OntheWilderSide

$100M Online Giving Study Network for Good has released a study of $100 million in donations from over 23,000 individual donors. The Young and the Generous provides key insights such as:

• Online givers are young (38-39 years old) and generous, giving several times more than offline donors on average.
• Virtually all of online givers (96%) have given to charity before, but a sizable proportion (38%) is new to online philanthropy.
• Online giving is tracking to the trends of online shopping and banking, and it is the avenue of choice for donors during disasters.
• Most people give online during the week, during business hours.
• Top searches are disaster related, plus “children,” “cancer,” and “homeless.”
• Small organizations benefit from listings on aggregation sites; at Network for Good, half of dollars go to small-medium sized charities.
• People say they give online because it’s easier than writing a check and a fast way to respond to disasters.

Download our complete Online Giving Study today!

Holiday Fundraising TipsCollect more donations this giving season by employing the following tips in your holiday fundraising campaign and supporter communications.Make the Gift Real
This year, get innovative in how you show the potential impact of your donors’ gifts. If they donate $50, what will happen? Tie donations to results that have a human face. You can also set a campaign dollar goal and communicate it to your donors so they can also see the collective impact at stake.Make It Easy to Give
Whenever you communicate with your donors electronically, place a prominent, impossible-to-miss “Donate Now” button in front of them. Consider changing the button image to something festive for the giving season. Put your button all over your web site, in every email and newsletter. It makes giving easy and irresistible! Ask for Recurring Gifts
Ask donors to sign up for monthly giving, with automatic credit card payments every month. This will lead to higher total gifts and ensures your charity a more predictable stream of resources in the year to come. It also establishes a recurring touch point with your donor through automated receipts, helping you build a stronger relationship with supporters.

Be Brief
The holidays are a busy time, and donors don’t want massive amounts of information. Less is more! Ask them for their support simply and succinctly.

For more ideas and techniques, download a free copy of our holiday donation tips.Salesforce for NonprofitsNetwork for Good and Salesforce Foundation have teamed up to introduce a customized nonprofit version of their constituent relationship management (CRM) database. Through their 1% product donation program, Salesforce.com helps more than 1,000 nonprofit organizations to manage membership, contact and affiliate data, forecast fundraising campaigns, report on donation opportunities, and a myriad of other data management needs.Stay tuned for new Network for Good courses designed to help nonprofits effectively use Salesforce.com as a fundraising database. Visit the Salesforce Foundation website to learn how your organization can sign up for their product donation program today.Featured Customer: Dance Theatre of HarlemDance Theatre of Harlem is a leading dance institution of unparalleled global acclaim, encompassing a “Classically American(R) dance company, a leading arts education center and Dancing Through Barriers(R), a national and international education and community outreach program. Each component of Dance Theatre of Harlem carries a solid commitment towards enriching the lives of young people and adults around the world through the arts.The Dance Theatre of Harlem uses DonateNow and EmailNow to involve and engage constituents in the growth of the Dance Company. They use DonateNow custom questions to invite donors to express interest in volunteering, estate and planned gifts, in-kind services and school enrollment for their children. “We use EmailNow to engage our constituents and to further the growth of our organization. We also include the DonateNow button in our emails so that our constituents know that they can make a contribution”, says Rodney Trapp, Development Manager at Dance Theatre of Harlem.Through the successful use of DonateNow and EmailNow, Dance Theatre of Harlem is able to build a stronger, more vital and viable cultural institution.

Filed under: Ballot issues, Education, Nonprofit Orgs Tagged: | greenfield