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. 

Integrating print, web and email

I believe that the key to success in any marketing campaign is integration of your look, feel and message across mediums, which constantly reinforces what you want your audience to get out of it. For example, a lot of people ask what day and time is best to send out email. It's the wrong question. Say you ask that at a conference and the speaker says "Tuesdays are the best day to send them out". Then everyone in the room starts sending them out on Tuesdays and it instantly becomes the worst day.  Specific time/day, in my opinion, just isn't that important.  What IS important is how you integrate it with every other part of that marketing campaign.

Here's an example of that. We just launched a fundraising challenge to get alumni to make their annual fund gift before the end of the fiscal year.  Below are some of the key marketing pieces: 

Print mail (Inside):



Home Page Promo:

(www.dartmouthcollegefund.org)

Challenge Landing Page:

(http://www.dartmouth.edu/~alfund/june_challenge/index.html)

The first (of many) segmented emails promoting the challenge:


Other lessons from this challenge:

1) When I was originally designing the landing page, I was REALLY worried that it would look too much like the print piece. The last thing I want is for a page to look like we just took a picture of the print piece and then slapped it up and called it a web page. At the same time though, I think consistency is very important. People may glance at the print piece or the promo or the landing page or the email, but if they all have the same look, feel and message, they'll still be mentally associating all of them and maybe gleaning a bit more each time they see one of the components.

2) A simple javascript ticker will make you look like a genius. I'm not kidding. When I first set it up, I was worried it would come across very cheesy...I still think its cheesy, but I also think its quirky and fun and works within the message (TIME IS RUNNING OUT!). If you're going to do it though, you have to go all out...when the idea was originally brought up, someone joked that it should be to the second but then consensus was that it should just be a countdown by day. I think expanding it and actually doing it to the second is what makes it cool.

3)Doing things like this requires you to be proactive. It's very difficult to pull it all together at the last minute. When you're relying on other people for content, this can be an extremely frustrating point. I'll admit, I about flipped out on a few people in trying to get all this stuff together.

Your website is for the masses - not for the wealthy!

Apologies for the prolonged absence. Work and life sometimes get in the way of blogging :-)

I actually have a number of blogs in the works right now, but Andrew left a comment on the last one I posted that I disagree so strongly with that I decided to dedicate a new blog to it LOL

"I can see why Princeton may have removed that section of the website. Nothing technically wrong with talking about what those donations "buy," but there's nothing inspiring there. It's kind of like saying, "Your gift will help us buy more light bulbs." I believe the research shows that people -- at least the people who want to give transformational gifts -- don't give because of need but because they want to make the world a better place. They want to give to hope.

So, yes, we need to do a better job of telling the right story to encourage those gifts to something that is hope-inspiring."

Now, I get what Andrew is saying but I disagree strongly with a few of his premises:

1) There's nothing inspiring about what small gifts can do: Anyone who has been following Barack Obama's campaign and his incredible fundraising success would disagree with that. I think there's nothing more inspiring than illustrating that small gifts matter because they can add up to huge success. I think this is particularly important for younger alumni who may want to give but don't think that a $25 gift means anything. Personally, I think it's very inspiring when someone tells me that even a small gift matters (probably why I've given so much money to Obama at this point). I can't afford a lot, but I can afford $25 here and $50 there. I don't think they expect that $25 to stretch to the moon and back but you still need to show them that every little bit helps. If you get them in the habit of giving now, as the last graph clearly shows, they will be more inclined to give later when they're making more money to give at higher levels.

2) People who give transformational gifts don't give because of need: Well first, I would argue that your website isn't for people who want to give transformational gifts, as the title of the blog implies. It's for the masses. Show me the last time your university received a $1,000,000 gift online? A $500,000 one? A $100,00 one? It's just impractical to think that someone is going to put that on their credit card. People who are giving at this level don't need your website to be convinced - they are already being personally handled by a fundraiser in your office who's helping them through the process. (I would also disagree that they don't give because of need - at least to colleges. I think that people who make large donations give to their college because they are asked and are shown how it will impact something they have a personal affinity towards. Also, let's not completely discount the ego factor here - it's always nice to have your name on a building.)

