Tips on Deciding Whether Your Charity Should Be Listed on Giving Web Sites

By HOLLY HALL

Whether they like it or not, most of the nation’s charities are now listed on one or more Internet sites that promote giving to large numbers of non-profit groups.

To help charities

evaluate the pros and cons of being included on the fast-growing collection of giving sites, experts offer the following suggestions:

Determine online fund-raising goals. Rather than simply agreeing to be on every giving site available, experts say, non-profit groups should first examine whether doing so fits with their own goals in seeking online donations.

“Do not get mesmerized by these giving portals and online shopping malls,” says Mark Rovner, director of Craver Mathews Smith Interactive, an Arlington, Va., direct-marketing company. “Focus on what you are trying to achieve online first.”

Some organizations have decided that it is worthwhile to be listed on donation sites, particularly well-known ones like Helping.org, created by the America Online Foundation. Doing so, they hope, will enhance their organizations’ visibility.

“One of the pros is being in good company,” says Jodi Gibson, a fund raiser at America’s Second Harvest, a Chicago group that oversees a national network of food banks. “Not being listed could make someone wonder, Why aren’t you there?’”

But other charities have shunned the donation sites, concerned that they might compete with the charity’s own efforts to raise money online or confuse donors about what the charity stands for.

The World Wildlife Fund has sent “cease-and-desist” letters warning some of the giving sites that the charity would take legal action if the sites did not remove the charity’s name.

In one case, the charity was listed on a donation site whose founders said they planned to pocket more than 20 percent of each donation. Kathleen Nixon, the fund’s director of marketing alliances, said she didn’t want the charity’s donors to think her organization considered it acceptable to charge that much for overhead.

“If they’re taking gifts in our name, I don’t want them treating our donors any differently than we would.”

Avoid long-term or exclusive contracts. While some donation sites enable people to give to any organization that has been granted charity status by the Internal Revenue Service and do not ask non-profit groups to provide any information before listing them, other sites are more selective. They represent a smaller, more carefully screened group of non-profit organizations with which they have contracts.

Having a contract with a giving site may be a good idea, experts say. But in the fast-changing and competitive Internet environment, charities should be careful not to lock themselves into lengthy contracts with any of the sites or give them exclusive use of the charity’s name or other information. That way, charities can maintain flexibility to move to sites that charge lower fees, for example, or those that develop other attractive features that could benefit their organizations.

Assess financial backing of giving sites. Robert Durkee, executive director of the Cancer Research Institute, in New York, says that he looks hard at how much money giving sites have behind them. While many dot-com sites will not disclose such information publicly, they often do so in one-on-one discussions with individual charities, Mr. Durkee has found.

“My basic criteria are whether they have enough capital and a business plan that includes vigorous marketing,” he says. “Can they promote themselves independently of what traffic they’re hoping charities will bring to their site?” None of the giving sites, he predicts, will survive without spending a lot of money to publicize their sites and draw people to them. Giving sites that rely primarily on charities to forward donors to them or to promote the site to their constituents, he says, will have difficulty surviving.

Boys & Girls Clubs of America has a set of questions that it asks any company that wants to team up with the charity for marketing promotions, both on- and offline.

Recently, the charity added two questions for giving sites and other Internet companies that want to use the Boys & Girls name. The charity’s officials not only ask for details on what venture-capital or other investments the company has obtained; they also ask to speak with the investors.

“That’s how you tell the guy with a computer sitting in the garage with his dog from a real company,” says Kurt Aschermann, the charity’s senior vice president for marketing and communications.

Seek control over content. Charities should avoid participating in sites that are not responsive when it comes to changing or updating information about their organizations, experts say. Otherwise, an organization could revise its mission or programs and find itself unable to correct its online listing to reflect those changes.

Charities should also avoid doing too much marketing for the donation sites, they say. Many of the multiple-charity giving sites offer charities a specially designed donate-now button that they can place on their own Web sites. The buttons often bear the giving site’s logo and take donors away from the charity’s pages, back to the donation site.

“A non-profit’s home page is an important way to define yourself online and draw people into your world,” says Mr. Rovner. “You would not put another company’s logo on your annual report, so don’t let them put their logo on your page.”

Check search functions. Many of the Internet giving sites allow people to search for charities — by typing in the organization’s name, for example. One problem, particularly for national organizations with multiple chapters: Typing the charity’s name often brings up a seemingly endless list of local chapters and other charities with similar names.

Entering “Salvation Army” on the AllCharities.com site, for example, yields 72 charities under that name; another site contains more than 200.

Salvation Army entries on some donation sites, says the charity’s treasurer, Lieut. Col. Don McDougald, bear the charity’s name but do not even accept donations, such as private trusts that have been established by individuals for the benefit of the charity.

“It is confusing to people to see these other names without a better explanation,” says Mr. McDougald. “That is a big frustration.”

Randi Nordeen, director of development at Christmas in April USA, says she is working with one site to ensure that a search for her charity by name yields only one entry, the organization’s national headquarters in Washington. Clicking onto that entry will result in a pull-down list of all of the charity’s chapters.

“The sites I really migrate to,” she says, “are those that are interested in customizing the program to meet our needs.”