How a nonprofit built their online community through social media and peer marketing
Read time: 16 minutes
By Mackenzie Walters
When I talk to nonprofit marketers and leaders, a common concern is an aging donor or volunteer base. Many retirees can support the causes and organizations they care about, but what happens as their generation grows older and younger donors or volunteers are not brought into the fold?
What struck me after reading “The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change” by Adam Braun is how he was able to excite college students and young adults — his generation and younger — to rally around building schools in impoverished parts of the world.
The nonprofit he founded, Pencils of Promise, started with an overseas semester where he discovered the desire of many children to attend school, and lead to the organization he founded to build schools, train teachers, and offer scholarships.
While Braun talked about how “being young” was a disadvantage to start, his story also shows what’s possible when college students and young adults are brought into the fold and their skills and passions directed toward the greater good.
Plus, Braun leveraged some of the newest digital marketing tactics of the time to grow Pencils for Promise’s online community. He focused on asking the growing community for small actions at scale, such as an invitation to attend a party, donate a small amount, or vote to win an online donation contest.
1. He started with friends and leaned into relationship marketing aka peer marketing.
As all small nonprofit leaders do, Braun reached out to friends as well as friends of friends. He shared his story, showed photographs of the people he met while traveling internationally, and asked them to join him.
He never tried to go it alone. Early on, Braun invited friends and acquaintances to lend expertise, including putting a volunteer leadership team together to do the work and get major projects off the ground. He even asked someone he discovered was skilled at managing volunteer leadership teams!
However big or small your network, your network has a network. Peer networking — sometimes called relationship marketing — can be a powerful way to grow. It’s often word-of-mouth or second-degree connections that open doors.
“I genuinely believed that someone’s Facebook status was a valuable commodity. Viewing an individual’s social media presence as an important form of currency was something we were banking on.”
2. He used social media marketing — especially Facebook and YouTube — as a primary way build an online community and support.
One of the first fundraising event Pencils for Promise organized was through social media. Braun created a Facebook invite and connected with everyone he knew when organic reach on Facebook was at its prime.
With his friends, he also filmed a goofy video called “Halloween Girl” to post on YouTube as a way of promoting the party. Everyone wore costumes and had a blast making it — capturing the fun and excitement on video. He knew it wasn’t enough just to ask, he also needed to show how fun it would be.
He then gave all his friends “host” capabilities and asked them to invite everyone they knew through Facebook. He didn’t just make a few posts and expect people to show up; they collectively invited “thousands of people” to the event — and 400 came.
The social media algorithms are very different today, so you can’t expect the same organic reach as in 2008. Facebook is becoming more of a “pay to play” platform every year.
But that’s not what Braun did — he invited instead of published. I’m sure they also posted, but he didn’t stop there. He took relationship marketing to the next level and invited everyone he knew (and everyone his friends knew) via the platform.
It’s a good reminder that it’s not always enough to publish an invite, you also have to actively make requests and send invitations, even (especially) on social media platforms today.
It reminds me of when I organized a fundraiser / celebration for my college newspaper, and while we sent out invitations, it wasn’t until we went through the list of alumni and personally called that we started to get RSVP traction.
Braun also didn’t view social media as a means to an end. At a time when many nonprofits (and many businesses!) were ignoring social media, Braun was leaning heavily into the platforms. He writes:
“Most (nonprofit leaders) were only focused on courting their major donors. But I didn’t just want donors, I wanted outspoken advocates. I genuinely believed that someone’s Facebook status was a valuable commodity. Viewing an individual’s social media presence as an important form of currency was something we were banking on.”
3. He went on the road and spoke at college campuses, even when only one or a handful of people showed up.
At one point, he and a few friends made a road trip across the country to speak at various college campuses, leveraging relationships he made with people still attending classes or with school connections.
Only one young woman showed up at the first place he visited. But he still gave a passionate speech. Then asked her to join him. She did by organizing a club on campus that spread the word and got more students involved.
I think back to nonprofits I was introduced to on campus more than 20 years ago — including Habitat for Humanity, now a global organization that builds or improves their home.
Students volunteered to help on a specific home build and invited friends to join them. As the college newspaper editor, I remember running stories about their efforts, which furthered their name and impact. I wasn’t familiar with the organization at the time and it served as my first introduction.
Fast forward and I’ve been involved in Habitat in various ways over the years, on and off, as have many people I know. I also know someone who made a large donation in their 40s in part because of the long-standing relationships that started in their 20s at college. Even though this person never volunteered to build a home, the organization intersected with their life at various times over the years and they understood the mission and impact their donation would make.
“Many nonprofits go straight for the major donors, and that’s important, but small donors and volunteers shouldn’t be overlooked or discounted.
In business terms, it’s the “lifetime value” of a particular relationship that should be considered — all of the donations and support given over their life — not just the first time value of a donation.”
Many nonprofits go straight for the major donors, and that’s important, but small donors and volunteers shouldn’t be overlooked or discounted. In business terms, it’s the “lifetime value” of a particular relationship that should be considered — all of the donations and support given over their life — not just the “first time” value of a donation.
