Tag Archives: Sheeraz Haji

Taking ePhilanthropy to the Next Level

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Tonight I attended the kick off event for a new ePhilanthropy book by Ted Hart, James Greenfield and Sheeraz Haji People to People Fundraising as well as an accompanying web site which describes itself as the next generation of ephilanthropy.  Through his previous role as founder of the ePhilanthropy Foundation, Ted has much to offer, especially to nonprofits that are still ‘testing the waters.’  Tonight’s event was sponsored by Craigslist Foundation, which clearly plans to become a major resource for nonprofits through an web site makeover planned in late spring 2008,

Some worthwhile tips from Ted:

  • Donors often go to a nonprofit web site first to evaluate charity, even if they eventually decide to donate offline
  • Social networking is worth doing, but not until a nonprofit has first done the basics: developed a content rich web site and a strategic email marketing plan (after collecting consituents’ email addresses wherever possible)
  • Asking is the key to receiving;  Thanking is the key to receiving again.
  • Inspiring your strongest supporters to encourage others to get involved with your organization is the essence of ‘person to person fundraising’
  • If your organization is a 501(c)3 and you don’t yet offer online donation, you can easily do so through services such as JustGive or NYCharities, both which offer rock bottom credit card processing fees (3%)

Also came across this recent blog posting which highlights best practices for nonprofits using web 2.0 strategies.

Report from Fundraising Day NYC

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I joined over 1800 at last week’s Fundraising Day, sponsored by the Association of Development Professionals.   I focused on sessions covering online fundraising;  highlights are below:

  • Many nonprofits are clearly still struggling to coordinate offline and online strategies.  Per Sheeraz Haji, President of Convio, only a handful of their clients are doing this well.  Steve Birnbaum of Jacobson Consulting suggested that the challenges are often not technical but organizational, e.g. getting people to talk to each other.
  • Online fundraising continues to increase dramatically, but overall it’s still less than 1% of total fundraising revenues.  (Some large nonprofit organizations are doing much better than this, however.)
  • Harry Lynch and Paul Habig of SankyNet offered a variety of techniques to accelerate online revenues – their presentation is available online.
  • Tim Lash of International Rescue Committee offered tips on eadvocacy, and also suggested a simple three step approach currently in use by SaveDarfur.org
    1. sign a petition
    2. tell a friend
    3. donate
  • A panel with representatives of Convio, Beaconfire Consulting & Carnegie Hall reiterated the need for synchronization of offline / online efforts, as well as how to make a site visitor ‘known’ by offering multiple reasons to submit an email address.  ASPCA is particularly good at doing this.
  • Using peer to peer fundraising was also suggested since supporters will often prefer to use their own web pages for fundraising rather than an organization’s page created solely for an event or other fundraising initiative.