I was thrilled to see the Humane Society’s fundraising campaign for their seals campaign take off this week.  In just 6 days, they were able to mobilize 576 people to donate and together their cause members raised over $20,000 for their work to stop the seal slaughter.

On one hand, the Humane Society did not have to do much to raise the $20,000.  They sent out one bulletin, which was emailed to their cause members and posted to their causes, and $15,000 was donated within 24 hours.  But it would be a mistake to think that the bulletin was a magic bullet or that you have to be the Humane Society to raise money using Causes.  Causes is a platform for equal-opportunity activism and the lessons from the seals campaign can be applied to almost every nonprofit.  Here are a few take-aways I learned from this campaign:

1)  Fostering and empowering many smaller causes is probably more effective than keeping everyone in one, large community. The Humane Society has a network of 1951 causes, started both by their employees and their supporters.  Instead of asking everyone to join one cause or consolidate their members into one place, they chose to “let a thousand flowers bloom” and empower their supporters though the smaller, mission-specific causes.  Because of this strategy, supporters enter their network through the issue that they are most passionate about whether it be the STOP Puppy Mills cause, Pledge Compassion for Farm Animals, or Make Animal Abuse a Felony.  Then, when a national campaign comes along or there is an urgent call to action, they can feature the same campaign across all of those causes.  This is also where Fan Pages and Twitter accounts come into play – “There wasn’t a lot of time to raise the money, so we made sure to do as much cross promotion as we could,” said Caroline LeFevre, Social Media Specialist for the Humane Society.  Caroline promoted the campaign across their causes, both Fan Pages they administer, Twitter accounts, in emails and on their website.

2)  Fundraising on Facebook is about getting people’s attention and getting them talking to their friends. The Humane Society’s bulletin was titled “We just saw a baby seal get killed – please help!”  Now I don’t know about you, but that certainly caught my eye.  Not only did that get people to open their bulletin but it also inspired them to tell their friend: 537 people either posted this campaign to their profile or invited other friends to donate.  This “viral echo” is an important part of any campaign on Facebook and smart campaigners are the ones that ask “What will inspire people to tell their friends about this?”

3)  Fundraising has to seem real to people, or they won’t donate. This campaign was coordinated with an urgent offline event, the start of the seal hunt season in Canada on April 8th, so cause members knew why they were fundraising now and where their dollars would be going.

If you’re interested in creating your own fundraising campaign, go to your Nonprofit Partner Center at http://nonprofits.causes.com and click “Create a Custom Campaign” in the Fundraising Tab.  Then read How To Run an Effective Fundraising Campaign to help with your strategy.  I’m really looking forward to seeing more nonprofits create custom campaigns and learning from each others successes as we experiment with these new tools.