Tag Archives: Blackbaud

State of Online Fundraising

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Today’s Nten webinar led by Blackbaud Internet evangelist Steve MacLaughlin offered a comprehensive review of online fundraising.  See Steve’s Connections blog for links to reports referenced in today’s session.  Some of my takeaways:

  • While online revenue represented only 5% of total fundraising in 2008, online receipts jumped 44% over 2007
  • Event fundraising emails (e.g. friends asking friends)  have an incredibly high click through rate – 57% in period covered by study
  • Only 16% of event fundraisers send emails – imagine how much more successful these events could be if more participants were encouraged to fundraise!
  • Donor retention is much worse for online donors than for offline acquisition.  More analysis is under way, but this may be partially due to donors having the ability to make ‘spur of the moment’ contributions without having a real commitment to the organization
  • How to increase donor retention? It is critical to quickly respond to donors / event participants / those who take an action to solidify the relationship.  (How often have you not received an email confirmation, or have received a boilerplate document with no customization?)
  • Senior management must drive integration of fundraising across channels – “We don’t live in a single channel world.”
  • Facebook and other social networking platforms are still more useful as engagement tools than as primary fundraising techniques.
  • Small organizations may be able to do as well or better than larger nonprofits since they don’t have the traditional infrastructure and can act more quickly

While most of these points weren’t a surprise, Steve’s summary provides a great overview for nonprofits that still need help in creating online fundraising strategies.

Addendum 11/5/09 – Hear me interviewed on Zonta Women’s Community Radio about how nonprofits should approach ephilanthropy and social media.  Thanks Roxanne Neilson, President, Zonta Club of New Rochelle for arranging.

Tips from an ePhilanthropy Pioneer

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eTapestry introduced their ‘software as a service’ product in 1999, long before many others realized the benefits of a web based interface.  (eTapestry was acquired by Blackbaud in August 2007.)  This week I had the opportunity to attend a session given by CEO Jay Love who offered some interesting insights.

Social media is on everyone’s radar lately;  Jay described the value of monitoring comments about your company / brand and described a recent experience where eTapestry was able to respond quickly to a negative tweet by a customer.  Read about the happy ending.

It’s often frustrating when our donors stop giving, but sometimes the problem is hidden when the number of new donors more than make up the difference.  If we can find ways to re-engage lapsed donors, what a difference this can make in our list growth!  Here’s some recent Guidestar tips on how to reduce donor attrition rates.

Two important questions to ask:

  1. How do you welcome new subscribers?  (Common Knowledge has also done considerable work on developing a welcome series of communications.)
  2. How do you manage relationship after opt-in?

Jay described the importance of having a donor database what everyone uses to document constituent interactions, also detailing a personal experience where he is considering discontinuing support for a charity which ‘asked the same questions’ that he had already answered in a past meeting.  In my experience, organizations that have a fully functional CRM often have difficulty getting staff to use it.   In response to my question,  Jay recommended that nonprofits demonstrate that those who are the biggest ‘note takers’ are the most successful in fundraising – and publicize this information to all staff.

Another point which may seem obvious but isn’t always applied – make sure you direct constituents to specific landing pages so you can track where they came from, not to your general home page.

For more ideas, visit Jay’s blog as well as Blackbaud’s NetWits ThinkTank blog.   To learn more about social media, visit the Gear Up for Giving training offered by the Case Foundation.

Why It’s Not the Technology

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In preparing for its upcoming  Online Nonprofit Technology Conference, Nten has asked What’s Holding Your Technology Back? I’ve posted a lengthy response, but make sure to read through everyone’s comments to this interesting question.

If you missed last week’s Blackbaud NetWits Summer Camp, all sessions and slides are now available for review.  I’ve known Steve MacLaughlin for years and his insights are very helpful.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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Usability testing is a great way to find out how well your web site is really meeting the needs of your audience.  Take a look at Userfly and how Beaconfire is helping Nten to redesign its web site.

Often projects fail because of a breakdown in communication.  No Surprises: The Key to Good Communication offers suggestions on how to keep all stakeholders on the same page.

Need a general list of online services?  Try 100 Online Tools for Non-Profits.

Beth’s Blog consistently offers wonderful material, even when she’s not the author – 4 Keys to Building a Successful Nonprofit Web Site.

Blackbaud is offering a good review of online strategies in a webinar series later this month.  Registration and details.

Some great Nten offerings coming up in September, offering an online version of events usually held live:

Personally, my wife and I are finally moving into our new home Monday, Aug. 17 after living in temporary quarters for the last month.  We’re looking forward to entering the next stage of our lives together.

