Giving Up; Nonprofit Personality Pays Off Online
- Thu, August 04 2011
- Filed under: Fundraising essentials
Today my wonderful colleague Kate Olsen guest posts. She publishes the Online Giving Index for my organization, Network for Good, and blogs at Companies for Good, where she posts thoughtful reflections on cause marketing. Here are her insights on what the index results mean for nonprofits.
Did you know that nonprofits with a branded donation page – a page that shows off the organization’s personality and makes giving tangible for donors – can see up to 5 times more in donation dollars than a nonprofit with a generic donate page?
Note: A branded donation page looks and feels like the nonprofit’s own website, even if it is hosted by a third party. The page has messaging, imaging and an aesthetic that is familiar to the donor and conveys the organization’s personality and mission. A generic donation page looks and feels like the transaction provider’s website, not the nonprofit’s. Other than the nonprofit name and address, there is nothing to reinforce the donor’s connection to the organization.
That remarkable finding is included in Network for Good’s Q1 and Q2 update to the Online Giving Index. This Index builds on data and observations from the Online Giving Study (a must-read for all nonprofit fundraisers!) and includes trends and analysis on $55 million in donations to more than 20,000 charities through the Network for Good platform in the first half of 2011. This includes donations to Network for Good’s nonprofit customers through their own websites and donations to other nonprofits through 25 corporate partner websites and Network for Good’s giving portals at NetworkforGood.org and SixDegrees.org.
Index highlights include:
• Overall giving increased for both Q1 2011 and Q2 2011, compared to the same periods in 2010.
• Charity Website giving saw mixed results across the first half of 2011, compared to the same period in 2010.
• Charity Websites with branded donation pages achieved 5x more donation dollars, on average, than sites with generic donation pages.
• Disaster giving for Japan tsunami relief was a primary driver of Portal Giving in Q1 2011.
• Social Giving increased for both Q1 2011 and Q2 2011 compared to the same periods in 2010 due to a mix of disaster-related and personal fundraising campaigns.
The full Index and accompanying data, including stand-alone charts, are available at our study website. You can grab our charts, share our data and discuss the results!
Comments
Hi - I’m Kate, author of the post above. I received a question about what differentiates a generic donation page from a branded donation page.
A generic donation page does not visually match the charity’s website but goes to a Network for Good-branded multi-step checkout process featuring the organization’s name and address. In other words, the donor feels like they have been passed off to another entity to transact the donation. Network for Good’s generic solution is called DonateNow Lite.
A branded donation page is integrated with the charity’s own website. Other than the NetworkforGood.org URL, it is not evident that the donor has left the charity’s website to make a gift. In other words, the donor feels like the transaction process was a seamless experience on the organization’s site because the page set up, messaging and aesthetic fits with the overall website. The branded, hosted solution from Network for Good is called DonateNow Lite.
You can learn more about these products at http://www.networkforgood.org/npo or http://www1.networkforgood.org/for-nonprofits/fundraising/donatenow
Love this! It’s exactly what we’ve been preaching in Canada for a while. Thanks for the post.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I’m so glad to hear that we are part of a trend. Hopefully we won’t need to be ‘preaching’ too much longer and the recommendations will take off.