Creating a Great Nonprofit Social Toolkit

Supporter-created content is one of the most heart-warming, validating things you can see as a nonprofit organization. Individuals taking your cause into their own hands can lead to awesome benefits for your org. But what if you have specific preferences for your public facing brand? It is extremely helpful to give your active supporters some helpful social guidelines.

Creating a nonprofit social toolkit will streamline crowd-sourced promotions and make the campaign process seem achievable to your audience. These toolkits can lead to higher quality, higher performing supporter campaigns.

Click here to download the complete guide to a nonprofit digital marketing strategy.

It’s up to you to simplify the campaign creation process. It takes some upfront work, but your nonprofit social toolkit will stimulate great supporter content and save you time long-term.

Common Questions Surrounding nonprofit social toolkits:

What is a nonprofit social toolkit?

A variety of social media tools and resources that are used to streamline a uniformed process for crowd-sourced content. Social media toolkits can be internal to streamline any PR communications, marketing efforts, or anywhere you want to have a consistent brand message. This tool can also be open to the public to assist supporters in spreading a consistent message of your organization across their personal accounts.

Why Do I need a nonprofit social toolkit?

Nonprofit social toolkits create uniformity in crowd-sourced content, as well as offers resources and ideas to individuals wanting to support your cause. Offering a social toolkit leads to higher-quality peer-to-peer promoted content, as well as guides supporters to recognize the goals you hope to achieve through crowd-sourced campaigns.

For example, if you notice fundraisers that include specific branded images see more success, you can include those images in your social toolkits to share with your supporters.

Where do I house my nonprofit social toolkit?

For the public to be aware of and use the social toolkit, it needs to get in front of supporters. On the website the social toolkit should be housed on the page where visitors learn how to help your cause. Off the website it can be included in email blasts and social campaigns.

Successful and helpful nonprofit social toolkits include:

Sample copy for an introduction to organization

This explanation acts as a guide for your supporters who want to share your story. As an outside supporter, coming up with a short paragraph that embodies the full nature of your organization can seem overwhelming. Having a clear and concise explanation for what your organization does can cut down on that stress to accurately explain your nonprofit. Sharing a simple powerful summary of your story also improves the chances that your supporters will share the best info for a good first impression.

Nonprofit mission statement

If there is limited copy real estate for explaining a cause in social fundraisers, and you only have a few seconds to grab audience attention. Make sure to include a one-sentence summary of your nonprofit cause so supporters can include the maximum amount of impact in a small space.

Example: Here is the mission statement for Feeding America that is simple, clean and easy to understand.

Our mission is to feed America’s hungry through a nationwide network of member food banks and engage our country in the fight to end hunger.

Sample/branded images

Visual tools are the best ways to grab new attention and engagement, so set your supporters up for success. If you like to keep your nonprofit brand uniform, include images and visuals with your logo/watermark that your supporters can use in their fundraisers. Offering specific branded photos also helps you control the content being shared along with your organization and states what’s appropriate for distribution. Quality control is important!

Some organizations don’t need a uniform brand in your public campaigns, but still want to maximize the quality of the fundraisers. If this is the case, include ideal photo dimensions for your supporters to refer to when choosing their own images. This way, you still get the crowd-sourced images that humanizes your company while also improving the quality of the content.

Video files

Videos are naturally more engaging than single images, and will grab the eye of new prospects. Including any branded or high-quality video files will improve your brands reach because videos can be shared widely across social platforms like Instagram TV, social video feeds, and social stories.

Notice we said ‘video files’ and not links to YouTube videos! YouTube videos are great, but uploading a video directly to a social platform gets better engagement than just sharing a link. Don’t lose those extra eyes by only sharing links!

‘Support Organization’ social profile badges

Spread the awareness of your brand through offering profile badges to supporters and Facebook fundraisers. They can be as simple as your organization logo to add on top of a profile pic or as detailed as a custom cover photo for specific fundraisers. Let your supporters promote your events, cause and opportunities with pride!

Statistics and data of your impact

One of the most powerful ways to share your impact is to share the facts! Include a list of your best statistics that communicate the difference you make in your community, the environment, or the world. These facts communicate the way that prospects can be a part of true change!

Stories and quotes to highlight

Highlighting your organization’s most powerful stories and testimonials will help potential fundraisers understand how to communicate their own personal story. Or, if a fundraiser would rather promote someone else’s story over their own, this makes finding the appropriate story that much easier and helps you keep control over the message and what information becomes public knowledge.

Specific Hashtags

As we explain in our post on leveraging instagram for peer to peer fundraisers, using one strong hashtag for all of your campaigns organizes all crowd-sources content. This practice makes it easy to find all crowd-sourced content for quick engagement and quality assurance.

Links to more information

Make sure your supporters have access to the right introductory information. This information can be for them to simply create their campaign, or for them to share with their community. We don’t know what our supporters don’t know! So it is better to include any possible information that could lead to the success of their fundraisers.

This information could look like:

Social posting best practices, how-tos, and instructions.
Approved blogs or press releases
Sample fundraisers
Contact information (like social DMs) to contact with questions

Sample Calls To Action

A Call To Action (or CTA) is the major action you want a viewer to take after seeing your information. For some efforts, that CTA may be learning more about your organization, signing up for a newsletter, or applying to volunteer. With fundraisers, the CTA will most likely be to make a donation. A fundraiser’s Call To Action is critical, as it is the final chance to inspire someone to act on your cause! Including powerful copy and sample Calls to Action will give supporters ideas and a clear direction on how to best inspire their community and empower them to donate.

Are you ready to create your nonprofit social toolkit? Reach out to our team for support!