1 in 3 Charities Ignores Online Queries From Donors, Says Study

Title: “Why Should I Give to You? The Nonprofit Value Proposition Index Study”

Organization: Douglas Shaw and Associates and NextAfter

Summary: Thirty-five percent of charities failed to respond to an online inquiry asking why a potential supporter should give to that nonprofit rather than another one and why that person should give at all, according to a new study. Of those nonprofits that did respond, only 26 percent did so within 48 hours.

Researchers from Douglas Shaw and Associates, a fundraising consulting company, and NextAfter, a fundraising research lab, posed as donors and contacted 127 charities by email from the nonprofits’ websites, by phone, and by sending a direct message via the charities’ Facebook page.

“The slow — or even worse, unresponsiveness — from the online channel highlights a significant area for improvement across the board,” the report says, signifying a worrisome and “systemic” issue for charities.

Among the findings:

• Responsiveness varied widely by type of organization: Environmental groups were most responsive, with 88 percent replying to email. Colleges and universities were least likely to respond, at 18 percent.
• Thirty-three percent of charities never responded to the researchers’ Facebook messages. Twenty-seven percent of charities had disabled the direct-message function on their Facebook accounts and could not be contacted that way at all.
• Three percent of organizations had no “contact us” form on their websites.
• The study graded responses from charities on four criteria: appeal, exclusivity (providing potential supporters with information they can’t get anywhere else), credibility, and clarity. When nonresponders were removed from the data, messages sent by social media scored highest by those criteria, while responses from the organizations’ websites scored lowest.