1. Introduction to Live Streaming in the Nonprofit Sector

Technology has the potential to affect the nonprofit sector in fundamental ways by significantly lowering donor marketing costs, creating new types of marginal distribution costs that allow both small and large organizations to benefit, and providing the deep information that donors, volunteers, and recipients use to improve their decisions. However, potential donors, whether corporate or individual, now filter out much of this information through internet search engines and social media rather than seeking information from the nonprofit organizations under consideration. The introduction of an engaging form of social media-marketing tool, live streaming, may significantly improve the engagement of potential donors.

Digital solutions are rapidly transforming business models across sectors and industries. Digitalization offers significant benefits, and achieving strong donor engagement is particularly relevant for the welfare of nonprofit organizations. Nonprofit organizations continue to face financial challenges, including declining public confidence, diminishing volunteer engagement, and increased competition from profit-conscious organizations and corporations that engage in social activities to project a better image and enhance corporate branding. In light of these challenges, Singaporean nonprofit organizations are seeking new opportunities to attract and engage potential stakeholders and donors to carry out their social mission.

1.1. Definition and Significance of Live Streaming

A research report conducted in the United States found that the average open rates of nonprofit organizations’ emails changed from 14% to 15%, simply a 1% rise after six years. Given the prevailing pessimistic outlook on direct marketing techniques, the live streaming platform is gaining popularity, proving to be more interactive and immediate by providing a smoother user experience. ……

Millennials today are characterized by voluntary activity, innovation, and the pursuit of transparency. In many nonprofit organizations, fundraising often consumes substantial organizational resources. Activities such as donor recruitment, cultivation, and engagement are long-term, integral processes of fundraising. However, recent studies have highlighted the minimal effectiveness and inefficiencies of traditional donor engagement methods such as traditional mail, telephone calls, and emails. The response rate of traditional donor engagement methods instead remains constant.

1.2. Evolution of Live Streaming in Nonprofit Organizations

According to Debono in 2005, internet use has resulted in a transformation of some business models. Many models are resorted to after being found out that some previous models could not be continued since they had been stripped of their traditional role. Many nonprofit organizations have joined in the usage of the internet as an effective platform that helps them in communication and marketing activities. Due to the high risk of failing to execute the advertisement and marketing activities, NPOs have been forced to join internet marketing that would help them in popularizing the mission, vision, supporters, and donors. Doing live broadcasts on the internet through related sites has been possible. These sites help in fundraising by giving information on how to donate. The sites can be updated all the time. In the review of literature, it reveals that nonprofits worldwide have seen the number of gifts as well as the overall levels of gifts to the organizations increase when using this tool. Little research on the specifics of this model has been performed. Organizations have been left to test this innovative use of internet applications to determine the effectiveness. This study shows whether the unique relationship-building feature of live internet broadcasting encourages an increased connection and investment in the organizations’ message, supports the growth and prosperity of donation benefits from donor viewers.

There are many technological tools used by nonprofits (NPOs) in this 21st century to disseminate information and implement fundraising activities. The tools used have seen changes and are much better than the ones used in the past. Examples of such tools are print media, telephone, billboards, TV, radio, and many more. Recently, internet-based technologies have been adopted. These include websites and email. They help in marketing and communications with supporters, donors, or even the organization. Unlike traditional technologies, they are cheaper to use and their cost tends to decrease due to continuous change and the increased use of internet applications.

2. Benefits of Live Streaming for Donor Engagement

The purpose of the study is to gauge the effectiveness of live streaming as a marketing communications tool and its ability to drive fundraising, specifically within the context of Singaporean nonprofit organizations. We conducted a pilot experiment and collected responses from 188 participants with diversity in ethnicity and age. Our findings revealed that live streaming has a significant impact on donor engagement with storytelling elements that pull reluctant viewers to become engaged listeners. The significant factors associated with donation are sense of urgency, interactive features, and personal connection. The implications are discussed with the insights it offers for charities or NPOs seeking to leverage different benefits of live streaming for their cause.

Live streaming Singapore is a digital marketing strategy that has been adopted by businesses to create a sense of urgency, excitement, and interaction. It also benefits brands in making a connection with their audience as a human element provides a much-needed trust and connection. Several charities have jumped onto the live streaming bandwagon to generate awareness and funds. Using live stream service for nonprofit organizations (NPOs) is relatively cheaper and reduces the cost of production and at the same time offers a high degree of interaction that broadcast media is unable to provide. The paper examines if live streaming has a significant impact on an individual’s likelihood to donate and the factors associated with such behavior.

