Mal Warwick on Fundraising

If, despite economic conditions, you have the necessary financial resources to bolster your online program, there are many other steps you can consider taking. Here are six possibilities:

1. If you are rejected for a Google Grant, you should consider buying AdWords on Google and possibly other widely used search engines. This practice has proven to be one of the most productive ways to advertise online—usually, far more so than the familiar, now old-fashioned banner ads.
2. The process of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) normally requires either a savvy in-house Webmaster or professional help—or both. It takes time. (SEO involves tweaking code throughout your site that will greatly increase the chances that search engines will list your site in a higher position when people search for “your” keywords.) The payoff comes in an increased flow of visits to your Web site by people who access one or another of the major search engines.
3. Increase the frequency of changes you make to your Web site, especially the home page. If you post new articles, videos, testimonials, or other new items on a weekly basis instead of monthly, or daily instead of weekly, your search engine ranking—and thus, in all likelihood, the traffic to your site—will increase. This, of course, means extra work for someone, and possibly even an extra staff position.
4. Produce videos that deliver up-to-the-minute information about your work. These can be as simple as talking-head updates or as elaborate as a Hollywood production. Posted on a Web site or distributed by email, a video is likely to gain you far more attention than even an article. More people now watch video online than use search engines.
5. Take a hint from MoveOn.org and the Obama campaign and set modest, short-term fundraising goals that will lend themselves to day-long or week-long campaigns. Engineer a real-time progress report to keep up the momentum as new donors join in the effort.
6. Try paid “chaperoned emails”—appeals from your organization that are sent by intermediary organizations (such as media sites) to their subscribers. If the cause or issue you’re addressing is consistent with the values and demographic profile of the subscribers to that site or service, you might attract a significant number of new names for your list. But don’t expect to ask them for money, at least not initially. This is a list-building exercise. You’ll have to work on inducing them to become donors.

Actions along these lines will yield two significant dividends for your organization: first, your relationships with your donors will be strengthened, because you’ll be broadening a channel of communications they can exploit to become more engaged in advancing your mission; and, second, you’ll be laying the groundwork for the fundraising of the future, which will almost certainly rest more squarely on electronic communications than traditional mail and phone. But there is one, even more significant step involving email and the Internet that you can take to boost your fundraising program: to break down the silos within your development operations and between development, communications, and marketing. We’ll take up that subject in the next chapter.
 

From FUNDRAISING WHEN MONEY IS TIGHT by Mal Warwick.  Copyright (c) 2009 by Mal Warwick.  Reprinted by permission of Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, San Francisco, CA 94103.

This is the final excerpt.  To read more, Mal Warwick's Fundraising when Money is Tight is available on Amazon.com.

Continuing with "reviewing fifteen of the simple steps you can take online—without spending much, if any, money—to support your fundraising program" - steps 11-15:

• Convert online donors to monthly sustainers. Almost everywhere outside the USA, nearly all fundraisers know that one-off gifts are a far less reliable and less lucrative source of support for nonprofit initiatives than are “regular” or “committed” monthly donors. Equally important, monthly donors are on average far more loyal than one-off donors. It’s not unusual for monthly givers to continue contributing—and, in many cases, regularly increasing—their gifts for ten years or longer. It’s true that the relatively antiquated banking industry in the United States makes monthly giving a harder sell. Nonetheless, hundreds of venturesome nonprofits have succeeded in converting a large enough proportion of their donors (perhaps ten to twenty percent) to monthly programs, so that their gifts account for as much as half the overall income from membership or direct marketing. In Europe, by contrast, many nonprofits exist almost exclusively on the basis of committed giving. Although relatively few online donors are likely to convert to a monthly program, the cost of offering them the opportunity is low. And those who do buy in will become the backbone of an online fundraising program.

