Last week Kevin shared a quick review and early look  on what we’re seeing in direct mail.  Today, a review of what’s happening in the digital fundraising realm.

First, a look at the types of digital activity and some examples of what organizations in various sectors are sending out at this stage of the coronavirus pandemic.

Digital Activity

Once again, the folks at NextAfter have come through.  Using mystery shopping they’ve produced data from 153 nonprofit organizations across 12 different verticals in an effort to answer these questions:

• What is the total weekly email volume from these organizations?
• What verticals are communicating the most?
• How has email volume changed over recent months?
• What percentage of emails are about COVID-19?
• Are organizations still asking for money, or just sending newsletters and cultivation content?

Purpose of Emails 

Here’s a summary of NextAfter’s observation of the data they’ve collected to date:

• The number of emails sent each week, has been steadily increasing;
• Public Policy and International have been sending more than twice as much as verticals shown in the bottom right such as Faith Based and Public Media
• International, Human Services, and Public Media has been steadily increasing their email volume in the past three months.
• The steady increase in email volume in recent weeks has primarily been driven by messaging that includes COVID-19.
• Roughly half of all emails included some form of a solicitation.
• Most verticals had similar ratios of COVID-19 mentions with the outliers of increased mentions in Public Policyand limited mentions in Education.
• The percentage of solicitation emails has seen a slight increase in recent weeks,but the overall ratio remains roughly 50/50.
• The verticals that are directly dealing with COVID-19 such as Health, Human Services, and Public Policy are sending more solicitations than any other messaging type while many others seem to be emphasizing cultivation efforts. Environment seems to be the only outlier.

Find Information On Point for Your Organization

Using Next After’s Coronavirus Fundraising Response Resource Center  you can drill in and see actual real-life emails that have been sent by organizations like yours. That way you can get new ideas to test in your messaging, content, calls-to-action, and more.

The NextAfter examples range from front line organizations directly involved in providing services directly related to the pandemic to arts and culture organizations and those in between.  For example you can see what Food For The Poor is sending and also take a look at a communication from the Seattle Symphony. You’ll also find digital examples from a range of environmental, civil rights, and animal protection organizations.

You can access all these goodies and a treasure trove of other coronavirus-related content here.

Some Digital Results in the Pandemic

It will be a week or two before the Blackbaud Institute releases the most recent Charitable Index for the last quarter and the Fundraising Effectiveness Project publishes its. [Note: It’s likely the digital returns will be up and mail returns down because of the lag time in the delivery and return of postal mail. Mail returns are an important part of these indexes.]

Meanwhile, in the absence of a mass of data from across many sectors and properly analyzed here’s some anecdotal information largely related to front-line organizations.

For example, the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy in promos for its webinars reports:

• “email appeals generating hundreds of thousands of dollars witih an average gift of around $250”
• “60-70% of donations from first-time donors”
• “email click-thru-rate increases of 300%.

Over on the consulting side the RKD Group reports “Record-Breaking Online Donations” and indicating that “for 15 of our food bank clients, online donations totaled more than $10.3 million from March 12 to March 31. During that same time period in 2019, online donations only totaled $803,453. That’s a 1,187% increase.”

You can see specific organization results for groups like the Food Bank for New York City, some state (Utah, Connecticut) food banks and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts by going to RKD’s blog .

On the non-front-line organization (culture, arts, advocacy, education, etc.) the anecdotal reports are mixed.  By and large open and click-thru rates are up and returns for those groups using messages that are most relevant to their mission seem to be doing as well or a bit better than before the pandemic.  When we have more specific data, we’ll post on that.

For now, and for examples check out the NextAfter Resource Center AND please don’t hesitate to share whatever information you have with us.

Thank you.

Roger