The Tools Every Charity Should Have in Its Online Fundraising Toolbox

I hope you enjoyed last month’s article “Fundraising Big Online: How Little Charities Are Punching Above Their Weight.” For those of you who missed it, let me provide this disclaimer: I run an online fundraising company, so my perspective is very pro-digital … but it’s also informed by 10 years of Internet fundraising experience, so I hope it will be of some value to you.

This month’s topic is dear to my heart. As the leader of a tool-building company, I spend a lot of time talking to organizations about the digital tools they’re using, the tools they like and the tools that don’t work. To keep this simple, I’ll group tools into categories or levels. Imagine you’re in the elevator of an e-philanthropy department store, and you’re ready to shop …

Level 1: Your Web presence
Your homepage defines who you are online. Many current and future donors will form an impression of you simply by what they see in a few seconds on your homepage. The good news is that there’s a shift away from spending lots of money on expensive Web site management tools and toward taking advantage of a new breed of powerful and inexpensive solutions available on the market. Keep in mind that even the most inexpensive Web site management tools require care and feeding by someone, so plan accordingly.

The best Web sites are those that change at least slightly each day, each week and each month.

More and more, organizations are realizing that it isn’t enough to simply have a single Web presence. Though important to manage your own domain effectively, the fact is that most people on the Internet will never visit it. This makes it important to have a page on Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube and other networks that are frequented by the kind of people you’d like to reach.

Level 2: Basic donations and e-mail tools
Once you’ve established your Web presence, you need to make sure your sites have basic plumbing to allow someone to leave an e-mail address and a donation. Good news again: There is an abundance of both of these types of tools, so it’s worth shopping around to find the one that best suits your needs. Price, security and branding capabilities should be primary considerations as you compare one toolset to the next.

You can really leverage all of your direct-response skills on this level: Build an e-mail list as big as possible; solicit that e-mail list carefully to drive donations and repeat.

Level 3: Fundraising and social-networking tools
The next level of tools allows organizations to move beyond direct-response techniques. Tools on this level enable a volunteer or donor to become a fundraiser for a campaign or cause. Such tools typically involve a series of personal and/or team fundraising pages and depend on the volunteer to solicit his or her own network of friends and family by e-mail and, increasingly, on sites such as Facebook.

More and more, organizations are viewing their “Fundraise Now” button with equal importance as their “Donate Now” button.

Some new tools on this level allow organizations to create their own private-label versions of Facebook. Dubbed “social software” tools, such as Igloo Software, these tools are becoming increasingly popular alternatives to "just" Web site content management tools. But it takes a plan for care and feeding to produce active online communities; software alone won’t do it.

Level 4: Relationship-management tools
Tools on this level allow organizations to have a collective memory about their past relationships. Formerly known as “donor databases,” these tools are an important part of any online fundraising strategy. Trends in this category are moving increasingly toward browser-based solutions for both cost and ease-of-use reasons. Tip: Make sure any relationship-management tool you choose can easily import and export data, since no one solution can really do it all.

A final piece of advice
As you are considering your online fundraising budget, don’t spend all of it on tools. I’ve seen too many organizations spend large sums of money on sophisticated tools, only to find that they don’t have sufficient budget for staff to leverage all of the features. As a result, they end up using only about 20 percent of the power even though they paid for 100 percent; and as staff turnover occurs, training and retraining demands soar.

Please keep your eye out for next month’s column, "Social Networks: How to Make Them Work for Your Organization." If you are enjoying this content, I invite you to search for my “Digital Fundraising Podcast” on iTunes and listen to interviews with top thinkers in the world of digital fundraising. Also, if you have any thoughts or comments I’d love to hear them at philip.king@artez.com

Philip King is president and CEO of Artez Interactive.