Every day in December, when Direct Relief tallied online gifts for its work to deliver medicine to needy people overseas, donations surged by at least 10 percent over the same day in 2013, says Thomas Tighe, the charity’s chief executive.
That kind of bounce, which has helped the charity achieve an 18-percent increase from July through December, halfway through its fiscal year, is especially important as the charity works to fight the Ebola epidemic and offer other aid.
Online donations also poured into the Salvation Army, jumping 16 percent in November and December over those same months in 2013.
That increase was fueled by a new Twitter campaign that asked donors to use the hashtag RedKettleReason to tell their followers why they gave to the Army’s year-end drive. About 66,000 people did so, more than doubling the number of mentions the Salvation Army got on social media during the holidays in the last two months of 2013.
Such strong results mean “we have reason to be optimistic,” about 2015, says Ron Busroe, the Army’s development secretary. “The stock market is up, and people continue to be generous.”
Strong Gains Online
Many other charities also reaped big online gains at year’s end. Network for Good, a processor of online donations, reports that gifts to 19,000 charities it serves increased by an average of 18 percent in the last two months of the year, compared with that period in 2013. People were giving more than in the past while new donors made contributions, too; the number of gifts increased 22 percent.
Blackbaud says that online giving to a group of 3,700 of its software clients rose by more than 11 percent in December alone.
It wasn’t just online giving that was strong last year. Schwab Charitable, which sets up donor-advised funds, says the roaring stock market fueled a 43-percent leap in contributions from July to the end of November, compared with those months in 2013. In calendar year 2014, contributions rose by 10 percent over 2013.
And in a sign of the growing power of the crowd in fundraising, the ALS Association, which stunned the nonprofit world by raising more than $115-million from the viral ice-bucket challenge, ended the year with a bang. Its 2014 fundraising walks generated $32-million, $10-million more than in 2013, and contributions through December 28 had more than tripled to $4.8-million over the same period in 2013.
Targeting the Wealthy
As fundraisers set their strategies for the year ahead, they are focused largely on expanding online gifts by reaching out to donors with a mix of email, social media, and, in some cases, direct mail, and on efforts aimed squarely at attracting money from the affluent.
The richest Americans made big gifts last year at a pace similar to those made in 2013, and 2015 got off to a generous start, with a $118-million donation to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from Samuel Tak Lee, a real-estate developer, and a $70-million donation to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston from the financier Fayez S. Sarofim.
One area of increasing potential, says Steve MacLaughlin, director of analytics at Blackbaud, is in donations from smartphones and tablets. Some groups, he says, received nearly 20 percent of their online contributions during the holiday from such devices.
But many charities aren’t prepared to take advantage of the growth in mobile giving: A study last year found that most of the nation’s biggest charities didn’t have mobile-friendly pages, and another study released this month came to similar conclusions. But some groups are making progress.
The Humane Society of the United States sent a text message on December 31 to thousands of people, with a link to an online donor form designed for mobile devices, and received contributions from 17 percent of the recipients. “Sending the text so late really helped sweep up the folks who hadn’t yet made their donation,” Lara Koch, the Humane Society’s manager of online technology, wrote in an email. “The fact that they could do it right on their phones with a mobile-friendly form that’s pre-filled with their information no doubt helped, too.”
The Jewish Communal Fund, where contributions by December 31, midway through its fiscal year, were $50-million higher—or 18 percent more than what they were by the same date in 2013—unveiled a new app called Clink just before Hanukkah. The app teaches young people, some of them celebrating bar or bat mitzvahs, about philanthropy and allows them to choose their top three charitable interests.
A few hundred young people, who can make a gift as small as $36 from a donor-advised fund bearing their name, have downloaded the app so far.
Meanwhile, other groups are increasing online donations by achieving a better understanding how donors interact with their sites.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which produced online returns in December double those of the same month in 2013, uses Google Analytics to monitor what information about birds people search for online, like the difference between a crow and a raven. The lab then directs people to a page with that information and gives them free access, if they provide an email address. The lab follows up with three messages related to the type of birds people are interested in, with some messages containing embedded videos. Only in the final email does the lab asks a person to give.
