Network for Good

People go online because they're seeking to connect with other people, with things they like and with causes they love. Technology enables them to forge stronger connections, and people therefore come to nonprofits with high expectations for the way we treat them online.

Online donations rose sharply last year, say three big organizations that handle Internet gifts.

Convio says online donations to its 1,300 clients topped $1.3-billion, a more than 40-percent increase.

Giving to 5,000 charity clients of Blackbaud grew by more than 10 percent in December alone, though the company wouldn’t give the precise increase. It's preparing a fuller report on 2010 results to release within the month.

And Network for Good says it processed 20 percent more in charitable donations last year than it did in 2009.

There's been an explosion of online intermediaries promising to help nonprofits raise money and awareness. Crowdrise, Jumo, Causecast, Causes on Facebook and others try to use social networking and crowdsourcing to build interest in charities and causes, and help them attract donations.

But for many nonprofits, the value remains to be seen. For one thing, they hand partial control over charity brand names and trademarks to users who are often unknown to the nonprofits they support. And virtually all of them ask users to pay to donate.

Here are six online donation tools recommended by Idealware.

Based on the findings from The Online Giving Study, Network for Good offers four tips to maximize online fundraising.

Charities raise far more money from their own Web sites—or those that prominently bear their name—than they do from social networks like Facebook or from other sites that channel donations to many causes, according to a new study of donor behavior over the past seven years. The study was conducted by Network for Good, a Bethesda, Md., organization that will send donations to any charity in the United States.  Its site—and other online portals—received 66.7 percent less in donations than sites charities created to seek donations on their own.

The Online Giving Study: A Call to Reinvent Donor Relationships, from Network for Good and TrueSense Marketing and sponsored by AOL, reveals important insights about digital philanthropy: People seem to give more when the online experience is intimate and emotionally coherent, and they also give online for reasons of convenience, especially at the end of the year and during large-scale disasters.

Charitable donations are shifting from collection trays and kettles to laptops and cellphones as more nonprofits turn to online and mobile fundraising.

From Facebook to Colorado Gives Day, high-tech campaigns are sweeping the nonprofit world.

Leveraging technology from Denver-based mGive, the Salvation Army is testing a text-message fundraiser this holiday season to supplement its traditional Red Kettle Christmas campaign.

It ushers in a new phase of mobile giving, which might soon include higher single-donation limits, corporate sponsors and deeper engagement between nonprofits and donors via texts.

Donors are upbeat about end-of-year giving. Here are some helpful links to check out regarding your end-of-year fundraising campaigns.

These five common online fundraising themes prevailed at the ArtezInterAction Conference.