It is important to give your potential donors an extra incentive to give to your cause. Setting up an online store and selling your merchandise is a great way to start and you’ll soon have people wearing around your brand – further promoting your cause.

In 2008 ecommerce sales reached $133.6 Billion according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. How can your nonprofit organization tap into this huge market? Your organization has 2 options when it comes to fundraising through ecommerce.

Integrate a custom online store into your website

For around $500 – $1000 you can get an online store integrated into your website if you find a developer who knows what they are doing. The next step is to start creating your products. I recommend using http://www.zazzle.com/. Here you can brand anything from mugs and t-shirts to your own skateboard. Pretty cool! Order your inventory, take some photos and put them on your new website and start selling! Oh – don’t forget to sign up for a payment processor so you can accept credit cards. PayPal has become the standard for online payments processing and gives good deals to nonprofit organizations.

Use a third party service to manufacture and ship your personalized items

Setting up an online store, creating your own inventory, and then praying that it sells can be an expensive risk if you are new to ecommerce. CafePress is a lower risk option if you want to sell items online to raise money. How it works: Each product has a Base Price that includes fees associated with selling. You simply set your retail price above the Base Price. When you sell an item from your shop, CafePress keeps the base price and sends you the markup.

There you have it – 2 straight forward ways to start fundraising online.

Twitter is a social networking tool that allows users to share short (140 characters or less) text blurbs about what they are currently up to. Sending a message or a “tweet” is sort of like sending a text messag, except it can reach an unlimited audience and is not directed at a specific individual.

Companies have successfully been able to tap into the explosion of twitter. In 2008 Dell made $3M off of promotions made available only to people following them on twitter. 2009 sales projections are very promising due to the incredible growth rate Twitter has seen (In 2008 Twitter saw a 752% increase in new users).

Nonprofits can learn from the successes in the commercial sector by harnessing the power of twitter. In fundraising with nonprofits, building relationships is key. Twitter should not only be used as a way of getting the word out about events, blog postings and news; but should be a way of connecting with your supporters. How do you do this? Follow your followers! Read and listen to what issues are impacting their lives and use that information to create more insightful and targeted advertising campaigns.

A lot of organizations say “why bother?” or “it seems like a waste of time”. My advice is to give it a try – you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain. At first the concept of Twitter will confuse you. “Who cares what I’m up to”…well the answer to that question is that almost 5 million users per month do.

Start by posting three current events going on in your organization per week to get you comfortable with the system. Also ensure your blog is set up to auto-post articles to your twitter account. Next, make it a habit to research current events in the news pertaining to your cause. Post the article on your page to promote discussion and “re-tweets”.

Each year the American Society of Military Comptrollers (ASMC) has thousands of its members compete for a small number of very prestigious awards. The paperwork would pile up and after an arduous process a winner would be selected. Earlier this year, the ASMC had decided enough was enough and sought a vendor to deliver a customized awards management solution.

vOfficeware, Inc was selected to develop this web application. The requirements were stringent: the system must support an unlimited number of fields and must be customizable by non-technical staff. The thought was perplexing, the ASMC was requesting technology that would allow a user to create a custom database of award nominations without knowing anything about database technology. vOfficeware’s engineers worked around the clock to deliver a solution that masqueraded all aspects that the end user was in fact building their own database. With an intuitive interface, ASMC personnel can create their own nomination forms as they used to do in Microsoft Word — but now have them become full fledged databases to track nominations all the way up to award selection.

The ASMC will present this awards system during its annual conference at the end of May and soon after nominees, judges and ASMC back-office personnel will access the single system to nominate, vote and honor its nominees.

As the 5th most trafficked site, it is hard to ignore the importance of Facebook in your web marketing plan.  Nonprofit organizations can set up a “Page” that interested members can join to learn more about your cause and help spread your message.

Are Facebook Pages for everyone?

No.  Your organization should be prepared before launching into a Facebook advertising campaign.  Do you currently update your main website on a regular basis?  Do you have someone who will be dedicated to posting updates to your Facebook page regularly?  Do you have a plan on which demographic you plan on targeting within Facebook?

If the answer to any or all of these questions is “No”, you should reconsider creating a Facebook presence until these issues are resolved.  Having a facebook page that is not updated on a regular basis is worse than not having a page all together.

My organization is ready for Facebook.

Great!  Your nonprofit is on it’s way to connect with new audiences, provide viral marketing of events, initiatives, volunteer opportunities, news and even raise money.

What are Facebook “Causes”?

Facebook Causes enables anyone to promote their cause for free and raise money through existing social connections, which means that a cause’s success is based upon the ideas and hard work of those involved, rather than their ability to hire expensive consulting firms. There is no up-front cost for nonprofits to use the system; a small processing fee is only deducted when money is actually donated.

For more information about Causes, see Facebook’s official Cause Page.