What your credit union can learn from GoFundMe
The inspiration for this article came to me when I stumbled upon a Facebook acquaintance’s shared post about one of her friend’s GoFundMe accounts requesting aid in purchasing a mermaid tail. Yes, I am completely serious. Yes, people ACTUALLY donated money toward her mermaid tail. Before you ask yourself what you could possibly learn from a company that allows fundraising on their platform to fulfil a person’s wish to be a fictional creature, keep reading.
GoFundMe is a San Diego and Melno Park-based digital company that was launched in 2010 and has become the “The World’s #1 fundraising site for personal causes and life-events.” In the past year alone, the site has helped people raise over $2 billion combined. In order to fund operations, the company takes a 5% cut on each donation received.
“The beauty of GoFundMe is that it allows campaign organizers to invite others to take part in their story. Just as we share parts of our lives on Facebook, we also want to share our dreams, pursuits, celebrations and challenges online with crowdfunding. People will always be eager to support others they care about. GoFundMe removes the physical barriers traditionally associated with receiving financial support from the people in our lives.”
While there are plenty of campaigns on the site that do not warrant fund raising (I’m a big believer in the fact that if you wish for something that is not an immediate need and are physically able to work for it, you work for it), there are many others that have good and noble causes. You can see some of the success stories here.
That said, here are some communications lessons your credit union can learn from GoFundMe:
- Emphasize your member-owned and controlled business model. GoFundMe gives fundraisers and donors the ability to “share dreams, pursuits, celebrations and challenges with online crowd funding.” Much like GoFundMe, credit unions encourage a sense of community by providing members with a “by the people, for the people” experience. Obvious statement alert: Your member-owned and controlled business model is a unique identifier in today’s vast financial world! Be sure to remind your members why they came to you in the first place by always keeping this messaging in front of them. A great practice is to utilize the blank real estate on your member-facing digital and print transactional documents to communicate your values, as well as the benefits of belonging to a credit union.
- Focus on feelings. GoFundMe campaigns that evoke happy, sad, motivational, etc. feelings from donors tend to perform the best. Why? As one of my favorite motivational speakers of all time, Zig Ziglar, once said, “People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” Zig was not alone in this line of thinking, as many surveys and top articles cite that 20 percent of a purchasing decision is logical, while 80 percent is emotional. While the GoFundMe campaigns are crowdfund-centric, they still evoke a buying decision as donors decide who to support and how much support they want to give. As a credit union, a great way for you to focus on feelings every time you work on collateral, the website, or anything else that is member-facing is to ask, “what kind of emotion will this evoke from our members?” If you can’t answer that question, you may want to rethink your messaging.
Conclusion
GoFundMe fosters an inspirational community atmosphere, and so do credit unions. Obviously you know the latter, but do your members? It doesn’t hurt to remind them! After all, the end goal is for them to get the warm, fuzzy feels every time they think of your products and services so they keep coming back for more!
