A recent study by Blackbaud’s Target Marketing on online fundraising (Roger commented here) noted that many donors who make their first gift online wind up making their subsequent gifts, if any, via direct mail.
Agitator reader Dave Raley has a theory about this. I reproduce his comment below.
My own — perhaps too blunt — spin on Dave’s theory is: Direct mail fundraisers know how to raise money; online "fundraising" is left to techies who don’t.
Here’s Dave’s comment:
"I have a theory about this whole idea that donors are migrating from being acquired online to giving offline. Actually seems to echo Jill’s earlier comment.
Goes something like: Acquire a donor online + Poor/inconsistent/infrequent online cultivation + Good/frequent direct mail cultivation = Online donor migrates to direct mail
We saw this with a client of ours a couple years ago perfectly. We looked at donors acquired online and sure enough by the end of year one they had “migrated” to giving offline. BUT the client had a very young online communications stream at the time. So in my mind, no wonder those first gift online donors “migrated” to direct mail – that was the channel the ministry was best at asking in!
We have spent years and years fine-tuning the best direct mail campaigns, but relatively little time in figuring out the best new media campaigns – so of course donors are going to migrate to offline, if only because that is the channel they are being best cultivated in. Now, I’m willing to admit that perhaps online is really good at influencing gifts, and direct mail is really good at being the channel the donor actually responds in, but still, I think I’ve got a pretty good theory here."
I think you have a pretty good theory too, Dave.
Agitator readers … ask yourselves: Is your online fundraising in the right hands?
Tom
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About on-line donors migrating to direct mail:
I don’t see that as a problem. No way. If I were running a charity, I would use every technique available to encourage on-line donors to migrate to direct mail.
My theory is that the internet is in many ways similar to a TV commerical. Donors who come in via a TV program are not renewed with another TV program.
The internet doesn’t cultivate. It informs. That’s good.
Mail cultivates. And that’s good.
I think that this theory only applies to those who “drop the ball” with their online fundraising campaigns/efforts. Many organizations fail to strategize and properly invest in their online efforts/staff, therefore missing many opportunities to cultivate constituents. I agree that there is a huge deficit in online fundraising “professionals” simply because the whole process is so new and fluid. A person working in this field has to be comfortable with ambiguity and constantly reinvent their approach based on the trends and habits of online donors. I personally think that some of the statements in this article are dangerous, especially when they say “donors are migrating from being acquired online to giving offline”. There is very little hard evidence to support this trend. As a online fundraising professional, I find this article to be a tad disconcerting, simply because the tone of it will only create more fear and uncertainty for organizations already struggling and hesitant to embrace the importance/magnitude of online fundraising.
Thanks for the post, Tom. Here’s to more learning in the future!
This is an interesting conversation. At Operation Smile we worked very hard to build a Donor Relations team based in our Donor First Philosophy (created by the amazing Jann Schultz). I was the team lead/supervisor assisting in the creation of materials and scripts.
We sought to treat the donor with the same care we treat the children we serve. We saw an incredible increase in our service level and repeat donors as well as reducing attrition through our personal donor interactions.
I say this because my new role is as Social Media Strategist which is in effect bringing all of the knowledge and experience I had dealing with direct response donors to our online presence. Our organization realized that Social Media and the web is truly a communication tool to the donor much like the telephone was in my Donor Relations capacity.
I am finding it is a tragedy to not engage, empower and acknowledge the legions of supporters we have online. The trick is to organize and guide how they support us and then produce some eventual monetary return. But the key to make any of that happen is to bring a real sense of Donor Advocacy to all of our web interactions.
Having accellerated my learning curve in the e-mail world and armed with 40 years of both traditional and online media channel knowledge, I can understand the passion that exixts (and will continue) for those professionals born to the direct mail manor. With few exceptions, I find the power of e-mail (and web banners although to a lesser but key support role) maintains significant merits over direct mail from returns on investments to a reduced carbon footprint.
The issue of attribution, or the impact of message exposures that lead to a donation, is one that begs for more analysis and research. The balance between offline and online worlds can then be optimized more easily.
[...] Too Important For Techies [...]
Ditto that online and offline marketing complement each other. I will say that while, online fundraising is still in its infancy, there is significant proof in President Obama’s campaign. There was an outstanding mix of offline marketing and online engagement through social media. This drove people to contribute, $10, $20 or $50. With corporate donors falling by the wayside, this may be the way of the future.
I’m going to call Jerry Huntsinger out on this one.
Both channels should be used for cultivation. You can’t think of the internet as “like TV.” Real connections are happening everywhere online, the problem is that most online giving is a donate button on a static web page. That is not strategic fundraising.
All the principles that are at work to cultivate a donor through the mail have been honed to understand the and take good advantage of the “technology” of the postal service.
Those principles can be applied to the online channel as well, it just hasn’t been understood very well by the NP world.
If the development cycle is acquisition, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship, observation — those things can all be done properly and effectively online, just as they can offline. Integration is huge! Very important! We can easily make the case that the development cycle is more effectively lived out on the internet.
If you have been using the internet as the TV (broadcast medium) or the mail (another broadcast medium) no wonder it hasn’t been working for you. Don’t treat your online audience as a demographic to be blasted. Engage them in the social conversation that it is.
Well, I’ve been “called out” before. I’ve always been wrong. I said donors would never respond to colored envelopes, or use a zip code, or reply to a computer letter. But the internet? It will come of age when the techo geeks and whizos are replaced by creative people who have a solid foundation in marketing.