E-Philanthropy

We all know that first impressions really do count. In fact, research has confirmed that folks visiting your website form an impression in one-twentieth of a second, influencing their ratings of the site. So it makes you wonder — what are potential members, supporters or donors thinking about your website? Does it inspire trust? Are they motivated to stay a while or come back for more?

With the arrival of spring, maybe now is a good time to think about a little spring cleaning on your website.

We have to let the donor experience drive our giving sites, not our cumbersome internal processes that make things difficult. This process should be filled with joy and ease for the end user, not headaches and frustration. This is especially critical because your online donors make larger gifts than those that come in the mail. Need more proof of the power of online gifts? Check out the annual report from Blackbaud.

To get you thinking, here is a brief checklist of 5 items from the donor's perspective that make a real difference.

Christine Schaefer, VP of community and marketing at Salsa Labs, tackles nonprofit donation page design and explains why and how a small to midsize business e-commerce strategy can be applied to nonprofit donation page design for higher completion rate.

Nonprofit crowdfunding is changing the landscape in online fundraising. As more and more donors are being exposed to crowdfunding for products and services, they’ll expect your fundraising to shift toward those approaches as well. Here are five best practices that I’ve learned along the way that you need to follow in order to crowdfund successfully for your nonprofit: 1. Start with a measurable goal. 2. Rethink rewards and donation tiers. 3. Create a sexy story. 4. Build a tribe of champions.

In the spirit of improving donor retention rates in 2014, here are five no-brainer follow-up techniques to help you retain new online donors.

Creating an online community to mobilize your supporters and further your nonprofit's mission might seem like a big task. What to do? Where to start? A simple way is to look at what your peers are doing. Below are five examples of what some innovative nonprofits are doing with their online communities. Think online communities are just a general space on your website? Think again. Each of these are purpose-driven online communities designed to achieve specific results for the organization.

Writing, and sending, your nonprofit’s email newsletter takes creativity, precision strategy and even a little finesse. Not only that, but once it's been sent, your newsletter is out of your control. There’s no redo. Proofreading, avoiding spam triggers, ensuring it’s mobile-optimized and creating alluring subject lines are all imperative to the success of the newsletter and what the content inside is promoting.

The Environmental Working Group was in the middle of an all-out push to raise money when it made a disconcerting discovery. The nonprofit realized that all the fundraising emails it sent to people who used Google’s Gmail service, one of the most popular email providers, were going straight into supporters’ spam folders, not their inboxes.

As big email service providers continue to wage war on spammers, nonprofits are getting caught in the crossfire. The solution, as the Environmental Working Group found out, is a good old-fashioned email house cleaning.

Oh, wait, it’s just another nonprofit e-newsletter! Check this list to make sure you are maximizing the opportunity.

Online fundraising is important — and growing more important every year — but nonprofits can't just open a spigot and watch online contributions pour in. Successful online fundraisers avoid the common mistakes that plague so many others. Here are four fundraising pitfalls we see too often and how can you can avoid them: 1. inconsistent messaging on donation pages. 2. making the donation process too complex, 3. skipping effective follow-up and 4. relying on intuition, not data.