Nonprofit Bridge

Below are excerpts at my planned presentation at next week’s NY Fundraising Summit, where I will be speaking in the session Online Fundraising: Harnessing Technology to Build and Maintain Relationships:

When developing online strategies for your nonprofit, be careful if you hear any of these ‘assurances’ from your colleagues:

• Everything is being done over the Internet, we don’t need much Information Technology staff. – Whatever vendors or products you decide to choose, you still need someone to not only select the best product for your organization’s needs, and then once it’s implemented, manage the relationship with the vendor.  Expecting any online product to just ‘work’ without some ongoing tweaking is a recipe for disaster.
• We can get a better deal if we hire web designers from overseas – While it’s a good idea to hire the best web person you can find wherever they are, be careful about basing a decision strictly on economics.  Working on a web site overhaul involves much give and take during the design and implementation process, and email isn’t always sufficient to insure that the deliverables match the goals.
• We don’t need to do a formal evaluation – I’ve worked with this person / vendor before. – What works for one nonprofit may not work for another.  In addition, making a decision based on a personal contact may backfire if that person suddenly leaves for a new opportunity.
• Vendor says we can connect our online and offline systems and they will help us to do it. – As I’ve discussed in my recent post, Reporting Across Multiple Systems, integration can be a mine field.  Beware of any vendor that says this is easy.  Ask to speak with other clients who have already connected their systems successfully – and are using the same products your organization is.
• Vendor suggests we should do things differently – Before speaking to any vendor, make sure you’ve outlined your requirements.  If you’ve done this, and the vendor questions your specifications and recommends a different approach, ask why.  Unless they can give you a satisfactory explanation – and provide alternatives that have worked well for other clients, find a different company to work with.

I will post my presentation after next week’s summit, which will take place Wed, June 3 and Thu, June 4 in New York City.  Hope to see some of you there.

If you haven’t yet seen it, take a look at the latest eNonprofit Benchmarks Study released last week where you can also listen to the recording or view slides from the May 14 event.  The report covers major ephilanthropy topics: email messaging, online fundraising, and online advocacy.  Major takeaways:

• email open and click through rates continue to decline, although less than in previous years;  but a message that is ‘opened’ may not be actually read by the constituent
• the number of online gifts and total dollars raised online continue to increase;  the increase in number of gifts helped to offset a decline in average gift from $86 to $71
• email lists continue to grow, but at a slower rates than in past studies;  almost 20% of email addresses go bad every year due to bounces or unsubscribes
• email results vary dramatically by audience sent to;  are you still making the mistake of sending everything to everyone?
• gifts of under $250 represent 97% of all gifts, yet donations of $250 or more make up 41% of revenue – don’t forget to recruit and acknowledge your major donors
• while social media gets most of the buzz lately, email clearly is still king, at least for now.

Thanks to Nten and M&R Strategic Services for updating this very useful report.  Network for Good, which continually offers wonderful guidance in online fundraising and marketing, offers Creating an Online Fundraising and Marketing Strategy to Thrive in Tough Times next Tuesday, May 26 at 1 PM EST.  Also see my previous post, Online Fundraising Strategies for Tough Times, where you can also listen to a recording of the event I moderated at the Foundation Center in NYC. earlier this year.

This week I’ve participated in the International Fundraising eConference which has demonstrated a completely new way to learn more about ephilanthropy strategies.  There is no physical location;  all sessions are online and are recorded so that if you can’t attend in person, you can watch/listen whenever it is convenient.  There are attendees from all over the world.  Online discussion boards have been created to continue a dialog beyond the sessions, which have been offered at multiple days/times this week.  While I miss the opportunity to personally meet many of my peers, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to participate at my convenience.

This morning I attended an excellent workshop on Community Fundraising led by Bryan Miller of Cancer Research UK.  He offered many examples of how we can help our supporters to help our nonprofits by engaging in their own fundraising initiatives.   In response to my question on how traditional nonprofits can maintain some level of ‘control,’  he suggested that we provide quality content to describe what our organizations are doing, which constituents can then use to ask for support.  Bryan also suggested that we seek out who’s already committed to our causes (e.g. look for your organization’s name on Facebook to find out how many pages have already been setup) and help them to use social media tools to spread the word and raise money.

Bryan also introduced the concept of crowdfunding, offering many examples of innovative event and cause specific fundraising at sites such as Kiva, Global Giving and a soon to be launched See the Difference.   Anyone can do fundraising now;  you don’t need your own web site, you don’t need strong technical skills.  In today’s difficult economic times, you can help someone save their home using Small Can Be Big. He also suggested a new focus in fundraising:

• from contact lists to communities
• from campaigns to developing strong content
• from campaign managers to community managers

Even a large retailer like Target, which has always been a large supporter of nonprofit causes, uses Facebook to help it choose which organizations to support.

The eConference continues through today but registrants will have access to the sessions and discussion boards for the next six months.

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, online giving continued to increase in 2008, but at a slower percentage than in 2007.   M&R Strategic Services reports that while the average online gift has decreased, the number of online donors has gone up, more than making up the difference for most organizations.  And while online donations are still a small piece of total giving for most nonprofits, some such as the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society have raising a significant portion over the Internet.  Some techniques that are most effective:

• Including deadlines in e-mail appeals
• Seeking small sums
• Combining text messages and e-mail appeals
• Asking corporate sponsors or like-minded charities to send ‘chaperoned’ e-mail messages on an organization’s behalf
• Using multiple channels, e.g. social networks, video, e-mail, and text messages

Many nonprofits (including mine) raise significant revenues through athletic events, such as walks and endurance type events.  But the Chronicle reports this too is also getting harder, encouraging us to provide lower-cost ways to participate, adding new types of events, encouraging more constituents to actively fundraise, and aggressively seeking more participants.  This article encourages us to stay positive and seek creative approaches to stay afloat.  Helping supporters to raise funds through third party events is sometimes overlooked as a further stimulus to overall fundraising.

More online fundraising tips are available from Alica McKee of Sea Change Strategies at Nonprofit Marketing Guide and the Nonprofit Blog Carnival.