Back to the basics – Fundraising Online is like Fundraising Offline

The Network for Good Learning Center is a great fundraising resource for any non-profit.   They have a great article up: “Five Things We’re Forgetting When We Take Our Fundraising Online.”  Rebecca Ruby Higman reminds us that the same basic principles apply to fundraising online as they do offline.  She uses these five principles:

1. People like to give to people-not organizations and statistics
2. People need to be asked to give
3. Fundraisers need to be coaxed
4. Fundraisers will perform better if part of a fundraising team
5. Fundraisers need to be recognized and feel valued

Definitely a great list.  I would add one more to Higman’s list: fundraising is 2 parts planning, 1 part working your plan and 1 part evaluating and perfecting your plan.  Whether online or offline, you start with your goal ($100,000 by September 1, $750,000 this fiscal year, etc), then work backwards until you can look at your spreadsheet and say: “that’s how we’ll get there.”

“Online” (aka the Internets or the “Tubes”, as one former Senator called them) is just another category of tools to help you accomplish your overall goal.  Once again, the tool is not a strategy itself.

Now back to those four parts:

• The planning is essential.  The online piece of planning makes assumptions about the size of your list (and how it grows), the response rate from emails and web site traffic.  Then, just like offline, you lay out a calendar of how you will communicate with your donors over a period of time.  It’s two parts (or three or four) planning because this stage is essential to the entire process.
• Working your plan is what you wanted to do out of the gate but you paused to make a plan so you could do it better.  It’s hitting on the message you developed through email, your web site, blogs, facebook, etc, etc, etc.
• The evaluation and perfection is often forgotten or shortchanged.  What were the results?  Did our assumptions hold? What feedback did we get from our members/donors?  Why did we hit/miss our goal? Doing this step well will make the next campaign (next month or next year) all the better.   

Online fundraising does sound an awful lot like fundraising in general, right?

-Stephen

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