Raiser Sharpe Tips » Online fundraising

Answer the Only Question Donors Have and You’ll Raise More Money Fundraising

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 22:07:43 +0000

Your donors have only one question that bothers them.

If you want to acquire more donors, you have to answer it. If you want to raise more net revenue, you need to answer it. And if you want to increase the lifetime value of your donors, you must answer it.

Here’s their question: “How will my donation change the world?”

Donors are confused
Donors ask this question for a number of reasons. For one thing, they’re confused. If they live in Canada and want to support an organization that helps children with cancer, for example, should they donate to the Childhood Cancer Foundation, Canadian Cancer Society, Canadian Research Society, Cancer Recovery Foundation of Canada, Coast to Coast Against Cancer, Wellspring Cancer Support Foundation, Terry Fox Run, or someone else?

Many donors don’t know. Or can’t decide. So given that your non-profit organization has competitors who do similar work, you must tell prospective and current donors exactly how you will use their gift to transform lives. Otherwise your donors may donate somewhere else.

Donors have limited funds
There’s another reason you must tell your donors how their gift will make the world a better place. Some of them are on a fixed income. Others just retired. More than a few have student debt. Or other kinds of debt. Some are broke. Either way, they can’t support as many charities as they’d like, so they give their money to the few causes that promise to make the biggest difference with their gifts.

Donors fund specifics, not generalities
Given the choice between donating to “End Hunger in Your City” or giving a donation that buys “Thanksgiving dinner for $1.73″ for a man at the local homeless mission, you know what the donor will choose. And so does the donor. “How will my donation change the world?” is a question that demands a specific answer, not a general one. Supply the answer and your donor will supply the donation.

Don’t ask for a single donation until you can answer this question. That goes for every campaign, every appeal, every ask throughout the year. And make sure your answer is clear, concrete and compelling. Your donors demand it, no question about it.

Need help with your direct mail program?
Download this book now.
Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program.

Need help?
If you need help raising money through the mail , give me a call at Harvey McKinnon Associates, at (416) 537-2904 ext. 212

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Ask for Email Addresses, Not Donations, in Online Fundraising

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:32:28 +0000

The key to raising money online isn’t Facebook or YouTube or Twitter or a donate button on every webpage.

It’s email.

Email is the tool that gets your message into the mind of your donor and persuades her to return to your website to make a donation.

Your charity cannot afford to wait for donors and potential donors to return to your website. You need to give them a reason to return. And you need to give them a way to return. Email is that way.

Which means the number one priority of your website is not to raise money or to acquire donors. It’s to acquire email addresses.

Unless your charity is a national, well-known charity that helps people during emergencies, and unless there is an emergency on right now, most visitors to your website will not donate during their first visit.

You need to start a conversation with them. A conversation that starts with email.

Stop asking for donations and start asking for email addresses instead.

Invite your visitor to complete a survey. Or take a poll. Or sign your petition. Or subscribe to your email newsletter. Or request your e-bulletin.

Use as many creative, compelling, donor-centred ways of persuading your visitors to give you their email address. But don’t simply say, “Enter your email address here to be added to our mailing list.” Instead, offer your visitors something of value that is delivered by email.

Your goal is to acquire as many email addresses as possible. Online fundraising is a numbers game. And the numbers are small. Open rates of 8%. Click-through rates of 2%. With metrics like these, you need to be reaching as many donors and potential donors as possible with every email appeal.

Think tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Aim for quantity. Secure as many email addresses as you possibly can, using as many tactics as you can think of, can afford and can manage.

Then develop a plan for converting a large percentage of the people on your email list to donors. Pretend you are dating. Treat their first visit to your website as the way you happened to meet. Instead of asking for their phone number, you asked for their email address.

In your first series of email messages, start the relationship by helping your potential donor get to know you a little better. Be interesting. Charming. Engaging.

When the time is right, pop the question. Ask for a gift. Direct the reader to your website to make a donation. Then follow up with a heartfelt thank-you letter.

