Aren’t there all sorts of prospects and donors, and don’t we have to adjust our strategy for each sort?

Some people want to give money on the first date. That’s how they express themselves. If the prospect is really excited about what you do, and you don’t ask him or her for money, aren’t you sending the signal that you don’t really need their money or involvement?

And aren’t you also adding an unnecessary step for all of those people who did want to close the deal (whether with a contribution of $10 or $10,000) in that first encounter? If I am in the market for a new tie, and I walk into a store filled with ties but then find out the salespeople won’t sell to me because they want to build a relationship with me first, I’m going to think the people in the store are crazy and I probably won’t go back. I wanted a tie. I wanted to spend my money.

Others want to wait and see. That’s fine — a good ask (online, direct mail, over lunch, etc.) should be as much an education on the organization’s goals and plans as it is a sales pitch. And we’re all used to spending lots of time cultivating donors, especially in the higher giving rungs. Cultivate first and ask later is not exactly a revolutionary concept in the world of major giving.

Clearly we want to build a sense of community with our supporters, whether they are donating or not. And online provides fascinating, inexpensive new ways to build that sense of community. But I’m not sure they’ll truly feel connected until they invest something in the organization. And we aren’t doing ourselves any favors if we get them into the habit of not giving, or if we endorse the idea that the giving part is a necessary but unpleasant evil that must be dealt with eventually.

So many organizations have seen drops in their DM prospecting this year, but it is still an investment that should be made because it helps keep the file at a similar size while churn continues to grow. But along with that investment organizations NEED to add online prospecting, which like Seth points out is so much more than asking for financial contributions. Like Mark states in his comment, when it comes to engaging with nonprofits online, people know that the financial ask will come, but THEIR perceived relationship and experiences with the organization will greatly impact how and if they decide to give.

I completely believe that if you cannot build a file of engaged individuals online your nonprofit will be floundering in the future, struggling to find people who care enough about your cause to give a donation or even take an advocacy action.

Ok, I’ll bite. I think your theorem of non-profits only prospecting online (“A nonprofit that cannot build a file of engaged individuals online is an organization that should forget about about trying to prospect for new donors.” ) falls into the typical trap of “all or nothing”. I’m surprised by this leap considering that your column routinely advocates that direct mail is not dead.

The fact is that direct mail acquisition is still the lifeblood for many, many non-profits as they attract new donors. While it is indeed becoming more cost prohibitive, there is still not a channel that matches it for acquisition efficiency of donors in a scalable medium. The vast majority of online prospecting consists of throwing out a fishing line and hoping someone will bite… versus the DM approach of proactively casting a net and raking in a large number of new donors, albeit a small percentage of what you mail.

A key thing to note here is that I refer to acquiring donors.. not warm leads. Godin is switching that paradigm and seeking warm leads which could be valuable for some, but our experience has been that non-profits are really struggling to convert a large percentage of online warm-leads into actual donors.

I don’t doubt that the time will come when alternative acquisition channels will play a more important role to non-profits but that time isn’t here yet for the majority of them to make any significant budget shifts away from DM and toward online if they want to continue to exist on the scale they currently do. Consider, how many non-profits you know that raise more than 10% of their total revenues online? And we are years (decades perhaps) after the “internet revolution”.

There should be an integrated prospecting approach in place for most non-profits for sure, but to say that online is more important than direct mail acquisition is silly at this point in time.

A final complication to online, is that while viral is very powerful, it makes it much more difficult for non-profits to track and therefore, it becomes a reactive versus proactive approach. As marketers, we are measured and compensated on our ROI for marketing activities.

I would pose a counter-theroem to you… Is the majority of online marketing (aside from email to house donors) by non-profits today really direct marketing? Or does it have more in common with traditional broad-base marketing than direct marketing?