Summer time giving

For many of us the summer is a time for relaxation and rest and I hope that everyone has a chance to take a vacation, catch their breath and start the new year with new energy. That said, depending upon your fiscal year, the summer months represent somewhere between 1/6 and 1/4 of your fiscal year. Given the current economy, those months represent opportunity that we can not afford to pass by.

My suggestion is to spend a good part of that time working in programs with lower impact to build for the future - for the vast majority of us, that is at least in part online giving programs. I would suggest that for many of us it has to do with social networking and how to use it for fundraising. Short of hosting a catastrophe nobody has yet completely untangled this puzzle but I have a suggestion on how to make steps in that direction.

My feeling is that social networking sites are not now or anytime soon going to be the panacea of fundraising results for higher education. Instead, they can be used to share the message of other things going on. How you ask? Use a group of alumni (young are suggested but take a look at the profile of your facebook fan (actually liker but that sounds bad)) to establish a fundraising event - can be as simple as a trike-a-thon or as complex as a walk for the homeless. Ask them to each take responsibility for raising pledges/commitments for this effort. Let them reach out to friends and connections via social networking. Your role is to plan the event and use the advertising features of facebook and email to get this in front of as many of the other folks in your constituent base as possible.

Will this result in millions of dollars raised? Probably not. Will this start the process of your constituents reaching out to one another on your behalf through social networks to raise money - absolutely. And that is the first big step on this path.