I think this is a classic example of assuming the web is the end-all, be-all answer to everything. I think you're in for a rude awakening if you think it's the best way to woo major donors. That requires a personal touch that you just can't get over a computer. You'll have much more success if you use it to focus on those at the bottom of the fundraising pyramid.

New donors need the most attention

I saw an interesting piece in the Journal of the DMA Nonprofit Federation today: A Donor Isn't Really a Donor Until They Give You a Second Gift! As the title implies, the piece discusses the critical time period after a donor gives their first gift to an organization since only 30 percent of them will return to give a second gift. However, if you get them to give a second gift, you have a 40-60% chance of a third gift, a fourth and beyond. Therefore, building that relationship between the first and second gift is critical to establishing a long-term relationship with donors:



There are many tactics you can employ to establish this relationship: Personal thank-you notes, a "new donors" welcome packet, a first year anniversary gift, etc. I think the most important one for us to consider for the web is to consistently show the impact of giving. Think back to the Wired Wealthy report. One of the most engaging things you can do is to show the real-world impact of the money you are given. This should go for smaller gifts as well as larger ones, as a person's first gift to your organization (particularly from younger alumni) are probably not going to be enough to get a building named after them. I think Princeton use to do this really well (for some reason, they've decided to take this down off their site but I took a screenshot when I first saw it):



Now, of course, putting a page on your website does not equate to active engagement but its an example of the types of stories you need to be telling. Also, make sure you're tying it back into the values of your institution. I noted in the graph that once you've got a donor at a third gift, they'll probably keep giving until your or their values have changed because at that point, you've got them convinced that you are a worthwhile cause that is in line with the values they want to financially support.

Key Takeaways:
1) Giving for the first time doesn't mean your donors are convinced of the value of your institution.
2) Creating that relationship after the first gift is key.
3) Establishing relationships over time will ultimately result in more substantial gifts.
4) The web is a key component in articulating success stories and values.

The Wired Wealthy Report: Full Review and Takeaways

A few days ago I posted an article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy about the newly released Wired Wealthy report. I finally had a chance to sit down and read the full report and all I can say it wow. The summary does not do the findings justice. You can download the full report on Convio's website.

This report focuses on donors who have given over $1,000 in the last 18-months through any channel (online, mail, etc...). Demographically, they are baby boomers but they are also extremely web savvy - they spend an average of 18 hours online a week and do most of their basic finances online, including paying bills, making purchases, etc...

My key takeaways:

Your donors can be separated into three groups in terms of how much they want to be engaged online:
1) Relationship Seekers (29%): They WANT to engage with you online. Predictably, they are usually younger and more inclined to spend their free time online

2) All Business (30%): These are the older crotchety donors that just want you to leave them alone after they give you money. They are usually older don't want to receive any online communications beyond a year end gift receipt. They also usually plan their charitable giving a year in advance and are very pragmatic about it.

3) Casual Connectors (41%): This group is the happy medium between the first two groups. They want periodic updates that tell them a charity is using their money efficiently and effectively.

THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN TYPICAL WEB 2.0!!!! They aren't going to join the social networks for the most part and only occasionally read blogs (which they will rarely if ever comment on). They do like YouTube though, with more than half of respondents having watched at least one video on there. This actually makes sense to me - they are busy people and probably aren't sending their free time galavanting around online.

However...Relationship Seekers and Casual Connectors are looking for a more inspiring experience on your website. You website rarely exceeds their expectation, which are very modest to begin with. They are interested in reading stories about the successes of your organization. What this tells me is that this is a great opportunity to subtly utilize technologies such as blogs or video as a means of telling your story. Just make sure that its about the STORY and not the TECHNOLOGY. The medium should be an afterthought to the message being conveyed.

