SocialVibe: Knowing Your Audience

When it comes to fundraising, you may not be in your target audience. Many of us who work in nonprofits have different values, lifestyles, and budgets from the people we're reaching out to. As Jeff at Donor Power Blog says, "Your most effective fundraising will most likely feel a bit off to you." Katya at Nonprofit Marketing Blog agrees, saying that truly effective social marketing taps into the values of the audience first, and not necessarily those of the nonprofit. It is with these facts firmly in mind that I take a deep breath and present SocialVibe.

SocialVibe lets people add advertisements to their own home pages, blogs, and social networking pages. Users can choose the brands they want to advertise — options include everything from Coca-Cola to Adobe — and choose the nonprofits they want to support. The advertisers make donations to the nonprofits based on the number of views and clicks their ads get. SocialVibe launched in February, and recently announced that they'd hit $100,000 in donations.

If you're like me, you clicked on the SocialVibe link, browsed around for a minute or two, and said, "Gross." But that's just it: I'm not in the target audience. The young people targeted by SocialVibe pride themselves in making their MySpaces and Facebooks look like stock cars. For many of us, trying social media campaigns means trying someone else's rules.

Most of the causes supported by SocialVibe are large, national nonprofits, and that's too bad. I think a service like this could do a lot to get young people excited about their community nonprofits. Being able to support a local after-school program might even convince a curmudgeon like me to sign up. The only information available for interested nonprofits is an email address. If anyone has tried to sign up with SocialVibe, let us know. I'm sure a lot of our readers would be curious about the process.