Claire Tiffin, a social work student at the University of Arkansas who is researching nonprofit fundraising.

Author: Claire Tiffin | Major: Social Work

My name is Claire Tiffin, and I am a social work major and communication minor at the University of Arkansas. I have the honor of receiving an Honors College Research Grant for my research on how social media affects nonprofit fundraising. When the covid-19 pandemic hit, I worked for a small nonprofit in Saint Louis. I do not think many people realize what a horrible effect covid had on nonprofits. Most nonprofits fundraise in person at large events like galas or auctions. Because these gatherings could not happen anymore, many nonprofits were facing a lack of funding and an increase of need due to the pandemic.  If nonprofits were not utilizing social media during the pandemic, it would increase their risk for less funding.

During the pandemic, I worked for a small private nonprofit in Saint Louis. I decided to propose to my boss to run fundraisers via social media, and this was an idea they had not thought of before. I ran a campaign across multiple platforms, and we set up a nonprofit Venmo account to make donating online easier. Through this process, I realized that it was vital for nonprofits to increase social media usage to fundraise. However, when I looked up information about how to utilize social media at a nonprofit, there was a lack of information.

Fast forward a year, it is June 2021, and the world is still very much in a pandemic. I started interning for another Saint Louis nonprofit that had a complex and far-reaching social media platform. As a development intern, I worked on a lot of fundraising and grant-making projects. I learned that throughout the pandemic, this nonprofit had its best fundraising year in the history of its nonprofit. That astounded me but I soon realized it was because they were utilizing social media to reach new donors and communicate the needs of their clients. I decided then to research how to correctly use social media to fundraise, and the effect that social media has on fundraising.

From the beginning of my time at the University of Arkansas, I knew that I would be writing a thesis. My first step was to find a mentor. My mentor is Kim Stauss, and I found her through the Social Work Department. In my freshman year of college, I met with her because I wanted to start as early as possible. By the end of my sophomore year, I had my idea about researching nonprofit fundraising. I talked to Kim about it, and we started this research journey. Kim is awesome and keeps me very grounded. Her experience is incredibly calming, and she consistently checks in and advises me. From the get-go, she helped me to know my deadlines and we came up with a timeline that worked with my school and work schedule. I am so thankful for her! Besides Kim, one of my close friends from my Social Work cohort, Hannah Baker, is also writing a thesis. Hannah is fantastic. Even though our research is vastly different, we discuss every step of our research with each other.

So far, I am about halfway through my research process. I developed a survey that will evaluate how effectively nonprofits use social media, and it also contains questions about the success of fundraising campaigns online.  I have sent out this survey to multiple nonprofits in Saint Louis to see if they utilize social media successfully during their fundraising campaigns. A big challenge I had to overcome was getting people to participate in the survey. I emailed over 50 Saint Louis nonprofits and got responses from less than 15. The main way I overcame this problem was to follow up emails and reach out to more nonprofits. This problem pushed my timeline back a few weeks, but it did not cause any major problems. Besides the survey, I am also going to be doing interviews with a nonprofit’s development and social media departments to get a better look into why social media makes fundraising so much more successful. I aim to collect all the data from the surveys and interviews by the end of January. I will report my findings and hopefully pinpoint the best techniques for online fundraising.  I plan to present my findings at the National Association of Social Work Conference in March.

I am hopeful that my research will give nonprofits the tools they need to successfully fundraise. The pandemic has increased the need for nonprofits, but it is impossible to serve the needs of the public without funding. I hope my work enables me to put together a guide to how to successfully use social media to fundraise, and I dream of sending that to nonprofits in Fayetteville, Saint Louis, and beyond. I am so grateful to the University of Arkansas Honors College for providing me with the means to take my research further. I feel like I have gotten the opportunity of a lifetime, and I constantly feel supported by the Honors College and my mentor Kim Stauss.