Shikiala Fasan
Strategies to Help Raise Funds for the Youth in Your Community
For nonprofit organizations to receive donors they would need to reach their correct audience to expand. While its important for Organizations to have social media platforms in order to display their brand to others, it would be beneficial if their vanity metrics was based off the aligned goals and results. Often with the metrics not being accurate can get the organization overlooked as it doesn’t reach its target audience.
The Empowerment Factory is a nonprofit organization based here in Pawtucket Rhode Island that serves the surrounding neighborhood of Central Falls, Pawtucket and Providence. The organization is dedicated to empowering the youth in communities through environmental education, creativity, and social-emotional learnings. Like many nonprofits’ organizations, funding is crucial for sustaining funding to expand their impactful work within the communities. The Empowering factory uses and relies on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and X, formerly known as Twitter, to promote, engage with its targeted audience, promote goals and results, and attract volunteers and donors. In order to use these social media platforms to its advantage the organization must look past the vanity metrics as they are artificial numbers that overshadow the organization’s true performance. By focusing on meaningful data to help improve its performance and services it can help seek and gain funding success.
The first platform I chose to view is The Empowerment Factory’s Facebook page: (2) The Empowerment Factory | Facebook. With Facebook as their most active platform with 2.4k likes and 2.6k followers, post likes ranging from 1-6 and shares equaling 1-4 these numbers can create an illusion of popularity. These numbers don’t truly reflect active engagement or financial support. Out of 4 recent posts only one post got a reaction. These post display great representation of the organization however, the content shared may not be compelling or engaging enough to inspire interactions that can lead to volunteer signups and donations. With their recent post seeking donations they could’ve included more information and specifics as to what the donation would be used directly for. Pictures and a description of the use of donations should have been provided to ensure donations are being used properly for the organization.
My suggestion for strategies to improve metrics for their Facebook page would be for them to utilize video content by making reels. Videos are highly engaging and can be a more effective way of showcasing TEF’s motives and initiatives. Short clips displaying success testimonials, workshop tours, or behind the scenes clips that will get attention and engagement whether it’s liking, sharing, commenting, or looking to donate. On their Facebook page there is an inadequate number of comment engagement. TEF can encourage followers to participate in questionnaires, quizzes, and polls in relation to the services and mission of the organization. With the audience engaging in comments, it helps circle relative information about The Empowerment factory staying relevant on follower’s page. Tracking conversations would be beneficial for the organization if they focused on enhancing their efforts by including advanced, channel and behavioral metrics to gain a deeper insight. By tracking the percentage of users who donate after clicking the link on Facebook is one way to enhance advance metrics. This will direct ties from social media to finding sustainable funding. Calculating the total number of interactions such as comments, likes, and shares divided by the total number of each post to reflect the effectiveness of content (channel metric). Tracking behavioral metrics like monitoring the number of people who reply to event invites while it indicates the interest and probable attendance.
The second platform I chose to analyze The Empowerment Factory’s (TEF) page is Instagram https://www.instagram.com/theempowermentfactory?igsh=ZWZteXRtdXlkYzdm . On Instagram TEF has 918 posts, 1.5k followers, and following 1.2 people. These numbers are very similar to the vanity metrics on their Facebook page. On the two most recent posts only 3-5 people interacted with the post by hearting it. With their post being the same from Facebook and the lack displaying any creativity or showcasing of the services provided is maybe why they’re not reaching their targeted audience. My suggestion to improve their Instagram is for them to optimize their posting schedule. By TEF analyzing their audience on each platform and scheduling post accordingly, it can maximize interaction and visibility. To also improve their metrics to gain sustainable funding is for TEF to collaborate with local content creators and influencers. By partnering with a local influencer or advocates who fall in line with TEF’s values and mission to help expand and reach the targeted audience and funding sources. With these influencers, staff and children can participate in creating reels and shorts to trends that align with TEF overall ambitions and goals. In a 2025 survey conducted by http://spoutsocial.com there is an estimate of 5.42 billion social media users with one average person using 6-7 different social networking sites per month. With these statistics TEF can use this data to organize their posting schedule along with creating trends and conversation tracking this can help increase engagement and donations.
On Instagram I recommend TEF monitoring their advanced metrics. Measuring the percentage of profile visitors who visit links in their bio or post as this reflects interests from people wanting to learn more or desires to become a donor. Evaluating interactions from Instagram stories and video clips referencing replies or comments by analyzing their channel metrics. I also recommend tracking how often users save post as this displays behavioral metrics. Tracking this interaction can reflect the intent to revisit the content later. While vanity metrics likes, posts, comments, and followers can portray a view of The Empowerment Factory’s presence on social media it doesn’t display the organization’s goals and results. If The empowerment Factory could better engage in content by creating polls, questionnaires, videos, collaborations can help gain audience interactions it will help better display efficient vanity metrics. This will help expand their audience and potentially attract donors to their organization that helps the youth in the community.