I helped raise $200,000 online for a congressional campaign in six months, and $100,000 online for a back-of-the-pack presidential campaign in three months. I therefore am fascinated by new benchmarks in this field. I've written about the innovations made in the Dean, Kerry, and Bush campaigns. Now we see the non-profit sector following suit:
- Convio, a web-based customer management service, estimates that $3 billion was raised online in 2004.
- Nearly 40 percent of tsunami donations came online, according to the Direct Marketing Association.
- Personal pledge pages, in which supporters of a cause or charity ask their family members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues to make a pledge are a growing tool in online fundraising. www.justgiving.com helps nonprofits and individuals raise money online with personal pages. AIDS Project Rhode Island says volunteers raised 20% more in 2005 for an AIDS walk by using personal pages than they raised the previous year.
- Non-profits have been way behind the technology curve. But they are finally able to start catching up, thanks to organizations like Network for Good, which has created cheap tools for online auctions, online fundraising, and volunteer recruitment that previously would have cost too much for small non-profits to utilize.
- The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews sent a writer on a trip to Israel with members of the organization, to post a real-time travelogue, to show donors what they had helped fund, potential travelers what they were missing and what they could experience on a later trip. The reports stirred up such interest that the organization increased its email list by 143% in six months, and raised $350,000 in four months. Ninety-eight donors were inspired to contribute more than $9,000 with just one email message. The IFCJ used Convio to beef up its relationships with supporters. (Source: www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com)
- Etapestry.com has developed a web-based Wishlist for non-profits such as schools and foodbanks to post online so that corporate and individual donors know what their specific needs are. Etapestry partnered with the Lawrence Township of Indianapolis to provide a prototype. (Source: www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com)
- By upgrading its website with a content management system by Kintera.com, showing something new each time a visitor logged on, the International Fund for Animal Welfare saw a 200% increase in unique visitors to its web site, and a 50% increase in online donations within one year. (Source: www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com)
- The United Way recently launched United Eway to help its local affiliates use cutting-edge viral marketing online tools.
A caveat to all this progress. Email is declining as a "killer application" in online communication. People get too much email. Only about 25% of legitimate bulk email (not spam, but permission-based email) is opened (half that -- 13% for ecommerce related email), and only 4.5% of recipients on average click-through the email to a web site, according to BrontoMail. So, online marketers for non-profits need to utilize a whole host of tools, not just email, to reach their constituents.
