By Chris Lee

Citizen philanthropy is a fast growing trend around the world. Social media has given individuals the tools to motivate their friends, family and others to get involved and support causes, according to publishing and marketing platform, Blurb. In 2009, in the midst of challenging economic times, research suggests that 92 percent of non-profit organisations saw an increase in the number of gifts received due to online promotion of fundraising for their causes.

To build on this growing trend, Blurb has launched its Blurb for Good platform, which enables citizen philanthropists and non-profit organisations to create and use books as a means to generate awareness, goodwill and monies for social causes.

NMK caught up with Teresa Pereira, Senior Director of European Market Development for Blurb Europe, to learn more about how charities can help increase awareness and funding over social platforms.

How advanced is the third sector with social media?

There is a huge opportunity for charities to share in the successes of large corporates who have used social media to engage people in genuine dialogue and be interactive with customers. However, to do it well is time consuming and often a 24-hour job - something the third sector often doesn’t have the resources to support.

Those charities who do it well are the ones who provide their supporters with the tools to do it for them. It’s no different to a brand engaging with communities online to create evangelists.

Where we have seen charities really benefit from social media is when it comes to response times for natural disasters, such as the earth quake in Haiti. Christian Aid UK was one of the first agencies on the scene to use social media to coordinate relief efforts and send updates to supporters across the globe using Twitter, Facebook, videos, podcasts and their own website.  

Trevor Johnson, Head of Strategy and Planning at Facebook, said: "The Haiti earthquake occurred at 4:53 on 12^th January and in that first minute 106 people updated their status with something about 'tierra' (earth). In the first three minutes after the earthquake there were over 700 people updating their status about it."

Social media presents the third sector with a huge opportunity to reach supporters, even after the media interest in their cause has died.

What do you put the 92 per cent rise in gift giving in 2009 down to?

Donation sites play a huge part in this increase. Sites like JustGiving and Virgin make it easy for fundraisers to push their sponsorship requests out to their network of friends on Facebook, Twitter and the like. It wasn’t that long ago when anyone taking part in a sponsored walk had to go door to door and get sponsors to pledge on paper and then, post event, they had to collect the cash and pay it into the charity’s bank account.

Online donations take away all of that leg work. As a society, we’re now so used to the concept of online payments that there is a certain element of security and reassurance that 100 per cent of the money you donate will make it to the charity. Online donations also make it easy to gift aid donations too – if people are giving, they usually want to ensure they’re giving the most they can, and online gift aid options make it easy for them to do so.  

Online fundraising also makes it easy for people to share more information and stories with their friends and families that helps support why that charity effort is important to them – this adds a very strong emotional and personal element.

What are your top tips for charities looking to get into online engagement?

Social media is all about groups of individuals coming together online around common areas of interest. This provides charities with huge opportunities to reach existing and potential supporters.

A great example of one such community is Twestival – the Twittersphere collaborating together to raise funds for good causes. This huge community acted on a global scale to raise more than $450,000 for Concern Worldwide. So high profile were these efforts that Sarah Brown wrote the foreword to their event wrap book.

It can be hugely time consuming to try and engage with new communities, so my biggest tip for any charity would be to give fundraisers what they need – arm them with the tools and widgets that will help them promote your cause and their fundraising efforts for you. Whether that’s badges to personalise their Twitter avatar with, or a widget to post it to their Facebook wall – make it easy for your supporters to promote you online. In turn they will become your advocates and evangelists and will help you build out your own community.

These online communities can be extremely powerful when they put their collective minds to it, and can rally fundraising efforts in an extremely short space of time – with blogger Julie Van Rosendaal raising more than $45,000 for Haitian relief with her community fund raising effort. There is a huge opportunity here for the third sector to make it easy for these communities to share and create projects that will raise significant funds for good causes.