Reporting Across Multiple Systems

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Currently I spend a few days each week generating reports for transmission of information between my organization’s online and offline systems.  Matt McCabe of Orange Leap hosted a NTen webinar this week, Meaningful Reporting: A Holistic Approach to Reporting Across Multiple Systems which highlighted this issue.  While there are no easy solutions, there are some options to consider:

  1. Select vendors and products which connect well with other systems.  Salesforce is an example of a company which has many ways to link its CRM to other software.
  2. Before implementing a new product, figure out how you will synchronize its data with your existing systems.  If you need to spend considerable time running reports and exporting / importing data, you’ll have little time to focus on developing the synchronization.
  3. Consider how much information you really need to have in multiple systems.  Some products will allow you to transfer basic contact information, but may not  be able to handle synchronization of event data or custom fields.
  4. Unless you have a lot of money to spend, it won’t be possible to have a ‘real time’ synch;  decide how often it is practical to have your systems connect with each other.
  5. Make the synchronization run automated, preferably during off hours.  The more manual work you need to do, the more chance there is for error.  (But make sure you look at the error log to determine what didn’t work.)
  6. Confirm that you’re including all activity.  Donations and event registrations may not be available in the same report;  you may need to find a ‘transaction report’ that includes all activity (then confirm this by sampling different types of transactions)
  7. Stick to a schedule – and let your staff know when synchronization is taking place.  (My most common question from staff is why a particular transaction doesn’t appear in another system, and when they can expect it to show.)
  8. If you encourage constituents to fundraise for your organization using a tool like Convio’sTeamRaiser or Blackbaud / Kintera’s Thon, you’ll need to find a way for offline donations to appear quickly on constituents’ personal web sites when developing your synchronization schedule.

In his presentation, Matt described the steps of data extraction, consolidation, reconciliation between systems and presentation, suggesting that you compute the staff hours spent in completing these tasks – and making management aware of the actual price in making integrated information available.  His overall recommendations included:

  • develop standards, e.g. how does your organization define ‘online giving’?  Become familar with APIs (application program interface) and Active Messaging Protocols (XMLs)
  • seek platform independent tools, e.g. using OLAP data storage and a data warehouse
  • empower end users to generate their own reports

The benefit: more time to devote to mission, faster more informed decisions and higher morale, and an increase in staff morale, as they’re freed from tedious reporting tasks.

How are you dealing with this issue?

New Findings About Online Giving

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The recently released donorCentrics™ Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis offers many interesting insights about online giving.   Steve MacLaughlin’s blog offers  a good summary of its major findings.  My comments are below:

  • online giving continued to grow rapidly in 2007 & 2008, even though there were fewer natural disasters which stimulated past years’ contributions – many of us take this for granted, but online giving is still relatively small compared to direct mail giving.
  • online donors give larger gifts than ‘traditional’ donors but have slightly lower retention rates – why are we losing donors’ loyalty?  Is it too easy to opt out of email communications?
  • while online giving is an important source for new donor acquisition, online donors may not be cultivated to their full potential after acquisition – this is an important point;  using a ‘welcome series’ of communications works much better than simply adding someone to an email newsletter list.
  • online donors often migrate to other channels, especially direct mail – I’ve long advocated the value of multichannel marketing, but it’s still interesting to find out that many will start online than give offline.  When I asked long term fundraising expert Michael Johnston recently to predict how much longer direct mail would survive, he confirmed that it would be quite a while yet.
  • direct mail donors rarely give online – so while online donors will go offline, offline donors usually won’t contribute online?  This was a surprise for me.

Twenty-four nonprofit organizations participated in this study, released by Target Analytics.  Interestingly, the headline of a NY Times article summarizing the study read Study Shows First-Time Online Donors Often Do Not Return. Clearly, we’re still figuring out what works but CARE’s Tobias Smith offered an interesting perspective, suggesting that we be “less worried about what channels donors use and offer them a variety of channels through which they can give.”  So if anyone tells you to focus only your efforts online when seeking new constituents, remind them that it’s too early to phase out traditional methods, such as direct mail.  Personally, I rarely pay much attention to direct mail, but many of our supporters still do.

