In 2008 email fundraising response rates were .13%, and email advocacy response rates were 4%. Online fundraising grew overall by 4.5% between 2008 and 2009.  For those of us trying to ramp up our online fundraising, those numbers are nothing to write home about. But in these hard times, we’ll take what we can get.  To help capture a slice of this fundraising action, Frogloop has put together a useful list of tips.  Here it is:

Create Killer Landing Pages: Tell people what you want them to do quickly. Be clear how their donation will make a difference. One tactic that has been successful for the nonprofit CARE is to provide their donors with two simple pie charts that illustrate how funds raised are allocated below the credit card donation form. Also give people several options to contribute money – one time giving, monthly giving, etc.

Cut The Wonk: You nonprofit will raise more money by telling compelling stories that resonate with real people. Donors are human beings (not ATM machines) and they need to feel connected to your organization and to your story. Save your press releases for the media, and your “talking points” for policy makers.

Build A Great List: You need invested people on your list to fundraise. There are two main ways nonprofits can build lists: 1) Organic Cultivation: via your own website, events, social networking sites, direct mail, etc; 2) Paid Acquisition: Online acquisition Google Ad Words, email appends, chaperoned emails, etc.

Cross Promote: The best way to reach your donors is to connect with them wherever they are – which means everywhere. Make sure you cross promote your fundraising campaigns across multiple channels such as your website, email appeals, social networks, direct mail, telemarketing, etc. Also be sure that the content is edited for each channel since each one has its own unique tone and voice.

Segment: Querying and segmenting your online membership may not be a ton of fun, but it’s vital to the success of your online fundraising program. You need this information to tailor appeals to different segments of your list. Why would you send members of your list who have never donated to your organization the same exact appeal to members who have donated $250 3x in the past 12 months? These two audiences are connected to your nonprofit very differently and therefore should receive different appeals that match their level of engagement.

Close The Loop: Don’t forget to thank your donors and tell them if you met your goals. This simple strategy has proven to help build better relationships with donors. Also make sure you include any compelling stories, successes, or photos so donors feel that their donation made a difference.

Measure The Results: There are myriad amounts of ways your nonprofit can measure the success of your online fundraising campaigns. Here are a few key ones:
•    Open Rates: What percentage of people opened up an online fundraising appeal.
•    Unique Web Visits: How many unique visits to the landing page.
•    Conversions: What percentage of people who clicked on the donate link, donated money.
•    Click-Through Rates: How many people clicked on a donation link.

According to Reuters, the actor Ed Norton is leading a new venture called Crowdrise “that gives people a free way to create their own fundraising pages to share through social networks, winning points and prizes along the way.” Crowdrise was developed after Norton found Twitter to be an effective way to raise $1.2 million for his long-term cause, the Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust, by running New York’s marathon last year.  According to Norton “People use Twitter or Facebook because it’s a way to share their personal narrative but we wanted to give people a platform to say, these are the causes I care about, I am volunteering and sponsor me.”

Here’s how Norton and Co. describe the way users can tap into Crowdrise:

START FUNDRAISING PROJECTS: Whether you’re running a marathon, volunteering, or have causes that you care deeply about, create your own Fundraising Pages on Crowdrise and choose from over a million charities to raise money for. If it takes you more than a minute to create your Page, you’re probably just a really slow typist.

GET YOUR VOLUNTEER PROJECTS SPONSORED: Post all your Volunteer Projects on Crowdrise so everyone sees how you’re making a difference. Go a step further and get your friends to Sponsor your Volunteer Projects to raise money for Charity, the exact same way someone running a marathon does.

MAKE YOUR CAMPAIGNS COMPELLING: Use your personal stories, powerful photos and videos, and our Best Promos Ever to create campaigns that are so compelling that your supporters not only donate money but want to join your Project Team and tell everyone they know about it.

GET VOTES AND WIN AMAZING PRIZES: Earn 100 points for every Vote you get from the Crowdrise Community and get 10 points for every $1 you raise for Charity. The goal is to allow the community to award the best Volunteers and Fundraisers in the world with lots of Points. Top Point Earners not only win amazing prizes, but they’ll be recognized for their extraordinary achievements by becoming Crowdrise Royalty.