Matching Gifts
While many nonprofits are putting a lot of energy into online fundraising, more conventional approaches to winning gifts, like offering to match donations, also helped charities at year’s end. Unicef persuaded three donors and one couple to provide a total of $650,000 in matching gifts to people who gave $10,000 or more in unrestricted donations.
The seven-week campaign resulted in more than $2.25-million in contributions, including the matches—far more than Unicef expected.
Everybody who contributed at least $10,000 was added to the organization’s Audrey Hepburn Society, named in honor of the late actress, a prominent supporter of the charity. Members receive special reports, access to charity staff members, and invitations to events where they meet other Unicef donors.
One reason for the success of the campaign, Unicef officials say, was that three of the four donors who made the matching donations allowed the charity to use their names to promote giving. “Having them be public really made a difference,” says Kristen Jones, Unicef’s vice president for regional fundraising.
Boost by Giving Tuesday
Special giving days also helped many nonprofits attract year-end donations.
Giving Tuesday, held December 2, was a big boost for many charities, raising at least $46-million, or 64 percent more than in 2013, according to one estimate.
Other charities participated in regional efforts to call attention to year-end giving. In Colorado, nonprofits raised $26.2-million on Colorado Gives day on December 9, up from $20.5-million in 2013.
Kayla Arnesen, director of the Community First Foundation, one of the drive’s organizers, says a key reason for the growth is that charities are getting better at publicizing their causes.
Throughout the state, Habitat for Humanity staff and volunteers wore pajamas to work to call attention to their top concern: ensuring everyone has a safe place to sleep every night.
For weeks ahead of Colorado Gives, Habitat used social media, email, and other messages to encourage its supporters to take the “pajama pledge” by wearing sleepwear on December 9 and demonstrating, in the words on a promotional flyer, that “you can’t sleep at night knowing that poverty and homelessness exist in our beautiful state.”
Changing Desires
As charities look to extend what worked last year, many are focusing on the changing interests of the wealthy.
The Jewish Communal Fund, the organization that designed the new app for young donors, has also created a “Private Client Group” to offer counseling and other resources to people with donor-advised funds worth at least $1-million.
“In the last year or so, it became apparent that people, particularly those with $1-million or more, are looking to increase the impact of their charitable dollars,” says Ellen Israelson, the fund’s vice president of marketing and business development. “People are starting to pay more attention to funds that are not being granted out immediately, wanting to make sure that those funds also support their ultimate goal in changing society.”
Ms. Israelson and her colleagues are now setting up meetings with more than 200 wealthy individuals and families, offering up to three hours of counseling to discuss their charitable goals and how quickly they want to accomplish them. They also discuss related issues like how families can juggle the interests of parents, children, and grandchildren in their giving.
Depending on the donors’ goals, Ms. Israelson says, the fund will offer new customized investment opportunities for those who want to make sure their donor-advised funds are invested in ways that match their charitable interests. Those efforts, she hopes, will lead people to put more money into their donor-advised funds.
Seeking Repeat Donors
Meanwhile, mindful of concerns studies have raised about the problems charities have attracting repeat donations, many groups made sure they were ready to thank donors for their year-end contributions and are finding other ways to show their appreciation.
Room to Read, a nonprofit that promotes literacy in Africa and Asia, films its work throughout the year so it can produce a two-minute thank- you video that’s sent to its donors, chapters, and social-media contacts soon after New Year’s Day.
Brewster Place, a retirement center in Topeka, Kan., will thank its donors with a Valentine’s Day card sent to everyone who contributed in 2014. The card will note that their names have been added to a wall honoring its supporters.
Among the recipients: 79 of the center’s employees who have made contributions. Those who have given for at least two consecutive years get a star next to their names and will receive a “random thank you” during the year, says Jeremy Hall, Brewster’s director. Such thank-yous make a big difference, he says.
“Some employees have spontaneously offered to give more after getting thanked,” he says.
