A real-life experiment by Facebook to encourage organ donation, adding one's donor status to one's timeline, sparked an immediate 2,000% increase in the number of people signing up as donors. Even after the initial flurry, signups continued at a rate double the previous rate, reports Mediapost. These remarkable results highlight the huge opportunity that social media offer to nonprofit groups.
Your Brain on Altruism
Nonprofit organizations tend to be all about driving behavior. They need first time donors. They need existing donors to give more. They need volunteers to help their cause. Sometimes, they strive to encourage others to change their behavior - say, adopt healthy habits or take actions that benefit others (like signing an organ donor card).
The problem is that changing the behavior of others is hard work. If you doubt that, ask anyone who has led a fundraising effort or managed a volunteer recruitment process!
The good news is that humans are wired for altruism. While we can be selfish at times, an altruistic streak was no doubt a major advantage in the success of early human communities. In fact, brain scans show that altruistic actions can light up brain areas associated with rewards and selfish desires. (See The Joy of Giving.)
Altruism As A Signal
Beyond the benefits to the overall community when we help others, there's another motivating factor described by evolutionary psychologists: altruistic behavior is a signal of "fitness" to others. In Helping Others Makes You Hot, I describe research showing that both men and women find members of the opposite sex more attractive when they demonstrate altruistic behavior.
Both donations and volunteering are signals of fitness, i.e., that the individual has more than adequate resources and also is likely to be a capable parent. (In evolutionary psychology, "mating" instincts play a major role in guiding behavior even when actual procreation isn't remotely possible.) There are some gender differences - volunteering is a more potent signal for women than monetary donations.
The Opportunity In Social Media
Nonprofits have always exploited this need for public recognition by donors and volunteers - they honor them at events, they engrave their name on plaques, and so on. Of course, these types of recognition are expensive and time-consuming. Small donors, occasional helpers, etc. can't be recognized this way.
As the organ donor signup boost indicates, social media outlets offer an inexpensive but powerful way to recognize and encourage desired behavior. Someone taking the minimal step of signing up as an organ donor wouldn't get a footnote on a brass plaque or even the briefest mention at a fundraiser, but could be acknowledged on
While you may not be able to enlist Facebook's direct support in the same way organ donation groups did, there are plenty of ways you can recognize your supporters in a way that is visible to their friends and others. Generating a modified profile photo with a special badge would provide great exposure, as would generating recognition content (an auto-generated, customized web page, for example) that your supporter could like or share with their friends.
Today, all kinds of activities provide a sharing opportunity ("Thanks for installing our app... share it with your friends!" or "You've reached Level 11! Post to Facebook!") Most people ignore these appeals lest they clutter their timeline or tweet stream with commercial pitches. But, those same people would be far more likely to share positive recognition from an organization they support:
- "I just received the Platinum Helper Award from..."
- "I just contributed to... Click here to learn about the great work they do!
Depending on the non-profit's nature, elements of gamification can be used to encourage supporters to do even more, all with social recognition and sharing.
Does your nonprofit (or one you support) make effective use of social media to publicly recognize its supporters? Post a comment with your example!
Roger Dooley is the author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing (Wiley, 2011). Find Roger on Twitter as @rogerdooley and at his website, Neuromarketing.