And here’s a chart for how the program works:

A new study, by Convio, Edge Research and Sea Change Strategies, entitled The Next Generation of American Giving: A study on the contrasting charitable habits of Generation Y, Generation X, Baby Boomers and Matures, tries to parse out how different generations are donating to the nonprofit sector both on and off line. The study defines Matures as Americans born in 1945 or earlier.  Baby Boomers are defined as those born between 1946 and 1964.  Generation X is defined as those born between 1965 and 1980.  Finally, Generation Y is defined as those American born between 1981 and 1991. Here are some of the key findings (summarized by Frogloop):

• Matures (there are an estimated 39 million of them) tend to be more loyal in their giving.  They also give the most money (a total of $1,066 on average per year).  However, their giving is spread among more charities, so the average gift is not discernibly higher than those of the other generations.  Further, Matures represent a shrinking donor pool. And thus, they may be a less attractive segment to target.  In terms of donation channels, Matures are more likely than any other generation to give and learn about charities via postal mail.
• Boomers (there are an estimated 78 million of them) are double the size of Matures.  For this reason, they represent a highly attractive donor population.  Unlike Matures they tend to look at giving or philanthropy as an investment opportunity.  Therefore, they are more likely to vet a charity before donating.  The average annual Boomer gift is a $901.  In terms of channels, “giving by mail is still prevalent with Boomers but at a significantly lower rate than Matures.”
• Generation X (there are an estimated 62 million of them) also represent a larger donor pool than Matures and thus, may be an attractive donor segment for nonprofits to target. 58% of them give and “not surprisingly, the incidence of having given on a website increases with younger populations to the point that for Gen X is almost equal to mail.”  However, it’s interesting to note that telemarketing was also viewed as an acceptable solicitation channel for this segment.
• Finally, Generation Y (there are an estimated 51 million of them) represent smallest donor pool.  Only 56% of them give.  This is not surprising, due to the fact that these younger folks are new to the workforce and therefore less likely than other generations to have disposable income.  Unlike Matures, Boomers or Gen X, direct mail does not register for Gen Y.  Instead, they are likely to hear about charities via mainstream media, word of mouth, school and peer-to-peer events.
• Finally, Facebook is “somewhat” important communication channel for any of the generational segments.  However, websites and email still rank as more important.
• Donors in all four generations said, “The most appropriate form of solicitation was indirect via a friend.” This confirms what many fundraisers already know  – determining who makes “the ask” is just as important as making it.  It also means that all nonprofits need to get better at leveraging their donors to fundraise on their behalf.

MobileActive has put together a great guide to mobile fundraising.  Below are their 7 Tips for Getting Started:

1. The first thing for a nonprofit organization to do is to decide whether or not to explore the possibilities of mobile giving. Here are some initial things to consider.

2. Collect Mobile Numbers: If you do not already collect mobile numbers, do so and make certain that you provide the appropriate information about how you will and will not use that information. If you want to let people know about a mobile giving campaign, sending messages to them (if permitted) or using your existing lists can be a way to raise attention to the short code/text fundraising campaign. If you have to start scrounging for mobile numbers at the point of wanting to raise money, you are behind. Here are some easy ways to collect mobile number

• On your website when you have people sign up for your newsletter, etc (see MMA materials for opt-in web samples/insert).
• From your existing email list/constituent list.
• At event registrations.
• On Facebook and other social media (some ASPs offer simple Facebook widgets)
• On feedback you collect for mail donations, reservations, or any other communication to and from your constituents.
• Through polls and and games or competitions.

3. Find the Right Provider: The easiest way to find the right Application Service Providers (ASP) is exactly the same way you consider any other vendor. Ask around, read articles, participate in discussions, and keep your eyes open.

4. Understand the Fees: As we noted, the fee structures for ASPs include one-time costs (the set-up), fixed monthly costs (which often include other services such as text message campaigns or extra keywords), and the transaction costs for donations. This can make comparing ASPs difficult; it also can mean that it makes the decision to actually go ahead with a mobile giving campaign harder.

5. Integrate Mobile Giving with Your Other Fundraising Tactics: Do not make the mistake of making mobile giving a separate project apart from your other fundraising operations. Remember that the donation process starts when a donor sends a text message. That action happens as a result of the donor having an existing relationship with the organization and/or some external prompt: a news article, an e-mail from you or a friend, an announcement at an event, a news story, or a message on a blimp, for that matter.

6. Donʼt Worry About Breaking Even: Here is one way to get your first mobile giving campaign off the ground without devoting half of your waking hours to spreadsheet what-if games. For one or more of the ASPs you are considering, calculate the fixed cost for the first year (some ASPs will offer a shorter contract). The amount can be as low as $1,188 (Causecast), up to $5,288 (mgive.com) with various added services available beyond those amounts.

