With Madeleine Kind
Digital fundraising has become one of the most popular and effective ways for charities and not-for-profits to interact with donors.
Charities are increasingly collaborating with online fundraising platforms such as JustGiving to deliver personalised campaigns, which have shown to drive donations and raise awareness of their cause. Another key to creating a successful campaign is social media, which can spread messages quickly, and in some cases make a campaign go viral.
As more and more people access the internet on smartphones, it is important that fundraising campaigns are compatible with mobile technology. Finally, with any type of fundraising, it is important to bear in mind who the target donors are, how best to communicate with them, and how they would like to donate.
Unfortunately, I have seen too many charities make their online donation process unnecessarily complex. New donors should be able to smoothly navigate through your donation page and submit a donation without having to go through a laborious signup or login process. Of course, there is an advantage of signing up but there shouldn’t be any force; this extra time may put potential donors off and look elsewhere.
So how can your charity adapt to this digital era?
One of the most powerful tools to attract donors is allowing them seeing their gift make a tangible difference. This is most prominent at the point of donating. Charities Aid Foundation, for example, allow you to put together a selection of fixed donation amounts, which display the potential impact that could be achieved if that sum was donated.
CROWDFUNDING
Crowdfunding is an innovative type of fundraising that leverages small and mid-sized online donations from a wide range of supporters to fund a need. This allows a lot of people to make a small donation, which collectively makes a greater impact. Several crowdfunding pages were set up to help with the Pakistan Floods Appeal for Disasters Emergency Committee, contributing to raising £25 million within only two weeks, showing the power of digital fundraising trends. There are many different sites available, including Just Giving, GoFundMe, and Crowdfunder - but they should be used as part of a wider communications plan.
ONLINE FUNDRAISING SITES
Websites such as JustGiving can be useful as they allow individual supporters or volunteers to fund-raise on your behalf.
One example of a successful collaboration with an online platform is Beating Bowel Cancer. Using JustGiving’s Page Creation API they were able to integrate their Decembeard campaign website with JustGiving and significantly increase the number of people fundraising online. This raised over £249,000, a 121% increase compared to the year before.
These sorts of campaigns clearly demonstrate the importance of engaging, personalised campaigning that can be easily shared on social media and help drive up fundraising totals
DIGITAL DONATION BUTTONS
As more and more people access the internet on smartphones, it is important that fundraising campaigns are compatible with mobile technology. If you include a donation button it needs to be a simple process that is smartphone friendly.
Make sure your fundraising page is linked into your payment system or PayPal account – if it is too complicated, donors will give up. Offering fixed donation amounts can make it quicker, but always include the option of ‘other amount’. Another incentive is to tell people what their donation will contribute to. Publicising your organisation’s progress using an online donation tracker can encourage people to help you reach your digital fundraising goal.
Alongside these digital tips, it’s important to remember to track the performance of your content to see what resonates with your audience well. Using this to then replicate in similar content will give you the most advantage – but don’t pigeonhole yourself into one target audience. Some of the most popular analytic tools include Google Analytics, SproutLoud and SEMrush.
コメント