December 2, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Nearly two-thirds of Americans plan to give online to charities in November and December, and their donations could exceed $4-billion, $1-billion more than they donated during the holiday season last year, according to a new survey.
The survey, released today by Convio, an Austin, Tex., fund-raising software company, and Forrester Research, a technology research firm in Boston, found that charity Web sites have the biggest influence on consumers’ decision to give online (44 percent).
Even so, Americans said that online gifts are not the only methods they use for donations. Many donors send in checks after examining a charity’s Web site (61 percent), contribute money at fund-raising events (38 percent), offer a donation to support someone they know in a fund-raising run, walk, or other such competition (17 percent), or respond to a telephone pitch (16 percent).
The findings show that “consumers are really going online to look at your Web site,” said Tad Druart, Convio’s director of marketing and communications. “The Web site needs to give them compelling information on how much and what they should give to. They want it to be easy to donate.”
But a majority of survey respondents, 56 percent, said that, while charities have made it easier to donate electronically, their Web sites make it difficult to find the information they need to make a decision to give.
Among other findings in the survey:
- Twenty-five percent of those polled said that what friends and family members say through social networking sites and in personal e-mail messages influences the charities they support.
- E-mail appeals and direct mail from an organization had about the same amount of influence on Americans’ decision to give. Last year, only 17 percent of respondents said they were influenced by e-mail messages, compared with 32 percent of those influenced by direct mail.
- Sixty percent of people over the age of 65 said they planned to donate online this holiday season.
