FundClass Archives

Using the Internet in Fundraising: full opening message

Full opening message of FundClass Topic #16, April 1999

Our facilitator for this FundClass topic is Gary Grant.

Opening Message

INTRODUCTION

Greetings and welcome. I'm happy to have been invited to present on the topic: Using the Internet in Fundraising.

So much of the buzz about the internet seems to focus on its implications in the for-profit sector. Will the Microsoft anti-trust suit save Netscape? Will Ebay stocks continue to soar? Will Amazon.com kill the local neighborhood bookstore?

But what about the non-profit world? Aside from the question of how businesses use the internet to attract more consumers and higher profits, how can we use the internet to attract more involvement and philanthropy to our organizations? What practical uses are there for fundraisers, grantseekers, prospect researchers, and so on.

This class discussion will address both the narrow practical questions --e.g. What can I do online that will enhance my fund raising work? What are the URL's that can help me each day? As well as the broader, more complex issues --e.g. How can my organization carry on its mission to the internet?

One premise to understand from the begining is that organizations differ in ways that impact how they and their development staff can use the internet. Just as Barnes & Nobel use the internet in a very different way from the Amoco Oil Company, so too will a College, a Cultural/Arts institution, and an Advocacy organization each use the internet differently.

INDIVIDUAL GIVING / MAJOR GIFTS

CONSIDERING THE INTERNET AS A TOOL FOR SOLICITING GIFTS

It is possible to send e-mail solicitations. There are companies now that generate e-mailing lists of tens of thousands of people. But this is NOT something I would recommend doing either to a generic list *nor* to your own constituency. Whenever you undertake an internet activity, its important to appreciate that there is a "culture" and an "etiquette (or netiquette)" in cyberspace. Right now, this culture is not accepting of solicitations and if done in a way that feels invasive, it can trigger a backlash against the sender.

What is safe, is to include on your organization's homepage either or both a request for support and information helpful to donors (such as planned gift information). The disclaimer here, however, is that you should not expect a lot of return from this--at least not yet. While I know of no studies about it, I would be fairly certain that the rate of giving (even as measured against the number of "hits" (or visitors) to the site would be far below any direct mail campaigns. So the advice here is to go ahead and do it since its almost free of cost (but don't spend a lot of time on your solicitation website).

There are exceptions. For example, the ACLU has had some success in attracting support through its website--the reason why is the Telecommunication Act of 1996 which created a massive concern among users of the internet, many of whom became more interested in that organization's efforts to protect privacy and free speech rights.

Similarly, an organization like the Red Cross might have much more success than most--especially in a time when there is a disaster that is getting media attention. Then people wishing to give are likely to go online specifically to find out how to do so.

But most organizations are not likely to motivate giving simply by making an attractive website. Most must do something more...

DOING SOMETHING MORE

If you go to the Pampers website (www.pampers.com), you would expect to find a nice sales pitch about why this brand of diapers is the one you should use on your infant. But instead you find a lot more--the Pampers Parenting Institute, as the site is called, provides access to everything from child development experts to health and safety information. They do this because the company understands that by appropriately expanding its role in order to provide something of value to people online, it can potentially draw some attention to its product.

With television, the programs capture people's attention so that the commercials can do their work. But on the internet, few will come to you unless you really understand (a) what the audience you are attracting wants; (b) what your organization can give online; and (c)what competing places they can go online for this.

One way to do something more, is to have an organizational e-mail newsletter. Membership-based organizations can capture new names and new interest as well as heightening the connection with existing members by sending a relevant and regular e-mail. Even if deleted before read, such a piece can make people feel more connected and more likely to support than the organization they only hear from once or twice a year (and then only for money).

A newsletter like this, can include a regular statement at the end--or an interestingly woven in request for support. Linking the successes announced to funding can help make it seem more relevant. Doing something more at your website is a little harder because it can be very time-consuming to take on a major project with a website. For example, there is so much adoption information online, that any single adoption agency hoping to be "the one-stop gateway to all online about adoption" would be unlikely to succeed.