• Apply for a Google Grant. You’re eligible if your organization is a U.S. 501(c)(3) and shares Google’s “philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts.” If approved, a Google Grant will provide you with free search AdWords. When a keyword related to your organization or your issue is searched, a small text ad like the following will appear in the upper-right-hand column. Here for example, is what appears when I searched for “torture”:

Sponsored Links
1.    Waterboarding Is Torture
Join Us Today to Stop the Cruel
Practice of Torture!
www.HumanRightsFirst.org

• Develop a “charity badge” or “widget”—a small, colorful link to your Web site—that your supporters can place on their Facebook, MySpace, or other social networking pages. If your widget is clever and attention-getting and enough of your supporters agree to post it, you can significantly boost traffic to your site. For example, Exhibit 13-2 shows the charity badge I picked up from the Facebook page of the Humane Society of the United States.
  
  Figure 13.1 Humane Society Charity Badge

• Take a page from the playbook of the word-of-mouth marketers, and ask your supporters to write brief statements of support for your organization and its work. Post the best of them online. If you get enough, create a separate page linked to the home page, offering “What They Say About Us.” Testimonials by clients or beneficiaries, donors, volunteers, or community members can be far more effective in making your case for giving than you can manage. They’re simply more credible. 

• To take the word-of-mouth concept a step further, sign up your organization with Great Nonprofits (www.greatnonprofits.org). There, your donors, volunteers, and other stakeholders can register their comments about the experiences they’ve had with your organization. You’ll get more exposure, which will lead to more traffic on your Web site—and, potentially, more donors. (Don’t worry about negative comments. There may well be a few, but they’re inevitably far outnumbered by the positive ones. In today’s skeptical society, you probably will even need a few nasty remarks to make the nice ones credible!)

From FUNDRAISING WHEN MONEY IS TIGHT by Mal Warwick.  Copyright (c) 2009 by Mal Warwick.  Reprinted by permission of Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, San Francisco, CA 94103.

Continuing with "reviewing fifteen of the simple steps you can take online—without spending much, if any, money—to support your fundraising program" - steps 6-10:

• Develop a “get-a-friend” capacity, and include it in every email communication—newsletter, alert, whatever. If your online communications are powerful, and especially if your work or the issue you address is prominent in the news, you might acquire a substantial number of new supporters through such referrals.
• Build a specific landing page for each electronic appeal to reinforce the specific case for giving. Don’t merely send prospective donors to your standard donation page. This would be the equivalent in direct mail of enclosing a standard, wallet-flap remittance envelope with every fundraising letter—which (I hope I needn’t add) is a big no-no.
• If your organization is engaged even slightly in policy advocacy, design a petition to gather email addresses, thus building your list. If advocacy is foreign to your organization, try a contest or a quiz about the issues you address. An intriguing petition, contest, or quiz might attract hundreds or thousands of new supporters as it bounces around the ozone.
• Make sure you’re utilizing the capability of your online fundraising tools to track donor interests and behaviors, and be sure to use that information to personalize your email offers. For example, consider sending an online survey (using a service such as SuveyMonkey or Zoomerang) to elicit some of the same sort of information I noted in Chapter 12, and integrate the answers into email communications.
• Precede every appeal by mail or phone with an email message to all those donors selected for inclusion in the project. You could send either a simple heads-up notice that an urgent letter is in the mail—or you could give those who prefer to contribute online a chance to save you the expense of mailing them by giving online. Either way, you’re likely to boost the returns you receive in the mail. You might also consider following up an appeal by mail or phone with a second email, updating donors on the progress of your fundraising campaign and giving them one more chance to contribute to it.

to be continued...

From FUNDRAISING WHEN MONEY IS TIGHT by Mal Warwick.  Copyright (c) 2009 by Mal Warwick.  Reprinted by permission of Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, San Francisco, CA 94103.

I strongly believe that, over the long run, fundraisers will come to rely on online communications to bring in a disproportionate share of revenue—while playing an ever more prominent role in reinforcing fundraising efforts through other channels in the short run.

