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The PayPal deal represents another step for Facebook toward making purchases on the social network a normal part of our everyday lives. This is an important trend for fundraisers to watch.

Why should this be important to fundraisers?

IF Facebook succeeds in making the exchange of money via social networks a culturally normal thing to do, THIS would be a huge breakthrough for all commerce, including online fundraising. Facebook already plays a large role in many people’s social lives and consumes a large percentage of their time online – adding regular commerce to that is the next big thing.

Most fundraising on social networks has continually struggled to perform. The notable exception is event-based fundraising, which is seeing repeatable, predictable success when integrated with sites like Facebook.

So be on the lookout for how Facebook payments continue to evolve and be adopted – it should be a valuable indicator of how successful we can be in fundraising directly through Facebook.

A recent comScore study may have an answer . This study found that individuals exposed to banner ads were 72 percent more likely to visit the advertiser’s website within three weeks of exposure, and 92 percent more likely to do a “brand search”. This study was conducted in Europe, so it is not completely analogous to U.S.-based nonprofits, but it is indicative of a larger trend.

According to comScore, the lift in the U.S. is closer to 49 percent in site visitation and 40 percent in searches. The actual percentages are still very small. Only 7.71 percent of individuals exposed to the ad visited the site and 3.27 percent did a search query. It seems total quantity is still very important in banner advertising to generate a significant return.

The bigger issue for advertisers is the fact that none of the traffic —or, for the ministries we serve, donations — will be correctly attributed to the banner ad if a donor sees the ad and then later contributes at the ministry website.

This study indicates that we will need to continue to evolve our metrics to be able to better capture the impact of banner advertising on an overall campaign. Even to the point where it may be necessary to suspend banner advertising for a time to see its true impact.

More angry protestors are beaten back by the Basiji, the Iranian regime’s oppressive militia. Neda is an innocent bystander passing through. Not even innocent bystanders are safe. A Basiji sniper bullet rips into her heart. She lays on the ground bleeding to death. Her father cries out for help.

Within days, her face is everywhere in Iran. Protestors hold posters of her face emblazoned with the slogan “we are all Neda.” She’s become an international symbol for the courage of the people of the Green Revolution. A reminder of the brutality of the Iranian regime.

All because of a cell phone video.

Traditional media outlets were almost completely locked out of the events of the last few months in Iran. But people around the world have followed the emotional protest — all because ordinary Iranians captured the destabilizing protests on the street, feet away from the military and militia, with their cell phones.

None of this would have been possible without Twitter, texts and cell phone audio and video.

One of Masterworks’ clients, GAiN, used these same techniques in responding to last month’s devastating earthquake in Haiti. GAiN president, Duane Zook, was in Haiti just a day or two after the quake to assess and report. He sent in reports via phone that were uploaded with photos. The result? Compelling multimedia reports that connected donors in an immediate way to the urgency of the need. Each report was highly trafficked and motivated people to give generously.

Hear Duane Zook’s reports from the field.

How can nonprofits produce gritty video and audio reports? How can they bring their donors to the core of their work?

By using their field personnel as a built-in media corps for fundraising.

As I understand it, there’s cell phone access even in the most remote, far-flung areas. Almost any cell phone made in the last few years has audio/video/image capability.

These cell phones could capture day-to-day compelling stories; giving nonprofits the chance to showcase the heart of their work in a raw and compelling way.

Of course, staff members need to learn that videos of smiling aid workers don’t help raise money. Cell phone video of conditions in a refugee camp or a video of a homeless man who is struggling to survive on the street do. They could provide the most compelling argument for donors to give . . . a window into the real-life problems that their gifts help solve.

What can nonprofits learn from the Haiti response that will translate into success for the rest of the year?

I’d like to take a minute to look at an article by Peter Schoewe about the fundraising outlook for 2010. By looking at his predictions in light of the Haiti earthquake, you can sharpen your fundraising over the next 11 months.

Schoewe says that nonprofits will have a greater opportunity to upgrade donors through frequency of giving instead of size of gift, especially because donors respond to urgent needs. Do you see a link to Haiti? An urgent tragedy presented itself and a nation trying to climb out of recession responded with record giving. Many of the gifts were small. Thousands of $5 and $10 gifts came in via text message.

