The total that charities raised online jumped 19 percent in 2011 compared with the previous year, and the number of Internet gifts they received climbed 20 percent, according to a new study that analyzes online fundraising and advocacy at 44 national charities.
The 2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study was published by M+R Strategic Services, a fundraising consulting company, and the Nonprofit Technology Network.
The share of people who responded to e-mail fundraising appeals and advocacy requests dropped in each of the last five eNonprofit Benchmarks studies. But in 2011, organizations said the percentage who made gifts increased 2 percent and the percentage who responded to advocacy alerts jumped 28 percent.
The increases can be attributed, at least in part, to organizations’ being smarter about their use of e-mail, says Sarah DiJulio, a principal at M+R Strategic Services.
The growing number of people using their cellphones to go online is a compelling reason for nonprofits to think more about how they make mobile technology a key part of spreading their messages and operating their programs, Laura Quinn, executive director of Idealware, told participants at the Nonprofit Technology Conference here.
In a recent survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 10 percent of cellphone owners said that their phone was their primary means of getting online. For certain demographic groups, such as young people and low-income workers, the percentage was even higher.
The first thing nonprofits should think about, Ms. Quinn said, is how their current Web site appears on cellphones. She recommended visiting the Web site mobilephoneemulator.com to see how an organization’s site looks on different mobile-phone operating systems….
Inactive e-mail lists have always posed a challenge to fundraisers, but as spam filters get more sophisticated, the stakes are getting higher, Dan Atherton, a consultant at Chapman Cubine Adams + Hussey, told participants in San Francisco at the Nonprofit Technology Conference.
He said e-mail providers like Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo monitor how people interact with an organization’s e-mail communication, and if not enough supporters open the messages, the providers will stop delivering the messages to subscribers’ inboxes.
“If nobody in the first wave of e-mails I send out opens my e-mail, other people won’t even see that e-mail,” said Mr. Atherton. “It will go into their spam folder.”
The Environmental Defense Fund recently ran into the problem with Gmail, said Matthew Grimm, an analyst at the organization.
“We saw our Gmail open rates plummet recently and didn’t…
When making purchasing decisions on, profit technology managers need to think about both “hard costs,” such as the price of a new software program, and ”soft costs,” the most important of which is staff time, Richard Wollenberger, director of information technology at the Parents as Teachers National Center, told participants at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, in San Francisco.
For example, when his organization recently bought a system that allows the technology department to push out updates to software programs across its network, he took into consideration the staff time that would be saved by eliminating the need to go to each employee’s desk to update the software individually.
“You figure by the time you can get people away from their computer and can go install their updates, you’re probably talking about a half an hour per computer per week,” said Mr….
Every year an estimated 1,000 polar bears linger outside the small Canadian town of Churchill, Manitoba, waiting for the Hudson Bay to freeze over so they can start their annual migration. To give Internet viewers a window onto the Arctic scene, a Bozeman, Mont., nonprofit organization is streaming the action live.
Polar Bears International has placed high-definition cameras onto a lodge and a wildlife-viewing vehicle run by Frontiers North Adventures, an adventure-travel company that organizes trips to see the migration. The cameras provide two live streams.
The Hudson Bay has usually been frozen by the second week of November, but last year it didn’t freeze until a month later, a sign of the Arctic warming that threatens polar bears, says Barbara Nielsen, a spokeswoman for Polar Bears International.
A mother watches a video she gained access to by scanning a QR code. Courtesy of Children's Museum of Richmond
If Karen S. Coltrane, chief executive of the Children’s Museum of Richmond, had her way, one of the museum’s education experts would accompany every family that walked in the door. But while she laughs at the thought that the Virginia museum would ever have that kind of money, Ms. Coltrane thinks she might have found the next best thing—with a decidedly lower price tag.
The museum has incorporated QR codes—a barcode that smartphones use to link to online information—into four of its main exhibits. And even though the organization has no technology workers, its marketing staff members figured out how to create the codes and make the idea work.
Not many charities are raising significant amounts of money through social networks, but the ones that are come in a variety of sizes, according to a new study.
Fewer than 3 percent of the 11,196 nonprofit groups that responded to the Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark survey said that they raised more than $10,000 on Facebook in 2010.
But of the 27 charities that reported raising more than $100,000 on Facebook, 30 percent had annual budgets of $1-million to $5-million.
Nearly nine out of 10 organizations in the survey said they have a presence on Facebook. Almost 60 percent of the groups use Twitter, and nearly a third say they are on LinkedIn.
The study was sponsored by the Nonprofit Technology Network; Blackbaud, a fund-raising software company, in Charleston, S.C.; and Common Knowledge, a technology-consulting company in San Francisco.
Doctors Without Borders is employing another tool in its effort to educate donors and the public about its work in Haiti since the massive earthquake: webcasting.
During a 90-minute webcast, scheduled for Thursday, January 13, at 8 p.m. U.S. Eastern time, officials from the medical charity will discuss how the organization has spent contributions, as well as current conditions in Haiti and efforts to stem the deadly cholera outbreak.
“We’re really trying to raise the bar in terms of the openness and transparency that we provide—not only on what we do but what we chose not to do—and to help people understand how an NGO like ourselves has to make those choices,” says Jason Cone, the group’s director of communications.
Over the last two weeks, the organization has solicited questions via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter. A day before the presentation, the group had already …
After the earthquake in Haiti, the American Red Cross started to receive Twitter messages from people who had family members trapped under collapsed buildings—but the organization didn’t have a coordinated way to get that information to emergency personnel in Haiti who could actually help.
Suspecting that it wasn’t the only relief group receiving pleas for assistance through social networks, the Red Cross organized the Emergency Social Data Summit to bring together government officials, nonprofit leaders, and social-media experts to discuss how to handle information coming in through the Web during disasters.
Most of the meeting, which will take place on Thursday starting at 9 a.m. U.S. Eastern time, will be streamed live over the Internet.
The competition is open to any nonprofit organization that focuses on conservation or environmental issues.
Participating organizations are reaching out to their supporters via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter to encourage them to vote for the charity to receive a share of the tournament prize money, the first $50,000 of which has been donated by eBay. So far 98 charities have registered.
People who sign up at the tournament site are eligible to cast initial vote for their favorite charity. To earn more votes, people can:
Donate to the tournament cash pool, earning 10 votes for every $10 donated.
Contribute to a participating charity, earning five votes for ever $10 contributed.
Refer others, earning one vote for each person they refer who registers at the site.
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