How do Followers work on DonorSee?

This brief guide covers what a Follower is, their importance, and some practical tips on how to gain them.

February 23, 2023

Followers are an essential part of success on DonorSee.

This brief guide covers what a Follower is, their importance, and some practical tips on how to gain them.

Followers are a great way to generate trust and social proof

Followers are a great way to generate trust and social proof. Consider that you are trying to get new donors to trust you and give you money. It shows how large your support base is and can help create a sense of a ‘community’ among donors. It’s always free for someone to Follow your DonorSee page and we prompt donors to Follow you after they donate.

Followers are smartly notified when you post projects

Followers are notified when you post new projects. If you have more than 50 Followers, DonorSee’s smart engagement tools and algorithm kicks in. Emails to Followers are ‘batched’ so they don’t receive a notification of a new project getting posted if it’s already been funded. Followers are also smartly notified - if they just gave, they won’t be notified until all other Followers have been notified.

The goal is to help you build an audience that you ‘own’. On other social media platforms, your reach and exposure with your ‘Friends’ or ‘Followers’ is limited.

Facebook's newsfeed algorithm restricts the average visibility of non-promoted content to 5.2 percent, meaning only one in 19 people who like a Page would see a particular post. The same report shows that Instagram interactions hover around the 0.96 percent mark (one in every 100 followers) while another research shared that Twitter’s is even lower at 0.045 percent. (Source, accessed Feb, 2023)

On DonorSee, 100% of your Followers are notified unless they just gave to another one of your projects.

Perk of Premium: 0% fees when a Follower donates

If you are a Premium DonorSee Partner, we take 0% in fees from any donor that Follows you. Those donors can come from your network OR be new donors you met through DonorSee’s marketing efforts.

As you build relationships with new donors through the power of your projects and storytelling, new DonorSee donors should choose to Follow your page for updates. As a natural reward for this, we reduce the percentage to 0%.

If you are a Premium DonorSee Partner, all donors from your preexisting network automatically have 0% taken for DonorSee overheads. It’s like they are a Follower - but they aren’t notified. So, it’s still helpful to ask donors in your community to Follow your page.

Gain Followers by asking!

Asking your existing network to Follow your page on DonorSee is the simplest way to increase your Follower-count. It gives a loyal donor a free way to support your project - and might help excite them about your projects!

You can generate a custom Follow link by adding “/?follow” after your DonorSee profile URL. It would look like this: donorsee.com/YOUR-PROFILE/?follow

Emilie used the below post on her Facebook to generate over 100 new followers:

You can inform your existing supporters that when they Follow your page on DonorSee, it ensures DonorSee takes 0% of their donations. But, I suggest you primarily focus on the relational bond you are trying to build. Talking too much about fees generally backfires. As Emilie demonstrated, a personal update was super effective. 

You are also welcome to encourage donors to Follow your page in your project update videos and comments on DonorSee. I suggest reminding donors periodically that they can follow you to stay up to date on your projects. As relationships take time to grow, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask more than once. 

I hope this helps you understand more about Followers!

If you want to learn more tips about social media to gain Followers, I suggest you check out this guide: Everything You Need to Know About Social Sharing.