February 4, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Nick Allen, an online fund-raising consultant at Donordigital, in Berkeley, Calif., says that most of his organization’s nonprofit clients saw online gifts decline by 20 to 35 percent in December, compared with December 2007.
But Mr. Allen says he found one bright spot to report after attending a recent meeting of more than a dozen nonprofit groups that meet periodically to compare and share their online fund-raising results and strategies.
Most of the charities, notes Mr. Allen, buy links when people search certain words on Google and other Internet search companies. That way, a link to their Web site’s donation page pops up when people search for content related to their cause.
While the number and size of donations made in response to Internet searches declined in the charities’ online fund-raising campaigns at year’s end, Mr. Allen says, the approach of buying links on search terms continues to work well. It produced from $5 to $20 for each dollar spent.
