Online Fundraising Strategies for Tough Times

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Norman Reiss

Reminder: Thursday evening, January 8, I will moderate a panel discussion at the NYC Foundation Center, Online Fundraising Strategies for Tough Times. Guest speakers will include Allan Pressel of Charity Finders and Cristine Cronin of NY Charities. Due to a large number of registrations, the Foundation Center has closed registration, so unfortunately you won’t be able to attend unless you’ve already signed up. However, I will offer a follow-up webinar on Wednesday evening, January 21 on ephilanthropy strategies. Watch for details in my next post.

Addendum 4-21-09
If you were unable to attend this event, you can now listen online at the Foundation Center’s events archive.

Upcoming Program at Foundation Center in NYC

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Norman Reiss

On Thursday, January 8, 2009, from 5:30 – 7:30 PM EST, I will be moderating a program at the NYC Foundation Center, Online Fundraising Strategies for Tough Times. My speakers will include Cristine Cronin, President of NY Charities and Allan Pressel, CEO/Founder of Charity Finders. We will discuss ways to continue to fundraise effectively during tough economic times using online techniques. Our target audience will be mostly small to mid sized nonprofits that already have a web site, but want to raise more money onlne.

Attendance is free, but early sign up is encouraged. Thanks to Charlotte Dion, Director of Foundation Center’s NY Library / Learning Center, for helping to arrange this program.

Meantime, here’s an interesting portal prepared by Nonprofit Consulting which links to a presentation and other resources on the topic we’ll be discussing next month. Also see some Online Fundraising Myths.

Hope to see you at the Foundation Center.

Next Week’s Presentation at Convio Summit

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Norman Reiss

For several months, I’ve been managing an implementation to Convio at my current organization first for TeamRaiser and then for other events, donation forms, and email marketing. To support our nationwide chapter structure, we’ve also decided to use Convio’s MultiCenter, which will allow each chapter to view and communicate with its own constituents. Next week I’ll be speaking about this project at the Convio Summit, joining representatives from other nonprofit organizations and vendors.

How can your organization successfully manage a transition to a new online vendor? See my previous post on Tips for Working With an Online Vendor.

For more on my presentation, view the event schedule – my session is From Concept to Finish Line — Getting Results with TeamRaiser™ on Tue, Nov. 18 at 2 PM CST.

More ePhilanthropy Ideas from Around the Web

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Norman Reiss

Guidestar summarizes recent Giving USA online fundraising survey:

while Internet giving is widely used, it still represents a small portion (under 5%) of overall fundraising
most common way organizations raise money over the web is through an online donation page
best results come from organizations that combine an online donation page with email appeals

Overall, social networking tools aren’t contributing much – yet, but an organization that utilizes online ‘communities’ is likely to improve results.

Care2′s FrogLoop blog interviews Phillip Artez, President of Artez on how to choose an eCRM. Phillip says that successful nonprofit fundraisers “aren’t afraid to share brand, content and promotion with their supporters” and reminds us that a large portion of funds will come from a small group of fundraisers so we should “treat them differently.” He mentions three areas where nonprofits should especially pay attention to: potential of social networking sites such as Facebook, donations originating from mobile devices and more organizations utilizing SalesForce (which has excellent connectivity to other systems and provides up to 10 free licenses to nonprofits).

Finally, the Nonprofit Times explains the importance of using multiple channels since many donors will visit the web before making a donation - even if it’s offline and, surprisingly, even more so for constituents 65 and older. PerDonordigital‘s Nick Allen, “more people are online, more people are doing research online, checking out charities they support or are thinking about supporting.” But NPAdvisor‘s expert Rick Christ warns that “nonprofit’s Web site should try to support direct mail, but not replace it.” and that direct mail is still how many first hear about a nonprofit. Convio‘s Vinay Bhagat adds that while blogs and social networking are getting more attention, the core web site is still the main way constituents will evaluate a nonprofit.

Many contributors to the Nonprofit Times article, including Nten‘s Holly Ross stressed the importance of integrating the web site with email appeals.

Online Fundraising over $10 Billion in 2007

Posted on July 2, 2008 by Norman Reiss

Ted Hart provides a look at how online fundraising has grown from $0 in 1999 to $10.44 billion in 2007. A graph and brief write-up is available at Slideshare.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently pointed out that while online giving still represents a small part of most nonprofits’ fundraising, for some charities they have become a major source of revenue, These five organizations have done especially well, raising at least 10% of their donations online: Heifer International (28%), Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (27%), Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund (21%), National Multiple Sclerosis Society (15%) and Make-A-Wish Foundation (10%).

Are you waiting for ephilanthropy tools to work perfectly before taking the plunge? If so, read Vin Crosbie’s take on Ted’s People to People Fundraising site on why tools are ‘good enough‘ to use now.

