Surge in Online Giving Lifts Hopes for Some Charities

The extraordinary tragedy of September 11 led to an extraordinary outpouring of

online gifts to charities doing relief work. Internet giving accounted for some $110-million of the more than $1-billion donated for relief efforts.

Now other nonprofit organizations — and the consultants who advise them — are trying to figure out if the surge represents a turning point in online fund raising or simply an emotional response to an unimaginable event. At the same time, concerns about postal delays caused by anthrax-tainted mail have prompted some groups to reexamine the role the Internet plays in their fund raising.

Robert Weiner, a fund-raising consultant in San Francisco who specializes in technology issues, believes the events of September 11 significantly raised donors’ awareness of the Internet as a way to give. The key factor in whether other charities will see benefits, he says, will be whether donors who made their first online gifts in the wake of the terrorist attacks end up feeling like the experience was a good one.

“Everyone is going to depend upon those disaster-relief organizations to have properly thanked the donor — ideally with an e-mail acknowledgment immediately after the gift was received — and to properly steward that donor,” he says.

Mark Rovner, a fund-raising consultant in Arlington, Va., believes that concerns about anthrax have done more to prompt charities to rethink their online fund-raising plans than the successes of the relief organizations.

“For the first time ever, groups that are highly direct-mail dependent saw a scenario where potentially they were going to lose the ability to communicate with their donors,” says Mr. Rovner. “I think a lot of direct-mail people got Internet religion via the anthrax scares.”

Sheila Dennis, the development director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says that developing a strategy for integrating e-mail and the Internet more fully into the Boston environmental group’s overall fund raising was already on her to-do list. But fears about anthrax led her to speed up those plans. Over the next year, the organization will test new online fund-raising techniques, such as using e-mail to encourage donors who made their first gifts electronically to give again.

Following the news of anthrax-tainted mail, Doctors of the World, an international health organization in New York, changed its Web site to make it easier for people to give offline. The charity already had a system in place for allowing people to make donations online using a credit card. This fall it added a donation form that can be printed out by people who still prefer to send a check but who might be too frightened to open fund-raising appeals sent through the mail.

Anthrax concerns prompted one charity to augment a direct-mail appeal scheduled for October with its first-ever e-mail campaign designed to attract new donors.

The appeal, sent by CARE USA, in Atlanta, went to 25,000 people on October 24. While the results are not yet known, Toby A. Smith, Internet strategist for the organization, says that online giving is up this fall.

CARE saw a spike in Internet gifts immediately after the terrorist attacks, says Mr. Smith. That was followed by a lull, but donations picked up again when American bombing in Afghanistan started and have remained steady since. Online gifts in October totaled $65,000, compared to the organization’s monthly average of $51,000.

Other organizations whose missions are related to the war against terrorism have also seen increases in their online fund-raising totals.

In October, contributions totaling $34,000 came in through the International Rescue Committee’s Web site. Prior to September, the organization, in New York, was raising between $2,000 and $3,000 a month online. James Boyle, manager for direct response, suspects that many of the donors were responding to information on its Web site and in its e-mail newsletter about the organization’s work, which includes providing educational programs for Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

International efforts aren’t the only ones to have seen gains in recent months. The American Civil Liberties Union, in New York, took in $180,000 through its Web site during September and October, up from the $42,000 donated electronically during the same period last year.

The nonprofit organization believes the increase is in response to its efforts to protect the civil rights of people detained as part of the federal government’s terrorism investigation.

The lesson charities should draw from the online fund-raising success of groups whose work relates to current events is that donors will turn to the Internet to respond to pressing needs, says Lenny Esposito, a fund-raising consultant in Los Angeles.

He suggests that urgent fund-raising situations — such as needing to make up an emergency budget shortfall, meet a matching-grant challenge, or solicit funds for a special project — are prime opportunities for nonprofit organizations of all stripes to put this principle into practice.

Mr. Rovner, the Arlington consultant, isn’t so sure what the events of this fall prove for the future of online fund raising.

“We all have these overwhelming temptations to draw big lessons,” he says of the response to the terrorist attacks. “But it is much too early for anyone to make any claims of lessons learned that they’re not going to have to retract six months from now.”