Stop asking for donations and start asking for email addresses, and you’ll succeed at online fundraising.

Learn More
Read Online Fundraising Secrets.
Learn the latest tactics for attracting website visitors and raising money online with compelling webpages, irresistible email appeals and engaging email newsletters.

Need help?
If you need help raising money online, give me a call at Harvey McKinnon Associates, at (416) 537-2904 ext. 212

Twenty Postal Strike Survival Tips for Charities and Non-Profits

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 16:04:50 +0000

What should you do if your charity raises money through the mail but your country’s postal workers are about to strike, or are already on strike?

Naturally, you’re troubled.

Most charities in Canada that are not places of worship raise a substantial portion of their operating budget using fundraising letters. Many charities also rely on the mail to recruit new donors, keep their donors up to date with newsletters, invite donors to special events, conduct donor surveys, and issue charitable tax receipts and thank-you letters. So a strike by postal workers isn’t just an inconvenience. It threatens a charity’s very existence.

Here are some ways to survive a postal strike.

In the weeks before the postal workers go on strike, write to your donors. Tell them that a strike is imminent, and give the anticipated strike date if possible.
Describe how the strike will affect your donors’ ability to communicate with you, and your ability to communicate with your donors, by mail.
Warn your donors to expect delays in receiving their gift acknowledgement letters, since their mail gifts, and you thank-you letters, will likely be delayed in the mail system.
If the labour action involves rotating strikes in cities across the country rather than a nationwide general strike, warn your donors to still expect delays, since the location and duration of each strike is unpredictable.
Give your donors a way to keep current on the status of the strike by showing them where to sign up for email bulletins, text alerts and media releases issued by the postal labour union and the postal service. Direct donors to the websites of each party in the strike.
Encourage your donors to make their donations using other methods, such as email, phone, online, text and in person.
Before the strike begins, make contingency plans for sending your appeals by email, provided you have the technical ability and sufficient email addresses to do so profitably.
If you are going to solicit gifts during the strike by email, write to donors whose email addresses you do not have on file, and invite them to give you their email addresses. Give donors an incentive, such as a gift certificate, for doing so (you’ll acquire more addresses this way).
If you anticipate that the strike will be prolonged, consider phoning your high-value donors and asking for a gift. Mention the impact of the strike and encourage them to either phone your charity or give online. Do this throughout the duration of the strike.
If you anticipate that the strike will be prolonged, write to your donors before the strike and invite them to join your monthly giving program. If some are reluctant, invite them to give a gift each month, however small, for the duration of the strike only. Stress your need for daily funds to continue helping the people you serve.
Before the strike begins, invite your most frequent and generous donors to mail you a series of post-dated cheques.
Before the strike begins, invite your donors to add your charity as an Internet banking payee so that they can donate to your cause when they pay their bills online.
Ramp up your homepage so that it makes a clear, compelling request for donations (perhaps even mentioning your inability to receive donations in the mail, and stressing the need for visitors to donate online or by phone instead).
Revise your Twitter homepage so that it stresses your need for funds during the strike, and then solicit donations in some of your tweets.
Post a provocative, viral video on YouTube that shows the predicament your charity will be in if you stop receiving gifts during the postal strike. Make a strong request for funds, and direct viewers to your donation page, or even better, to a special landing page dedicated to the strike.
Post regular status updates to your Facebook page so that your fans, friends, donors, advocates, members and everyone else is reminded regularly of your need for funds.
While the strike is on, email your gift acknowledgement letters, charitable gift receipts, newsletters and special event invitations.
If your charity has to cancel a fundraising event because of the postal strike, host the event online instead as a creative, fun, tongue-in-cheek non-event. (“Our Black Tie Non-Event will NOT take place on (date). Cocktails will NOT be served at 5:30 p.m. Dinner will NOT be served at 7 p.m. NO program will be held at 8:30 p.m.)
When the strike is over, and you have a backlog of gift acknowledgement letters to mail, mention in each letter that you are sorry for the delay in thanking the donor.
When the strike is over, don’t be tempted to persuade as many donors as possible to start giving online instead of by mail. The majority of today’s donors prefer the mail. Gifts made by email and online still make up less than 10% of the revenue for most charities in North America.

