The Internets isn't just something the kids use...you can raise big bucks on it too!

The Chronicle of Philanthropy released its annual online fundraising statistics this week and I'm sure many old-school fundraisers (who think the Internets is just something the kids use) were surprised at the results.  

One article discussed the findings of the Defenders of Wildlife that email communications to donors can lead to larger online (and offline) gifts: 

• Donors who contributed through traditional means (mail, phone) and who did not receive email communications gave an average of $40.
  
• Donors who contributed through traditional means but did receive email communications gave an average of $59. 
  
• Donors who gave exclusively online made average gifts of $65-$70
  
• Donors who gave both online and offline made average gifts of $105-$110.  These donors were also the most likely to make repeat donations. 
  

The organization also found (not surprisingly) that people are much more likely to give more if they receive an e-mail appeal right before or right after a print appeal, though the follow-up was more likely to have a bigger effect. 

In the same issue was another article discussing donors who make larger gifts online.  Increasingly (and I think in no small part because of the Wired Wealthy report, released back in March), non-profits are becoming open to the idea that it's OK to ask donors to make large gifts online.  Though some experts say this is most effective for donors who will make gifts of up to $10,000, there are organizations out there who have reported receiving gifts of over $200,000 online.  This means you have to make sure that you are capable of accepting large gifts - we had an incident a few months back where a donor tried to make a gift over $50,000 online, but our system wouldn't let him!  We don't traditionally court donors with asks of over $25,000 online, I don't think it occurred to anyone to make sure we could accept large gifts.  This has since been fixed (pushed up to $150,000, which is the limit of the bank) and I believe since then we've received another large gift ($83,000 if my memory serves).  Not too shabby, but I have to wonder what would happen if we started actually ASKING people to make larger gifts online!  

Key Takeaways: 

1. Email leads to larger gifts, online and off
2. People will give you large chunks of change online if you ask them
3. Make sure your systems are set up to take large gifts, whether you are asking for them or not.  You don't want to lose out on $100,000 because your website can't process the credit card.