Turning Fundraising on Its Head

Its e-mail newsletter has an average open rate of approximately 30 percent and an average clickthrough rate of 18 percent, though the numbers vary per e-mail — and in the past three months, the clickthrough rate has jumped to 34 percent.

The social-media numbers have followed suit. When Brown joined Hope, its YouTube page had a total of 3,000 views. As of mid-October, that number has skyrocketed to more than 117,000 total views, and on a monthly basis, Hope gets anywhere from 7,000 to 9,000 views on its YouTube channel, according to Brown. The Hope Institute Facebook page went from right around 200 fans to more than 2,400 at press time, while the autism program's Facebook page went from about 200 fans to more than 2,400 as well. And the Twitter following has gone from a couple of dozen to nearly 1,900 for the organization, while the autism program's Twitter following went from about three dozen to more than 2,600.