1. Right-Size Your Sites for Mobile
With nearly two-thirds of Americans now carrying smartphones and mobile-payment technology beginning to take off, experts say a charity’s online-giving hopes will die if its website can’t adapt easily to a small screen.
The Movember Foundation raises money, mostly online, for men’s health causes, so it pays close attention to how its site looks on a mobile device. The group even revamped its logo so it would look sharp on a mobile device.
That attention has paid off: About 15 percent of its total gifts are made through mobile devices, and the group expects that supporters this year will open more than 60 percent of the emails it sends on phones and tablets.
2. Mix and Match Online and Offline Design
All of a nonprofit’s communications with donors, no matter the medium, should echo each other in design and language, says Jeff Brooks, author of The Money-Raising Nonprofit Brand.
“People don’t like going online and then feeling like they’re talking to a completely different organization,” he says.
When the international medical charity Project Hope sought to encourage more monthly donors — whom it calls Hope Lifters — it spread the word through direct mail, email, Facebook, and Internet banner ads. The group’s website and every appeal it made bore some version of the blue, red, and black Hope Lifters logo, and each message struck the same theme.
After efforts were made to ensure that donors who received Hope Lifters email appeals were exposed to matching messages in Facebook ads, the number of one-time online donors who committed to monthly donations rose by 10 percent over the number who became sustaining donors in February 2014, says Jann Schultz, the charity’s senior director of integrated fundraising and communications.
3. Update Your Organization’s Structure
Nonprofits need to rejigger their organizational charts to make online involvement and giving central to everything they do, says Steven MacLaughlin, director of analytics at Blackbaud.
Case in point: In 2013, the Humane Society of the United States introduced a new position, director of integrated marketing, to help pull together everything involving online giving.
The improved coordination among the charity’s fundraising, marketing, communications, and tech staffs led to the creation in November of a new monthly giving program in which donors can go online to support animals under care at a Humane Society-affiliated wildlife center. The program has drawn 160 supporters so far.
It’s still a fledgling effort, says Geoff Handy, the charity’s senior vice president of direct marketing and membership, but the program would have been much harder to create without the coordination. “Donors want you to be everywhere,” he says. “The difference now is that we have staff that straddles all channels.”
4. Craft Websites for Young and Old
People of all ages go online regularly, and smart charities are designing their communications to appeal to people who grew up with smartphones as well as those who didn’t.
Everyone likes large type, simple page navigation, and a clean, clear aesthetic, online experts say. At ChildFund International, which raises much of the money for its child-sponsorship programs online, at least a quarter of its web traffic is made up of people 55 and older.
Last year, the charity redesigned its website to make it more intuitive and easier to read on mobile devices. On the new site, viewers can see a donation form by clicking on a photo, instead of solely by clicking on a “donate now” button.
“Younger people expect to be able to hover and click on an image, while older people might be looking for a button or a text link,” says Amy Morrison, senior manager of digital marketing. “We want to have all audiences covered.”
5. Be More Sociable on Social Media
“Social media should not be considered just a marketing thing, a place for organizations to send out their messages and stories,” cautions Brad Davis, vice president of digital services at Dunham and Company, a fundraising consultancy.
Heifer International takes that to heart, and last year asked its fundraisers to work in tandem with their colleagues in social media to respond to posts on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
The antipoverty charity also committed itself to provide responses on those networks within 24 hours of a post, including during weekends and holidays, and often personalizes the responses and thank you’s with birthday greetings and acknowledgment of a donor’s giving history.
“We see social media as a customer-service tool, a way to show people we are listening,” says Maegan Clark, the group’s social-media manager. “We want donors to feel like they can talk to us online.”