But if you think realistically, you can offer a site that provides visitors with something of real value. Finding your niche will require spending a significant amount of time researching what exists online in your area of work as well as thinking about what you can offer online.

RELATIONSHIP BUILDING

It's helpful to think of the internet as a tool for building stronger relationships with your constituency or donor publics (and not just as a way to get your message out to many cheaply). The internet is two-way. Its benefits are often in the human-to-human connection that it allows. For example, many people who are unlikely to call or write your executive director with a question or comment, might not hesitate to drop an e-mail--and how exciting it is to actually get a response this way and really feel like you matter to the organization. How exciting it is to see your own name listed on a website as a valued member or leader.

In working with alumni for a social work school, we found it enormously helpful to have online discussions (much like this class),between alumni, students, and faculty. Graduates who had never had any access to the school since graduating (we had participants ranging from Japan to rural Tennessee), could suddenly (and conveniently) engage in a conversation about something of interest.

This kind of program gave us the ability to interact with one-third of our constituency which in the past could get no more than mailings and phone calls. Our analysis had shown that only those 2/3rd living in staffed cities and who could attend programs gave significantly to the school, so the potential here was great. Of course one limitation is that not all of that constituency we were trying to reach out to had e-mail or shared their address with us. Depending on how large your group is, you may want to move more or less cautiously with this kind of interactivity.

If you want to create some interactivity for your constituency, here are some options and some rough numbers to consider. The technology is often available for free online. These numbers are based on my very non-scientific observations and there are no guarantees.

a) For a listserve to work, I estimate that at least 200 people are necessary for there to be any dialogue (90-95% will read but not respond, "lurkers"). Over 600 is probably too many as they will create a flood of discussion.

b) A newsletter can be pretty much unlimited, although replies may be too many for staff to handle. They should be automated so that you don't have to maintain the address list personally which can be surprisingly time-consuming.

c) A chat room requires an enormous number of visitors to generate enough traffic for there to be chat. Perhaps on the order of 1000 visits a day is needed before you could hope to have a successful chat room. The room itself should not have more than 5-10 people at any given time or the discussion cannot stay on topic. Scheduled discussions may work better.

These are not exhaustive. There may be online forms of stewardship and recognition for major donors (e.g. a banner on your main page celebrating a critical major gift). There may be ways to link volunteer projects or a way for volunteers to support your online activities.

Another idea that has had great success for me was to create a mentoring website where alumni could describe themselves and where students could go to find alumni willing to help advise them. This was enormously popular with the students and extraordinarily rewarding for the alumni. The activity resulted in several students finding jobs out of state in its first year.

In many of these cases, it may be worth creating a partnership with similar organizations in order to pool interactive activities. Competition among non-profits online can, I think, be a very destructive thing.

This concludes the first part of this class. I'd enjoy hearing your thoughts about:

• What you do to create a closer connection with your constituency?
• What are your thoughts about a role online your organization could play in order to attract support?
• What are the risks you fear and the opportunities you think are out there?
• And of course, any other thoughts.

PART 2

Thank you for your patience...the following begins the second formal part of the internet fundraising class.

To refresh...in the first part we covered individual giving--and concluded that organizations do need to be online, both through websites as well as by using e-mail to communicate with their donor base. One of the best ways to get real value from the internet is to use it to cultivate closer bonds with an existing and identifiable constituency. But many organizations, depending on their nature, can also potentially attract new donors and members to their organizations using an online presence.

In the next part, I plan to cover three different ways of using the internet in fundraising. First, I will discuss prospect research, which for me at least, is the most common daily way I use the internet. Second, I will provide a methodology and some specific direction on how to use the internet for grant seeking. Third, I will mention briefly how to use the internet for your professional advancement and job seeking.

Prospect Research

I have to confess--I really enjoy the astonishment from the non-net savvy when, after just a few minutes, I can come back with all kinds of useful information about a new major gift prospect.

While the internet may not do away with the need for good prospect researchers, it can put some important information at your fingertips.