2.1. Increased Reach and Accessibility

Through live streaming, the nonprofit organization can showcase its work and the beneficiaries it has served. Photos of beneficiaries can be shown on the live stream. Videos of beneficiaries sending their regards can also be shown on the live stream. The live streaming enhances trust, credibility, and transparency because it shows real people and real actions. A participant of the live stream remarked: “It’s a good chance to get a sense of what the organization was about and seeing the people who are affected by the organization.” In interviews, participants said that after watching the live video and getting to know the PEC through it, they felt that PEC was closer to them and that they were honored to be able to participate in it. During the live stream, the chat window was open and live spoken comments were also invited. These features made the live stream more interactive and participative. The interactivity and live responses that are not available in traditional media encouraged a feeling of teamwork and helped build a sense of unity with the organization.

Live streaming can be used to reach and engage more donors at any time. It is not limited by geography or time. For potential donors living in remote areas or with limited mobility, live streaming can make events or information accessible and participatable for them. Audience retention rates are higher for live videos compared to prerecorded content, even though the viewing numbers for live video may be lower. In Singapore, there are around 2 million Facebook users at any time and the potential reach of people who can watch the live stream is substantial. Live streaming can be done on mobile phones or PC, so it is easy to reach current donors and potential donors from virtually anywhere at any time. Even when the live stream is over, the recorded live video can still attract viewers and increase donor engagement.

2.2. Enhanced Donor Interaction and Engagement

The main goal of creating engaging website content, like blogs and topic-specific interviews, is designed to simultaneously attract more website visitors and deepen their level of engagement by facilitating open and easy knowledge transfers between site visitors and site owners. Informational websites express unselfish attempts to aid their users or to generate emotion-related benefits. Online communities are particularly important ways for charities to provide advice or support and fulfill their basic objectives and take advantage of interest in a specific tax-advantaged director or powerful campaign. The online community could be a significant contributor to the public service mission and function of the charity through collective blog writing or community building.

Donor interaction and engagement refer to donors’ participation in online communities and promotion of dialogue and interaction on social media platforms. Social media platforms provide a space for large-scale engagement, mission, and brand preservation during and after events. When donors participate in these conversations, they feel more connected and better informed. Through engagement with current and potential donors, organizations strengthen relationships, can influence outcomes, and increase trust. Hence, stronger relationships are described to improve just about every aspect of donor behavior and will have a significant positive impact on donor retention rates.

3. Case Studies of Successful Live Streaming Campaigns in Singapore

Hope Vision Action (HVA) was formed by visually impaired taxi drivers affected by the pandemic for the visually challenged and elderly in the community who are affected by the pandemic. HVA appeared on the Jump for Hope Bayfront New Year’s Eve Live Stream Event by NVPC. Hosted by Guiguo Studio with a total viewer count of 85,000 and targeted at a niche audience of OLDS. Featuring 4 live-streamed acts from 4 nonprofit organizations, HVA was represented by Daniel Ng, George Lam, and their beneficiaries. They were contesting in the exciting segment of a virtual talent competition. They performed and solicited donations from viewers.

In 2020, the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre (NVPC) in Singapore embarked on a pilot program with 20 selected nonprofit organizations. These nonprofit organizations took part in the pilot program to test the impact of live streaming to drive up donor engagement and augment other philanthropic events organized by NVPC. The 20 selected nonprofit organizations were provided with grants from $10,000 to $30,000 and paired with veterans from the live streaming industry to hone their live streaming skills. We evaluated the experience of Crime Library Singapore (CLS) and HopeVision Action (HVA) and ventured into a post-campaign evaluation by extracting comments from social media, YouTube, and TikTok channels.

3.1. Organization A: Campaign Title and Impact

Manufacturing consent and controlling communications and narratives through public relations machinery will not necessarily deliver the real and the relative desired end results. Going through the political, economic, technological, and sovereignty aspects of the Sharma “What Is Indian Autonomous Internet,” this communication will argue how attempts to achieve Bharat Mata predominantly Hindu, when coupled with Article 370, could lead to an independent India, increases vulnerability, isolation, and risk to the security, authenticity, and integrity of the essential bellwether systems that support and enable digital services. While Bharat Mata predominantly Hindu could produce the delusional illusion of normalcy and serve to distract from real issues, it adds layers of complex presence with three strategic adversaries and international enmity.

