Wealthy & Wired: Donors Actually Like to Give Online

Add comment March 27th, 2008

Who knew? A major national survey reported this week that wealthy donors - those who give a minimum of $1,000 with an average annual donation of nearly $11,000 - PREFER to donate to their favorite non-profits via online tools versus any other method.

The survey was conducted by Convio, Sea Change Strategies and Edge Research and talked to more than 3,000 donors from 23 major nonprofits. Some of the results include:

• Major donors are online - 80 percent say they’ve made donations off- and online, with 51 percent saying they prefer to give online.

• Email is under-utilized to reach donors - 74 percent of survey respondents said they’d like an email from non-profits to remind them to send in their annual gift.

Traditionally, non-profits are focused on relationship-building, wine-and-cheese receptions and direct mail…but perhaps they need to catch up to the wired world. So many of our activities are online now, and it’s time for non-profits to take heed.

Online communications are not only the trend, they also provide non-profits with a lower overhead and administrative costs. Email blasts, for example, cost pennies per mailing, whereas direct mail pieces cost hundreds of times more.

Reducing administrative costs while increasing donations - now that’s something all donors would support in their favorite charity.