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Non-Profit Fundraising

Aired November 27 and 28, 1999

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This is Internet on the Air. I’m Joan Silvi. Non-profit organizations raising money on-line. Details in a moment.

Funding Credit: Internet On The Air is a production of the University of Michigan School of Information and Michigan radio, made possible by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Are you looking for an easy way to make charitable contributions at tax time? Or are you curious about a non-profit’s financial status before responding to a direct mail solicitation? Finding answers to these questions has become easier as non-profit organizations turn to the Internet to raise money and promote awareness about their activities.

One Web site that serves both purposes is www.helping.org. The site has a database with over half a million nonprofit organizations. Visitors can search for a nonprofit by location, size, or subject interest, such as Arts, Culture, and the Humanities. They can also view financial information about each charity before making the decision to donate. Links to the Better Business Bureau and the National Charities Information Bureau provide additional data on these organizations. After donating on-line, users receive instant tax receipts through an automatic e-mail thank-you.

The intent of the site is to connect interested donors and volunteers with non-profits. Even nonprofits that don’t have Web sites can benefit from the convenience that this site offers to donors. According to Jillaine Smith of the Benton Foundation, the site received over 2 million hits within the first week of its release. This immediate popularity suggests that people are indeed responding to the “one-stop shopping” approach to charitable giving. Next time you donate to your favorite charity, you might find yourself clicking a mouse button instead signing a check.

To find out more about non-profit fundraising on-line, or to listen to other programs, visit our Web site at www.iota.org. For Internet on the Air, I¹m Joan Silvi.

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The Interview

IOTA interviewed Jillaine Smith in October 1999.

What are non-profits using the Internet for?

Non-profits are using the Internet, both e-mail and the Web, for a variety of things, including a lot of advocacy. Some of the most exciting ones are personalizing their sites so that you, the advocate, can tell them what issues you’re interested in.

Within the environment, for example, they will both e-mail you action alerts based upon your personal interest, as well as give you a personal webpage of action alerts, of current news. One of the organizations that comes to mind is the Conservation Action Network, which is run by the World Wildlife Fund.

So non-profits find the Internet useful as a feedback mechanism?

Right, because they’re collecting some information that they can then evaluate to see how well their network is doing. It’s very important for non-profits to evaluate how any of their electronic efforts are supporting their mission.

Role of e-mail in non-profits.

E-mail is used a lot for communicating with their constituencies and for doing e-mail action alerts. E-mail is still the most powerful tool, even more so than the Web, because people are receiving e-mail. They don’t have to go to a Web site. It’s pushing information at them.

How is the Internet being used to raise money?

Non-profits are starting to explore how to use the Internet to increase their revenue stream, and to explore new ways of raising money. I think there is still a lot to learn in this particular area. I think there is a tendency to believe that if you put a little button saying “Donate Now” on your Web site, that all of a sudden you will see an increase in donations.

It has to be part of a larger communications strategy for reaching out to your audience and encouraging them to come to your Web site. Whether it’s for on-line fundraising or advocacy or whatever purpose, you can’t just build a Web site and expect they’re going to come. You have to be aggressive with communicating with your audience in other formats, whether it’s through radio, public service ads, or e-mail.

Example: WAMU public radio station, Washington DC

A great example of this is the recent fundraising campaign of WAMU, the public radio station in Washington DC. I think it was the second time that they did this. They let people donate money and become members through their Web site, but they did an extended campaign this year and aggressively pushed the Web site through their daily efforts to encourage people to join.

I don’t know what the exact figures are, but they saw an incredible increase in their membership drive. It was very, very successful. Again, it was part of a strategic communications plan that didn’t only rely on the Web, but used other communications means as well.

What does this mean for smaller non-profit that aren’t as Web savvy?

There are a number of services available now to help non-profits who have websites, and even ones that don’t, to raise money through the Internet. Some of them are commercial start-ups, that are taking a cut of donations made through the ‘Net.

There is a new initiative with the AOL Foundation called helping.org that is encouraging people to give on-line. They have partnered with Guidestar, which has a database of all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations in the United States. People can search this database for non-profits that are doing work that they care about, and make a donation directly on-line. The AOL Foundation is not taking any cut. They are passing on all of the donation except for the credit card charge to the non-profit. The non-profit doesn’t have to be on-line, they perhaps don’t even know that this service is there. They will receive a check, and the donor will receive an automatic reply saying thank you for your donation, which can be used as a receipt for tax purposes.

