‘F’ Grade For Online Giving
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports a new study which gives a ‘F’ grade to most nonprofits for their online fundraising.
The study of 151 charities, including 100 on the Chron’s Top 400 list, points to many shortcomings in these organizations’ online fundraising practices. Here’s where to download the Online Fundraising Scorecard, prepared by Dunham+Company.
What I found interesting is that many of these so-called online fundraising failures are actually failures of Direct Marketing 101. That is, they would be considered failures as well in any direct mail fundraising programs, where the extant experience and institutional knowledge is probably greater.
So the study seems to have found serious gaps in the fundamental direct marketing know-how of these organizations. Leading one to wonder whether they botch their direct mail fundraising — where the financial stakes are much higher — in the same ways.
We’re talking about simple stuff like (all quantified in the study):
- Slow response to initial interested contacts;
- Significant delays in asking for donations;
- Lack of use of personalization;
- Jumbled messages — offers/requests that are too complex;
- Lack of urgency in communications;
- Inadequate ‘welcome’ acknowledgement;
- Failure to engage actual donors more deeply.
Whatever the marketing channel, shortcomings like these would be fatal.
The study does identify ten stars of online fundraising: Ducks Unlimited, Environmental Defense Fund, Feeding America, Food for the Poor, Heritage Foundation, Livestrong, Oxfam America, Special Olympics, United Way, and the public radio station WNYC. These groups raised about 25% more money online than others.
You might want to make a contribution to 2-3 of those and watch how they respond.
Finally, I was struck by this Chron comment about Ducks Unlimited:
“Ducks Unlimited says that its emphasis on giving donors a good experience on mobile devices has been a boon for its online giving. After it overhauled its site to make it mobile-friendly in July, it saw a sharp increase in people who used their smartphones or tablets to make gifts. In the last five months, half of all the group’s web traffic and 25 to 35 percent of online donations are coming from mobile devices, says Anthony Jones, web director.”
Get your marketing basics right, then get your mobile act together!
Tom
P.S. Great job Dunham+Company … you get an Agitator raise!
3 responses to “‘F’ Grade For Online Giving”
Behavioral Science Q & A
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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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Chip had a similar experience with his annual informal year-end giving survey, which he did this year for online giving. Read about it in his blog. Very eye-opening!
http://www.grizzard.com/why-online-retention-rates-are-so-bad/
Superb post Tom! Sometimes the simple stuff is the most difficult. Let’s be fair to so many staffers who are attempting this WITHOUT any decent training. Most do not know where to turn.
I truly believe there is a great opportunity for a strong basic training course in such fundamentals that even small charities could afford.
BTW, your idea for making a few donations is worth its weight in some precious resource. For years I have asked new employees to take $100 (from the company) and make 20 $5 donations, both on-line and via the mail with national NPO’s and then record what happens in the next 90 days. It is literally a mini-MBA in donor engagement!
Thanks for posting this. I was fortunate enough to be asked by Dunham+Company to look at the report findings before it was published and provide some comments.
Brad Davies and Tim Kachuriak put a lot of time and effort into tracking what nonprofits are actually doing — not what they say they are doing.
The skeptic could look at this report and say: “Wait a minute! Isn’t online growing faster than anything else? How can so many nonprofits be doing a bad job?”
It’s a fair question that should make us stop and consider all of this from the donor (consumer) perspective — because that’s who is really in charge now.
Remember those bag phone salesmen in the 80s? They were selling a lot of units even though, hello, it’s a giant phone in a bag. Consumers were driving it despite less than optimal conditions.
Nonprofits are doing OK today despite not always being very good at it (on average) because donors are driving it. And those nonprofit organizations that are doing following best practices and driving next practices outperform everyone else.
Jay Love and I used to go around the country talking about specific things everyone nonprofit could do to drive donors to give online — and why that was a good idea to do. Some listened and acted on the advice. Others didn’t.
I would rather focus on the positive than the negative that comes with failing grades. The report gives nonprofits clear steps they can take and it’s all upside. There’s still a tremendous opportunity for nonprofits even if they just do the basics really well. (This of course applies to things other than online giving too.)