According to The Hindu Centre, the National Democratic Alliance Government has developed five grand narratives to further a vision and partition the country’s consciousness, that is the pre-independence narrative of a Bharat Mata predominantly Hindu, which means India emerging as a strong economic and military power representing unfulfilled aspirations of the majority. Subsequently, the narratives that of Jammu and Kashmir representing the latent historical and emotional aspirations of the majority; Article 370 and the special status of Jammu and Kashmir being seen as impeding the course of normalcy and of the opposition parties being seen as a threat to the truncated and bipolar realisation of the predomnincent power aspirations, and of defanging spyware firm that targeted India which meant to highlight the digital security defence measures taken by the Union government while using Israeli spyware for individual political surveillance.

3.2. Organization B: Campaign Title and Impact

The whole live broadcast looked like a mystery escape game that was never broadcast, causing fans to express themselves under all kinds of intimate information generated by the effect of beer. The final activity let everyone play and then die the cards and completed. In terms of content broadcast, according to the official expression of the platform, the short-term coverage of the live broadcast was as high as “500,000 live broadcasts per second”, with a cumulative live broadcast of more than 3.6 million. The campaign duration was more than 54 hours, and the final fundraising amount across 61 campaigns was S $ 170,000~~~~$ 180,000. These two digitizations have successfully completed the target and are quite eye-catching in this field.

2016. Campaign Title and Impact. Organization B conducted a live streaming fundraiser for the Singapore national singlehood day on 11 November 2016. The campaign was a great success as it garnered exquisite media attention and appreciated a remarkable sum of money. The overall fundraising target was S$60,000, and donors could choose to support a romantic drama, a romantic comedy, or an introspective art film. If the fundraising goal is achieved, a feature-length film will be made with the chosen theme. Fabrique and M&C Saatchi managed the streaming event. From the perspective of the script and content strategy, the program planned the “host” to talk to each other when nothing happened, and the subsequent gameplay smashed the creative group of the creative group.

4. Challenges and Considerations in Implementing Live Streaming for Donor Engagement

Perhaps crystallize the creation of social value. Attracting sponsorship as a means of funding from live streaming doesn’t seem to be the most appropriate choice in the case of local NPO management, since they might have lesser resources with which to promote themselves and their campaigns in order to thoroughly satisfy businesses to sponsor their projects. Furthermore, local NPOs in Singapore should be mindful that finding the best business to partner for a potential live streaming project might be challenging. Since specific concepts and issues of public interest and mutual importance could be entirely lacking in business, the different points of view and expected coverage served by NPOs can legitimize the action. Even during the co-creation and delivery phases, the businesses will not perform satisfactorily. Nonetheless, little sponsorship action may adversely affect the execution and promotion of the live streaming project and limit its total impact on the real donor participation.

Limitations related to live streaming for NPOs within the Singaporean context were observed, in agreement with the multi-framework before it starts that managers should carefully study donor behavior trends using live streaming. There are several challenges to implementing live streaming for donor engagement in local NPOs though. Local NPOs have limited resources to afford and run live streaming projects. In particular, the resulting high cost might limit the consistency and persistence of some local NPOs in maintaining regular live streaming projects. This suggests that their frequency and duration might adversely affect the positive effect of live streaming towards any increase in donor engagement.

4.1. Technical Challenges

The existing resources such as the internet, camera, computer, or desktops are all donated by the local donors. Therefore, the solution to these challenges is to have better planning and discussion to decide what they need or the support they wanted. One participant said, “It is true that we do not have the technical equipment such as the camera, those are being lent to us by brothers in our organization. They gave us resources and support. Zianzichuang not only need to beg for money, but we need to think about the stuff we need and to beg for it.” The participant suggested the NPOs themselves should think about what they need, and to request it from stakeholders, such as individuals or foundations.

The lack of technical equipment to broadcast live streaming actively poses critical challenges to NPOs to actively undertake live streaming. A participant said, “I know turning on the live streaming is very popular now, but we are all using our personal Facebook to live stream. We are doing it without sound, there is no sound. There are no further tools available to us.” A participant shared the same opinion and elaborated, “there is lack of sound for live streaming due to insufficient technical equipment.”

4.2. Ensuring Data Privacy and Security

Nonetheless, it is important for NPOs to respect individual preferences. As one participant suggested, “The possibility and preferences to offer or view the websites with no commercial cookies or pop-ups is related to this influence.” NPOs should provide a high level of comfort for the donors, ensuring that the donors’ needs are respected, and data privacy is high. Cooperation with the NPO to strengthen the use of data can offer a basis on which to approach potential donors, especially if DNR will also draw on individual preferences. Data protection safeguards are being developed based on the mechanisms of data protection legislation, ensuring that the data is not cross-correlated, de-identified identifiers with the right to data portability, and the donor’s right to ask questions on the donated data. The report for this can be placed with the document, but a transponder can be coded in the live stream to ensure privacy time window limits for anonymous data sharing. If a timetable is available for the live broadcast, the data may not be identified due to the heterogeneity of the data and the context data, thereby enabling the recording to be deleted. The report, however, is enlightening and concerning in relation to the live broadcast.