Distracted Online Donors Don’t Donate

Alan Sharpe — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 13:45:07 +0000

The percentage of people who visit a website and get somewhere through the shopping cart process but eventually give up is around 59 percent.

So that means more than one out of every two visitors to a website has a credit card in hand and is ready to buy (or donate) but does not. They give up.

One of the culprits is distractions.

Different things distract different people. I suggest one thing you do not want to have on your donation page is a video or a video that people can watch that takes them outside of that page. If people get to your donate now page, you don’t want to have a video they can click that takes them to YouTube or MySpace or shows them another page on your website.

Consider the donation page for a human rights organization. On the left-hand side they have a link to News Releases, About Us, Publications, and Info by Country. They have all the Global Issues, like Torture, Women’s Rights, and Social Justice. Then you look further down, they have a Film Festival, Photo Galleries, and Audio/Video. They have all of these tantalizing things that a donor might glance at and think: “Oh, they have a photo gallery. I think I’ll click on that.” And they clicked right away from the donation page.

At the bottom of the same page they have a Bookstore, Press Contacts, and Financial Documents. They have all sorts of stuff that you can click on at the bottom of the page, and on the left of the page, and on the right of the page. Big mistake.

You want to remove anything that you think will distract a donor from making a donation. That includes graphics, videos, and navigation buttons that take them out of that page and somewhere else in your website, and any words, paragraphs, sentences, or phrases that take up the donors’ time and distract them from giving a gift.

If you’ve ever been involved in sales, you know that one of the cautions that you always receive as a salesperson is, “Don’t talk yourself out of a sale.” Some people do that. They give you the presentation, they show you what it is that they think you should buy, and then once you’ve agreed to buy it and you’re ready to buy they carry on talking and talking and talking and talking. And sometimes they’ll tell you something about the product that you hadn’t really thought about and hadn’t learned, and they talk you out of buying it.

Don’t to do that on your donation page. Ask for the donation. And only the donation. Then be quiet.

Learn More

Online Fundraising Secrets

Learn the latest tactics for attracting website visitors and raising money online with compelling webpages, irresistible email appeals and engaging email newsletters.

Non-Profit Domain Names: Twenty Do’s and Dont’s for Creating Yours

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:58:13 +0000

If I asked you to recall the domain names of the 20 largest US charities, you’d do pretty well, I know.

You’d remember mayo.edu, of course, the largest US charity, and ymca.net (2nd).

And clevelandclinic.org (4th).

And redcross.org (6th).

And likely salvationarmyusa.org (7th).

But would you remember nyp.org, mskcc.org, csmc.edu, bgca.org, and chop.edu?

I didn’t think so.

Although these charities are the 9th, 12th, 13th, 15th and 16th largest charities in the United States, their domain names fail the three tests of an effective charitable domain name. They are neither easy to spell, pleasant on the ear, nor memorable.

If you want your donors, clients, employees and the media to remember your non-profit domain name, follow these 20 Do’s and Don’ts for naming yours.

