The fast-growing emergence of digital marketing and social media in the business world today offers many groundbreaking opportunities for exploring new horizons. These technologies are commonly focused on and used in the fields of marketing and consumer research, although they can be very effective if used powerfully in the practice of collective collaboration. Crowdsourcing describes the practice of companies or individuals obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, especially from the online community, rather than employees or traditional vendors.

The principle of crowdsourcing highlights the fact that more heads are better than one. By polling a large crowd of people for ideas, skills, or engagement, the quality of content and idea creation will definitely be superior. The proper application of crowdsourcing to a business allows the selection of the best result from a sea of ​​’best inputs’, rather than being forced to receive the best input from a single provider. Results can also be delivered much faster than traditional methods, since crowdsourcing is a form of freelancing.

Social businesses, especially non-profit organizations, can make use of crowdsourcing, applying it from fundraising and marketing to activism and volunteering. With this concept, nonprofits can harness the power of the crowd to raise awareness of their cause, gather information, cultivate new donors and volunteers, and even get the job done.

Even in its early days, people have been using the Internet to solicit and organize groups of people to play small roles in projects. Therefore, we can define crowdsourcing actions in modern social business as engaging communities, be it your group of volunteers, donors, and customers, your local community, or a community of like-minded people to provide input, ideas, and feedback. which you usually can’t do. get. The idea of ​​outsourcing non-profit tasks through crowdsourcing can demonstrate openness and transparency in decision making and there are different models of this application for social business. These models include;

Attract collective knowledge: This crowdsourcing model involves sharing and aggregating information to find solutions to problems, as it centers on the idea that two or more heads are better than one.

Microvolunteering: In this crowdsourcing model, large tasks are broken down into much smaller ones, allowing for the possibility of outsourcing repetitive work to the crowd. Microvolunteering was successfully applied after Hurricane Katrina when a large number of volunteers manually recorded 15,200 entries to consolidate each of the missing person information sources. Nonprofits can learn how to effectively apply this crowdsourcing model by using local fundraising consulting services.

Crowd Creation: Here, the crowds are used to help produce original works of art. This model is similar to an open source project where many people make contributions.

Mass voting: Because everyone has an opinion, this crowdsourcing model is designed to explore people’s love of expressing themselves by voting on something or rating and giving feedback. Tapping into that desire can increase awareness of your cause while attracting valuable new audiences to your message.

Fundraising: This category includes the general idea of ​​encouraging individuals and crowds to financially support projects that benefit others. Some nonprofits in the United States are optimizing crowdfunding as communities mobilize crowds to provide funds on special “giving days.” For example, in November 2011, more than $13.4 million was raised on “Give It All Day” in Minnesota.

Any of these models or categories can be used in isolation or combined with other approaches to match the goals of your particular organization.

After analyzing the possible ideal crowdsourcing models for your organization, it is equally important to practice this revolutionary concept with the precaution of always keeping things simple and meaningful. For example, if your nonprofit organization needs to come up with new plans for an upcoming annual fundraising event, the organization’s fundraising manager could send an email to all supporters asking for ideas and suggestions.

Although each non-profit organization may have different specific ways of making productive use of crowdsourcing, the following guidelines and tips should always be kept in mind in any social business model to ensure productivity and success;

Plan ahead:

Always start by choosing the right model for your organization’s goals. This involves figuring out what you’re trying to accomplish and finding ways to address the goals by picking the right crowd, setting up a crowdsourcing campaign, and getting the word out to the right people. Develop a comprehensive outreach plan that combines the use of social media and email to access current followers. These current followers are key to the whole plan, as most of the time they have access to networks of people with similar interests, which helps to spread your project.

For example, choosing a crowdfunding website that closely matches your goal establishes a good platform. Such delicate decisions in the planning stages of nonprofit organizations are always more efficient with the proper involvement of a nonprofit consulting professional.

Keep it simple:

Keep your message as simple as possible to get across, so it’s easy to help get it across. Break strategic goals down into smaller tasks that people can help with, and always make it very clear what you want the crowd to do. Crowdfunding is a relatively easy means of soliciting support and is most successful when crowdfunding initiatives rely on family, friends, and colleagues rather than strangers. Key to achieving goals is setting reasonable expectations, along with acknowledging the traditional rules of fundraising credibility, strong networks, a track record of success, and transparency.

Engage and reward participation:

When implementing crowdsourcing methods to engage new groups of potential supporters, be as creative as possible in the effort to extend your campaign to locations in hopes of reaching new audiences. Consider and establish programs to regularly interact with current followers and introduce incentives and rewards for participation.

Stay positive:

It is important throughout every campaign to stay positive both in private and in public. Also, staying nice to people who can contribute combined with personal interactions increases the chance of a donation or action. Believe in the process, forget about any activity that doesn’t clearly support your mission, and stay focused on the mission.

Crowdfunding can produce valuable results when applied correctly in social business and the key to this success is making the instructions as clear as possible after the specific analyzes and before the creation of the marketing plan. The easiest way to get your crowdfunding campaign on the right track is to hire earnings consulting services or fundraising consulting professionals who specialize in crowdsourcing.