A guide to the tools ColoradoGives.org provides to help you share your fundraiser in Facebook, Twitter, and more
Social media is a key way for everyday philanthropists to promote their charitable fundraisers on ColoradoGives.org and get their family, friends, and community involved in supporting important causes. ColoradoGives.org is a platform built for social media and our team has worked hard to develop tools that make it fun and easy to share causes close to your heart on social media!
Connecting Your Social Media Accounts to ColoradoGives.org
In order to use most of ColoradoGives.org's social media sharing tools, you will first need to connect any social media platforms you use to your ColoradoGives.org account. When your accounts are connected, sharing your fundraiser on social media is as simple as clicking a button!
You can connect your Facebook and Google Plus accounts when you sign up for ColoradoGives.org, but you can add new connections at any time through your user profile.
To access your profile, log into your ColoradoGives.org account and click your name from the menu under your name on the navigation bar.
Editing Your Profile
To customize your user profile, click the "Public Profile” tab.
When you’re editing your profile, you can upload a photo of yourself to use as your user avatar, share your location, write a short profile, and fill out a fun Q&A that helps the ColoradoGives.org community get to know you.
Your Account Settings
You can manage your ColoradoGives.org account from your "Account Settings".
In your account settings you can manage linked social media accounts.
When you have successfully linked a social media account to your ColoradoGives.org account, you’ll see it listed here. If any anytime you wish to disconnect a social media account from ColoradoGives.org, you can simply press the button for that social media account that says “Disconnect” to remove it from your ColoradoGives.org profile.
Social Sharing Buttons
Your page has tools to share your fundraiser embedded right under the donate button:
When you click the Facebook button, ColoradoGives.org will generate a Facebook post with a link to your page and a preview of the content on your page.
You can easily post appeals to donate to your page and updates on your fundraiser’s progress using this tool.
Next, there’s the Twitter sharing option. The coolest thing about the Twitter sharing tool on ColoradoGives.org is that it generates a shortened, Twitter-friendly link to your page so there’s no need to use tools like Bitly or Google URL Shortener to stay within your 140 character limit!
You can change the text just by typing into the box. ColoradoGives.org is automatically tagged, so if we like your tweet and want to help spread the word about your fundraiser, we might retweet you!
ColoradoGives.org makes it easy to reach out to people you want to support you via email. When you click the email icon, ColoradoGives.org will open up your operating system’s default email program and autofill an email with a link to your page and short message. You can add the address of someone you’d like to reach out to personally about your fundraiser, or add several contacts.
You’ll need to take a minute to personalize it, but this can be an incredibly helpful tool if you’re not sure what to write in an email about your fundraiser!
(Please note that this icon will open up your operating system’s default email program — on a Mac, it’ll open up Mail, and on Windows, it’ll open up Outlook. If you use a web-based email service like Gmail, you’ll need to log into your account and then copy-paste the email into a new email.)
Widget
Have a website or a blog? ColoradoGives.org has created a widget you can embed to collect donations! Just click this icon:
Then choose the type of widget you’d like to embed on your site or blog.
Here’s how the different types of widgets work:
Widget with direct donate: People will be able to complete a donation from the widget, without leaving the page where you’ve embedded it. The widget itself is secure, even if your website or blog is not.
Facebook page: This will install a Facebook “app” that puts a “Donate” button on your page and allows people to complete donations from our widget. This doesn’t work for Facebook profiles — you will need a Facebook brand page in order to install this widget.
Widget: This creates a widget that links to your ColoradoGives.org page. People cannot donate from this widget, but it will take them to your ColoradoGives.org page where they can read your full story and complete a donation.
Button: This generates a “Donate” button that links to your ColoradoGives.org page.
Social Sharing Tips
Social media can be a great way to spread the word about your fundraiser and raise money for your cause. Here a few tips to help your fundraiser gain momentum:
- Tag the charity and ColoradoGives.org: At ColoradoGives.org, we’re always on the lookout for cool fundraisers, so if you tag us on Facebook or Twitter, we may share or retweet to our audience! The charity you’re raising money for may do the same, so be sure to tag them as well.
- Mix it up: No one wants to see the same social media post about your fundraiser over and over, so get creative to make sure your posts are seen! Go live on Facebook, record a video, share photos, create your own images in Photoshop or Canva, get involved in memes (think “Mannequin Challenge”), issue a social media challenge… don’t be afraid to think outside of the box!
- Ask for shares and RTs: We all need a little help from our friends, so be sure to ask yours to share and RT your fundraiser to help increase your reach.
- Conduct personal outreach: Sharing on social media is important, but the impact of reaching out to personally ask someone to support your cause is huge as well. Personally emailing or messaging a few close friends and asking them to make a donation to your fundraiser can help you break the ice and get your first donations, or help you through a slump.
- Make specific “asks”: Making a general request that people donate to your page is all well and good, but what works even better is asking for something specific: A specific dollar amount, an amount that will get you to your next milestone, social media shares, etc. People like these kinds of requests because it takes the guesswork out of helping and gives them specific instructions!
- Add a link to your email signature: If you use email to communicate with your friends and family, try adding a link to your fundraiser to your signature. (Check your company’s policies before adding a link to your work email’s signature.)
Have additional questions about social sharing? Contact us here.