There are three strategic drivers of success in online fundraising:

1. A compelling and involving Web site that cries out to visitors to become engaged—to give if possible, but at the very least to leave their email addresses.
2. An ongoing effort to acquire email addresses through every means possible. Only with a large and growing email list can your organization thrive online.
3. An easy way for visitors—and especially donors acquired through other channels—to contribute through your Web site. Increasingly, direct mail-acquired donors are acquiring the habit of renewing or making special contributions online in response to direct mail appeals.

With that understanding, let’s begin by reviewing fifteen of the simple steps you can take online—without spending much, if any, money—to support your fundraising program:

• If you don’t already produce an electronic or e-newsletter or frequent alert, start one. Be sure to use your Web site to promote this opportunity to all visitors, casual or not—and invite them to sign up free of charge and with minimal fuss and bother. (The less information you ask for, the more people will sign up.)
• Use every opportunity to gather email addresses from your supporters, and immediately add each new address to your e-newsletter or other email communication. This means including a line for donors and prospects to write in an email address on every form you distribute, whether through the mail, at your office or other facilities, or at special events. It also means sending an automatic message of thanks to every new subscriber, with one or more links to pages on your Web site where you offer news or opportunities for engagement.
• If you’re contacting your supporters once a month by email, increase the frequency to twice monthly, or weekly. If you’ve secured permission from your supporters to contact them by email, you’ll probably find that only a small percentage will “unsubscribe.”
• Optimize online giving opportunities on your Web site by making the process as easy as possible for donors. For example, include a prominent “Donate” button on every page—including, of course, your home page.
• Include a “Donate” button on every email you send—including those from staff (and that means you, too!). Be sure you don’t overlook your e-newsletter.
   

to be continued...

From FUNDRAISING WHEN MONEY IS TIGHT by Mal Warwick.  Copyright (c) 2009 by Mal Warwick.  Reprinted by permission of Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, San Francisco, CA 94103.

Let’s get something straight right off the bat.

If what you’ve got in mind is to cut costs in direct mail and other forms of capital-intensive fundraising and substitute online communications instead, forget it. This course will lead only to grief. I know of at least one organization, consumed by a rigid environmental ethic, that eliminated its direct mail program entirely a few years ago and switched to fundraising by email—and was forced to fold its doors within a year.

Online fundraising and communications is an exciting field brimming over with promise. You can recruit new supporters, including donors; you can engage and motivate your donors; you can even raise a little money. But you can’t expect donors to change their habits overnight and respond online to the same sort of appeals that you might otherwise deliver by phone or mail. And don’t hold your breath waiting for millions to pour in from your Facebook Cause or in response to Twitter tweets. Those things simply ain’t going to happen. By 2020, perhaps. But not in the foreseeable future, despite all the rosy predictions from the online-fundraising boosters club. And certainly not soon enough to help you compensate for shortfalls in other aspects of your fundraising program caused by prevailing economic conditions.

But here’s what you can expect from the online medium today:

• Studies show that a hugely disproportionate number of donors—your donors!—use email and the Internet. Eighty percent of them in one notable study. They may not be giving to you now, but they’re likely to be more receptive to communicating with you online than you think they are.
• Research also indicates that half of all those who receive appeals for funds from nonprofit organizations go first to the Internet to check their Web sites. Some, a much smaller proportion, also check the sites of the charity watchdogs such as GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance. More and more, donors are even giving online in response to appeals sent through direct mail. My colleagues and I have been seeing as much as ten to twenty percent of revenue from direct mail renewals or special appeals come in online for organizations that have strong Web sites.
• The experience of fundraisers who are using email to reinforce direct mail or telefundraising efforts clearly suggests that email boosts overall response without necessarily bringing in much money online.
• Increasingly, special events are taking shape online. Invitations, registration, and payment can all be handled with great efficiency via the Internet, and as a result some organizations now use the online medium exclusively to promote and organize their events.
   

From FUNDRAISING WHEN MONEY IS TIGHT by Mal Warwick.  Copyright (c) 2009 by Mal Warwick.  Reprinted by permission of Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Imprint, San Francisco, CA 94103.