6 Online Fundraising Communications Takeaways From Campaign 2010

Last month, a Care2 webinar, "Lessons From Campaign 2010: Innovations in Online Fundraising and Organizing From the Mid-term Elections" offered several insights for fundraisers.

Teddy Goff, associate vice president of strategy at Blue State Digital, and Taryn Rosenkranz, director of marketing and new media for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, provided the do's and don'ts of online fundraising and communications. Rosenkranz also shared three online fundraising communications best practices.

Here are some more takeaways from Rosenkranz's portion of the webinar:

• "Communications and PR, persuasion, convincing people that your cause is important and what you believe in, showing who you are, providing awareness — that's one side of online communications," she said. "And there's the other side, which is raising money. Raising money online or offline, the most successful strategy was when we were able to bring in more grassroots people, and those that were most successful capitalized on news." The candidates that tied their platforms and policies to current issues were the most successful.
• Subject lines make a huge difference, Rosenkranz said.
• "Did you make it easy for your user on contribution pages?" she asked. "Make it clean and quick. Don't make it too long so they aren't engaging, and don't take them off-site to distract them."
• Ask yourself, "Am I working on growing my list?" Turn offline supporters into online supporters, Rosenkranz said. She suggested that Facebook ads can help you build your list because they are inexpensive and easy to use.
• Multichannel giving is really important. You need to integrate. The best donors give through several different channels.
• Use surrogate asks. "Have the right people ask for you," Rosenkranz said. "Who are those people, and who should they ask? You want it to be as personal as you can make it."