Your websites are NOT for the "All Business" audience: They are going to make their gift and then never come back more than once or twice a year. This is actually a good thing, because your website is never going to be good enough for them. They don't want to be connected with you by your site, or engaged or inspired. It's a futile effort. Use your web presence as an opportunity to engage and inspire your other audiences, while also providing a very easy mechanism for the All Business types to visit and make their annual gift.

Email: Lots of opt-in levels: All of your email should be anticipated, personal and relevant. 75% of your wealthy donors think you send them too much email. If you give them the opportunity to tell you HOW they want to be communicated with, they will appreciate it. There should be different levels between opt-in or opt-out. This them the opportunity to sign up for news or challenge alerts, success stories, end-of-year receipt, etc... It's OK to email them a lot if they tell you to but its NOT OK if they haven't opted in. Also, NEVER look up a donors email address in an outside database if they haven't given it to you - its a big time no-no.

Show tangible and ongoing results: The things that keep your Relationship Seekers and Casual Connectors coming back to your site throughout the year are the opportunity to seek the results of their donation. Show them what their money has bought and update it on a regular basis.

Segment for maximum results: Whereas some organizations filter higher-end donors out of their e-communications plan entirely, this study clearly shows that's the wrong decision. Instead, create a special e-communications plan built specifically for their needs and desires.

The report has great recommendations for next steps that charities and organizations should take to enhance the online experience of their wealthy donors. It really is an extremely valuable read for anyone working in fundraising to see the direction things are going.

Wealthy donors WANT to give online

Chronicle of Philanthropy
03/24/08
Wealthy People Increasingly Give Online, Study Finds

By Elizabeth Schwinn

Affluent people are increasingly likely to use the Internet to make their charitable donations, according to results released today of a study of nearly 3,500 donors.

But charities are turning off some of their biggest donors -- people who give $1,000 or more, the survey found. Some charities send too many messages to donors who say they don't want them, while others don't take take advantage of the interest many donors express in expanding their online interaction with nonprofit organizations, the survey found.

"Most charities are not paying attention," says Mark Rovner, president of Sea Change Strategies, a fund-raising consulting company in Takoma Park, Md. "The people responsible for larger gifts need to start taking the Internet much more seriously than they have."

Sea Change conducted the survey along with Convio, an Austin, Tex., company that provides Web-based software for nonprofit groups, and Edge Research in Arlington, Va., which does research and polling for nonprofit organizations.

The survey was based on data from 3,443 donors who had made gifts of at least $1,000 to a single cause in the past 18 months and donated an average of more than $10,896 per year to charities.

Sixty-four percent of the donors were age 45 to 64, and 57 percent had incomes of at least $100,000. The donors' names were provided by 23 organizations that represent an array of causes, including advocacy groups, health organizations, international relief groups, public television stations, and Christian ministries.

Among the key findings:

Four out of five donors said they had made a charitable gift online, and a little more than half, 51 percent, said they prefer to use the Internet for their donations. Some 46 percent said that they expect to make a greater percentage of their charitable gifts online within the next five years.

Fifty-six percent said that charities send too many e-mail messages, and 47 percent said they do not read as many messages from charities as they did in the past.

Seventy-four percent said it's inappropriate for a charity to obtain their e-mail address from a commercial database, while 82 percent said they don't think it's right for charities to send them messages about another organization.

Ninety-two percent of donors like getting year-end tax receipts by e-mail, while 83 percent want to get electronic updates on a charity's finances and spending. Seventy-four percent said e-mail messages are appropriate when notifying donors that it's time to renew an annual gift or to explain how a donation has been spent.

Eighty-one percent of donors dislike messages that take an urgent tone in seeking a repeat donation.

Forty-six percent of donors said the charity's messages do a good job of making them feel connected to the organization, while 43 percent said the messages are well-written and inspiring.

Most of the donors want more say on the quantity of e-mail they receive from charities.