1. Accentuate the positive
www.muscle.ca
Muscular Dystrophy Canada

2. Ask for the gift
www.supportcamh.ca
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation

3. Call yourself what everyone else calls you
www.sickkids.ca
The Hospital for Sick Children

4. If your initials are well known, use them
www.aa.org
Alcoholics Anonymous

5. Turn a popular perception on its ear
www.autismspeaks.com
Autism Speaks Canada

6. Cut your name in half
www.amnesty.org
Amnesty International

7. Put your case for support in your domain
www.livestrong.org
The Lance Armstrong Foundation

8. Use hyphens
www.oprah-winfrey.org
Oprah Winfrey Foundation

9. Use some alliteration
www.metmuseum.org
Metropolitan Museum of Art

10. Say it backwards
www.unicefusa.org
United States Fund for UNICEF

11. Reduce your name to a verb
www.adopt.org
The National Adoption Center

12. Name your country with the suffix
www.heartandstroke.ca
Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada

13. Name your city in your name
www.seattlehumane.org
Seattle Humane Society

14. Name your state in your name
www.oregonhumane.org
Oregon Humane Society

15. Name your country in your name
www.americanheart.org
American Heart Association

16. If your initials are not well known, don’t use them . . .
www.rnzfb.org
The Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind

when you can instead spell out your name . . .
www.blindfoundation.org
Blind Foundation for India

17. Don’t abbreviate your name to initials that appear to spell an unrelated word
www.artic.edu
Art Institute of Chicago

18. Don’t abbreviate your name to initials that are meaningless to the unconverted
www.chrisapp.org
Christian Appalachian Project

19. Don’t compound your troubles by using initials in your sub-domain name and your domain name
www.irp.wisc.edu
The Institute for Research on Poverty oat the University of Wisconsin-Madison

20. Remember that even the longest names can be shortened memorably
www.kennedy-center.org
John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

By the way, the 9th, 12th, 13th, 15th and 16th largest charities in the US, the ones with the forgettable domain names (above), are Presbyterian Hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. But then you knew that, right?

Boost Your Online Fundraising by Thinking Like Wal-Mart

Alan Sharpe — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:33:24 +0000

To generate more donations from your website, think like Wal-Mart.

If you visit a Wal-Mart looking for a spare tire, you don’t walk in the doors looking for a sign that says “Spare Tires.” You look for a sign that says “Automotive.”

You don’t want “Housewares,” “Fashions,” or “Electronics.” You walk towards the sign that says “Automotive,” and when you get there, you look for a wall of tires. When you see those, you know you’ve arrived. Shoppers who can’t find what they want in one store leave for another. That’s why retailers spend millions of dollars each year on improving their wayfinding, store layout and signage. Walk into a Wal-Mart today and you’ll notice two things about the store layout: 1. Wal-Mart has clearly delineated grocery from general merchandise, and 2. they’ve established strong sightlines into key departments.

Do the same for your donors.

When donors and potential donors land at your website ready to make a donation, they hunt for a button that says Donate. They don’t come looking for a button that says “Support Our Cause,” or “Foundation” or “Donor Links” or “Giving.” They come looking for a button that says “Donate.” Not “Donations” the noun, but “Donate,” the imperative. Put that button where your donors will find it quickly.

And make sure that when someone clicks your Donate button, they’re taken immediately to the Donate page. Don’t take them to one of those pages that says “Why you should donate” or “Our foundation needs your support” or “23 reasons to consider giving to your local hospital.” If they’ve clicked your Donate button, they’re ready to donate. Take them directly to the form where they put in their first name, last name, address, credit card.

And don’t give donors a detour. Don’t take them to Housewares when they want Automotive. Don’t have a distracting pop-up that asks them to take a survey. Take them right to the page where they give you their credit card information.

So put your donors one click away from a donation, since they are already one click away from your competitors.

Online Fundraising Secrets

Learn the latest tactics for attracting website visitors and raising money online with compelling webpages, irresistible email appeals and engaging email newsletters.

Internet Fundraising: Raise Funds Online with these Nine Email List-Building Tips

Alan Sharpe — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:18:56 +0000

The secret to raising funds online is not Facebook or Twitter or texting or even your website. It’s email. To raise money on the Internet you need the email addresses of folks who believe in your cause and want to see you in their inbox. Here are nine principles to follow in acquiring those addresses.

1. Only add subscribers to your list who have given you permission to email them.

2. Attract new subscribers by offering them regular, valuable content. Before anybody gives you their email address, they’ll want to know what’s in it for them. Tell them. They’ll get a weekly email newsletter, bulletins, alerts, updates or tips on how to manage their health. Offer valuable content in exchange for their email address.

