A recent survey by  Harris Interactive and Virilion unearthed some surprising results about donor preferences for receiving information.

A majority of donors, 51%, were, "not at all interested" following organizations that they care about through blogs, social networks, and RSS. In fact, only 6% of donors reported using social media to track organizations.

Presenting nonprofits with somewhat of a paradox is the fact that 52% of respondents think its important that nonprofits use social media to connect with supporters.

When asked what types of information they would prefer to receive through social media, "Donation/Information Requests" ranked last, preferred by only 22% of donors. The top three choices were News and Announcements, Success Stories, and Volunteer Opportunities.

The survey, taken during late December of 2007 and early January of 2008, included 2,275 adults who reported donating, volunteering, or advocating on behalf of a nonprofit in the 12 months prior to taking the survey.

Though these results are somewhat inconclusive, the survey highlights the importance of knowing what your donors want and keeping in touch with their preferences.

Click here to read the full results and details. 

Thanks to The Chronicle of Philanthropy for their article that brought our attention to the survey!

Convio recently released their second annual nonprofit online marketing benchmarks study. Don't let the lengthy sign-up form scare you, we're sure you'll find tons of worthwhile information in there, including benchmarks on:

•  Web site traffic
• Registration rate
• Email file size
• Online revenue: fundraising, eCommerce, growth, average gifts, and value of an email address
• Email appeals: open rates, click-through rates, response rates
• Email newsletters: open and click-through rates
• Legislative activity

How to Measure the Value of an Online Supporter

Over here at Care2 we get this question a lot. And we should. Any nonprofit seeking to recruit online supporters should rightly be concerned with the ultimate value derived from such supporters.  The following is an attempt to address this question, without any presumption that it will provide a definitive answer.  Check out the simple calculator below, and if you want more a detailed explanation, read the discussion at the bottom of this post or give us call. We value the expertise of our colleagues and welcome any feedback or comments.

Click to read more ...

It's no wonder that despite all the cool bells and whistles of newer technologies, email remains the most popular online marketing tool.  According to a just-released survey from Datran Media , email was voted the strongest performing media buy in December 2007. 

The survey showed that 80% of marketers believe that email is ahead of other tools such as search and display ads.  The New York-based email and digital marketing services provider surveyed more than 2,000 marketers and showed that 82% of respondents plan to increase their use of email marketing in the year ahead, echoing our earlier reports. 

The clear benefits of email was demonstrated by the 67% of respondents who said that email has contributed to a boost in their sales.  The survey also showed that 55% of those polled expect ROI from email to become higher than any other digital channel. 

For more details, check out the full survey. 

The always excellent Beth Kanter tipped us on this interesting post from the Compete.com blog  that demonstrates the overlap that exists between users of social networking sites.

How is this valuable?  Well,  theoretically, if you believe MySpace is a place for donors, your presence there also reaches 64% of Facebook users, 65% of Bebo, and 69% of Hi5.   As you can no doubt gather, you might not need to invest valuable time and resources into all four, because a lot of the audience is redundant.

So, which one social network should you consider for your next campaign?  Beth points us to a great post on Read/Write Web about some demographics information on the users of the different networks.

Choose wisely and, as always, make sure it's worth it.

It's November, crunch time for nonprofit fundraisers looking to cash in on some of the Yuletide cheer of the giving season.  Sure, you wanted to be ahead of the game, but you got tied up rockin' out on Monkey Island in Second Life.  Now, you need a surefire strategy to get you those key last minute donations.

If this is you, then "A Procrastinator's Guide to Year-End Fundraising" is a must-read on how to make up for the lost time.  Care2's very own Eric Rardin and Heather Holdridge, along with Mark Rovner and Sarah Haug of Sea Change Strategies, give you a crash course based on best available wisdom on how to design your web presence to maximize giving and broadly how to connect with new supportsers, and communicate year-round to foster the best possible relationships with donors.

 With as many as 98 percent of visitors to an organizaiton's donate page leaving before making a donation, the gang offers concerte action steps for increasing the percentage of visitors to your donate page who actually complete a gift.

Using their advice, you can make sure that the night before Christmas your potential donors' nerves aren't a-jangle, and they make that critical donation.

Click here to download the guide.

Post co-authored by James O'Malley and Justin Perkins.

With estimates up to 200 million members globally and 12% of all internet traffic, MySpace certainly earns the title of the "top dog" of social networks. Despite the more recent shift of attention to Facebook in the past 6 months by the nonprofit community, there are still remnants of a goldrush by nonprofits over the last year to build a presence on the uber-popular site. But was there ever any gold? And is there any left?  And what is the optimum combination of videos, pictures, text, friends, and other widgets? And is it even worth it?

Á la our Causes analysis awhile ago, we examined 150 nonprofit profiles on MySpace to see which functions people were using, how those features were working, and how much money their profiles were raising.

Whether you've stacked your profile with all the cool widgets, videos, and badges or you're still trying to figure out who "Tom" is, read on to learn what others are doing and how you can maximize your MySpace, or see if you even want to spend your time there.

Click to read more ...