In a follow-up call from researchers, one donor told them he is disappointed that charities often give him just two choices for receiving e-mail messages: "always" or "never."

"Instead of just having me check a box that says 'Never,' they could actually grade it and say 'only contact me once or twice a year, exceptional events,'" he said.

The poll results suggest that charities need to stop treating online communications with wealthy donors as little more than an electronic version of direct mail, says Mr. Rovner.

"It really behooves these organizations, particularly with these higher-dollar donors, to look into how to sort these people out," Mr. Rovner says. "It may be OK from a financial standpoint to throw mediocre stuff at the small-dollar donors but it's not OK to e-mail that stuff to the high-dollar donors."

The survey was conducted last fall and had a margin of error of 1.5 percentage points. It was based on e-mail addresses of big donors provided by 23 large nonprofit organizations.

The people contacted for the survey represented only 1 percent of all the e-mail addresses the charities have collected from donors and other supporters but accounted for 32 percent of all the annual gifts made to the charities. An executive summary of the survey, The Wired Wealthy: Using the Internet to Connect with Your Middle and Major Donors, is available free.

An extended version of this article will appear in The Chronicle's next print edition, which will be sent to subscribers later this week.

Show Me The Money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My last job wasn't in the hard-line budget of the university when it was first created and I knew there was a high probability that the day would come when I would have to show that they made the right decision in funding it to be able to keep my job. I literally had a folder in my documents called "Justifying My Existence" and in it contained all of my bragging material that showed the impact of the position as they DIRECTLY RELATED to the business goals of the university. That last part is the hardest - while some things are easily quantifiable, some just aren't even though you know in your gut that they have an impact.

Nonetheless, come budget time you're going to have to justify your projects to your higher ups to get funding for it and you don't necessarily speak the same language they do. I'm as guilty of any of using the "but it would be so cool!" argument, but that doesn't always cut it. Money and resources are always tight in higher ed, especially when it pertains the web because so few senior people in any organization really understand it (not that they aren't very smart people....it's mostly a generational thing). So how do you get them to see things your way? Give them numbers. I'll give you some real world examples of things they gravitate to:

You think your school's/department's website sucks and want to do a redesign.

How is this redesign going to enhance the bottom line? The primary business function of any college is educating its students. The majority of this money (I'll make a broad estimate of 65% at your average school) comes from tuition dollars, which most directly comes from admission. Another 25-30% come from fundraising/development/alumni relations. The rest of miscellaneous sources. How will your redesign enhance those areas? Will it even? If not, I would take the next step argument of saying that it will enhance current student engagement with your area and here's some testimonials from current students saying how much easier/better it would make their life.

You want to convince your boss to let you dedicate more time or money to email marketing.

A good email system can track any statistic you could ever want and even a half-hearted email marketing plan will give you results. In admissions, show how many prospective students go directly from receiving an email to fill out an online application (you can later use these results to show what percentage of these students ended up enrolling). Make a graph that compares online applications to paper applications and their change in popularity over time. In development, show them how many users went from receiving an e-mail to making an online gift (you can really easily do this with Google Analytics). With the total value of gifts derived directly from your email campaign, use the American Marketing Association's ROI Calculator to show the value these emails bring to the organization.

You hate making phone calls and want to move towards relying more heavily on IM with prospective students.

Instant messaging is nothing new in admissions and has certainly gained traction over the past five years. Yet phone call after phone call remain. You need to show IM are just as valuable, if not moreso, than that phone call. First, you have to find a way to track IM conversations, which should be as simple as utilizing an existing CRM (whatever you use to track phone calls/events/etc...if you don't have something, you have larger problems to worry about). Then you can run lists that show students you've had IM conversations with based on outcome (reject, enroll, accepted but did not attend, etc...). My past experiences tell me that the students who are going to contact you over IM are the super-excited students and the vast majority will either end up getting rejected or enrolling. Why wouldn't the university WANT to offer students that are already inclined to enroll an opportunity to communicate over their medium of choice?

