Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi Y'all, does anyone have best practices or factual data for what the optimum social media posting frequency should be when doing a fundraiser?  I would love to know things like: duration of the campaign, frequency of posts throughout the day, content change frequency, etc.  There has been some concern within our organization that posting 2+ times a day when fundraising causes donors to get upset as it looks like we're begging for money.  However, we are a nonprofit and are asking for money so we need to post often, and people can just skip through the post.  Thanks for your help.
#MarketingandSocialMedia

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Myrna Schultz
Board of Directors
Contra Costa Humane Society
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What type of fundraiser are you doing? Raffle or asking for donations? People like to see interactive posts and videos. If you can add different heartwarming video stories or pictures that can help.
Hope that helps.

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Claudia Padilla
Founder and Executive Director
Happy Bunny Project
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While you may feel that posting several times a day may "wear out" your donors, keep in mind that not every donor sees each and every post.  In addition, we have found that people respond differently to ... well... different posts! If you are looking for funding to help an injured animal, you may find that you receive more donations for a dog than for a cat (or vice versa!). It can also vary on whether it is a congenital condition or an injury caused by neglect or cruelty.   In other words, people respond to various needs, and there is no "cookie cutter" post to garner donations. What we have found to be important is to post a FOLLOW UP post to any ask. An injured dog? We will post an "after" photo and information on how he/she is doing, and when it will be ready for adoption. And then of course we'll post the ADOPTION photo! It's important for donations to be acknowledged, and for donors to see that their giving had a true impact.  Hope this helps!

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Erin Hooks
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-30-2023 09:16 AM
From: Claudia Padilla
Subject: What is the optimum Social Media Posting Frequency for a Fundraiser?

What type of fundraiser are you doing? Raffle or asking for donations? People like to see interactive posts and videos. If you can add different heartwarming video stories or pictures that can help.
Hope that helps.

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Claudia Padilla
Founder and Executive Director
Happy Bunny Project
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This is so true.  Unfortunately, FB algorithms have changed that we have noticed a drastic drop in our post engagements.  And the ones that garner the most interest sometimes surprises us.   IF you don't ask, you will not get.  While we tend to not  do well with social media donation pleas except for food for our outreach program, if yours are working keep it up no matter how many..   I know I do not see all the posts from my favorites charities but then I go specifically look and might find a fundraiser.

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Dawn Roberts
Executive Director
Beesley Animal Foundation
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-30-2023 09:50 AM
From: Erin Hooks
Subject: What is the optimum Social Media Posting Frequency for a Fundraiser?

While you may feel that posting several times a day may "wear out" your donors, keep in mind that not every donor sees each and every post.  In addition, we have found that people respond differently to ... well... different posts! If you are looking for funding to help an injured animal, you may find that you receive more donations for a dog than for a cat (or vice versa!). It can also vary on whether it is a congenital condition or an injury caused by neglect or cruelty.   In other words, people respond to various needs, and there is no "cookie cutter" post to garner donations. What we have found to be important is to post a FOLLOW UP post to any ask. An injured dog? We will post an "after" photo and information on how he/she is doing, and when it will be ready for adoption. And then of course we'll post the ADOPTION photo! It's important for donations to be acknowledged, and for donors to see that their giving had a true impact.  Hope this helps!

------------------------------
Erin Hooks
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 01-30-2023 09:16 AM
From: Claudia Padilla
Subject: What is the optimum Social Media Posting Frequency for a Fundraiser?

What type of fundraiser are you doing? Raffle or asking for donations? People like to see interactive posts and videos. If you can add different heartwarming video stories or pictures that can help.
Hope that helps.

------------------------------
Claudia Padilla
Founder and Executive Director
Happy Bunny Project

Thanks everyone for your helpful input!

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Myrna Schultz
Board of Directors
Contra Costa Humane Society
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 02-03-2023 08:16 AM
From: Dawn Roberts
Subject: What is the optimum Social Media Posting Frequency for a Fundraiser?

This is so true.  Unfortunately, FB algorithms have changed that we have noticed a drastic drop in our post engagements.  And the ones that garner the most interest sometimes surprises us.   IF you don't ask, you will not get.  While we tend to not  do well with social media donation pleas except for food for our outreach program, if yours are working keep it up no matter how many..   I know I do not see all the posts from my favorites charities but then I go specifically look and might find a fundraiser.

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Dawn Roberts
Executive Director
Beesley Animal Foundation
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 01-30-2023 09:50 AM
From: Erin Hooks
Subject: What is the optimum Social Media Posting Frequency for a Fundraiser?