He also predicts that there will be “fewer arguments about the viability of different fundraising channels.” Text message giving proves the point. 14% of all money donated for Haiti relief came via text messages. That, combined with the 28% that gave online and via email, means that 42% of gifts so far have been through new media channels according to the Pew Research Center.

It’s still too early to measure how the percentages will morph as direct mail results come in. But initial returns affirm that new media channels can raise substantial funds. That’s why it’s more important that nonprofits work to integrate both traditional and new media channels to maximize income.

The challenge now is to take these two lessons from the Haiti earthquake and build on them in your nonprofit throughout the rest of 2010. Remember to create urgency in your fundraising efforts. Don’t discount new media fundraising channels. The future of fundraising is multi-channel integration.

To read all of Peter Schoewe’s article click here.

I’d like to call one thing out in particular – this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZf8MRYasss

There are a couple things I want to call out about this video:

• The video was up within FIVE hours of the quake – incredibly fast.
• The video is obviously incredibly rough (handheld camera? sticky notes on a giant map? talk about low production value…)…
• …and incredibly effective. Over 1 million views, and an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.
• Also note the embedded donate link at the 12sec mark.

This is not to say all successful online videos should be this roughly shot, or over 5 minutes long. If anything, this points out there aren’t hard and fast rules about what makes a successful video – it really is dependent on the situation at hand.

Check out another video put up just a few days ago by the Red Cross – also a good example of the right use of video for the circumstances.

* By the way, the latest from the Chronicle of Philanthropy is that the Red Cross had raised approximately $153 million through last Friday 1/25.

The video targeting tool also allows targeting of videos by keywords, viewer demographics, interest-based categories, or some combination of the three.

One possible application for nonprofits

In a disaster-response situation, particularly with disasters in developed countries with solid technology infrastructures, a lot of user generated content finds its way onto YouTube. Savvy nonprofits should be looking to target all of the YouTube videos being made around the disaster, with direct links to landing pages optimized for donation response.

Note: The targeting options are officially in beta, so they may not be available to everyone just yet.

There are certain upsides to last-minute, new media communications planning. These include timeliness with current events and lower costs as a result of generally higher efficiency.

However, we advocate for a quarterly or annual planning model, where the primary direction of communications is set months in advance, and that plan is generally worked out accordingly. Exceptions would include emergencies or other breaking news elements that need to be responded to, as well as a subset of social media that simply cannot be planned ahead.

There are a number of advantages to planning on a quarterly or annual basis:

• Better integration with other channels. It takes time to integrate across channels, particularly since some channels like direct mail require lead time for production. By planning ahead, integration can be baked-in rather than bolted-on.
• Better discipline and strategy. Last minute communications planning can lead to diffused focus and inconsistent messaging. Often, in planning ahead, we find an increase in the ability to think through strategy before we execute.
• Enables “pounce” opportunities. By planning ahead for regular communications, both the organization and agency are able to free up capacity to pounce on urgent opportunities the moment they arrive.
• Better distribution of resources. Nonprofit communications staff is typically constant, while the communications themselves rise and fall with the seasons (for instance, communications in December tend to be much higher than those in January). By planning ahead, an organization can better accommodate spikes and lulls in communications.

Again, there are certain aspects that cannot be planned ahead, such as conversation taking place with constituents via social media, emergency response, etc. But the more that can be planned ahead, the greater the capacity to deal with the immediate and urgent.

Are you planning ahead? What do you think?

Check it out below, or at www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT9Zbb2k0dI.

If you’d like to know more about the One Meal One Hope campaign, how it worked, what channels we used, etc. – check out our webinar on the topic.

In fact, there are more videos watched every day than searches performed, as attested to in this post excerpt:

According to comScore Video Metrix, 120.5 million Americans watched nearly 10 billion videos on YouTube.com in August 2009. That 82.6 videos per viewer a month.

According to comScore qSearch, Americans conducted 9.4 billion searches on Google in August 2009.

Yep, the numbers are right. There are more videos being watched on YouTube than there are searches being conducted on Google in the United States.

Are you using video? If not, you probably should be.