Online Fundraising Mistakes
Fundraising Success just ran this article, 3 Common Online Fundraising Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them), featuring the views of Thomas Gensemer at Blue State Digital.
As Gensemer sees it, the three mistakes are:
- Treat it like direct mail
- Focus too much on control
- Focus too much on asking for money
I’m struck most by this observation:
“Fundraisers focus on so much control and preapproval and thinking about what a Dec. 29 e-mail will look like today, and I don’t know that we should know that answer because I’m not writing e-mails today for Dec. 29 in anything else I do,” Gensemer says. “While we work schedules for clients that may go a month, two months, even three months out, there’s always flexibility because if today something’s in the news about cancer and I’m working for the Cancer Society, the e-mail that mentions something in the news is probably more relevant than what was planned a month ago on the schedule.”
In all fundraising, relevance to the donor is everything.
I recall occasions — pre-Internet — when we actually Fedex’d appeals to high-value donors when key events happened (natural disaster, violence at an abortion clinic, a human rights abuse). This technique evolved into use of “look-alike” packages that mimicked special delivery packages. Just as there were “faux” Western Union telegrams … remember them!
All of these sought to convey urgency and immediacy — our organization is on top of this breaking event … it’s top of mind to the donor … they feel the urgency or outrage or loss and want to respond immediately. The issue — and ask — could not be more relevant than at those initial moments.
This is Fundraising 101.
But yet, Gensemer is right. We do too often lose sight of this imperative — and the terrific advantage of immediate execution capability — when “planning” online fundraising campaigns.
With online fundraising, schedules should be made to be broken. And prepared content must be discarded and replaced when overtaken by events.
With online fundraising, real-time events rule, not pre-planned schedules or content.
Tom
2 responses to “Online Fundraising Mistakes”
Behavioral Science Q & A
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Interesting post.
Here’s my plug for Facebook in providing immediate information: I’ve found that our Facebook followers are always the first to get any information – no charges to post it (my email system is limited on the number of times we can email without additional charges we cannot afford), many more followers on Facebook than on my email list, quicker than my email system (no need to format, link, make it look a certain “branded” way).
🙂
Thanks for the shout, Tom!