Online Quizzes, Ringtones, and Apps Aid in the Hunt for New Donors
By Debra E. Blum
Contributor
August 11, 2014 | Read Time: 4 minutes
As the search for new donors gets more intense, a growing number of charities are experimenting with unconventional ways to find people who want to give.
More and more charities are running online contests, distributing quizzes, and offering bumper stickers, all with the aim of collecting new names and addresses, particularly email addresses, so they can send appeals to people who have never given to their groups.
In some cases, nonprofits are paying other groups to collect names for them. Change.org and Care2.com, for example, will set up online petitions that focus on issues important to a charity and then sell the group the contact information of everyone who signs up. Charities are also working with Google, Facebook, and other technology companies to drive traffic to their sites or display click-through ads targeted to people who might be interested in giving.
But some groups are trying even more creative approaches on their own. A wildlife group, for example, might offer to give away animal-sound ring tones for email addresses, or a food pantry might ask people to send emails offering encouragement to clients.
Trial and Error
The process, as with all efforts to attract new donors, is hit or miss.
Food & Water Watch learned that lesson a couple of years ago when it created an Internet quiz with 10 questions asking whether certain scenarios were from real life or from the movie “The Hunger Games.” The group sent email pitches to people who took the quiz.
“It was basically a flop,” says Sarah Alexander, the group’s deputy organizing director, adding that few people took the quiz, and even fewer turned out to be donors. While the movie was very popular and quizzes often go viral on social media, Food & Water’s mistake, she says, was trying to piggyback on those things without making a better connection to its cause: advocating for safety and consumer rights.
“The subject of the quiz was a little too far afield from our mission,” she says, “so we weren’t reaching an audience that worked for us.”
Since then, Food & Water Watch has hit upon a more successful way to attract both addresses and gifts. It offers bumper stickers with a message that’s central to the group’s work: “Ban Fracking Now.”
Showing Interest
Food & Water’s approach involves sending the stickers along with information on the group and suggestions about ways the stickers can help educate others about its mission. After that, it will send a letter or email that includes an appeal. Like other charities trying to build their donor lists, the organization welcomes people who have taken action or shown interest before making any effort to solicit them.
But not everyone agrees that such list-building efforts are worth the time and money. Roger Craver, a direct-marketing expert, says that beyond buying, exchanging, and sharing lists, and doing what he calls predictive analysis on demographic data to create your own lists, other tactics, especially those that rely on social media, “fall into the category of chasing unicorns.”
And even if a charity manages to collect a substantial number of new addresses, he says, leads brought in through “gimmicks, like offering ring tones” are less likely to bring in supporters.
“You can always get more names for your file, but can you get more donors?” Mr. Craver says. “That is the question and that is the follow-up that needs to be done if you want to test if any of this is worthwhile.”
Better Numbers
Sam Parry, director of online membership and activism at the Environmental Defense Fund, says he’s continually running the numbers to make sure the organization’s acquisition efforts make sense. And because the number of donors and amounts raised from donors recruited through telemarketing and online approaches has been improving, last fall the Environmental Defense Fund started shifting some spending away from efforts to find people to solicit through direct mail.
Now, as much as 37 percent of the group’s budget for recruiting donors goes toward online efforts like petitions and search-engine ads, up from 20 percent in recent years.
“We’re making our spending flexible and responsive,” Mr. Parry says, “sticking with what works, still renting outside lists but also trying and testing new things.”
Creative techniques nonprofits are using to find new donors appear in the links below.
• Cornell Lab Gives Bird Lovers Free Tools— in Exchange for Their Email Addresses
• Land Trust Harvests Interest Through Farmers Markets
• Soliciting Greetings for Sick Kids Gives Children’s Hospital a New Way to Find Donors
