Meet the New Platform: Same As the Old Platform
“So put your little hand in mine. There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb…” Slap alarm.
Read newspaper. Headline: Facebook Announces Now Accepting Donations for Nonprofits. Read the story: Will they share donor information with the nonprofit? No. No they will not. Discard newspaper and proceed with day.
“So put your little hand in mine. There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb…” Slap alarm.
Read newspaper. Headline: Google Announces Now Accepting Donations for Nonprofits. Read the story: Will they share donor information with the nonprofit? No. No they will not. Angrily crumple newspaper. Proceed with day.
“So put your little hand in mine. There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb…” Slap alarm.
Read newspaper. Headline: Instagram Announces Now Accepting Donations for Nonprofits. Read the story:
“The company said it was too early to talk about how the donor data that Instagram collects through this feature will be shared with participating charities.”
Use newspaper as kindling. Proceed with day.
Yes, it’s true: Instagram announced on February 7th that it will be accepting donations. It’s also true that this is a nigh worthless gesture unless and until they give you the donor’s information. To review our previous arguments:
- You don’t own the donor. Facebook/Instagram/Google do. These, then, are donors who are unlikely to keep giving if only because you can’t take steps to retain them.
- You don’t own the donor relationship. You’ve worked on a thank you reinforces why someone should give to you. InstaGoogBook will instead send them a receipt with the warmth of a tax accountant and with the customization of a McNugget.
- You are giving them data to compete with you. Let’s say you work for Operation Smile. A list of Smile Train donors would be golden for you. Now you can buy it from FaceGoogGram.
You wouldn’t invest in a CRM that took the donation but ran off with the donor like a thief in the night. That’s what this is. To say you haven’t decided whether the nonprofit should get the donor data is like saying you haven’t decided whether your car should have wheels – it’s a necessary feature for functionality.
So that’s a “No!” on Instagram donation efforts for me for the short term.
“But they have such a large audience,” you (or your social media inclined execs or board members) cry! ” Surely we can’t ignore them!”
I wouldn’t propose to ignore them. And stop calling me Shirley.
Rather, your goal on these platforms is to turn their audience into your audience. You want their audience to opt in for your communications, knowing that any other road to these constituents is a toll road. By steering folks from them to you – specifically to your white paper, infographic, free toolkit, magnet, advocacy alert, petition, screening tool, or whatever conversion tool you have set up – you now have permission to have a relationship without being repeatedly dunned for it.
You also need to gather your own data on donors/respondents who come in through these social media platforms. As with getting the name, the digital giants will charge you to target by their categories, which are 50-80% solid and 20-50% divining from chicken entrails. When you collect first-party data, it’s clean, accurate, and (best of all) yours. Your donors will generally give it to you as long as you use it to make their experience better.
We must break out of digital Groundhog Day and create our own constituent acquisition and learning methods; no one else will do it accurately and without payment.
Nick
13 responses to “Meet the New Platform: Same As the Old Platform”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
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I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]
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Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]
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Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]
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There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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I just love this! Digital Groundhog Day, indeed. Of course, I’ve been watching Russian Doll – so I’m in the mood…
Thank you! And if it comes to monthly gifts, it’s even more important to use your own platform.. see a recent post on this..
https://www.adirectsolution.com/where-should-monthly-donors-go-to-donate/
Nick, thanks so much for shining a light on this!
If I had a nickel for every time myself or anyone working at Bloomerang or any other CRM company has tried to point this out to professional fundraisers, and their often clueless board members, the resulting funds could support numerous charity missions.
The complete lack of understanding by so many charities of how important follow-up communications are to any new donors may be the reason donor retention rates keep falling.
Can you also point out Nick, that it is not just social media sites, but also many crowd funding sites and also popular sites like DonorsChoose.org, who also do not provide the names and contact information to the charities or the schools they support.
Absolutely – these are walled gardens within our own nonprofit family…
This is a problem impact the sector as a whole, and it deserves a similar-scaled response. What should the various professional associations representing us to do? One at a time we can not make headway with any of these third-party processors, but what if there was a unified request or response? Would orgs be game for this?
It reminds me of a favorite Edmund Burke quote: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
Some potential steps through these associations, IMHO:
– Get a sense for the sector. If I’m on a different planet from others, it wouldn’t be the first time. If I’m not, that sense of the sector needs to be unified and amplified.
– Meet with the larger violators named here. Jay, I agree with you that there are other direct donation sites don’t share their donor data, but that is their business model, so I don’t see persuasion working there. It could be they are unaware of the negative impacts of this – in the effort to move fast and break things, we may just be one of those things. I suspect the closed architecture is, to them, a feature, not a bug, but I have been wrong before.
– Failing the above, decide on collective action. One would hope for a resolution sans legal, economic, political, regulatory, or social movement action. But if one got what one hoped for, so many of our organizations wouldn’t be necessary. Part of my call for first-person data is to give us more options here, making it so that we do not hurt ourselves (as much) in such a fight. As this has a who-ties-the-bell-around-the-cat’s-neck problem, the associations are essential here, but we need to let them know if and how much we care.
Other thoughts?
No doubt, GoogStaFace will also trumpet their inspired social responsibility and benevolence in providing such a valuable tool to the poor, humble, starving nonprofits of the world. They will be very proud of their good deeds. Pay no attention to their privacy issues, declining userbases, and role in the undermining of democracy.
This is great! Right up there with Vu Le. Thanks so much. I run a monthly call for immigrant rights fundraisers. Would you come on and do a webinar. We can pay an honorarium.
Many thanks. I learned and I laughed.
