Internet Fundraising
“The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed”, William Gibson
Engagement
Making the Internet work for you
Charity websites are not popular with Internet users; one piece of research found as few as one visitor in every 2,500 chooses a charity website, further more, donating came 18th out of a possible 21 online activities undertaken in the last twelve months, very few people go straight to a website and give.
One reason is that charity sites are not satisfying the main reasons why people use the Internet, i.e. to shop, communicate, banking, find out about products. Many sites are also dull and contain too much irrelevant information. Sites are also not always easy to interact with and navigate. Finally sites need to give users a reason to visit them, what incentive is there for the user?
To make the tools that you have on your website most effective you need to ensure people are visiting your website. There are lots different resources available that are free and provide ways to let people interact with your website and other supporters. This interaction helps to bring people return visitors, the more they visit the site the more chance you have of getting a gift from them or encouraging them to use some other method as describe earlier to generate your organisation an income.
When planning your site consider how you will initially engage with your supporters and secondly how you will use it as a fundraising tool.
Social Media are effective at engaging with people as such can be used as an initial hook to draw people to your site to find out more.