Shenanigans

By Mark Hrywna

Who says nonprofits don’t have a sense of humor? The Sierra Club blasted an email to some of its members last week asking to “help Gov. Sanford find the Appalachian Trial.”

The “Dear Friend” email from Deputy Director Greg Haegerle, promoting a new online community, begins: “We heard the governor of South Carolina had some trouble finding the Appalachian Trail last week.”

It continued: “We don't want that to happen to anyone else, so now’s a perfect time to let you know about our new online community: Sierra Club Trails. Members of the community are adding trails from around the country, sharing spectacular photos, and discussing topics such as whether guns should be allowed in our national parks.”

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford originally told his staff that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail for a few days only to be found that he actually flew to Argentina over the Father’s Day weekend to meet a mistress.

One Charity, The Potential For Thousands Of ‘Causes’

With 50 million users, approximately one-quarter of the 200 million Facebook users, Causes has proven that it can virally grow very quickly. “It’s easy to start taking that for granted,” said Joe Green, founder and president of Causes.
 
“We tried to make it very easy to get people into these groups,” he said. The idea is to entice people who are at least interested in the topic. Green described it as a loosely qualified list, not people who previously donated to the nonprofit, or to anything for that matter. “There’s a lot of potential people,” Green said.

“The vast majority of donors are not people who would’ve donated offline,” said Green, adding that the Facebook application is just as much about engagement as it is fundraising.

Causes has more than 8,000 official partners, with 50 to 60 new requests daily, according to Green. Approximately 50,000 different nonprofits have at least one Cause benefiting them that someone has set up. As a partner, nonprofits have the ability to oversee all of the Causes that have been created for it. A Causes search for American Red Cross can yield as many as 129 different Causes pages.

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