What’s great about this for those organizations that do perhaps have a simple Web site, but can’t afford an e-commerce Web server or don’t even have the resources to process credit card transactions, whether on-line or over the phone. They don’t need that. They can use helping.org’s service and point people there and encourage people to donate to their organization through that mechanism. They don’t need to invest in their own resources to do on-line fundraising.

How successful is www.helping.org?

Helping.org was released on October 20, 1999. In the first three days of it’s opening, there were 2 million hits on the site, and 6,000 new volunteer opportunities were posted. We don’t yet have the figures for donations made, but they were very pleased. Helping.org also promotes volunteerism, and has a database of volunteer activities, which is another way that non-profits are using the ‘Net.

What does the Benton Foundation bring to this process?

The Benton Foundation has been around for 17 years and has always focused on media and the public interest. In its early years it focused on how to use radio, television, film and video. In more recent years it has been looking at the newer media, the Internet specifically.

My job is to research and promote effective uses of the Internet for the public interest. My background is looking at how advocacy organizations have used the ‘Net. But we’ve also looked at the role the Internet is playing in other areas, including education and libraries. We also look at the digital divide, and what the impacts are if the Internet is not made available to all Americans. As it becomes more and more a part of our daily life, the divide between rich and poor, between educated and uneducated, is only going to increase if we don’t provide access in all areas of the country. So we look at communications policy as well as communications practice.

What is the nature of your partnership with the AOL Foundation?

We are partnering with the AOL Foundation in two areas. One is on a clearinghouse of information on the digital divide to help people understand what it is, what’s the research behind it, and what are some of the great projects that are out there focused on bridging the digital divide.

The other aspect of our partnership is building an area focused on helping non-profits use the Internet more effectively. On helping.org this section is called “Resources for Non-profits”, and it builds on Benton’s work developing a Best Practices Toolkit. We are working with a group drawn from technical assistance providers around the country who have great experience working in the field with non-profits. Together we’re building a set of resources and tools that will help non-profits use the Internet more effectively.

Where do most non-profits fall in term of technological resources? Is cost a limiting factor?

Non-profits are all over the map in terms of how they can leverage this technology. It doesn’t really matter what their budget is. What really matters is who in the organization has the vision to really see what technology can bring. There are large organizations with huge budgets that still don’t get it, and there are large organizations that do. I’ve been very impressed with some of the smaller efforts, even volunteer organizations with little or no staff who’ve done tremendous things on the Web.

There’s a group that I love called “Mothers and Others” that is promoting environmentalism from a mother’s point of view. A very specific issue-area, a very focused audience, a very simple Web site, and very effective, on I’m sure, a very low budget. You can have a very effective Web site and electronic mail campaign without having to have a lot of money. You just need to think strategically about what you want to do, who it is you want to reach, and what’s the best way to get there.

What are the common pitfalls for non-profits in establishing a Web presence?

There are still a lot of non-profits that are struggling to figure out how this technology can support them. One danger area is that non-profits jump into the technology thinking “Oh, we need a Web site”, “Oh, we need everybody to be on-line”, and that might not be true. I would encourage all non-profits that haven’t explored this technology fully yet to really sit down first and think about how it can enhance the way they work. Actually, the resources on helping.org are aimed at both non-profits that are not yet fully on-line, as well as those that are thinking about revamping their existing on-line presence.

How is the public interest being served in the Internet? What does the future hold?

It used to be that the public interest was predominantly served by non-profit organizations. However, we’re really starting to see corporations take on philanthropy and community engagement in ways that they really didn’t before. I think a lot of this has to do with the new and young wealth that’s coming out of the technology sector. You have a lot of young people who are making a great deal of money, very early, and all of a sudden realize “I need to do something socially responsible with this”.

We’re seeing socially responsible businesses set up, corporations that have a non-profit arm, so that some of the proceeds of the corporation go into the non-profit for charitable purposes. There is a blending now of the corporate sector and the non-profit sector. The corporations that are exploring how to be philanthropic and make a profit at the same time is a new area that hasn’t been explored very extensively. I think it remains to be seen how well the public interest is served.

Please direct questions or comments to iota.webmaster@umich.edu.

Last Updated November 18, 1999

Non-Profit Fundraising

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