The Five Basic Steps to Acquiring Donors Online

* Paid search. The concept of developing a budget for online marketing might scare some nonprofits — particularly in this economy — but it shouldn’t. Search engine marketing is an easy way to wet your toes. SEM involves placing ads (called “sponsored links”) on Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search.

For starters, buy the search terms that are related to your mission — unless your organization is the first that appears under the organic (or free) search results. Even if your organization is the top organic search listing for keywords closely related to your brand, purchase pay-per-click ads for those keywords, too, and point them directly to a donation form. (For an example of how this works, type “Amnesty” in Google.) Search ads can be particularly effective when there’s breaking news related either to your organization or to one 
of the societal challenges you seek to solve. It’s best 
to hire an expert to help you with this, at least to get you started.