Once you have calculated your financial commitment, consider approaching one or more of your existing donors to cover that cost. This means that your break-even point for at least the vendor is $0. As with all other fundraising techniques, you really do not know how it works until you have done it, so removing some risk is a good way to position this as an experiment. After the first year, you can continue the mobile giving process by including its costs and projected revenues in your budget based on the first yearʼs experience.

7. Start Early: Because the time to start up your mobile giving project can take at least several weeks, do not think that you can just add it on a week before the start of your annual fund drive. Overnight successes are almost always preceded by a lot of hard work.

The right-roots are taking credit for the Scott Brown victory in MA. In Sunday’s Washington Post, two GOP online consultants argue that being out of power has allowed the rightroots to leapfrog over the established GOP leadership. Here are a few of their key claims: 

• Previously rightroots strategists were laughed out of high-level campaign meetings, told that online budgets are the first thing to go and informed that having a Facebook page is “unpresidential.” And it wasn’t until recently that people stopped asking techies to fix their computers.

• Being out-of-power nurtures online organizing: It’s not as though GOP organizers woke up last fall and realized they’d better learn to use this Internet thing. [Repubs] are out of power — and the party out of power has the stronger incentive to innovate. If it doesn’t, the base will. Netroots protests dragged the Democratic Party into the 21st century kicking and screaming in 2006 and 2008. Frustrated with the president and health-care reform, the conservative “tea party” movement has done the same for the Republicans in the past year.

• It’s not that the GOP is any less capable of using technology than the Democrats are. It was just that during the years that the netroots really took off — 2004 to 2008 — Republicans were not angry enough (or desperate enough) to use all the weapons in their arsenal. A single, unifying outrage, like the Democrats’ opposition to the Iraq war and to President George W. Bush, was missing.

• The Internet isn’t a line item in a campaign budget anymore. It’s not just something you have to pay for, underneath catering and radio ads. It has reorganized the way Americans do everything — including elect their leaders. Candidates who would have had no chance before the Internet can now overcome huge odds, with the people they energize serving as the backbone of their campaign.

• These forces all came together in the MA Senate special election. Scott Brown’s supporters became fans of the candidate on Facebook, where they commented on his status updates and uploaded their own photos. The Republican Senate hopeful took to Twitter, using the #masen hashtag to let his followers know how the race was going. His campaign powered its field operation through targeted online ads and Web-based spreadsheets, and raised $12 million from 157,000 individual donations in the last two weeks of the race. After he won last week, his team live-streamed the election-night party in Boston online.

The right roots think that their party seems finally to be catching up online — just in time for 2010 and 2012.

For more than a decade, progressives and liberals have dominated online politics, but that’s beginning to change. A year after Obama’s campaign domination of online fund-raising, online organizing and social media, Ross Douthat of the NYT raises the possibility that the right may have begun to outflank the left online. According to Douthat:

• Republican politicians have taken over Twitter. Sarah Palin has 1.2 million followers on Facebook. And in liberal Massachusetts, Scott Brown, the Republican Senate candidate, has used Internet fund-raising to put the fear of God into the Bay State’s establishment. Last Monday, Brown raised $1.3 million from an online “money bomb,” and his campaign reportedly went on to raise a million dollars a day throughout the week. The race’s online landscape looks like last November’s in reverse: from YouTube views to Facebook fans to Twitter followers, Brown enjoys an Obama-esque edge over his Democratic rival, Martha Coakley.

• Brown’s race…demonstrated there’s no necessary connection between online organizing and liberal politics. The Web is just like every pre-Internet political arena: ideology matters less than the level of anger at the incumbent party, and the level of enthusiasm an insurgent candidate can generate.

• The attempts to turn the [Obama] campaign’s online community, weakly re-dubbed Organizing for America, into a permanent political force have flopped. In a recent post on the Web site Personal Democracy Forum, Micah Sifry captured the free-floating sense of anger with Obama’s governance: “The people who voted for him weren’t organized in any kind of new or powerful way, and the special interests … sat first at the table and wrote the menu. Myth met reality, and came up wanting.

Are robocalls effective? According to Shaun Dakin the answer is a resounding “NO”. While robocalls appear to be a “useful way to call attention to a mailing, they have never otherwise been found to result in a measurable increase in turnout.” After numerous studies involving millions of phone calls, no robocall has shown any significant increase in turnout.  Here are summaries of four robocall studies:

• A 2005 study failed to show that robocalls generated mobilization results among youth voters. This study was conducted during the 2005 New Jersey Gubernatorial Election. 18,000 young voters were randomly selected to be robocalled with one of two GOTV messages, while the rest of the young voters in the election were left uncontacted. The first group’s message encouraged turnout and informed the voters of their polling location. The second group’s message was a generic turnout encouragement. Neither message was effective at increasing turnout over the uncontacted group.