You want to expand your web presence into the social network dejour.

Saying "because everyone else is doing it" is not a good enough answer. Find a way to relate this directly to the business process (i.e. $$$$$$$$$$). For example, I blogged a while ago about social ads on Facebook. Since we instrumented our ads with Google Analytics, we were able to show that, although we only got a hand full of leads from it, those leads were far more inclined than your average visitor to make a donation. It was very cheap for us to test the waters (about $80 or so for a full month of ads) but the return opened the door for future involvement on the site. Social networks, and student blogs to a certain extent, are tricky ones because they are really about engagement rather than hard numbers. You can have a group on Facebook that has 500 people in it but no one ever posts or you can have a group of a dozen or so really dedicated members that are on there 10 times a day. Which is a greater success? This is going to require some time to massage your manager into the idea of looking past the hard numbers to see the true value that can be attained, but it is worth the effort.


I hope you're seeing a pattern: Everything comes back to money.

Better website => more applications/donations => more $$$
-or-
Better website => more current student engagement => less transfers/more excited alumni => more tuition/more donations after graduation => more $$$

More email marketing => more applications/donations => more $$$

More use of IM => better recruitment of excited students on their medium of choice => higher enrollments => more $$$

More use of social networks => better leads once they are driven to your website => more applications/donations => more $$$


The last one is a bit of a stretch, but you'll have that. In addition to the numbers, many managers just want to know that you're actually THINKING about this stuff and if you show them you are, they will have more confidence in your abilities to make solid recommendations in the future. More-so, any manager worth their salt will translate that confidence like this:

More confidence in you => higher likelihood that they'll want to keep you happy as an employee so you don't get lured away to another organization (on average it costs an organization about $40,000 to fully train the employee that would replace you) => they give you a raise => more $$$ for you :-)

See, it works out for all involved.

Landing pages as an impediment?

Typically, I'm a fan of landing pages. But then we did an email "Save The Date" for an event we were having for high end donors a few weeks back and just asked them to call or email the person in charge to reserve their place. We didn't have time to do a landing page (the email was to replace the print invites, which were delivered late) so it was just a plain message with no links included to click through. We followed it up a week later with a slightly modified email, again no link.

The event went from being extremely underbooked to extremely overbooked. No landing page was necessary.


So fast forward a few weeks. The Parents Fund wants to do an email follow-up to a print solicitation they did a month back or so. My argument was that they should just do a quick and simple email and send them straight to the give online form. Make it as easy as possible for them to give a gift before they have the time to think about it (or call their spouse for permission!). However, what we ended up doing was sending them to a landing page that explains the impact of the gift before sending them directly to the gift form.

I have mixed feelings about this (and we don't have the data yet to say whether it worked or not). We have evidence from our last e-solicitation campaign with the annual fund that clearly shows that people are more likely to make a gift if we just send them directly to the gift form, rather than sending them to the site first, where they may get distracted. On the other hand, parents may need a bit more convincing that all that tuition money that are currently paying just does not cover the full amount the college is spending to give their child a world class education. Perhaps a split test is in order :-)

If the ultimate business goal of the organization is to raise money, and we can conclusively show that sending people to a landing page impedes that goal, should we just do away with them for the most most part? I'm not saying don't have the content on your site when it's appropriate but in regards to driving people to make a gift from other mediums (email, facebook, etc...), wouldn't it make more sense to make it as seemless as possible for the user?

Surveying Development Websites: Harvard

So maybe Harvard just feels like it doesn't have to try. I don't mean that sarcastically. If I had a $30 billion endowment and raised about $600 million a year in gifts, I'm not sure I would want to try either. In fact, from a business perspective, why would I dedicate resources to "fixing" something that doesn't really appear to be broken?

Still, since I'm reviewing websites based on a standard set of questions, I'll go through the exercise with their site as I did with Princeton.