3. Offer a tangible incentive, such as discount coupons or free admission to a special event.

4. Aim to get the email addresses of donors and non-donors, activists and non-activists, members and non-members. Advocates, volunteers, anonymous website visitors and any other non-donors who sign up for your newsletters are prime prospects for donations.

Don’t just concentrate on getting the email addresses for your donors. Try for anybody who could turn into an advocate, volunteer or future donor. The thing to remember is to just be patient. The nice thing about email is it doesn’t cost a lot of money to write to those people over time and encourage them to give a gift. So start off by trying to get the address rather than the donation.

5. Ask for as little information as possible to get their email address. You could simply ask for their email address alone – most of us would be horrified to do that. We’d at least like to know the name of the person. But when you start asking for their name, address, phone number, date of birth and social insurance number, you’re asking for trouble. Ask for as little as possible in order to get their address.

6. Make sure every single message you send to your list is helpful and relevant. Quality, relevant content is the easiest way to keep your subscribers subscribed and encourage them to refer you to others.

7. Don’t rent or borrow email addresses from anyone except the most reputable organizations and list companies in the industry. And, even then, exercise great caution because you don’t want to be branded as a spammer. It’ll put you on the blacklist for a long time and once you’re on, it’s hard to get off. If you’re on a blacklist, obviously you can’t do any email fundraising.

8. When you ask for someone’s email address, describe what you’ll send them and how often you’ll send it. You could even say, “You’ll be hearing from us every Friday,” or “You’ll get our Monday morning bulletin.” Let them know either how often or when they’ll be hearing from you so they’re not surprised.

9. Give your subscribers an easy way to opt out. Make it really simple for them to tell you they don’t want to hear from you anymore. There’s no point building a huge list of subscribers if they simply delete your messages or flag them as spam. I subscribe to a newsletter right here in Canada sent by one of Canada’s largest fundraising newsletter publishers and there’s no way to unsubscribe from it. I have to phone them or visit their website. Nowhere in the emails does it tell you how you can stop hearing from these people. You don’t want to be in that position. People will think you’re trying to make it hard for them to unsubscribe and you’ll spread ill will that way.

Excerpted from Online Fundraising Secrets by Alan Sharpe.

Attention Online Fundraisers: Your Donors Want to Get Engaged

Alan Sharpe — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:46:36 +0000

The non-profit organizations who raise the most money online use their websites to engage visitors. This is a vital step in raising money online. It’s not enough just to have a Donate Now button. You have to have a website that actually encourages people to do something on your website and get involved in some way.

Here’s an example from Heifer International’s website. Heifer does relief and development work overseas. If you visit their website, you’ll see a simple navigation bar. You can learn about their WORK. You can GET INVOLVED.

You can GIVE a gift. And you can LEARN more about the people who they help. If you click the GET INVOLVED link, it takes you to a page with the headline, “Get Involved – Help Heifer End Hunger.” And you can see all the ways that you can get involved with this organization.

You can become more engaged with the organization. You can Volunteer, for one thing. You can visit their learning centers. You can Support Partnerships, large and small, to help them achieve their mission of ending hunger around the world. You can even Take a Study Tour where you travel overseas and study the work that they’re doing and the people who they’re helping. You can help them Raise Funds. You can attend a special event, invite a speaker to come and speak to your group. And you can even refer this page (Email Page) or this organization to others that you know. There are lots of ways that you can get involved, and many nonprofits are using websites like this to engage their members and donors.

In the past, in the direct mail arena, the only option like this was Friend-Geta-Friend mailings, where we would encourage recipients of the direct mail piece to pass along a card or a buck slip or ask them to tell their friends about the organization. Whereas, online, you have many, many more creative ways and fun ways and engaging ways that you can spread the word and get your donors involved in your organization.

In North America, households that volunteer give 40% more money per year to charity than households that do not volunteer. So if you use your website to engage your donors, you’ll see your revenue increase over time.