Integrated Fundraising – No Longer Optional

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Probably the best book explaining the benefits of ephilanthropy I’ve seen to date is Ted Hart’s People to People Fundraising.  Multiple experts from nonprofit organizations and vendors / consultants who service nonprofits offer detailed strategies on why nonprofits must begin to embrace integrated fundraising techniques.  Some memorable takeaways:

  • Traditionally an organization’s web site has been under the control of either IT or marketing.  Whereas their goals and objectives may be well intended, it is fair to say that their core focus is not development  oriented. Development is often shut out from many of the Web conversations…Nonprofit organizations need to take a much more holistic focus of who controls and contributes to the overall online presence;  marketing, IT and development are just three of the contributors.
  • Many organizations hae been quick to jump on the online bandwagon without creating an effective strategic plan.  For example, it’s easy to ask people to visit your web site or leave an email address.  But without an effective plan for how you wil use email addresses and how your online activities will integrate with your offline activities, you may be creating more problems than solutions.
  • To develop integrated campaigns, an organization may not need to restructure, but it will have to to rethink how the departments within the organization interact with each other.

Some of the book’s contributors, many which I’ve heard speak at conferences and other industry events, include Blackbaud’s Steven MacLaughlin, Convio’s Sheeraz Haji, Network for Good’s Katya Andresen as well as Ted Hart, who has long been an expert on this topic since founding the ePhilanthropy Foundation.  Many case studies from nonprofits that have successfully utilized integrated fundraising strategies are profiled, as well as many ways to take advantage of social networking sites.

If you still think that collaborative campaigns won’t work in your organization, take a look at this book and find out why it’s so important.

Notes from Fundraising Day, ePhilanthropy Symposium

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I joined over 2000 colleagues who help nonprofits raise money at Fundraising Day last week.  Some takeaways:

Mark Rovner offered these tips:

  1. Ask When the Time is Right – when your organization / cause is in the news
  2. Avoid the Constant Ask
  3. Synchronize Your Channels – direct mail, email, web site
  4. Avoid ‘Soft Asks’
  5. Ask for Feedback – surveys, online focus groups
  6. Finish the Story, Close the Loop – don’t ask again after donation before informing how past donation was used
  7. Don’t Ask for the Wrong Amount – know what levels your donors have previously gave
  8. Recognize Cross Channel Behavior – many will donate online after receiving direct mail
  9. Make Sure You Thank More Than You Ask
  10. Test – Find Out For Yourself

Tom Gaffny demonstrated the value of asking for a specific amount for a specific purpose, rather than simply requesting a ‘general donation.’

A day later, I attended the ePhilanthropy Social Networking Symposium, where we debated the value of social networking tools to nonprofits.  Some highlights:

Steve MacLaughlin, Blackbaud‘s Director of Internet Solutions suggested that we ‘experiment first, plan later’ to make sure our organizations are represented in these new web environments.  He suggested a POST approach:

  • People - who are you targeting?
  • Objectives - what do you want to achieve?
  • Strategy - what will it look like when you’re done?
  • Technology - what tools will you use?

Philip King of Artez Interactive suggested the value of recruiting fundraisers instead of donors, and suggested that the ‘from’ line in an email will often be more important than the ‘subject’ line;  i.e. people give because of their relationship with people, not necessarily because they support the cause.  He also discussed the ‘game changing idea’ of Kiva, where people can donate without going through a nonprofit organization;  Oxfam Direct has also used this technique successfully.

To keep up with latest trends, many speakers mentioned the value of following sites such as Beth Kanter’s blog.

Blackbaud to buy Kintera, but…

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This isn’t a surprise to me;  hopefully this will give Kintera the financial backing it has long needed.  But I wonder how will Blackbaud integrate Kintera’s products with the other organizations it has acquired in the past year: eTapestry, GiftMakerPro, and Target Analytics.  After years of keeping Raiser’s Edge as a locally installed product, is Blackbaud really prepared to sell itself as an online organization?  A few recent experiences indicate otherwise:

  1. Blackbaud recently hosted an Interactive Internet Symposium in New York City.  I subscribe to many blogs and elists, yet did not learn of this event until a week after it was past. 
  2. So I would not miss out on similar events in the future, I visited Blackbaud’s web site to signup for its enewsletters.  But Friday and again today, I was unable to complete my signup.  After selecting a user name and password, I received no acknowledgment either online or in email about whether my signup was successful.  But I was unable to login with my selected credentials, nor have I received any email confirmations..

If Blackbaud relies on its own marketing to distribute information about events and if signup to receive electronic communications is so difficult, does this sound like a company that is committed to providing online services?

Internet Marketing Strategy Assessment

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Whether or not you currently use or intend to use their products, Blackbaud has made available an Internet Marketing Strategy Assessment which will help you evaluate whether your organization is effectively utilizing online marketing.  Some of the questions may seem basic, but are worth reviewing, e.g.

  1. Is your mission statement clearly stated on your web site?
  2. Is your Web site address printed on all of your marketing materials?
  3. Do you allow event participants to solicit sponsors / donations on your behalf through personal web pages?

Take a look and see how your organization rates.