Why Don’t Charities Take More Advantage of Online Donors?

To the Editor:

Thanks for the excellent story on e-mail fund raising, “You’ve Got a Charity Solicitation” (November 30).

To learn more about online fund-raising efforts, we made $25 online donations to 34 major national nonprofits and both major presidential campaigns and parties.

Only the World Wildlife Fund and the American Red Cross, along with the Gore campaign and the Republican and Democratic National Committees, sent us e-mail resolicitations. Most groups simply added our name to their direct-mail streams.

Fewer than half of the organizations sent us the kind of instant e-mail thank-you that online users expect. The average postal thank-you took more than three weeks, a long time for an Internet donor.

We tell our clients that while it sometimes makes sense to add online donors to direct-mail programs, they should also take advantage of the fact that the donor initiated the relationship online and cultivate the online donor via e-mail, with links to Web pages where the donor can learn more, take action, and make another gift or sign up for monthly giving.

Nick Allen
President
Donordigital.com
Berkeley, Calif.