Asking for money online: what works?
- Thu, May 24 2007
- Filed under: Fundraising essentials
A sense of immediacy is often needed to get someone to donate. Are you answering the question for your donors, why give now?
An interesting M + R study based on the results of 180 fundraising appeals from nine different nonprofits delves into the efficacy of a few methods to lend a sense of immediacy to your appeals. While noting the sample size is small, the study suggests some of these methods work better than others.
1. Multiple appeals that tied together in a cohesive campaign performed better than stand-alone, one-off appeals. They have higher conversion and a much larger average gift size.
2. Offering a deadline results in bigger gifts than an open-ended appeal, though it didn’t increase conversion.
3. Matching gifts are motivational, increasing response rates and gift sizes.
4. Dollar goals may increase response rates, though there was not statistically significant data showing an impact in the study.
Based on my own experience, I’d say the study is right on. At Six Degrees, we combined a deadline, matching gift and most-donations “contest” into one campaign where leading individual fundraisers for nonprofits had their gifts matched by Kevin Bacon. We sent out several bulletins during the campaign. So we combined all four elements above. Clearly, as you can see by the levels of giving spiking at the matching grant competition deadline, this combined approach drove a lot of giving.
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Interesting chart. I would love to see more fundraising websites publish this sort of data. There’s no doubt that matching grants combined with a deadline are an effective combination.
Deadlines are easy to find. Matching funds are harder to come by!
Any suggestions on where nonprofits can find matching funds? Should they solicit from existing major donors, who want to participate in an online campaign? Or do they go after new sources of major gifts?
Thanks Peter. We are offering another round of matching funds via Kevin Bacon starting July 1—stay tuned for the announcement. You can also look to corporations - who would do it because they get nice publicity when you reach out to your donors re: their matching grant - or your biggest donors, who may want to inspire other donors to give more.
Statistics can sometimes help but the market is changing so fast… you can never depend on something or it’s just my opinion.
Thanks Katya for posting, people needs that kind of info. Regards.
I am asking for money to help take care of my family. Right now, we are very strapped, as are millions of othr people, however, I want to just be able to take care of my three children and my husband is doing his best with different changes of work due to layoffs in the computer industry.
We need help! Please email me.
Thank you.
Nice to see soemone runing a not for profit blog, the internet is full of people making a living from the internet so I take my hat off to you. Good luck with the blogging
Those statistics was good. And it’s nice to know that there are people like you that works hard for a “cause”.
Keep Up!
I can’t agree more than what you’ve said. But stat is useful in any case
I wonder how much it will cost a universal conversion of graphic music and video files?
I would like to have the whole conversion at all.
This is such a great resource that you are providing and you give it away for free. I enjoy seeing websites that understand the value of providing a quality resource for free. It’s the old what goes around comes around routine. Did you acquired lots of links and I see lots of trackbacks? new york web design
Interesting, and I agree on the usefulness of matching gifts
. Can’t help but wonder, since I am new here, is Katya russian?
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I can tell you one thing, I’m going to lose any sleep over this and have effects of lack of sleep as a result! Great post thanks for the information.
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Well, this is a very valuable post. Thanks for the information you provided. It would be great if got more post like this. I appreciate it.
Throw a tantrum to get attention. Show how dire things are by kicking and screaming because the Hello Kitty stickers are missing. Bad marketers make their appeals apocalyptic and scare away the audience. Good marketers show how bad can become good. They are inspirational and aspirational.
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Good post.Nice to see soemone runing a not for profit blog, the internet is full of people making a living from the internet so I take my hat off to you..
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