While you may feel that posting several times a day may "wear out" your donors, keep in mind that not every donor sees each and every post.  In addition, we have found that people respond differently to ... well... different posts! If you are looking for funding to help an injured animal, you may find that you receive more donations for a dog than for a cat (or vice versa!). It can also vary on whether it is a congenital condition or an injury caused by neglect or cruelty.   In other words, people respond to various needs, and there is no "cookie cutter" post to garner donations. What we have found to be important is to post a FOLLOW UP post to any ask. An injured dog? We will post an "after" photo and information on how he/she is doing, and when it will be ready for adoption. And then of course we'll post the ADOPTION photo! It's important for donations to be acknowledged, and for donors to see that their giving had a true impact.  Hope this helps!

------------------------------
Erin Hooks


Original Message:
Sent: 01-30-2023 09:16 AM
From: Claudia Padilla
Subject: What is the optimum Social Media Posting Frequency for a Fundraiser?

What type of fundraiser are you doing? Raffle or asking for donations? People like to see interactive posts and videos. If you can add different heartwarming video stories or pictures that can help.
Hope that helps.

------------------------------
Claudia Padilla
Founder and Executive Director
Happy Bunny Project

Thanks for your reply Claudia.  I was asking in general, but mainly for donations.

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Myrna Schultz
Board of Directors
Contra Costa Humane Society
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-30-2023 09:16 AM
From: Claudia Padilla
Subject: What is the optimum Social Media Posting Frequency for a Fundraiser?

What type of fundraiser are you doing? Raffle or asking for donations? People like to see interactive posts and videos. If you can add different heartwarming video stories or pictures that can help.
Hope that helps.

------------------------------
Claudia Padilla
Founder and Executive Director
Happy Bunny Project
------------------------------

What kind of fundraiser is this? I think they type really affects the frequency

For example, for a medical fundraiser, I may just post once with the story and how to donate

But if we are getting ready for an in-person fundraising event, I may post several times a week to remind people it is coming up

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Amanda Gray
Truly All Cats Trapping and Rescue
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Hi Myrna,

I agree with most of the comments, it really depends on the fundraiser.
We usually only ask for very specific support throughout the year, e.g, items on our wishlist that are running short of or for emergency veterinary expenses. In both cases, we usually post once about the specific need or animal once and then follow-up with a Thank You post.  We are lucky that people are really responsive to these cases.
More general asking for donations on Social Media, we will only do as part of Broader Online Giving Campaigns, such as Giving Tuesday, here we have Idaho Gives one time a year (maybe other states have something similar as well ), and there's also Michelson's Found Animals Fundraising Challenge. There we would usually post more times a day, but always with a different story.
Best,
Nora

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Nora Paech
Development Director
Snake River Animal Shelter
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That is what we tend to do, ask when have specific needs.  Although we do post frequently on Social Media  and at least once a day but our mission is different as we are spay/neuter and wellness services.  One of our state's biggest Day of Giving this year has been cancelled so we are trying different ways to get donations.

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Dawn Roberts
Executive Director
Beesley Animal Foundation
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-31-2023 11:50 AM
From: Nora Paech
Subject: What is the optimum Social Media Posting Frequency for a Fundraiser?

Hi Myrna,

I agree with most of the comments, it really depends on the fundraiser.
We usually only ask for very specific support throughout the year, e.g, items on our wishlist that are running short of or for emergency veterinary expenses. In both cases, we usually post once about the specific need or animal once and then follow-up with a Thank You post.  We are lucky that people are really responsive to these cases.
More general asking for donations on Social Media, we will only do as part of Broader Online Giving Campaigns, such as Giving Tuesday, here we have Idaho Gives one time a year (maybe other states have something similar as well ), and there's also Michelson's Found Animals Fundraising Challenge. There we would usually post more times a day, but always with a different story.
Best,
Nora

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Nora Paech
Development Director
Snake River Animal Shelter
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We aim to post on our socials once a day M-F, twice max. For general donations, we try to tag it onto a post once a week, but try to utilize stories more often.

Diversifying content is key; sometimes we'll tag it onto our weekly recently adopted posts, sometimes we use a 'ways to get involved' post that includes our wish list items, animal sponsorships, or volunteer recruitment rather than asking for monetary values directly.

Videos tend to see more engagement than static images, and time of day matters; we focus on posting around 4 pm which generally sees much more engagement than earlier in the day, so the value of that one post vs. the three that don't see many eyes, is much more powerful.

Applying values to the denominations is also helpful to show what their dollars are going towards is a good selling point.

We recently had an animal that needed emergency surgery so we initially posted with a backstory on the longtimer and the fundraiser, then did an update the following week on his upward progress, and while we still needed the funds to cover the surgery, we wanted the focus to be on finding his forever home which gave followers more reason to share the fundraiser.

For Giving Tuesday, we were including the donation link onto animal features a few times a week but didn't want to go overboard by posting too frequently as it becomes noise and people become tone-deaf to the donation language.

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bonnie hiliadis
Development & Communications Coordinator
North Country Animal League
Morrisville VT
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