• A 2006 study failed to find that robocalls increased turnout among Latino voters when the calls were placed from a Latino organization. The National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) conducted the study during the 2006 General Election in five California counties. Robocalls were delivered to 61,422 low propensity Latino voters. No effect on turnout was found among those who were called relative to those who were not called.

• A 2005 study failed to find that robocalls had an effect when using the voice of a Latino celebrity. NALEO conducted this study in California, New Mexico, and the city of Houston, TX, during the 2002 General Election. More than 250,000 phone numbers associated with Latino voters received two robocalls each. The calls were recorded in Spanish by a Spanish-language-television celebrity anchorwoman. The researchers found no statistically reliable increase in turnout among those who were assigned to receive the calls relative to those who were assigned to not receive the calls. The cost of the robocall campaign was $23,725 which means that the robocalls in this study resulted in a cost per vote of approximately $275.

• Another study failed to demonstrate an effect from robocalls using political endorsements. This experiment was conducted during the Texas Republican Primary for State Supreme Court Justice. In this study, hundreds of thousands of Republican voters received a robocall message recorded by popular Republican Governor, Rick Perry. The message encouraged Republicans to turnout for the upcoming election, and to vote specifically for the endorsed nominee. Those who received the robocalls were not measurably more likely to vote than those who did not.

The direct mail guru’s over at Mal Warwick Assoc. have posted a useful summary of the key points from a new book by Chip and Dan Health entitled Made to Stick, which explores what ideas work best in direct mail. They are:

• Simplicity—short, profound statements are powerful. Focus on the message’s core—think “proverbs.”
• Unexpectedness—generate lasting interest. Create a gap in people’s knowledge to make them curious.
• Concreteness—make ideas clear so everyone understands them. Explain ideas through (many) real examples.
• Credibility—make people believe your idea. Use vivid details, use statistics to illustrate a relationship (rather than a number) that people will remember.
• Emotional—tap into people’s feelings to make them care about the idea.
• Stories—the right stories can inspire and make people act.

This might be useful little checklist the next time you’re drafting up some direct mail.

A new 2009 eCampaigning Review Study by Advocacy Online was released last week which analyzed if nonprofits are effective at using online communications to reach supporters. Here’s what they found:

• 60% of nonprofits studied present a compelling argument for supporters to take action, yet close to 70% of the organizations did not send a follow up email within one month. 37% of nonprofits did not even bother to send a thank you email.
• 50% of organizations’ online lists had 40% or more inactive supporters. Only 9% had a strategy for reactivating dormant supporters
• 76% of the organizations surveyed ask their donors to take action online.
• 69% ask their online members to make a donation.
• 92% collect email addresses from at least two sources, including: events, website, and offline mailings.
• 51% of organizations have 10,000 members or less.
• 5% of supporters are active members (meaning they took one or more actions in the period of the study between June and August 2009).
• 7% of respondents conduct split tests of email alerts.
• 4% of campaigners are supporters of more than one organization.

Based on the report, Frogloop’s Allyson Kapin suggests some strategies that nonprofits should utilize to move their members up the ladder of activism

1. Segment their lists more and write separate emails that resonate with different levels and types of supporters.

2. Survey their list at least once a year and ask supporters what issues do they think the organization should take on?

3. Determine if these inactive members are bad email addresses.

4. After a few attempts of trying to re-engage inactive supporters, consider removing them from your nonprofits list.

5. Grow your online lists to account for churn rates

Common Cause recently surveyed over 500 communications professionals from foundations, nonprofit organizations and educational institutions to find what makes an organization an effective communicator. According to their report:

It is no surprise that nonprofit professionals are nearly universal in their belief that communications is vital to the livelihood of their organizations (97%).  Building awareness, managing reputation and raising money are all critical functions directed or supported by communications professionals. But findings show a significant gap between nonprofits’ views on communications and their effectiveness.  Only a third of the organizations we polled are highly effective at communicating who they are and what they care about.

So what really distinguishes the “highly effective” organizations from their less effective counterparts?  While there’s no magic bullet, Common Cause found that being strategic is effective. Specifically:

1. Their leaders play an active role in communications.
2. They have donors that understand the importance of communications and provide the resources to back it up.
3. Communications planning is done in concert with organization-wide planning.
4. They have the right staff for the right jobs, and get help when needed.
5. They master the basics and go beyond.
6. They evaluate their work to better gauge successes and areas for improvement.