As there is personal or sensitive information of both the donor and donee in the fundraising process, the question of data privacy is crucial for NPOs. Many participants in this study expressed the need to respect an individual’s digital footprint for reasons of credibility and data protection. One participant said that a good live stream event is to ensure that there is no data breach of identity data. Another participant commented that, “I’ve also heard directly from friends that they are concerned with the amount of data that social media has on their usage. These concerns can lead to hesitation from potential donors who do not want to share personal information with the organization.”

5. Conclusion and Future Trends

Moreover, this study contributes to the emerging body of knowledge concerning the rising trend of nonprofit organization (NPO) management. This study found that using live streaming as a communication tool is very beneficial and can be a game-changer for Singaporean NPOs. However, longevity, updates, and accuracy were found to be the main concerns encountered while managing live streaming. With the limited scalability expansion while keeping excellent quality, various strategies of executing beneficial donor engagement from the usage of live streaming were designed. Finally, future research directions and recommendations are deliberated in the conclusion part of the research.

This study aims to find out the impact of live streaming on Singaporean nonprofit organizations’ (NPOs) ability to attract and re-engage with donors. To respond to this research question, the present research adopted the context of three well-known Singaporean NPOs which utilized live streaming as a communication tool in their daily operations. In-depth discussions with various key employees were held to elicit any new or noteworthy insights which helped explain the Singaporean organizations’ three different coordination processes across its multinational headquarters. The study found that live streaming does not only increase the Singaporean donors’ engagement but also attracts new potential donors, as well as helps facilitate the bonding processes within their internal and external stakeholders.

5.1. Summary of Key Findings

In summary, the findings suggest that live streaming can engage donors by allowing them to be an active participant in the narrative and better understand social issues and the work that NPOs do. Trust, satisfaction, transparency, and connectedness are significant in building and maintaining relationships, as well as increasing the long-term value of donors. While there are resources and time required to embrace live streaming and donors for the audience, it can also increase the revenue from donations. Management needs to recognize these values and believe in the potential, influence, and adolescence in online activities. Findings from the qualitative research have presented us with reasons to invest in live streaming. Quantitative data regarding donation revenue would further confirm the positive impact that live streaming could have on NPOs. After all, it is one thing to believe, and another for results to materialize.

Currently, the use of social media and video streaming is prevalent in Singapore, with 75% of the population of 5.7 million using the internet daily. To reach out to people and grab their attention among the noise of the internet is challenging. Live streaming allows for real-time updates and interactions, therefore making social media posts that are likely to be viewed might be redundant in comparison. Nonprofit organizations that are looking toward the engagement of younger donors online to build connections and deepen relationships with their audience should consider live streaming as a platform.

Live streaming can attract and engage younger donors who appreciate better insight into their beneficiaries and seek real-time updates. However, the preparation surrounding live streaming, such as training and operations, requires an investment of time and resources. Staff members must see the value and impact that live streaming could bring beyond donations.

5.2. Emerging Technologies and Strategies in Live Streaming

Live streaming package of information of relatively common multi-association interests among non-members can be exchanged with members for member dues. As information revenues will increase and can be made into a perfect competitive market, giving cues are constrained or negate information revenue marketing account that from operating similar make-cues membership regular market goals. Associations which goal to maximize either economic profit or the quantity of services sold up regals their economic limits or restrict their numbers to tighten up the membership market value. The concept of supply arguments from membership financial goals help inform how and make live streaming can add value to think beyond the box, relative costs/savings in considering live streaming strategy.

The dramatic increases in technologies available and channels offered call for emerging strategies to increase earning and retention of members who are also considering and comparing various choices, costs, and utility of economic and civic activities. Organizations – trade, professional, labor, college, and others – have strategies marketing institutional goals. These are overall marketing strategies taking a strong organizational or societal interest objectives and trading parity points. Purely pecuniary profits not. Included giving cue in association is the makeup and turnover of membership. Live streaming – immediate feed of broadcasts over the internet – is becoming a growing field of new technology sources of member opportunity as well as for multi-association audiences.