Online engagement: A holistic approach to fundraising, marketing and activism

Posted by irishg on March 11th, 2005 at 05:13am

This is the first of a three part series looking at online engagement as a strategic approach to integrate fundraising, advocacy, volunteer mobilization and activism to strengthen and grow an organization’s active supporter base.

Part One: Online Engagement: A holistic approach to fundraising, marketing and activism

“We can’t send that fundraising appeal to our list today because someone just sent out an e-newsletter. We’ll have to wait ’til next week.”

Does this sound familiar?

As nonprofits have become increasingly active on the internet, overlap and conflict seems to have increased as well between the departments responsible for fundraising, member services, campaigns, volunteers and communications . These silos of actiivity tend to operate more independently in the offline world, but the internet has created a set of common resources - notably homepage geography, and email subscription lists - that everyone wants access to. And that can lead to conflict and competition.

At least, that’s the view from inside the organization. From the outside, web site visitors and email subscribers have little or no awareness of the inner workings and politics, and it surprises and confuses them when the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. From the outside, all of the points of contact blend together into a single ongoing relationship between the supporter and the organization, and every single communications activity can have multiple connections - and multiple effects/impacts.

For instance, an email fundraising campaign may have a primary aim of motivating a donation, but it could at the same time be profiling an important issue in an e-advocacy campaign, and could also drive the donor to an online action. There may be considerable overlap both in the content of the message, and also in the specific target audience (email contact lists). It makes sense for both silos of activity to have a more complete knowledge of the interaction history with their contact lists, and of how the specific communication piece they are planning fits into that large picture.

A fully developed online engagement strategy sets out a holistic model for understanding how organizations establish and nurture ongoing relationships with individual supporters, and also how those relationships can be tapped to deliver new energy and ideas into all aspects of an organization’s activities

An online engagement strategy incorporates fundraising, volunteer recruitment and mobilization, plus advocacy, action and PR, and recognizes that supporter action can take a variety of different forms, from making a donation, to volunteering, to participating in an advocacy action, or passing on info. to friends/family/colleagues. Instead of separating these activities into different categories based on department or campaign area, the engagement model sets out a more complete picture of the relationship an individual supporter has with an organization, where they could be a donor, an advocate, a volunteer and an activist all at the same time.

Central themes of online engagement:

Supporters as “us”, not “‘them”
Your supporters should be viewed as more than just potential sources of fundraising revenue or clicks on action buttons. They should be viewed and treated as insiders, a real part of your organization, and not just as a target for delivering messages. Also realize that a your supporter base is a resource that grows with use – the more you exercise your supporter network, the stronger it gets, and the more valuable it will be to your organization.

It’s about more than money
A holistic approach to online engagement encourages donors to express their support through more than just giving money. The list of active “roles” that your supporters can — and often will - play includes: volunteers, advocates, defenders, communicators, researchers, mobilizers, analysts and more.

Connect with individuals, not masses
Online engagement is not about delivering messages to mass audience - it’s about crafting a meaningful relationship with each individual member of your constituency. This is where the techniques and approaches of fundraising can be of great value. Fundraising is all about individual engagement – it’s the stock and trade of developing and delivering messages that motivate people/foundations and corporations to give money. These techniques and approaches may be equally applied to other areas of constituent relations – in all of the active support roles indicated above. Individual engagement is not about mass marketing or mass mobilization/activism – which are more concerned with the size/action/impact of the crowd than with motivations/opinions/commitment of the individual actor. Communication/marketing is about delivering messages – constituent engagement is about building relationships.

Next> Part Two: Principles of Online Engagement

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