Peter Deitz, Social Actions

With the global financial crisis at its peak and a recession looming, many nonprofit managers are probably asking themselves, "How will my nonprofit raise money next year?" I suspect fewer fundraisers are asking themselves, "How will my nonprofit raise the money it needs four years from now?"

Current best practices will serve nonprofits just fine in 2009. Between email solicitation, direct mail, major donors, and grant-writing, the vast majority of nonprofits will weather the economic hard times. But a shifting communications environment and changing donor demographics could render those best practices ineffective at best, and obsolete at worst, as early as 2012.

So how should your organization prepare for the changes that are afoot?

When it comes to online fundraising, an obvious tip is to meet your current and potential donors where they are. Today, millions of prospective donors between the ages of 18 and 35 find themselves on Facebook.

In June 2007, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the release of FBML, a scripting language that assists developers in creating custom "applications" for the popular social network and its 40 million active users. Each application enhances the functionality of Facebook in one way or another. Some build bridges to external web sites. Others help friends on Facebook interact in new ways.

To help tech-savvy nonprofits sort through the fundraising options, this brief guide includes:

• An introduction to Causes, Change.org, ChipIn and Fundraising
• Suggestions for leveraging several fundraising applications at the same time