Internet Fundraising
“The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed”, William Gibson
There are many of reasons that make Internet fundraising a worth pursuing for an organisation.
· It can be cheap or free to do
· It demonstrates that you are a progressive organisation; embracing new technology and new ways of thinking
· It can provide an unrestricted income
· It requires little effort to maintain once it has been set up
Audience
There is a potentially huge audience available to visit a website, and the number of people using the internet is growing, the figures below illustrate this:
200,000 Labour Party members
2,000,000 Amnesty Int’l members
18,000,000 eBay.co.uk users
£100,000,000+ UK online giving
200,000,000 MySpace accounts
1,000,000,000+ internet users
In addition people are becoming more comfortable with using these new media, improved site security also increasing confidence in online buying. For many people the internet is not a “new thing”, and by 2016 the 20-something's workforce will never have been without Internet.
The growth of online giving is also impressive. Between 2003 and 2004 the Charities Aid Foundation reported an 89% increase in online donations through their giving sites, which was worth £3.8 million. The same period saw a 432% increase in paperless Direct Debits. One in ten people who gave to charity in American in 2007 did so online
Value for money
The Internet offers good value for money. Web givers tend to make higher average donations than other givers; the donations made online are also more likely to attract Gift Aid; 76% of online donations attract Gift Aid compared to 28% of other donations (Charities Aid Foundation)
The Internet also provides a cost efficient way of staying in touch with supporters. Email, online forums and blogs make it easy to stay in touch with supporters; and as there are no postage or printing charges with these they are free to use, or at least they minimise cost them by sending information over the Internet to those supporters with access to it and wanting to access information through this means.
Use of websites
You do not even need to have your own website to take advantage of some of the methods. As all you need to do is set up links to the sites and promote them which could be done on your emails and printed documents.
Advantages