By Jennifer Furla
Executive Vice President
Midwest Region
Despite being part of the Boomer generation, where my grade-school son thinks “Mom and Dad” are decidedly uncool in trying to rap to his new-styled dance and hip-hop music, I still consider myself young and “hip.” So I answered incredulously when my much-younger cousin, in connecting with me by email over the holidays, asked if I knew what Facebook was.
Know it? I have a page!
Facebook was a common thread in emails and chance meetings among friends, relatives and acquaintances over the holiday break. It seemed that a whole new batch of us had awakened to this new technology of social networking and were anxious to try our hand at it.
In keeping with our promise to not only know state-of-the art, but to be state-of-the-art, our firm has made a commitment to ramp up our collective and individual aptitude for new technology, the likely audiences that will connect to it, and how all of this can impact your nonprofit fundraising.
What We Know
There are real generational differences in how individuals respond to requests for money and time.
What we’re talking about here are differences in the generations generally characterized as: Millenials (born since 1981), X-ers (born 1964 to 1981), Boomers (born 1946 to 1963), the Silent Generation (born 1929 to 1945) and the Great Generation (born before 1929).
While a 2008 study on generational giving commissioned by Chicago-based Campbell & Company (our colleagues in the Giving Institute: Consultants to Non-Profits), indicates little difference in the giving patterns of younger generations (X-ers and Millennials) from the generations that come before them (Boomers, the Silent and Great Generations) when you control for education, income and religious affiliation, there’s ample support for understanding real differences in how these generational groups like to give and receive information, and their level of technology-based engagement.
According to Anna Farmery, founder of The Engaging Brand, whose blog has been rated a Top 100 blog by Ad Age, Millennials are affected by certain “trends of this time” that include:
* A sense of embracing technology to make life easier
* A sense of our impact on the world
* A sense of sharing, collaboration
* An awareness of social media
President-elect Barack Obama tapped into this desire for online and technology-based engagement, raising more than $500 million in online donations in his presidential election bid. According to a November 20, 2008 report in The Washington Post, members of the Obama online campaign operation broke the numbers down this way: 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online, adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once, The Post reported.
Obama’s email list contains upwards of 13 million addresses. Over the course of the campaign, aides sent more than 7,000 different messages, many of them targeted to specific donation levels (people who gave less than $200, for example, or those who gave more than $1,000). In total, more than 1 billion emails landed in inboxes.
By contrast, The Post reported, 2004 candidates John Kerry and Howard Dean, respectively, had 3 million and 600,000 email addresses on their lists. Of note in The Post report was that one million supporters signed up for Obama’s text messaging program, and more than 2 million profiles were created on MyBarackObama.com, or MyBO, Obama’s own socnet (read: social network). This provided a platform for staging offline events and in-home and neighborhood gatherings.
In the charitable sector, online giving expert Ted Hart announced in June 2008 estimates of total online giving in the United States reaching approximately $10.44 billion for 2007, a 52 percent increase over 2006 estimates. According to Hart, this was driven by significant increases in online giving for both small and large organizations, creativity in strategy, and the unprecedented use of the Internet by individuals for non-disaster and disaster support efforts.
The Wise Giving Alliance survey found that the youngest respondents-those ages 18 to 29, who have grown up with access to computers and the Web-are most open to the idea of online giving. According to data from the ePhilanthropy Foundation in Washington, which provides information to charities that seek to raise funds online, the average age of donors who give online is 35 to 40. By contrast, research by the Mellman Group, public-opinion researchers in Washington who work with nonprofit clients, shows that the average age of donors who give via direct-mail solicitations is 66.
The Challenge: What You Can Do
The obvious challenge for most of us is that we don’t have an email list that contains 13 million addresses, but there are small steps you can take. Joanne Fritz, nonprofit columnist on about.com, offers these 10 tips for online fundraising:
1. Get legal with your online fundraising.
2. Market your online fundraising program.
3. Explore all your options for online fundraising.
4. Make sure your website invites online donations.
5. Observe proper online etiquette in your online fundraising.
6. Provide lots of ways for people to donate—not just online.
7. Make sure that your website donation button is big and above the fold.
8. Provide the opportunity for non-monetary contributions, such as volunteer time.
9. Show real donors and specify how donations will help.
10. Try segmentation of your online fundraising audience.
Read the full article at 10 Online Fundraising Basics You Need to Know.
What’s Out There Today, and on the Horizon
For the nonprofit leaders who embrace the opportunity to enter the world of technology and begin to explore multi-channeled approaches, there are some bright spots on the horizon.
Steve McLaughlin, writes in Connections, Blackbaud’s online giving blog (Jan. 5, 2009):
“Nonprofits typically focus on existing or lapsed donors during end of year appeals, and Blackbaud customers tend to use multi-channel campaigns (direct mail, telephone, web, email, etc.) as part of these fundraising efforts. This continues to be a winning approach to building a successful online fundraising program. Organizations using the Internet mostly for donor acquisition and without integrated strategies usually see higher attrition rates than other nonprofits. Moving into 2009, the nonprofits that concentrate their efforts on their existing donor base and leverage integrated marketing efforts will do a better job of weathering the storm.”
Veteran fundraising consultant Roger Craver, in a Jan. 5, 2009, post of Prospecting, the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s online fundraising column, puts it this way:
“The winners — and I mean big winners for 2010, 2011 and 2012 — will be those NGO’s [nongovernmental organizations] who use the current crisis in 2009 to sharply focus on the ‘best’, ‘most loyal’ segments of their donor bases, to aggressively experiment with the use of truly integrated channels (mail, telephone, new media).and to turn the clock back to a personal and accountable focus on recognizing and involving the best of their donors.”
Editor’s Note: Much background for this article comes from the ample resources on the web to educate your volunteers and donors about generational trends and multi-channel online. WE encourage you, as part of your New Year’s Resolution, to take time to learn about web- and technology-based opportunities for fundraising and promoting your organization, and to share that with your volunteers and donors.
Tags: generations, online fundraising, Technology, text messaging, trends
#1 by Jennifer Furla on May 2nd, 2009 - 9:41 am
Coming June 1: JBA on Facebook and all consultants “LinkedIn”