Sanky Blog

By Harry Lynch
Published on AFP site on April 14, 2008

Back in ancient times—say around 1998—we all knew that the Internet was going to take over the world. Remember that? How obsolete and uncool was everything else, including every other fundraising medium and method, about to become?

It wasn’t to be, of course. Not even close, in fact. Yet even the naysayers, who have a decade’s worth of history and hindsight on their side, would do well to stop and take note of just how far we have come in just 10 short years.

The approximately 50-fold increase in the amount of money being raised online over the last decade is eye-popping. While the Internet may still represent less than 4 percent of the nearly $300 billion being donated annually in the United States, if the rates of growth hold up, well, you do the math.

Of course, there’s also the often-overlooked fact of who is now online. Fully one-third of people over 65 (READ: those most philanthropically inclined) are now active on the Internet. Plus, nearly three-quarters of those in the 50–64 age group (i.e. the folks making the most money) are going online regularly. That degree of Internet penetration among older adults is wildly ahead of what was projected just a few years ago.

There’s just no doubt about it: The future of online fundraising is clearly very bright—and very, very complicated.

Rapid shifts in what people do online and how they do it, as well as the growing tendency for older users to jump back and forth between new and traditional media, make best practices for online fundraising a rapidly moving target.

When it comes to new media, there’s simply no such thing as timeless lessons. The best anyone can claim to do is offer a few observations that might serve as guideposts in these extraordinary—and extraordinarily challenging—times. Here are a few:

• Keep up with, and invest in if you can, the newest thing. Pay close attention to trends and shifts. However, don’t bet the house—at least not yet—on social networking or text messaging campaigns. These are vital and exciting ways to engage mostly younger audiences. There are a few important exceptions, but the majority of nonprofit organizations have yet to raise truly significant funds through these channels.
• Pay more than lip service to synchronizing online and offline fundraising and communication channels. “Integration” should be more than just a buzzword. More and more online donors—and in all likelihood your most important ones—are likely to move offline at some point and mail you a check, or vice versa. Keep track of them and engage them in the right way, in the best medium, at the right time.
• Listen (of course!) when the 40-year-old chair of your board tells you to post a video to your website or insists that you add some Flash animation. At the same time, don’t have the entire strength of your online appeal depend on any feature that might be a barrier for anyone who might have a slow Internet connection or an older computer, or who simply may be less comfortable with downloads and new software. (Fact: 53 percent of Americans used dialup Internet at home in 2007!)
• Don’t skip the basics: building a great website, getting people to your great website and using email to engage and ultimately solicit your constituency. The vast majority of donations online are still generated by websites that make a compelling case, in both words and photographs, and succeed in getting people to visit them. (Another fact: a recent survey found that 62 percent of Americans visit an organization’s website before donating!)
• Don’t pay too much attention to how America’s kids communicate. While our text-message-happy youngsters may tell us that email is not cool (“so my parents” was the last quote I heard), that’s exactly the point. Email is now the preferred means of communication by many parents, along with aunts, uncles and grandparents. The last time I checked, those are still the very people who give money to nonprofit organizations.

Perhaps the next generation of donors will want to send their donations via text message, be motivated by clips on Google’s YouTube channels or respond to some unimagined method that we’ll be talking about in future articles.

We need to be ready. We need to keep our eyes open and be sure not to blink. The future is flying at us a whole lot faster than it used to.

We also need to be excruciatingly careful not to take our eyes off what we do know in the present: who gives online, why they give and what we know we can do today to raise more money online.