12 Tips For Successful E-Campaigns

January 31, 2008      Tom Belford

Thanks to Margaret Battistelli at FundRaising Success for publishing these twelve best practices for e-efforts.

They're proffered by Tom Gaffny, EVP for fundraising at Epsilon. As part of his homework, Tom made online contributions to 145 nonprofits and tracked their subsequent actions.

Here's the stunner: 49 groups (one-third) never even acknowledged the gift. For the sake of the stunningly incompetent fundraisiers involved, their careers and families, I hope Tom never releases the names of those organizations!

No question, there are at least 49 folks in those groups who oughta be fired!

Now, for those who believe in acknowledging gifts, here are Tom's recommended best practices:

1. Be relevant. Be local.

2. Highlight video on your website.

3. Engage constituents (quizzes, games, video, etc)

4. Leverage techniques that work in the mail (matching gifts, headlines, Post-its, etc)

5. Send information in bite-sized chunks.

6. Work at channel integration.

7. Personalize your organization.

8. Be visual.

9. Say thank you in different ways.

10.Ask “friends” to get the word out.

11.Be timely. Be there.

12.Highlight your partners.

Tom