Barriers To Online Fundraising Success
An article on October 13 regarding nonprofits’ online success (or lack thereof) in Fundraising Success began like this:
"Nonprofit organizations are resource constrained, as we all well know. According to a 15-question survey Convio conducted between September 2008 and October 2008 of 60 nonprofits, the most common response regarding their organization’s top barrier to success was insufficient staff. [Emphasis added.]
Other barriers to online success noted by those surveyed were lack of coordination, lack of education of online marketing, database issues, integration of different Web tools/technologies and intradepartmental issues. The survey also found that nearly 70 percent of the organizations questioned have three or fewer employees dedicated to online-related programs."
Let me repeat: the most common response regarding their organization’s top barrier to success was insufficient staff.
On October 14, the very next edition of Fundraising Success featured these two articles: Tips for Recruiting Supporters to Your Facebook Cause and Seven Tips to Harness the Power of Twitter for Your Cause.
Does everyone see the problem here?
Online staffs are spread too thin (and I suspect many have too little direct marketing experience) to get even the basics on online fundraising mastered.
See my comments about the Greenpeace USA website from Monday. Or wait till Friday’s post, when our guest writer will document how shabby even the most basic e-newsletter practices are of many of the biggest US nonprofits … all groups spending more than $1 million per year on fundraising.
And yet, as the articles from Fundraising Success illustrate, there’s a clamor to run out and jump into Facebook and Twitter. I’m not knocking FS … they’re just accurately reading and servicing their market. If it’s hot, they need to cover it. And I guess, in that sense, so do we at The Agitator.
But c’mon folks, let’s concentrate a bit on getting the fundamentals right — too many e-mail fundraising appeals suck … too many Donate pages suck. If the direct mail of some of these organizations was as careless and backward as their online fundraising, they’d be broke.
There, I’ve gotten that off my chest!
Tom
P.S. I know that in spite of my fulminations, you’re still going to click off to the damn Facebook and Twitter articles, aren’t you?!
5 responses to “Barriers To Online Fundraising Success”
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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Tom, your comments “too many e-mail fundraising appeals suck … too many Donate pages suck” are supported by the recent Cone survey where supporters of causes still don’t trust online giving, or worse, can’t figure it out….see my Post at http://bit.ly/EoEGa
Excellent points, Tom. As is the case with every new bell and whistle that comes along … the basics come first, then you can play with the, well, bells and whistles. I like this quote from the Web Watch column (written by Big Duck’s Liz Brandwood) that will be appearing in the November issue of the print version of FundRaising Success, “If direct mail, e-mail and other proven fundraising tactics are still the bread and butter of the nonprofit world, social media has served up some exciting dessert options.”
Another interesting aspect of the survey was that the lack of staff was across the board – organizations with more than a dozen people in the online team said they lacked the staff as did the organizations with only two people in the entire organization. Ninety percent of respondents cited insufficient staff resources as the primary barrier, though budget constraints and a lack of online marketing expertise weren’t far behind. I psoke with a nonprofit last week that had those same challenges with their direct mail programs.
We recommend fours key areas nonprofit managers should be more aware of and thoughtful about when looking at developing online success:
•Organizing their resources carefully
•Planning the priorities for these resources
•Assigning ownership and accountability
•Acquiring or developing the skills required for online success
Seems to me those are some of the same fundamentals behind successful direct mail campaigns, just a different channel requiring different expertise. If you follow those fundamentals one will know if and when social media might be the right investment and be able to measure the impact of those channels for branding, awareness and fundraising – a well designed and resourced use of social media might support more return on the other channels as well. But the approach has to be right.
As marketers, it’s often more natural and stimulating to spend time thinking about new tactics, a new technology or a new creative concept versus thinking about staffing and structure. However, this research clearly indicates that if you do not spend time thinking about your staff size, skill mix and organizational structure, your results can be adversely impacted.
As a sector, we need to be more thoughtful about how to organize our precious resources and continue to share what’s working and what’s not.
Tom,
I second your comments about getting the fundamentals down before NonProfits or any organization for that matter start commenting on Facebook/ Twitter or whatever the social network highway maybe. You have NP’s as you mentioned (Habitat For Humanity, Charity Water and GreenPeace) that still haven’t “maximized” their presence on the internet as the marketing opportunities are constantly evolving making it challenging to keep up with the times…
You seem very knowledgeable and captivating in your writing style. Perhaps you could give some pointers on how to take advantage of how to be a better online fundraiser. Maybe you could throw a few bones to the highly skilled, several hours of free time, unemployed individuals out there to be encouraged to donate their services. For the sake of whuffie. Pay it forward. It all comes back to you in the end….
Hi Tom,
Great article. Social networks work best when integrated correctly with an overall online program as a way to make compelling information viral; but no one is going to share a message/content that is irrelevant or uninteresting to them – they probably won’t even read the whole thing. I know I don’t.
It seems as though a possible suggestion for improvement would be:
Step 1: Segment who gets what messages by their actions and donor history or program/project affinity
Step 2: Create good, unique, compelling content based on those segments individual interest, and ensure fundamentals of donation options, email capture and call to action are clear and consistent
Step 3: Integrate social media sharing elements into the content so it can be shared easily on social networks.
If more resources and time were spent on steps one and two, step three is fairly basic and a natural progression which (hopefully) will result in more quality “followers on Twitter” or “Fans on Facebook”