2008 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study

Posted on April 25, 2008 by Norman Reiss

Nten and M&R Strategic Services have released a fascinating study which provides metrics for online messaging, fundraising and advocacy. Some highlights and observations:

open rates (compared to a study in 2006) declined from 21.3% to 17.6%; click-through rates dropped from 4.9% to 3.6%. I’ve found that many NPO staff don’t take the time to analyze reports which clearly demonstrate that most constituents who get email are not bothering to open them, fewer are clicking on any included links.
on the average, constituents are emailed 4 times / month. Seems like once a week is still too often, making more of a case to use segmentation to target content to selected constituents.
About 20% of an email list ‘goes bad’ each year due to unsubscribes and other changes in email addresses. So a nonprofit that wants to grow its list needs to first make up for this loss in numbers first.
Advocacy mailings consistently show higher response rates than other types of mailings. How many of these constituents can be effectively converted to other types of engagement?
$1000+ gifts were only 1% of the total number of donations, yet represented over 20% of online giving revenues. Major gifts still deserves consistent attention.

Thanks to Holly Ross at Nten, and Sarah Dijulio at M&R for collaborating on this report and the 21 nonprofit organizations that participated in this analysis; a webinar discussing the study is available.

Online Fundraising or Direct Mail? Use Both

Posted on January 21, 2008 by Norman Reiss

Does online fundraising offer a huge opportunity for most nonprofits? Yes. Does this mean that the more traditional direct mail methods should no longer be used? No! Many other bloggers recently discussed this issue:

Chronicle of Philanthropy - Direct-Mail Appeals Suffer, New Survey Finds

Sea Change Strategies – Mark Rovner - A Little Fundraising Rant

Seth Godin - I Gave at the Office, as well as his latest book, Meatball Sundae

A useful summary of the issue is provided in The Agitator’s Baby and the Bathwater.

I agree with Seth’s point that online fundraising clearly is not meant to replace direct mail fundraising. Some people may always respond best to direct mail, while others enjoy doing everything online. The real challenge, as Seth points out, is to convert the donor to an active supporter of an organization’s cause, or who encourages others to get involved. Whether a donor gives offline or online, getting someone to get and stay engaged has the biggest benefit for our organizations.

The Wired Fundraiser

Posted on November 3, 2007 by Norman Reiss

Network For Good, which recently started a monthly teleconference series in nonprofit marketing and online fundraising, has now released a study, The Wired Fundraiser. Key findings include:

People listen to wired fundraisers. People donate because they trust the messenger, not primarily because of the importance of the cause.
Not every wired fundraiser excels, but some can raise thousands for the charities they support.
Tools such as widgets and social networks are especially helpful in making personal fundraisers effective.
Smart charities embrace the wired fundraiser rather than try to control the process.

I’ve said in the past that fundraising needs to be a joint effort of many departments within an organization, not just development. But now Katya explains how “technology enables anyone to be a fundraiser, anywhere online.” As nonprofits, we should give these motivated supporters everything they need to be successful because they will help us to reach audiences that we would have never been able to access, no matter what marketing strategies we use.

More details of the study are summarized in Katya Andresen’s non-profit marketing blog.

A New Day at Kintera

Posted on August 16, 2007 by Norman Reiss

Since my current organization has used Kintera since January 2005, I eagerly signed up for yesterday’s Nten conference call with Scott Crowder, who joined the firm as Chief Technology Officer earlier this year. Although I’ve raised nearly $7 million in online fundraising revenues, working with Kintera has been a challenge, especially when trying to integrate with Raiser’s Edge, our offline fundraising software.

In addition to Scott’s arrival, Kintera also hired a new Chief Executive earlier this year, Richard LaBarbera, replacing the firm’s founder who had long held the position. Recently, Kintera announced a new initiative - Kintera Connectwhich promised a new approach to integrating with other systems, a complete reversal from Kintera’s past strategy. However, when few details of this program were available, I feared this was mostly talk with little substance.

By agreeing to do yesterday’s call, Scott made himself available for questions by the entire Nten community. Although Kintera Connect was a main topic, he also addressed many other issues including one that Kintera has always sought to bury – the company’s financial viability. After detailing many new technical initiatives currently in process, Scott described the firm’s goal of reaching profitability later this year and that they are “almost there now.”

Scott also described how Kintera no longer wants to do “everything for everybody,’ which has led to it having a product which tries to do too many things, not all which it does well. By opening up to tie in with other systems, Kintera seems to now realize that it must focus on its strengths: e.g. CRM, CMS, advocacy, and leave the rest to others.

Other announcements included:

implementation of Akamai technology to enhance performance
data center migration
sharp increase in capacity to send mass emails
enhanced CMS, replacing current system

Although I’ve often been a critic of Kintera in the past, this conference call shows that the new management at Kintera is determined to set things right. I’ll wait and see if the results equal the promise, but Scott’s willingness to talk openly is a promising sign. A recording of the conference call is available at Nten’s site.

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Bridging Technology, Communications & Development to Implement ePhilanthropy for Nonprofit Organizations

Tag Archives: online fundraising