Nonprofits fundraising and friends: The online fundraising migration

Charity organizations have needs, such as grants, large donations and online fundraising. Also, they need all 3 if they are to avoid possible cracks in revenue.

Charity organizations depend on multiple ways of action and support from private people, their own members and partner organizations and businesses to make their work count.

Our vision of traditional fundraising is a charity reaching out to individuals and companies for donations so the charity can work for communally valued programs. Other income tactics are to pursue grants and deals with foundations and from the government, or to approach commercial actions, for example by peddling merchandise to patrons or charging payments services.

Online fundraising as an important fundraising channel

Charity organizations need to play all fields, and pull all their resources to avoid revenue cracks which could be detrimental to the organizations work. Also, a growing percentage of donations to charity are given online.

Like American National Multiple Sclerosis Society which experiences that over 1/3 of their donations in 2010 were donated online. (Exact numbers: $73,475,000 out of $217,450,000 where donated online)

Charity:Water turned into a shining star in nonprofit sky by using social media for branding and to raise money online. Charity:Water raised over $650K via social media in 2009. And even more stunning is the fact that almost $250K of this was raised with a re-defining Twestival event conceived by Amanda Rose - a huge fan of the Charity:Water’s work!

More donors of all ages are going online to make donations. A study by Blackbaud shows that private fundraisers who use social media online raise 6 times as much money as those who don’t.

There is an online migration going on in the fundraising ecosystem. Association of Fundraising Professionals fronts a study showing that over 50% of donors over 65 plan to make an online gift this year, almost 70% of age between 35 and 64 plan to do so, and over 85% of donors under 35 plan to give online.

Even donors responding to direct mail from a charity choose to make their donations online. 29% of donors after receiving appeals through mail in 2010 chose to donate online.

So why are donors choosing to give online?