Learn more

Online Fundraising Secrets

Learn the latest tactics for attracting website visitors and raising money online with compelling webpages, irresistible email appeals and engaging email newsletters.

Online Fundraising: Attract Donors with Search Engine Optimization

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:27:50 +0000

Search engines are the most common way that potential donors will find your website. A non-profit website that appears near the top of search engine results will witness a dramatic increase in traffic compared with competing websites that appear further down in the results.

Like every other charity, you want a high ranking on the search engines. Unfortunately, many charity websites appear poorly in search engine rankings-or not at all-because they are not written and designed to take advantage of how search engines work.

So how do search engines rank your web pages?

Among many other things, search engines pay attention to the location and frequency of keywords on each of your web pages. Keywords are simply those words that characterize your mission. If you are the American Cancer Society, for example, then “cancer,” “breast cancer” and “cancer treatment” are some of your keywords. If you are a human rights charity, then “death penalty,” “free speech” and “torture” are among your keywords.

When your potential donors search online for information about you or about the cause you champion, they type into a search engine the keywords that they associate with you and your work.

As far as the search engines are concerned, web pages with these search terms in the HTML title tag are more relevant than pages without them. Pages with these search terms near the top of the page (in the headline and first few paragraphs of text) are more relevant than pages without them. And pages that contain these search terms frequently on the page are more relevant than other web pages.

Your goal is to discover what keywords the majority of searchers type into the search engines when they are looking for information that you can help them with. Then put these keywords into the most strategic parts of your website, which include:

Domain name
Page title tag
Meta description tag
Meta keyword tag
Headings
Sentences and paragraphs near the top of your page

This process is called Search Engine Optimization. It makes sure your web pages are easily found by search engines, easily indexed by search engines, and given a high ranking by search engines, so your site appears at the top of searches.

You might be interested in…

Seminar-on-Demand 008-3
How to Attract Donors to Your Website
Presenter: Alan Sharpe.
Learn how to optimize your website to rank higher on the search engines, take advantage of You Tube, My Space and other social networking sites to drive potential donors to your website, and avoid common mistakes that penalize your search engine rankings.
6 pages of tips, best-practices and full-colour samples of effective websites. 90-minute recording of a live seminar. Delivered by mail on a CD.

And don’t miss…

Handbook Number 24
75 Easy Ways to Build Your Opt-in Email List.
Acquire new subscribers, donors, members and advocates with these tested strategies.

Handbook Number 26
Raise Funds in a Recession.
Twenty-seven development professionals describe how to raise funds, cut costs and retain donors in an economic downturn.

Online Fundraising Donation Pages Must Answer Donor’s 3 Questions

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:15:58 +0000

Do you use direct mail fundraising letters to drive donors to your website to make their donations? If you do, make sure your website donation page answers the three most common questions asked by donors.

Question #1. Am I at the correct place?
What you say on your donation page needs to match what you say in your direct mail appeal. Visually, this means that if you feature in your direct mail package a photo of a homeless man eating supper at your drop-in shelter, you should feature that same photo on your make-a-donation page. If the ask in your letter is for your Tornado Relief Project, then the ask on your donation page needs to match that. Which, by the way, means you should never direct your direct mail readers to your home page to make their gift. You should send them directly to your donation page, preferably one designed specifically for each direct mail campaign.

Question #2. Where is the one thing I’m looking for?
Donation pages, for some donors, have replaced business reply envelopes as the response device in direct mail fundraising. A growing number of supporters like to read your letter offline but make their donation online. Which means your donation page is not so much a webpage as a response device. And Maxim Number One of direct mail response devices and order forms is to make them simple to understand and easy to complete.

So if you have invited your direct mail reader to sign a petition on your site, make that petition form simple to find and easy to complete.

If your appeal letter offers a tote bag in exchange for an online donation, show a picture of the premium and give instructions on how to get it.

