People who go online to donate to charity for the first time often do not return to the Internet to make later gifts, according to a new study examining the experience of 24 nonprofit groups.
The findings suggest that while the Internet can be a valuable fund-raising tool for charities, particularly in soliciting gifts after disasters like Hurricane Katrina, it is not a replacement for direct mail or other forms of fund-raising, The New York Times reports.
“Online giving is higher than offline giving, and the demographics of online givers are more attractive — better educated, higher income,” said Tobias Smith, director of online communications at CARE, which took part in the study and works on issues faced by poor women.
“But how you get people to routinely give online is a nut no one has yet cracked.”
The study was done by Target Analytics, a unit of Blackbaud Inc., which provides software and services to nonprofit groups.
Of those who did make additional gifts after an initial online donation in 2006, according to 12 organizations offering data in January, 37 percent never gave another gift via the Internet, while 18 percent gave electronically in one year and through other channels in another.
CHABAD’S LUCK
Chabad has been using the internet for fund-raising for quite some time. Within a week of the terrorist massacre in the Chabad House in Mumbai, the Chabad-Lubavitch Headquarters had raised about $1 million through mailboxes it had opened on Chabad.org.
Other online campaigns in recent years were orchestrated following the economic crisis in Argentina which ended in 2002, the great Tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the bombarded Israeli city of Sderot, various fires in Chabad Houses such as San Diego and Ukraine.
“[Fundraising] is an opportunity to connect more and more Jews to the mission, and to the Rebbe’s mission of getting every Jew involved. And part of that is channeling the empathy people are now feeling,” says Rabbi Yosef Kantor, Head Shliach to Thailand.
Chabad emissaries usually receive minimal seed money to start their outposts, but each house is responsible for raising its own budget each year. Though Chabad does not keep a formal database on how much each outpost raises, officials estimate that the emissaries combined take in more than $1 billion per year.
WHY ONE TIME?
Charity fund-raisers offered several possible explanations for the study’s findings, the Times article added.
Many donors using the Internet to make their first gift to an organization are responding to a disaster like the Asian tsunami or Hurricane Katrina, and those givers may not be interested in supporting a group’s continuing work.
Nonprofit groups face a number of challenges in trying to reach donors electronically, sources say.
For one thing, they must have a team dedicated to fine-tuning and improving their Web site and another team for e-mail marketing, both of which are added expenses. Nonprofit solicitation materials often get caught in systems that trap spam and other unwanted e-mail. Other systems eliminate the compelling images that are so effective in direct mail.
Still, the demographics of online donors are enticing for charities. The study found that of the donors who made at least one online gift in 2008, roughly a third had incomes greater than $100,000, while about one-quarter of those giving in other ways fell into that category.
