100 Word Review: Google’s Real-Time Search for Nonprofit Organizations
December 9, 2009
Many nonprofits still struggle with how to measure Social Media ROI and are not so clear on what exactly the benefits are of utilizing social media. An obvious benefit is about take front and center stage in a few days when Google launches their Real Time Search to the public. If your nonprofit is not utilizing social media, then the only content that will show up is what others are saying about your organization. Nonprofits that do utilize social media will have more control and will show up in real time results more often. Here’s a video demo from Google:
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Nonprofit Tech 2.0 Blog :: A Social Media Guide for Nonprofits 
sounds grand!
Sounds great, but how do we go about making sure we are part of that search? If this is for NFP’s (we are one) how is that implemented?
No way of knowing until it’s live, but my guess is since it is real-time… then the more you Tweet keywords popular with Googlers, the more you show up in searches… we’ll have to wait an see!
Absolutely, the more content you produce and UPDATE, the more activity you will be connected to in google searches.
whoa, that’ll be pretty cool
I’ve been hearing about this for a while now; thanks for posting a link that gives me a better idea of how it’ll work.
What I don’t understand is how this is actually helpful to users. There seems to be an assumption that *real-time* information is naturally better than info that’s, well, so five-minutes ago. There are situations where that might be true, but they’re hardly universal, and if that’s what you need, why not go directly to Twitter for that?
And furthermore, I’d rather these real-time search results not clutter my search results; I have enough information overload as it is.
What am I missing?
This post and the questions that most who replied had about “what will this do, what am I missing?” got me to thinking of some ways for nonprofits to use Real Time Google Search to increase the effectiveness of their constituent interaction and as a result increase the success of their fundraising efforts.
Microsoft CRM and Sales Force to name just two companies are in the process of adding functionality to their software which monitors and collects relevant social media comments from donors and keeps it in their data record in the CRM system. If you are using fundraising software developed on these platforms or integrated with them, then this data is immediately available for campaign solicitations.
Imagine your nonprofit has an immediate need for funding driven by some “event” like a natural disaster. You could search your data base for those donors who are currently commenting in the various social media about this event and make a timely solicitation to tap into their interest. Then you could ask them if they would share this funding need with “friends” in their social network who might also be interested in responding to this event.
This action has a compound effect. Not only are you soliciting funds from potential new donors but your solicitation is coming from a trusted friend of theirs, thus increasing your chances of success. At the same time you are building your network of potential donors for future solicitations. Even if they don’t donate this time they remain in your database as a prospect for future solicitation.
These are just a few of the ideas that we on the fundraising software development side are integrating into our software to leverage the power of social media in order to improve the effectiveness of a nonprofit’s fundraising efforts. For more ideas check out
http://www.fundraisingfuturist.com