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Friday
03Jul

The Web’s Influence on Affluence

DateFriday, July 3, 2009 at 09:46AM | by AuthorDavid M. Lawson abd Lori Hood Lawson

Despite all of the delayed campaigns, lower donations, budget-cuts, and general angst caused by the economy, major gift fundraising is still happening. Of course it is only happening for organizations that are staying engaged in the major gift process. The old maxim “if you don’t ask, you don’t get” is more true than ever as donors stop their impulse giving and move towards a more thoughtful approach that focuses their diminished capacity where they can receive the maximum return on their philanthropic investment.

In this difficult giving environment the web is positioned to play a more significant role in raising gifts in the mid to high range of your program. Studies like “The Wired Wealthy” helped to prove that larger donations can be effectively raised online and universities who have always led the way with major gift fundraising are now asking, and receiving, high-five and low six figure online gifts. It is understandable that the preferred measurement of success is money because it is tangible and undeniably important. Yet to fully understand the web’s full impact on major gift fundraising you must look at its intangible effects. First among these is the influence your web story has on a major gift donor’s decision to support you or not.

In the chart, “Usefulness of Charity Web Sites in Deciding to Give,” The Wired Wealthy study, produced by Convio, Sea Change Strategies, and Edge Research, segmented the wired wealthy into three clusters:

1. Relationship Seekers, those most likely to respond to opportunities to connect emotionally with your organization online;

2. All Business, those donors who visit charity web sites to donate, period; and Casual Connectors, those who occupy the middle ground between

3. All Business and Relationship Seekers. The chart below reflects those respondents who stated that a charity’s web site is very useful in making their giving decisions.

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Monday
29Jun

Top 8 Social Media Tracking Tools

DateMonday, June 29, 2009 at 10:07PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Social media! I seriously think it’s "the" buzz word of 2009. According to Omniture, over 200 million searches are conducted every single day and 78% of people trust recommendations by peers. But how should nonprofits track their social media? What tools should they use?

Understand What You Want to Track.

  • Do you want to track how many people are clicking and sharing your links or updates?
  • Do you want to track how many people are signing your petitions after visiting your site?
  • Are you interested in trends relating to specific topics your nonprofit works on such as health care reform or human rights?

Each objective requires different tools to track your nonprofits social media progress and return on investment. However, it’s important to note that none of them are 100% at measuring results. Lets dig in to my top eight social media tracking tools.

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Sunday
28Jun

Fundraising Dips In First Quarter Of 2009

DateSunday, June 28, 2009 at 07:44PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

The struggling economy hit nonprofits hard in the first quarter of 2009. According to the latest Target Analytics Index of National Fundraising Performance, the number of new donors dropped by almost 13%, as compared to 2008. The study analyzed 79 nonprofit organizations and their fundraising campaigns via direct mail, online fundraising, telemarketing, and canvassing.

The study also showed that for the first time since Target Analytics released its initial study in 2002, overall revenue per donor declined by 2.1%. Prior to this study, the Index of the National Fundraising Performance had only been showing a gradual decline in donor numbers since the US Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005. However, things rapidly changed from Q4 2008 to Q1 in 2009. The decline in donors accelerated even faster due to the recession and a 13% decrease in new donors.

While these numbers may seem alarming, it’s common to see a decrease in donations and donors in Q1 since it’s the slowest fundraising period in a calendar year. In addition, nonprofits are competing for donors attention in a dismal economy, which many fundraisers have not had to face before. Furthermore, this is the first time in 8 years that we have a Democrat in the White House who is very supportive of major issues such as health care reform, ending the war in Iraq, etc so fundraising asks are not as “fight the right” focused as they were during the Bush administration. By the way, if you have not checked out Frogloop's recent article on converting new activists into donors, now would be a good time to do so since it’s packed with great tips and resources.

Other key metrics from the study include:

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Thursday
25Jun

Strategies For Optimizing Your Nonprofit's Website

DateThursday, June 25, 2009 at 11:19AM | by AuthorMatt Howes

Testing email subject lines and content is pretty easy with many email marketing tools, but there was never an easy way to do the same thing with webpages...until Google Optimizer.

I first heard about Google Optimizer from an Obama Campaign veteran and have become a big fan. To use it, you create a webpage and variations of that page that you'd like to test (for example, you might want to test if people respond better to a picture of a polar bear or a happy child on your donation page). You then set up an "experiment" on Google Optimizer where you tell it what the test pages are and what the conversion page is (the "thank you" page if you're testing your donation process).

The amount of time to get results will depend on the traffic to the page, but Optimizer will soon generate a report about which variation performed better, and you can easily shift your traffic to the winner. Here's a sample report:

Google Optimizer also allows for "multivariate testing". From Google: "Multivariate tests, on the other hand, allow you to test multiple variables -- in this case, sections of a page -- simultaneously. For example, you could identify the headline, image, and promo text as parts of your page you'd like to improve, and try out three different versions of each one. Website Optimizer would then show users different combinations of those versions (let's say, Headline #2, Image #3, and Promo Text #1) to see what users respond to best. Multivariate tests are more complicated, and typically require higher page traffic."

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Wednesday
24Jun

How Unused Gift Cards Can Support Nonprofits

DateWednesday, June 24, 2009 at 12:14AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Do you have a pile of gift cards stuffed in an old draw? Chances are they will probably lie around for a while and the next thing you know, they expired. It’s hard to believe, but approximately $40 billion in unused gift cards is sitting in US kitchen and sock drawers, an average of $400 per household. What a huge waste of money.

Plastic Jungle, a company that sells, buys, exchanges, and donates gift cards agrees and recently started to raise money for nonprofits by encouraging people to donate their unused gift cards to DonorsChoose.org and other nonprofits. Here’s how it works.

Web visitors can list gift cards for sale on Plastic Jungle, or cash in cards with a minimum balance of $25 directly for up to 85% of the card balance. Users exchange their unwanted or partially used gift cards and donate the cards with a minimum balance of $10 to benefit a list of nonprofits or DonorsChoose.org, a really cool organization that connects people to public school classrooms in need. As a donor, you choose which project you would like your donation to support.

Plastic Jungle is also starting to expand their nonprofit outreach efforts to raise money for additional organizations. Sound interesting? Contact them for more info.

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Monday
22Jun

YouTube Launches Video Volunteers

DateMonday, June 22, 2009 at 11:57AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Today, YouTube luanched a cool new program called YouTube Video Volunteers in partnership with allforgood.org, to help connect nonprofit organizations with skilled video makers who can help them broadcast their causes through video, reaching new audiences online and driving action around issues and projects that matter to them.

"We're hoping that this will help nonprofits with one of their constant struggles (content creation) as well as engage a new group of supporters in a meaningful way. I think of it is a step towards Service 2.0, said Ramya Raghavan of YouTube.

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Wednesday
17Jun

VolunteerMatch.org Opens Public Access to its Network

DateWednesday, June 17, 2009 at 10:34PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

VounteerMatch, the web’s largest and most popular volunteer network that helps people find local volunteer opportunities with over 65,000 nonprofits is opening up its network to outside developers under a Creative Commons license to expand the non-commercial use of its free service.

"This is a big step for us," said Greg Baldwin, president of VolunteerMatch. "But we are excited about the opportunity to adopt new technologies and we know it is the right thing to do."

Opening its database to outside developers will better position the organization to take advantage of emerging trends on the Web making volunteer opportunities more accessible to a new generation of web services including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, said Baldwin.

In addition to announcing the new license, VolunteerMatch is also moving to adopt the use of open XML standards to promote accessibility and improve data quality.

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