That’s high praise – thank you. I love Vu’s take on donorcentricity (https://nonprofitaf.com/2017/05/how-donor-centrism-perpetuates-inequity-and-why-we-must-move-toward-community-centric-fundraising/) in part because I don’t agree with all of it, so it continually challenges me. And I’m in the middle of Unicorns Unite (with Jessamyn Shams-Lau and Jane Leu) about the (fraught) relationships between nonprofits and foundations.
As for the webinar, I’m at nellinger (at) thedonorvoice (dot) com – take that, tricky bots! – let me know and we can work on schedules.
This article, and those like it, completely miss the point. Our donors are using social media, no matter how much we wish they were not. If they decide they want to give on those platforms, they will. No matter how much we wish they would give on another platform that we control. I also firmly believe that normalizing giving, even small gifts, is beneficial to all nonprofits. If we see our friends and family fundraising and donating to their causes that we care about, then we are much more liking to seek out causes and participate in philanthropy. Ignoring or scoffing at social media fundraising is done at the fundraisers’ peril.
Julia’s full reply is up at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fundraisers-youre-missing-point-social-media-julia-campbell/ and it’s well done. I fully agree with your comments about the importance and ubiquity of social media.
Where we disagree is on the importance of having donor data. You state correctly that we don’t “own” a donor. We nonprofits shouldn’t be the houseguest who can’t take a hint. That said, it is important to try to create a relationship with that donor if they would wish for one. With platforms where you don’t get backend data, you can’t do that. You can’t even do the most basic task of telling the person what good their donation did, since that acknowledgment has been McNuggeted by the platform.
There is a happy medium between forcing our message on those who do not wish it and not being able to get our message to those who do. Like all positive relationships, it begins with consent. We just did a feature (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSqSvE3EWV8, while I’m promoting links) about using online tools to get constituents by providing them information of value. Those are the types of interactions and permission-based strategies that tools like social media can help be a part of the conversation. As you say “If you are lucky enough to have their permission to email them or contact them, treasure it.” My goal here is to build more treasure.
Looking at this from a financial perspective, let’s look at two campaigns on Facebook: accept donations through Facebook or link to your donation page to make the transaction. To make the math
easy for me, let’s assume the average initial gift of an online donor from a Facebook campaign is $25 and the average online donor lifetime value is $100. Let’s further assume that the friction of the extra click cuts your donation rate in half so in our campaign, the one through Facebook gets 100 donors; the one with the transaction through their website gets 50.
The LTV of the Facebook campaign is $2500 = $25 * 100. Frictionless donation experience, no followup possible from nonprofit so that donation is all you get. You could get more out of these folks perhaps, but that road is tolled.
The LTV of linking to your site is $5000 = $100*50. Friction leads to fewer, more valuable donors.
Since this math is made-up, to generalize, look at the value you get from a continuing relationship — any time that value is greater than the negative impact of friction of bringing them over to have a relationship, bring them over. (Any time it’s small, rethink both the friction of your form and the nature of your donor relationships :-))
This brings us to your final point – that this is inevitable. Perhaps. I know for certain that it is inevitable if nothing is asked for and nothing is done.
But there are platforms that don’t do this. PayPal payment processing is an intermediary that does pass donor information. And way back in the mists of time (2008) they partnered with a hot social media platform called MySpace to create fundraising widgets that gave donor information (http://agitator.thedonorvoice.com/online-fundraising-on-myspace/ – no, none of the links still work).
Social media fundraising is inevitable, necessary, and as you point out good: training people to make donations a part of their lives. We should do it, but on our terms by bringing people to a place where we can have a relationship. Fundraising using the social media’s payment platform trains to have a relationship with that site rather than with that cause or that nonprofit.
You may be right we can’t change that structure. But we should change that structure. And if there’s one thing we causes are good at is being willing to lose, then lose, then lose, then lose, and so on until we win.
Crossposting to your LinkedIn response as well, because like you, I think it’s a debate worth having and loved your thoughtful response.
Talking about tracking & donor relationships…
I am curious about your thoughts re Bernie Saunders highest $$$ gross online, yes higher than 2016. How to
perpetuate giving at an avg. $27 often leading to multiple commitments.
Personally, I’m a bit skeptical of the exact $27 number ( for example, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/18/bernie-sanders-keeps-saying-his-average-donation-is-27-but-it-really-isnt/ ; my guess is that the Sanders campaign is repeating the same number and current media is reporting as such), but even if that’s a bit off, he and many of the 2016 and 2020 candidates have had broader bases of smaller support than previous campaigns. Some thoughts:
– Candidates have done a good job of legitimating small gifts. See for example http://agitator.thedonorvoice.com/learning-from-politics-chip-in-change-for-change/ . Some of the behavioral science tips there are things we could use more often. Further, many candidates have made it a focused part of their solicitation strategy, eschewing money from PACs and advertising this as part of their appeal and their appeals.
– It’s interesting that we are seeing (from what I can tell) record numbers of donations to political candidates at the same time as our own donations are narrowing. As Roger reports from Blackbaud in today’s post, overall revenue is up, but the number of donors is down: http://agitator.thedonorvoice.com/fundraising-aint-dead-yet/. We’ve talked in the past about mental accounting – how even though money is fungible, we have sub-budgets in our minds for various categories. I’d previously thought of charitable donations as a bucket for folks — what if it is just “donations” and people are making a decision between nonprofits and political candidates? Don’t know at first blush how to prove this, but it seems like it may be possible.
– Sanders in particular shows the value of a list. I would be very interested to see the new/previous donor breakdown of the campaigns, as I’d guess that because of his previous run he was able to get a large number of people to give again, whereas other candidates don’t have that history. “Former presidential candidate” will have a better fundraising list than (purely hypothetically) “mayor of a city of 100K”. Another data point to show that the best place to store your money isn’t the bank but in your donor file – size and depth.
Other thoughts?