Charities are creating significant barriers to potential donors making online contributions, according to the first Online Fundraising Scorecard, a study by Dunham+Company and Next After.
The study, the most comprehensive focusing on the online donor experience, gives most nonprofits a failing or mediocre grade when scored against tested and proven online best practices.
The study comes at a time when many charities are still struggling to recover from the Great Recession of 2007-09. Giving USA’s 2013 report estimated that giving increased only by 1.5 percent when adjusted for inflation in 2012, the most recent year when data is available.
Of the 151 organizations that were part of the study, 127 scored 75 percent or below.
“Research has shown that online giving represents only about 6 percent of total charitable gifts, but this study uncovers the fact that charities put up unnecessary roadblocks to donors giving online,” said Rick Dunham, President and CEO of Dunham+Company and also a member of the boards of The Giving Institute and Giving USA.
“This new data, combined with research already showing that more than two-thirds of online transactions are being abandoned, makes us believe there are millions – if not billions – of dollars being left on the table. Virtually every charity could improve the online giving experience for its donors.”
The study was conducted over the course of nine months in 2013. The researchers reviewed the websites of 151 organizations, including 100 in the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 400 of the largest nonprofits, and signed up to receive emails as well as giving an initial $20 gift.
The study examined 46 key indicators in four critical parts of online fundraising: email registration, email communication, the donation experience and the gift acknowledgement process.
The researchers discovered:
- 37 percent of organizations did not send a single email within 30 days after subscribers signed up to receive them;
- 79 percent did not personalize emails with a person’s first or last name;
- 36 percent sent emails with multiple, conflicting calls to action;
- 65 percent required three or more pages to give a gift online;
- 84 percent did not have a online donation experience that was optimized for mobile devices; and
- 63 percent did not provide a next step for donors to take once they thanked them for their donations.
Interestingly, animal welfare organizations (81 percent), political candidates (78) and environmental and wildlife organizations (77) received the highest average scores. Jewish organizations (68 percent) and Christian ministries (67) received some of the lowest.
For more information, or to download the scorecard and check your own organization, visit www.dunhamandcompany.com.
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While these are very helpful pointers for improving the experience for our donors–something we should all aim for–I think unless it’s a horrible experience, it’s unlikely to impact donations profoundly. There may be a subtle psychological impact of reading my name in an online solicitation field, for instance. However, I’m going to give to a lot of the orgs. I presently give to, regardless, because I support the causes: my shul, the Hillel at my alma mater, my local Jewish Federation, the Jewish org. I’m an alumna of, and asstd. other Jewish and pro-Israel orgs. I have relationships with. I give to them annually. I don’t read about 75% of the newsletters and solicitation letters I receive…and when I do, I skim. This reminds me of all the business that was drummed up in the 90’s on tweaking websites to be “ideal.” Having a good website is indeed an important communication tool. But how many additional donations will *really* be secured in taking a B or B+ level website to an A? I don’t visit the websites of the orgs. I support unless I’m looking for specific info. or to make a donation. I wouldn’t want the orgs. I support to spend more time/money on administrative expenses to “hook” me better. When I increase my gifts, it’s because of a personal relationship or because of a new initiative they’re taking that I connect with. Let’s keep our focus on the mission first and foremost, while aiming to improve our donors’ experience.
This is a good reminder for organizations to review their donor processes, whether online or off. It’s not simply the online giving form (although many orgs could make some simple changes there that would have a big impact); organizations also need to consider the other steps of the process, including:
– Stewardship – timely, warm thank you letter AND a plan to steward donors long-term
– Data Management – tracking donations accurately in a donor management system
We tested our JCamp180-affiliated Jewish overnight summer camp online donor experiences last December and provided feedback in a couple of articles that may be helpful to any organization reading this article:
http://jcamp180.org/Knowledge-Center/Technology/Technology-Tools-for-Fundraising/Camps-Online-Giving-Test-Part-I.aspx
http://jcamp180.org/Knowledge-Center/Technology/Technology-Tools-for-Fundraising/Camps-Online-Giving-Test-Part-II.aspx
It would be great to hear from other organizations about changes they made to their online fundraising systems/processes that made a big impact.
Kevin Martone
Technology Program Manager
JCamp 180
While I agree that the UX on donation forms could be dramatically better and increase online conversion rates, the study cited in the article talks a lot more to the cultivation of online donors. This extends well beyond the donation form and suggests that Jewish organizations are doing a poor story building relationships with online donors and telling the organization’s story effectively.
You raise a really good point. In fact, I *used to* completely agree with you until we started doing online experiments to test this stuff and found that there is a disproportionate increase in results compared to the amount of effort that is required to optimize our fundraising campaigns.
Here’s a few examples:
1. My first test, we changed literally one sentence in an email. And it was the very last sentence. Now best practices and my marketing intuition told me that only 18% of people read to the bottom of an email, so how could making one change really make a material difference. We set up and A/B split test and found that the optimized version generated 42% increase in revenue. That woke me up a little bit to the tremendous opportunity to increase the capacity for nonprofits by simple doing a better job of communicating. You can read the whole story here: http://www.digitaldonor.com/2013/07/my-very-first-experiment-how-changing.html
2. With another organization, we tested a different layout and copy on a donation page. We went from a very visually pleasing page to a page that used longer-form copy that better communicated the impact that would be achieved through the donor’s gift. We again did an A/B split test and found that the optimized version generated a 274% increase in revenue. Compared to the effort it took to make the changes, the return on investment was HUGE– tens of thousands of dollars in new revenue!
By the way, I’m the lead researcher and co-author of the Online Fundraising Scorecard. One of the reasons that we did this study is to start this conversation about optimization in the nonprofit space. We love the work that caused-based organizations do and want challenge our nonprofit friends to never settle. We look at at 10% response rate as a 90% non-response rate and we get excited about trying to make our messaging and designs better so that we can inspire the other 90% to support the cause.
If there are things we could do to make our fundraising better, to raise more money, to provide greater capacity– to do more good– why would we not strive for that?