Let's remind ourselves of the criteria:
1) Does the main institution website link directly to the development website in a way that makes it easy for the user to give?
2) Does the development website do a good job of convincing me that my gift matters, no matter what the size?
3) Do they provide features that make me nostalgic about my institution or stories of students today that my gift will be benefitting?
4) Is making my gift easy?
5) Is my gift acknowledged?


1) Does the main institution website link directly to the development website in a way that makes it easy for the user to give?
Answer: No.

There is no giving button on the main Harvard page. Instead, a person interested in making a gift (who may not just be an alum as an aside), should click on the Alumni button in the upper right hand corner:



Once they click on that, they are brought to the alumni community page, which appears to be the main places for them to make a gift online:



We're only a few more clicks away from actually being able to make our gift! (Ok, maybe that one was sarcastic :-) ). So you click on "Make a Gift" in the left hand nav and are brought here:



Click on "Credit Card" and you are brought to an excessively long and overwhelming form:



I really have to wonder what percent of their users drop out at some point in the process. I know I would. I'd rather give my money to someone that's going to make my life easier!

2) Does the development website do a good job of convincing me that my gift matters, no matter what the size?
Answer: That depends on what you mean by "convince"

Ok here's the thing: After poking around for about half an hour, I finally found the annual fund site! This is a little better than the the alumni community site:



After poking around a bit further, I found this:



So it explains what the money would go for, but as far as making me feel like a $25 gift will make any sort of difference, I'm not convinced. Of course, we all know that a $25 gift is a drop in the bucket relatively speaking but there are ways to make people feel like its ok....that it may not build a new dorm, but it's better than nothing! I think this is an especially important attitude to build in younger alums who will not be able to afford making gifts right off the bat. Get them into the habit of giving to their school and one day, that $25 million gift may come.

3) Do they provide features that make me nostalgic about my institution or stories of students today that my gift will be benefitting?
Answer: The have a lot of news on their site, though I'm not sure it's the same thing.



I won't knock them for having news on their site but it also seems to do little more than aggregate content from other places. Not a bad idea to conserve resources certainly....I just think they could do a better job of actually featuring the news stories that are relevant to their audience instead of just linking them to other pages around the university.

4) Is making my gift easy?
Answer: HA! I think we already answered this :-)

5) Is my gift acknowledged?
Answer: Hmmmmm....

Well....there's a flash piece thanking donors for the 2005-2006 year:



(View the Flash piece here)

As far as any sort of honor roll though, I didn't come across one. Also, in 2008 I'm not sure it's still a good idea to have a thank you piece from a few years ago on your site....

Overall: I'll say it again - They're Harvard. They don't have to try.

Surveying Development Websites: Princeton

Most of you know that I come from an admissions background, so when I moved into development I had to shift my prospective. There are a lot of similarities between the two. For example, at the end of the day its all about making a human connection to make the sale. But the sale you're trying to make is fundamentally different: In admissions, you're competing with 4,000 colleges across the country. In development, in many respects, you're really competing with yourself. Your alums have already "bought" your product. It's now your job to convince them that it was a good purchase. It's like in the movie Dave: the part where he is outraged that the government is paying for a program to convince Americans that their choice to buy an American car was a good one:

DAVE
(hearing him)
Yes, Bob. Choices... Now the
Commerce Department..,

SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
(sitting erect)
Yes, Mr. President?

DAVE
(from a card)
You're spending forty-three million
dollars on an ad campaign to...
(reading)
'Boost consumer confidence in the
American auto industry.'

SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
And it's proving quite effective...

DAVE
Does it make the cars any better?

SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
No, sir. It's more of a perceptual
issue.

DAVE
(beat)
Perceptual?

SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
Yes, it's designed to bolster individual
confidence in a previous domestic
automotive purchase.

DAVE
(beat)
Why?

SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
Well... to shore up product
identification and preserve market
share.

DAVE
So we're spending forty-seven million
dollars to make people feel better
about a car they've already bought?


A slight digression...but this is really what development is all about. We're spending money to convince alums that their decision to go to school here was a good one so that they, in return, will give us money to spend on the next generation of students.