Marketing and communications is one of the best ways to invest in supporters and build relationships, leveraging the scale of one-to-many (instead of one-to-one or one-to-few, as with a dinner to ask for a large gift).
Start considering marketing and communications as fundraising and donor activities, and you’ll start investing in them and see the benefits as your name recognition and relationship with supporters grows.
4. He asked people to “join him” instead of “support him,” and said he ran a “for purpose” organization
One of my favorite quotes is by Tom Stoppard, who said: “Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”
Braun chose his words carefully, and as a journalist-turned-marketer I can appreciate why.
He asked people to “join” instead of “support” him. He started talking about his “for purpose” organization instead of his “nonprofit.”
He saw himself as a “business-driven entrepreneur who wanted to work on global education,” not a “nonprofit person.”
I’ve heard other nonprofit leaders also switch their wording by asking donors to “give” — not “give back,” which implies the donor has something that is not theirs and should be returned. That’s harsh, but I’m starting to see the shift in language among a few organizations to simply ask donors to “give” and to thank them when they do.
These are subtle switches, but I’ve seen how word usage and new branding language can make a difference.
Think about some of the switches in our modern language: “teachers” are now “educators” and “mechanics” are “technicians,” terms that both command more respect.
5. He created campaigns to encourage his community to join him in raising money.
With an active social media community of people who wanted to get involved, Pencils for Promise launched campaigns to encourage individual campaigns. He wanted to activate the digital community they had built and fostered.
One of their campaigns, “Impossible Ones,” personally resonated with students and young adults who had a rebellious streak and wanted to prove they could do something that others had deemed impossible.
In many ways, it was part of the nonprofit’s ethos. Many people told Braun that what he was trying to accomplish wasn’t possible or that he should take the traditional route of building wealth through business consulting.
Instead, he took a different path to accomplish the goal of creating Pencils for Promise — a story and then a campaign that resonated.
One 17-year-old girl biked across America to raise funds and became one of the stories featured on their website. Others were asked to support “impossible” goals through donations or launch their own “impossible” campaign.
Another campaign they launched set a BHAG, or “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” in business speak. They told their community that whoever raised the most money would win a free trip to visit the school they built with the money they raised.
Businesses set BHAGs because it’s a specific, tangible goal that feels like a huge stretch but, with focused and intentional effort, can be reached. More than anything, the goal becomes motivating and helps you make that extra effort to succeed.
6. He waited before seeking traditional news media attention until he had a major story that would put them on the map.
As a journalist, this was an interesting insight for me, and one you’d expect from a former Bain business consultant that’s always thinking about growth and capacity.
It’s not unusual for nonprofits or any organization to seek media attention, and sometimes it’s OK to seek that out before the organization is fully built. (You’re building it on the fly, right?)
But Braun had bigger aspirations and wanted to capitalize on media exposure with what he called a “holy s**t” story. Something that would captivate the reader or even prompt them to mention it so someone else. For them, it was building 100 schools.
Plus, he wanted to have a great website in place — because the first thing a reader does is Google the organization and look at the website — as well as a solid infrastructure to be able to handle any inquires the story prompted.
What’s interesting is that his first media piece wasn’t with a major, traditional news organization. It was with HuffPost, an online media disrupter, and the story ran over Thanksgiving when many people are thinking about community.
The attention helped connect Pencils for Promise with many large organizations interested in partnerships and cause marketing, a form of influencer marketing.
7. He leveraged cause marketing and partnerships. Because he built an audience, brands were interested in partnering and both organizations benefited.
Braun calls this his second “big bet,” as companies were starting to notice that consumers wanted to buy products that made the world better — a trend we’re still seeing today.
“I believed that marketers and major brands with lots of advertising dollars would want to keep those consumers happy by finding ways to show them how their purchases benefited others.”
You could call this the rise of influencer marketing, except the “influencers” were nonprofit causes with large or passionate communities.
For example, a major bookstore offered to match an online donation campaign — getting their brand in front of Pencils for Promise’s community while also creating a positive association of caring about causes. Braun writes:
“I figured they would seek out as partners the organizations with the largest and most engaged social media followings. So we focused on building an engaged community online and transparent programs that created tangible goods on the ground, making us perfect for cause-marketing campaigns.”
Because of this focus, Braun “obsessed” with the nonprofit’s brand, from a polished logo and online presence to the language used in various marketing or print material. How the organization represented itself not just to the community, but to potential partners, really mattered.
“Branding can make or break a company, and a great brand creates legitimacy and trust,” he writes.
Think of how you would present yourself during a job interview — you want to make a great first impression, so you iron your clothes and maybe buy a new shirt. You take extra time making sure you look put together and professional.
That’s the power of a brand, because it makes that quality first impression. As an organization, you get one chance to show up and make an impression to earn a second chance to connect.
Mackenzie Walters is the editor and podcast host of Nonprofit Storytellers. Have an opinion on nonprofit marketing, outreach, fundraising, or communications? Reach out to us.