In Search of Digital Donations

By Carl Weiss

We all get them, snail mail requests for donations. Sometimes we respond, sometimes we don’t.  But one thing is for certain: charities sure cut down a lot of trees in their search for donations. Between these unsolicited requests for funds, combined with armies of telephone fund raisers, it’s no wonder that charities are big business in the US, having raised an estimated $316.23 billion in 2012 alone. As voracious as most charities are for donations, what's odd is that many are still using old school methods to drum up support.  Surprisingly, many of them seem to be reluctant when it comes to making the switch to using the Internet for fund raising.

One thing that’s certain since 2000, it’s become far easier to vet the accountability, transparency and financial health of nonprofits.  Portals such as Charity Navigator have been created to provide the public with information regarding thousands of charitable institutions from coast to coast.  By entering http://www.charitynavigator.org, you come to a site that lets you search listings from A to Z, Top-10 Lists, or even Hot Topics that relate to charities. This and other such portals make it as easy to check on a charity as it is to search for a pizzeria or dentist in your neighborhood.

More importantly, many of these sites not only report on the veracity of a charitable institution, they also let you know how much of every dollar donated actually makes it to the people/causes whom the charity supports.

Sites like Charity Navigator also allow you to follow the money line item by line item, revealing everything from a charity’s revenues to how much they spend on administrative, fund raising, and program expenses. Best of all, if you like what you see, there is a handy “Donate Now” button on the site that makes contributing to the charity of your choice as easy as point-and-click.

When you consider that 72% of charitable contributions comes from individuals and only 21% from foundations and corporations, then it would seem that the Internet would be a match made in heaven for nearly every charity.  Yet according to a post on philanthropy.com, “Eighty-four percent of nonprofits, including many of the nation’s largest charities, haven’t made their donation websites easy to read on mobile devices, one of several flaws that can cost them significant contributions, according to experts who studied 150 charities and other organizations.” http://philanthropy.com/article/Most-Charities-Fail-at-Raising/144401/

According to the report, this included 100 charities big enough to be on the Philanthropy 400, which lists the groups that raise the most money from private sources.  The post went on to lament the fact that most charities aren’t doing enough to use email as a fundraising tool, and that those do, for the most part, aren’t making it clear to donors what action the recipients should take.

That’s not to say every charity isn’t finding a number of ways to leverage the Internet.  Take Goodwill Industries. Recently it added a couple of new sites designed to help people donate to its cause. The first is http://shopgoodwill.com   which is kind of a hybrid of a Goodwill store with eBay. On the site, shoppers can bid on thousands of items which are then shipped to the highest bidder. 

Another site that is owned and operated by Goodwill is Job Junction. This site not only helps job seekers intersect with local employers, but it also includes a tab that shows every visitor to the site how and where to make a charitable contribution to Goodwill. (The site even provides donors with a handy form they can submit come tax time for every item donated to Goodwill.)  

While some charities are finally starting to take advantage of the Internet, there are still a number have yet to successfully join the digital age.  Among the other findings by Philanthropy.com:

     ·         37% of the organizations send no emails within 30 days after site visitors signed up

     ·         56% of the organizations didn’t ask for donations within 90 days of signing up

     ·         79% didn’t personalize email appeals with either a first or last name

     ·         65% of the websites polled required visitors to click three or more times in order to donate

Fortunately, there are a number of providers such as Charity Navigator that are willing to trail blaze in

this realm.  On top of that, there are several new starters that are willing to cut out the middleman altogether when it comes to giving.  One is called GiveDirectly.org, which provides a way to give money directly to recipients, thereby eliminating intermediaries and charities. It also allows you to contribute funds to individuals worldwide.

“GiveDirectly does not attach conditions to the donations, allowing recipients to spend the money in any way they want. The assumption is that poor people know better than anyone else what they need. A recent study published by MIT, co-written by one of GiveDirectly's former founders, argues that unconditional giving allowed poor households to save more than those in conditional giving programs, as well as increase food consumption by 20 percent.”

Another of these direct-to-recipient sites is called CentScere.com, a charitable service created by a group of college students whose avowed aim was to “turn your social media into charitable donations.” Their service allows you to “choose how much to donate for each post or ‘Like’ on Facebook, or for every tweet on Twitter, and then select your favorite charity among a list. Your credit card is charged every time you reach $7.99 in donations and your contact information is provided to the nonprofits you donate to so that they can keep you abreast of their latest efforts.”

While some charities still seem reluctant to fully embrace the Internet as a fundraising medium, Centscere co-founder Ian Dickerson summed it up perfectly when he said,

“The methods that worked on the baby boomers and older generations just won’t work with us. We grew up online; it’s part of our everyday behavior. We can’t afford to give as much as older generations, but we would happily give some change here and there. For charities it's also a way to build a relationship early on so that when we do have an income, and can make larger donations, we'll donate to them.”

Besides, any fundraising method that saves a tree or keeps my phone from ringing at supper time is alright by me.

Carl Weiss is president of Working the Web to Win, a digital marketing agency located in Jacksonville, Florida.  You can also interface with Carl live every Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern on Blog Talk Radio. This week’s guests include Adam Thayer and Tracy Collins from Goodwill Industries of North Florida.