Online Fundraising

In part one of this two-part series, we talked about six friends you absolutely must make if you want to increase your fundraising results this year—and sustain and grow them over time. Today, we look at six more...

In a recent blog, I erroneously described Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who have been described as “psychology’s Lennon and McCartney,” as “two Princeton University psychologists.” Actually, only one of the pair worked at Princeton—Kahneman, who has been there since 1993. Tversky was at Stanford University at the time of his death in 1996. This is all background for an interesting email I got last week from Adam Dickter, a public relations guy...

With over 2 million campaign organizers and 25 million donors, the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe has become a major force for helping philanthropic causes go viral. In 2016, GoFundMe reached a major milestone: $3 billion given over its platform, and it says three times as many people year over year. In most cases, the average campaign…

I like the idea of Giving Tuesday very much—there needs to be a day (actually, more than one) dedicated to giving. That’s why it frustrates me that we are killing it. And not killing it in the sense of "doing very well." "Killing it" in the sense of making it unable to survive. I know…

We’re used to scouring eBay for scoring deals on designer duds, or for maybe finding that obscure vacuum part. But now the online market behemoth has jumped into the world of charity gifting. Launched on Giving Tuesday, Nov. 29, the eBay for Charity team’s new "Gifts That Give Back initiative" allows charitable organizations to “sell”…

How does the size of suggested donations affect charitable contributions? That’s the question researchers from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business set out to answer in a recent study. Oleg Urminsky, associate professor of marketing, and Indranil Goswami, then a doctoral candidate at Booth and now an assistant professor at the University at…

There is a viral campaign going around right now born from the discomfort people have with a certain online news site. This website seems to polarize many people in the U.S. and has been a big player in the recent political arena. The campaign is trying to use the very basic feedback elements of AdWords to hurt the website. That has some scary implications...

Ever wondered how your online fundraising is doing? And how that compares to other organizations? Do you need numbers that can help you to set your goals? This online marketing charity benchmark tool will kickstart that process. We have analyzed close to 12 million sessions, looked at more than 40,000 donations and checked out 148,000…

As Black Friday approached, I became very aware that our peak giving season is now here. For my organization, during the last four months of the year, we receive more than 60 percent of our donation revenue. I stopped for a moment the other day during lunch and wondered why giving at the end of the calendar year is so important...

I’m not a fan of #GivingTuesday. Don’t get me wrong, though. I do like the idea of it. Promoting philanthropy at a time of year that has become associated with extreme consumerism is a nice concept. While I have no quarrel with the idea of #GivingTuesday, I do have several problems with the reality of…