3 Common Online Fundraising Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

Ways to avoid these mistakes
Gensemer offers these online fundraising communications best practices to cut down on the mistakes and optimize your online communications:

• Diversity the message. “Don’t just ask for money, but deepen the involvement or potential involvement in the organization.”
• Be ever more transparent to where the dollars go, and be very practical about how quickly you respond to news and milestones that put the personality of your organization out front.
• Have your technology infrastructure service your relationships. “So don’t require because of technical choices five days until you can get something out, because if you’re in the news today yourself or your issue is in the news, you want take advantage of it. Newsworthiness is such a limited currency.”
• Understand your messages from the point of view of your would-be donor or e-mail subscriber. “Don’t just speak to the army. Don’t just speak to your immediate insiders; don’t speak insider tone. Bring them into the fold. Cultivate the relationship more than you normally would in traditional direct response.”