Archive for June, 2005
June 29th, 2005 at 12:13am
Under fundraising
Heard another good take away today in Washington, DC. Oxfam America leveraged good media relations to raise a lot of money online. Dave Moore at Oxfam had good media relations with Yahoo. He had a name and number and relationship with a decision maker at Yahoo. In the first sixty minutes after news of the tsunami, he made the call to his Yahoo contact. Oxfam American was the only highlighted charity for the first 20 hours on Yahoo before other charities appeared. It only took good media relations. How are yours online?
By Michael Johnston
June 29th, 2005 at 12:10am
Under fundraising
Still sitting at Reagan Airport and wanted to mention another neat idea. I talked to someone from the National Wildlife Foundation, www.nwf.org, and was impressed with the way they try to show the value of signing up to their enewsletter. Go the bottom of their home page and you’ll read how they describe it:
Want a free monthly e-newsletter with interesting facts, e-cards, and news about America’s wildlife? Sign up for Wildlife Online today!
Doesn’t that sound interesting? It’s better than simply — PLEASE GIVE US YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS OR SUBSCRIBE HERE.
By Michael Johnston
June 29th, 2005 at 12:05am
Under fundraising
I’m sitting at Reagan National Airport today and thinking about something I saw a few hours ago with the good folks at GetActive, an ASP. They praised the work of the American Lung Association. The Lung Association took a long air quality report and broke it up into bits of information based on each US state. Instead of downloading a big old PDF, visitors could enter their email address and then get the ability to request state-specific pieces of the report for themselves. It’s a wonderful example of how you can make a report into an acquisition tool. It creates value to the prospective donor/supporter by giving them the chance to get information relevant only to them. Think about this technique the next time you publish something big and meaty online.
By Michael Johnston
June 29th, 2005 at 12:01am
Under fundraising
Oxfam Canada has shown that mixing old and new media can generate breakthrough results. Recently, Oxfam Canada was smart enough to test the effectiveness of a monthly, committed ask to single gift tsunami donors. They tested using the phone to call web donors; they tested the phone to call phone donors, etc. The best group to convert to monthly committed gifts were web donors were were subsequently called. They converted at a 10% rate — or so, with an average donation of $11. The results are still being finalized, but they are important. We can all learn from this. You may find that donors will come onto your database through one medium but be better engaged thereafter with other mediums. Testing, testing, testing is the order of the day.
By Michael Johnston
June 27th, 2005 at 06:19pm
Under fundraising
I was in Bismark, North Dakota last Friday and had a wonderful time with the local AFP Chapter. One story stood out for me in the area of online fundraising. A local AFP member told me about a wedding registry gift that she made on behalf of two cartoon characters. Characters, Cathy and Irving from the strip, Cathy, were getting married. The strip’s creator, Cathy Guisewite, asked readers to go online to a gift registry service and make a gift to the Pet Orphans of Southern California, www.petorphansfund.org. Her readers gave over $25,000 online. Is that innovative, wonderful, and I don’t know what else!? Absolutely. When you can make popular culture blend with fundraising, wonderful things happen and I think it’s easier online to do that.
By Michael Johnston
June 8th, 2005 at 11:36pm
Under Trendspotting+ fundraising
As promised, I’ve got the MSF Austria mobile phone results:
Since 1999, Mobilkom Austria has been a partner with MSF. We partnered to create an SMS donation platform together to 2001. Since that time, the money raised through SMS has grown tremendously.
The tsunami-related campaign took place in 3 phases:
Phase 1 – Mobilkom Austria sent a request for donations to its subscriber base of approximately 500,000 individuals, asking for individuals to call the number:
0664 660 1000 to give anywhere from 5 to 70 Euros. Each prospective donor could choose an amount and when sent, were asked to confirm their gift.
After confirming their gift, Mobilkom Austria sent a thank
you message on behalf of MSF. The amount donated was transferred by Mobilkom Austria to MSF.
Phase 2 – After thanking the donor, an automatic inquiry was sent asking whether the SMS donor would like to be contacted by telephone by MSF.
Phase 3 – If they texted ‘yes’ then they received a call on their mobile phone. 60% of the donors said yes to a call and 50% of those contacted converted to a monthly gift.
282,000 Euros was donated in the SMS gift phase. Still haven’t got numbers for monthly committed gifts.
By Michael Johnston
June 3rd, 2005 at 12:11am
Under Trendspotting+ What's working+ fundraising
Last week I had the pleasure of sharing with nonprofit fundraisers from Austria, Slovakia, Romania, and Hungary. For all of these countries, SMS - text messaging via cellular phones is a quickly emerging fundraising option. North American fundraisers should be watching carefully. In Austria, MSF raised 5% of total tsunami dollars through text messaging. Donors, through traditional media and participating mobile carriers, were given the chance to donate small single gifts — approximately 20 dollars as a single gift.
It’s not that single donation that was intriguing — North Americans started giving in small numbers over their cell phones during the tsunami disaster period — but it was MSF Austria’s successful conversion of these mobile phone donors to committed monthly donors. 50%! Yes, 50% of their single gift mobile phone donors converted to monthly committed giving via their bank accounts when contacted after making their single gifts.
Everyone think about that for a bit and see whether we shouldn’t all be testing text message fundraising and a monthly committed follow up.
In the post-communist countries, text messaging is catching on fast for fundraising. WWF Hungary is launching a text-message campaign to raise money for its first ever Danube-focused fundraising campaign. The Danube runs through Budapest is a vital part of both the country’s ecosystem and history. I’ll keep you posted on how their campaign has done. I also heard about a successful text-message fundraising campaign in Slovakia. Similarly, when I get results I’ll pass them on.
My final note’s one for North American fundraisers. Text messaging services are very low cost to start up. It’s time to hear about success stories from other countries. I’d love to hear about it.
By Michael Johnston
June 1st, 2005 at 08:49pm
Under fundraising
Justgiving provided the tool to allow £7 million to be raised for 638 UK charities from 8,615 participants in the Flora London Marathon. With an average gift of £36, and each giving page raising over £900, peer to peer fundraising tools are becoming an increasingly viable option. To find out more information on the results click here.
By Jennifer Doyle