The 2 biggest 'online' problems we face
Online fundraising has been the next big thing for years, but it also seems to have failed to live up to its potential for years. There are several underlying problems. I'm going to highlight two. The results are still too focused on the short term. And we are not investing enough.
βOnlineβ problem 1: the short term
Obviously, there are several organizations that are good at it. (Or consider themselves good.) But I mainly come across organizations and fundraisers who have not yet mastered βonlineβ. Looking at the results, we're getting better at it, but we're not there yet. And certainly not on a large scale.
In online fundraising we are looking for what I call the 3 Ds: data, donations or donors. Naturally you want to further develop the acquired data (name, address, email and/or phone) into donations (one-off donors) or donors (regular donors). Donations can be a goal, but ideally you would also like to develop further into donors. Direct recruitment of (regular) donors is usually the best of the three when you look at long-term value.
I mostly see data and donations being recruited. Most organizations have great difficulty recruiting regular donors. And by that, I mean in large numbers.
Ultimately, fundraising is about creating long-term value. On the one hand there must be a decent volume and on the other hand good quality. And as it often happens where you can achieve large volumes, the quality is far below par.
Let's zoom in on those large numbers of one-off donors that are being recruited. Of the new one-off donors you recruited 13 - 24 months ago (through digital channels in this case), how many have made a second donation in the past 12 months? I see varying results in the market: percentages between 5% - 30% are not strange at all. And that painfully exposes the problem. We are getting better at recruiting new donors, but apparently, we are not so good at retaining them in the long run. So, then itβs rather useless.
And also for online fundraising success lies in the long term. Only if we can keep our donors we create long term value. Only then it makes sense.
Qualitative acquisition and a long-term perspective are essential for the business case to work. Of course, this applies to every recruitment channel.
You can only keep your online recruited donors by having them give again. So you also have to keep asking them for individual donations. Or you must ask them to give as a regular donor. In my experience, the most successful way to convert one-off donors to regular donors is to follow up as quickly as possible using the telephone number obtained at the point of acquisition.
And yes, the online recruited regular donors are of good quality. However, the numbers are still too lowβ¦
For the time being, 5% - 30% retention is unfortunately more the rule than the exception. Or the numbers are too low. We are all looking for new acquisition channels. All eyes are on online. Can online live up to that expectation soon?
βOnlineβ problem 2: lack of investment
Problem number two: we are not investing enough. Online is usually presented as one channel, while the expertise we ask from our online fundraisers is many times broader. The online fundraiser is now too often a generalist. Responsible for far too many different things at once. We need more specialists. More investment is needed.
Like all other channels that we can distinguish in individual giving, online fundraising is a profession. However, there is a very big difference. Where the label DM, TM, F2F or events often indicates one and the same channel (or very similar variants), the label 'Online' is the collective name for a wide variety of different channels and expertise.
Everything that even smells like digital or new media is shoved under the heading of 'online'. To name a few: SEO, SEA, Facebook, content management and creation, website conversion, from micro-sites to landing pages, retention programs, journeys, data enrichment, media buying, campaign management, social media, display, SMS, marketing automation, growth hacking, lead generation, email marketing, mobile, copy writing, layout, analytics, CMS, CRM, YouTube advertising, re-targeting, customer data platforms, etc.
And in small organizations you can generally add a bit of ICT to that, because if the printer or your email doesn't work, the online person is often the first to be asked ...
Online is a broad field and we try to unite that in one person. If you are lucky, you will get someone who understands this and brings focus to the work, so that you become better in one of the many parts. If you are unlucky, you will do a little bit of everything and that will not help. Having a good overview and making choices on what to focus on is always a good idea. But a little extra capacity wouldn't hurt either. So, we must invest more!
Within individual giving you have different disciplines and angles. You can approach it per channel, or product, target group, etc. The set-up of a fundraising organization does not determine its success. The people who work there do. They make it work or not. And that can be done in different compositions. But in general, there is a chronic shortage of people. And therefore, also within online.
Too often there is a lack of investment. That is a certain frugality in the non-profit sector that is justified on one hand, because we do not want to make useless expenditures. But on the other hand, completely unjustified, because in fundraising you should never only look at the cost side. We are not making costs, we make investments for which we get something in return.
As a sector, we have been looking for new acquisition channels for some time now. Let me make it clearer: as a sector we have a huge need for the development of new acquisition channels. The dependence on F2F for some organizations is unhealthy. Online, with its 10+ channels, can possibly compensate for that, but then we must invest in it seriously.
And then beautiful things can happen.