In This Edition:

• Email Open Rates, Click-Throughs, Average Gifts All Drop
  
  
• Fundraising ...
  Assessing the cost to find a donor
  
  
• Advocacy ...
  From blogging to actually meeting people
  
  
• Major Gifts ...
  8 elements to declaring it a major gift

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Email Open Rates, Click-Throughs, Average Gifts All Drop

Online gift amounts declined by an average $15 for all organizations, but local and state-based organizations really took it on the chin, with online gifts dropping an average $51, according to a study released today. 

The segment nearly doubled the average overall growth for number of gifts, but the precipitous drop in average gift is a “big concern,” according to Marc Ruben, co-author of and vice president at M+R Strategic Services, in Washington, D.C.

To read the complete article click here...

Fundraising ...
Assessing the cost to find a donor

Internet advertising can be tricky -- clicks, impressions, eyeballs. How about actual people? The newest addition to online advertising is cost-per-lead advertising, which only charges for actual leads.

President Obama’s presidential campaign used this cost model to build lists and other nonprofits are joining in, according to Arun Krishnan, vice president of marketing for Brooklyn-based Pontiflex. The cost-per-lead model is “taking it to the next level” for online advertising said Krishnan. Here’s what you need to know:

What it looks like. The advertising could be within a banner ad or can piggyback on an offer that requires a sign up. For example, if someone signs up for an e-newsletter subscription they could opt in to receive information from a nonprofit by simply checking a box off.

How it works. The contact information is transferred through the backend to the nonprofit. Instead of paying for clicks or impressions that might not convert, “The nonprofit doesn’t pay unless they actually get a qualified subscriber,” said Krishnan. Nonprofits can also segment for geographic area for targeted online subscribers.

“It’s much more effective -- say you want to grow your donor database by 1,000 subscribers. You could budget exactly how much you need to go in,” said Krishnan.

Advocacy ...
From blogging to actually meeting people

As ways to utilize the Internet expand, we have come to see that the term “community” has taken on a very fluid set of meanings.

Communities of people with special interests, for example, now can extend throughout the world, with instant communication not imaginable a century ago.

People always had opinions, but now they’re bloggers. One such community, a blog, consisted of people who made a living (usually) as critics. One of them, Tom Watson, wrote about the experience in his book Cause Wired.

Watson was intimately involved with “newcritics,” which he describes as a small-scale experiment among friends. The experiment yielded three key lessons:

• Online organizing requires a hierarchy. Watson (who was the creator of newcritics) found that when he dropped out for any substantial period of time, the discourse waned. Others took limited leadership roles, but it became clear that sustaining the enterprise was his job.
• Moving from online to in-person cemented the cause. Before people got together, newcritics was a nice little blog. After they met in person it became a community.
• Small but well-connected can be more effective than huge and widely disbursed. Within the larger group there were smaller circles of bloggers. These smaller groups kept the overall group vibrant. This worked very well.
  

Major Gifts ...
8 elements to declaring it a major gift

Although there is general agreement in the nonprofit sector about the importance of major gifts, there is not always agreement about just what constitutes a major gift.

Speaking at the National Catholic Development Conference in Orlando, Fla., Sean O’Connor of Community Counseling Service discussed the value of major gifts and said that getting the best out of them rests in large part on understanding just what constitute the key elements of major gifts fundraising.

According to O’Connor, those key elements are:

• Previous giving. Is there a history? If so, what motivated it? If not, how can we draw the prospect closer?
• Research. Does the request amount make sense?
• Sequence of request. When will we ask this prospect? Why is that?
• Clear rationale. Why is now the time to approach this prospect?
• The right solicitation team. Can they influence the prospect's decision? Have the donors made a gift equal to or greater than the request amount?
• Power of influence. Are there other donors who should be involved?
• Defined solicitor roles. Does everyone know what to say and when?
• Naming opportunities or gift recognition. Do they reflect the prospect's style and interests? Will there be one opportunity or several?

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