If you’re offering a discount that visitors receive by entering a discount code found in the letter you mailed them, make the place on your donation page where they enter that code impossible to miss.

Question #3. Can I trust you?
Trust is the deal breaker in fundraising, both online and offline. Potential donors and members who decide they cannot trust you won’t donate. So if your direct mail piece wins their trust but your donation page loses it, you lose the donation. And the donor. Which means you must avoid the things that create suspicion online, and employ the tactics that increase trust.

Avoid donation page mistakes that arouse suspicion:
1. No street address, just a PO Box
2. No phone number
3. No privacy policy
4. No security policy

Use donation page elements that create trust:
1. Better Business Bureau logo and a link to your online BBB profile
2. eTrust logo, or similar (so donor’s know their privacy is secure)
3. Toll-free customer service phone number
4. Endorsements from trusted, objective, third parties, such as Charity Navigator

Remember that your online donation page is part-two of your direct mail case for support and ask. You’ll convert more visitors into donors when you give them what they expect to find, make the process easy and quick, and avoid the tactics used by spammers and scammers.

You might be interested in…

Handbook Number 24
75 Easy Ways to Build Your Opt-in Email List.
Acquire new subscribers, donors, members and advocates with these tested strategies.

Handbook Number 14
The Fundraising Letter P.S.: 100 and 1 Ways to Make Yours More Powerful.
Attract gifts and motivate donors by improving one of the most important sections of your donor appeal letters.

Online Fundraising: Four Deadly Blunders to Avoid

Alan Sharpe — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:31:48 +0000

The good news is that 62 percent of adults visit a non-profit’s website before donating (according to a recent online survey conducted by Harris Interactive).

That’s also the bad news.

For many non-profits, the quickest way they can scare away donors is to direct them to the organization’s website. Too many non-profit websites are making blunders that discourage donors from browsing, donating, volunteering or referring others to the site. Here are four common blunders, and how to avoid them.

Blunder #1. Obscure website address
What would you expect to find at www.gghorg.ca? Is this address obviously for Guelph General Hospital? How easy is this website address to remember? Is it as easy to remember as www.lenoxhillhospital.org, the address for, you guessed it, Lenox Hill Hospital? If you want donors, volunteers, members, alumni, the media and others to easily find your website, give it an address that’s both intuitive and easy to remember. If your organization’s name is a mouthful, then create a unique website address, as the Arthritis Research Institute of America did with its website, www.preventarthritis.org.

Blunder #2. Donate button on the homepage only
Some visitors will find your website by typing your website address into their browser. But plenty more will find you through a search. Which means they may land on any page of your website other than your homepage. So if you want visitors to donate, put a Donate Now button or link on every page of your site, not just on the homepage.

Blunder #3. No email sign-up
The key to raising money online is not your website. It’s your email. You raise money by emailing folks who have asked to hear from you. But you can only do that if you have their email addresses. A website that does not collect email addresses is not likely to raise much money. So put a sign-up link on every page of your site, offering a free email newsletter, email updates or something else of value to your donors that they will receive from you by email.

Blunder #4. No interaction
I heard recently of a young boy who explained to his father why he didn’t watch television: “It doesn’t do anything. All I can do is watch it.” That explains the beauty of the Internet: it’s interactive. Which means your website visitors expect your website to be interactive. They expect to be able to “do something.” Your visitors will stay longer, and enjoy their visit more, if you offer them online surveys, polls, petitions, quizzes, refer-a-friend buttons, donation pages and other ways for visitors to interact with your site.

You might be interested in…

Seminar-on-Demand 008-3
How to Attract Donors to Your Website
Presenter: Alan Sharpe.
Learn how to optimize your website to rank higher on the search engines, take advantage of You Tube, My Space and other social networking sites to drive potential donors to your website, and avoid common mistakes that penalize your search engine rankings. 6 pages of tips, best-practices and full-colour samples of effective websites. 90-minute recording of a live seminar. Delivered by mail on a CD.

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