February 6, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
At the blog Creating the Future, Hildy Gottlieb urges readers not to succumb to the “sirens song” of social media, which lures charities with the promise of raising money fast—and on the cheap.
Asking donors to contribute tiny sums toward an individual need or project through Facebook feeds and Twitter entreaties is an unsustainable method of fund raising, argues Ms. Gottlieb, who is president of Community-Driven Institute and Help 4 NonProfits in Tucson, Ariz.
In fact, she says, social-media fund raising is downright destructive because it does nothing to solve the causes of problems. As a result, the problem is never eradicated, which in the long run creates disillusioned and discouraged donors who eventually abandon philanthropy out of a sense of hopelessness.
“By asking for help for ‘just one poor boy and his family,’ we are actually creating the path to frustration, burnout, lack of impact,” she writes. “We are setting up our communities for an even tougher job of creating a culture of philanthropy,” she adds, by requiring them to overcome “the culture that gives the million and one reasons that creating a better world is impossible.”
Instead of these one-at-a-time approaches, Ms. Gottlieb argues, nonprofit groups should focus on building groups of people who work cooperatively to devise comprehensive approaches that have a better chance to overcome social problems.
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