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Nonprofits Get an "F" for Online Fundraising Expertise
According to a new study of 151 organizations’ websites and online marketing tactics, fundraisers get an “F”!
– Eighty-four percent of nonprofits, including many of the nation’s largest charities, have NOT made their donation websites easy to read on mobile devices.
– Most charities aren’t doing enough to persuade supporters to sign up for their emails, and the emails don’t give enough direction.
– The groups take too long to ask for money, and they make it too hard to give online.
– Thirty-seven percent sent no emails within 30 days after visitors signed up to receive them.
– Fifty-six percent of the organizations did not ask for a donation within 90 days of people’s signing up.
– Seventy-nine percent did not personalize email appeals with a supporter’s first or last name.
– Sixty-five percent of their websites required visitors to click through three pages or more to give online.
– Eighty-six percent of the groups’ websites did NOT provide a compelling reason for giving “today” (no urgency).
– Seventy-three percent encouraged sharing by offering donors a simple way to tell their followers on social networks that they had made a donation.
– Eighty-two percent did NOT welcome new donors through a series of emails.
Who’s doing it right? 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.
OUCH!!!
Get the book!
Feeling like your job is getting harder because donor expectations have changed and competition for the charitable dollar is growing?
Finding that the old orthodoxies and conventions espoused by so-called experts in online echo-chambers and at conferences don’t work anymore?
Want to help more people make impact by facilitating their acts of philanthropy but feel like too many obstacles keep getting in your way?
Then this book is for you.
Engagement Fundraising was developed from the perspective of a donor who discovered firsthand that the impersonal, spray-and-pray approaches of his beloved charity were not only offensive but also wasteful and ineffective. So he took action. And now, you can too.
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Thanks for this wake up call Greg.
While their website may be fantastic, holding up the site of a hate group that works to disenfranchise Americans and reduce equality is hardly worthy of best practices attention. Listing the Heritage Foundation here is an affront to your readers whose lives have been impacted by Heritage’s machinations.
Hi Ellen-
Thanks for participating. Here at MarketSmart we aim to be apolitical. We serve left-leaning groups (like Planned Parenthood International) and right-leaning groups (like the American Legislative Exchange Council).
I must admit that, because I live in Washington, D.C., I have friends on both sides of the isle. Several of them work for the Heritage Society. One is the right-hand man for John Boehner. Others include the CEO of the Washington Post (certainly a left-leaning publication).
While I appreciate and am happy to post your comment, I can’t necessarily agree that the Heritage Foundation is a “hate group”. That label might go a little too far because if I labeled them that way, I would bet some folks that work there would respond telling me that a group like Planned Parenthood is a hate group too.
If I and my firm were to become political, we’d lose lots of clients and my mission to help nonprofits reduce their costs and increase their funding would die. So, I hope you can appreciate my reasoning here.
Thank you again for participating.
Thanks for this wake up call Greg.
While their website may be fantastic, holding up the site of a hate group that works to disenfranchise Americans and reduce equality is hardly worthy of best practices attention. Listing the Heritage Foundation here is an affront to your readers whose lives have been impacted by Heritage’s machinations.
Hi Ellen-
Thanks for participating. Here at MarketSmart we aim to be apolitical. We serve left-leaning groups (like Planned Parenthood International) and right-leaning groups (like the American Legislative Exchange Council).
I must admit that, because I live in Washington, D.C., I have friends on both sides of the isle. Several of them work for the Heritage Society. One is the right-hand man for John Boehner. Others include the CEO of the Washington Post (certainly a left-leaning publication).
While I appreciate and am happy to post your comment, I can’t necessarily agree that the Heritage Foundation is a “hate group”. That label might go a little too far because if I labeled them that way, I would bet some folks that work there would respond telling me that a group like Planned Parenthood is a hate group too.
If I and my firm were to become political, we’d lose lots of clients and my mission to help nonprofits reduce their costs and increase their funding would die. So, I hope you can appreciate my reasoning here.
Thank you again for participating.
Personal crowdfunding is crowdfunding for traveling, weddings, but can also be done for medical emergencies, natural disasters, see coverrme.com for alternative crowdfunding site.