So how does the web fit into all this. Well, a good development website, in my opinion, has a number of tasks to achieve:
1) Provide alums with an easy way to make donations to the institution.
2) Acknowledge alums who have donated to give them a warm, fuzzy feeling.
3) Convince alums who are thinking about making a donation that it is a worthwhile venture through stories and iconic images.
4) Compliment ongoing marketing initiatives of the office that are taking place through other mediums.


When I first started my job back in November, I thought it would be a good idea to survey current development websites. Basically, I decided to go down the list of Top Colleges as ranked in US News and World Report. Here is the criteria I am looking at:

1) Does the main institution website link directly to the development website in a way that makes it easy for the user to give?
2) Does the development website do a good job of convincing me that my gift matters, no matter what the size?
3) Do they provide features that make me nostalgic about my institution or stories of students today that my gift will be benefitting?
4) Is making my gift easy?
5) Is my gift acknowledged?

Let's start off with the top dog themselves: Princeton. Princeton just launched a $1.75 billion campaign, Aspire.

1) Does the main institution website link directly to the development website in a way that makes it easy for the user to give?
Answer: Sort of.

Right now, the giving option is located in a quick links menu in a dropdown on the main page.  To be fair, however, it looks like Princeton will be launched a new homepage with a more prominent giving button soon.  Here is the preview: 

When you click on the giving link, you are brought to http://giving.princeton.edu, which looks to also be serving as the main page for their campaign:




Now I'll be honest: I'm a sucker for this website.  I think it's clean, very easy on the eyes.  I also love the bold orange on light grey...plus I think the grey just makes the images on the page pop out.  

2) Does the development website do a good job of convincing me that my gift matters, no matter what the size?

Answer: Yes, but you have to dig a little.

It's vital for colleges to be able to convince potentials donors that their gift matters, particularly with the younger classes.  When we leave college, most of us just cannot afford to give any significant amount of money until at least a few years into our chosen career. At the same time, it's important for colleges to begin to cultivate that idea of philanthropy into their alums right off the bat so down the road when they can afford to give a lot more, it will be easy to sell them.  

I'm actually a huge fan of how Princeton handles this on their site: 

 

Even a small gift of $25 matters.  If you are able to give more, it has a greater impact.  Well done.

3) Do they provide features that make me nostalgic about my institution or stories of students today that my gift will be benefitting?

Answer: Ehhhh.....

I think this is where they start to fall short.  I think the closest they come to meeting this goal is with their blog for the campaign, which I am a fan of: 

Visit it at https://blogs.princeton.edu/aspire

The blog combines images of today with some pretty cool historical images and you can subscribe to it via e-mail.  It's also easy to find, being linked directly off of http://giving.princeton.edu.

4) Is making my gift easy?

Answer: Yes

The "Make A Gift" button is clear in the top nav on the page and from there, you can make your online gift.  Users can elect to log into an alumni account or just proceed to the gift form, which is broken up into four pages so that it doesn't overwhelm the user (this may seem like a small thing but just wait until we get to some other college sites....)

5) Is my gift acknowledged?
Answer: Ehhhh....

Although Princeton does offer a page with "profiles in giving" (pictured below), there is no full honor roll that I  can see.  Here, I think they are missing an opportunity.  The honor roll on our page is one of the biggest drivers of traffic to the website (from people googling their name) and one of the biggest drivers of gifts (because people don't want to see their classmate's name listed and not theirs.  Additionally, the profiles in giving only features high level donors, which is going to be an unreachable height for us mere mortals.  Acknowledgment of only multi-million dollar gifts could work to undo any cultivation of younger classes, who may once again feel that their small gift won't matter: 

Overall, I think we have to admit that Princeton does a damn good job.  The site is clear, easy to navigate and seems built to handle most of the objectives a good development site should while also throwing in a bit of Web 2.0 here and there.  Kudos to Princeton :-)