September 6, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A new survey suggests that an organization’s Web site is important to all kinds of donors, not just those who make gifts online.
The study found that nearly 40 percent of people who support nonprofit organizations either as a donor, volunteer, or advocate report that they consult online sources of charity information before making donations.
That figure jumped to 55 percent among the most-committed supporters, those who said they had done all three — donated, volunteered, and advocated on behalf of a charity in the past year.
“Regardless of how somebody becomes aware of an organization, whether it’s from a friend or family member or from the news or from a direct-mail piece, they’re going to the Web to learn more, to validate their selections and their choices,” says Dan Solomon, chief executive officer of Mindshare Interactive Campaigns, a Washington consulting company that conducted the survey in May with Harris Interactive.
The survey polled 2,379 adults in the United States who said they had given to charity, volunteered, or advocated in the past year.
The study found that the more donors earned, the more likely they were to conduct research about charities on the Internet. Forty-five percent of donors who earned $75,000 or more per year said they consulted online sources of charity information, compared to 26 percent of donors who earned less than $15,000 and 24 percent of donors who earned between $15,000 and $24,999.
More than six in 10 supporters who said they conducted online research on charities said they went to the organizations’ Web sites to get information. By comparison, 38 percent said they relied on friends for information about nonprofit groups, and 31 percent said they relied on family.
Fewer reported turning to watchdog organizations and other third-party sources of information, including the Better Business Bureau (38 percent), Charity Navigator (11 percent), Guidestar (7 percent), the American Institute of Philanthropy (7 percent), and Network for Good (3 percent).
The study also found that donors who give the most and are online spend more time on the Internet than they do watching television.
Donors in the survey who gave $5,000 or more in the past year reported spending an average of 19 hours per week online and 16 hours per week watching television. Donors who gave less than $1,000 reported watching an average of 18 hours of television per week and spending 17 hours on the Internet.
For more information: Go to http://www.mindshare.net.
