Productive crowdsourcing applications for social businesses

The rapidly growing emergence of digital marketing and social media in the business world today offers many revolutionary opportunities for exploring new horizons. These technologies are commonly focused on and employed in the fields of marketing and consumer research, although they can be very effective if used powerfully in marketing practice. 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 from traditional employees or vendors.

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

Social enterprises, especially non-profit organizations, can make use of crowdsourcing from fundraising and marketing to activism and volunteering. With this concept, nonprofits can harness the power of the crowd to raise awareness for 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 contributions, 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 is centered 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 ability to outsource repetitive jobs to the crowd. Micro-volunteering was successfully applied after Hurricane Katrina when a large number of volunteers manually logged 15,200 entries to consolidate each of the missing persons information sources. Nonprofit organizations can learn how to effectively apply this crowdsourcing model by using local fundraising consulting services.

Crowd Creation: Here, crowds are used to help produce original artwork. 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. Harnessing that desire can increase awareness for your cause while attracting valuable new audiences for your message.

Fundraising: This category includes the general idea of ​​encouraging individuals and multitudes to financially support projects that benefit others. Some nonprofit organizations 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 “Giving the Biggest 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 looking at possible ideal crowdsourcing models for your organization, it’s equally important to practice this revolutionary concept while being careful to always keep 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 might send an email to all supporters asking for ideas and suggestions.

Although each nonprofit organization may have different specific ways to make productive use of crowdsourcing, it is necessary to always keep in mind the following guidelines and tips 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 achieve and finding ways to address the goals by choosing 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 reach your current followers. These current supporters are key to the entire plan, as most of the time they have access to networks of people with similar interests, which helps to spread the word about 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 communicate so it’s easy to help get it across. Break down strategic goals 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. Setting reasonable expectations is key to achieving goals, 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 your effort to spread your campaign out into venues 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, drop 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 analysis 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.