Using the internet for prospect research is beginning to really feel like an art more than a science. I wish there was an easy formula--but unless you want to spend a whole afternoon at it, you have to anticipate what you are seeking.

Below are some of the common sources I use for prospect research and a description of how they might be used:

• Infoseek This, or any other similar search engine, can be a good place to start. I met a potential supporter recently and though I had no idea of his capacity, out of curiosity I typed his name into a search engine and found out he recently named the library at his alma mater in the past five years.

  Now, if your prospect's name is John Smith, don't bother with the search engines. A common name is obviously going to return thousands of sites that are impractical to explore--without some other key words (e.g. "John Smith" +Megacorp) is fine if you also know that he is the CEO of Megacorp. But a Xavier Thistlehammerstein is probably ok to try, even without knowing any other information.

  General search engines will tend to find many common news sites, corporate websites, personal homepages, etc. I have come up with speeches prospects have delivered, news stories discussing their wealth, and so on.

   

• Hoovers This site is a great place to go for information on Corporations or to find if an individual is an officer of a corporation. A paying subscriber can get fully detailed profiles on each company, but even for free there is significant information.

  If the individual you are researching is in another profession, you can track down some details at professional sites. For example, almost every lawyer can be found in Westlaw's directory (http://www.wld.com) or at Martindale Hubbel's site.

   

• Forbes (http://www.forbes.com) This is most useful if you just want to focus on finding some of the richest individuals and companies.

   

• Yahoo Newspapers If you or your prospect lives somewhere that has a newspaper with an online edition--it may be possible to do a check in the local papers. The Chicago Tribune, for example, allows one to search the last several years for any name. It then gives a small sample of what each story is about and allows you to purchase the full article by credit card for less than $2. Its inexpensive and immediate. I hope more of the newspapers in the country provide such a flexible resource.

  I've also used Yahoo for other things. I have one potential donor considering a gift of over $1 million--but wants to wait to see how a certain stock does. By bookmarking the specific Yahoo stock quotes page, we can easily keep tabs on its progress so that we appropriately time the follow-up.

For more on prospect research, try "The Association of Prospect Researchers for Advancement". (August 2001: link no longer exists)

For those inclined to pay for their prospect research sites, there are also powerful research benefits of Handsnet.org, Lexis/Nexis and there are a number of services now which use web-based interfaces to access their traditional prospect research databases.

Not being a true prospect researcher--are there others out there with recommendations about these?

This last part addresses the question of how one approaches their job search as a fundraiser online.

The Online Resume

I do recommend developing a personal page for yourself either through your own ISP or through a free online service of which there are many (such as geocities.com). An online resume serves two purposes:

(1) convenience/speed, since potential employers can immediately see and print it out. I was surprised how often in my last job search, this came in handy. It enables employers to dig further too--for example, exploring links to your former employer's websites or e-mailing references. This may give those with online resumes an edge.;

(2) it tells employers that you are net savvy...even if they never bother to look at your resume. With this in mind--I tended to include in my cover letters that the resume was available online, even though I included a hard copy--which is admittedly more attractive.

If you would like to see my resume online as an example, it's at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2608/resume.html (although I've not updated it with my current employment yet).

Another possibility for your online resume is to have it registered with one of the many job-search sites in the hopes that a desireable employer will find you. I can't see how this would hurt--but I also would not place a lot of hope that this will land your dream job. Also, some job sites will only let you create a resume in their format or just allow posting basic information for their database.

Unfortunately--there are just so many job-search sites out there and until they whittle down to a few comprehensive ones, it can really feel like your lost in a jungle.

I also suspect that few employers, especially in the nonprofit world--will be likely to search for candidates in this way.

For a quick list of job search sites, see the following page, where I've listed a number under the category "general job search sites": http://www.ssa.uchicago.edu/linksjobs.html (August 2001: link no longer exists)

Finally, if you want more on how to build an online resume, I still have an old class online at http://www.ssa.uchicago.edu/vclass/ (August 2001: link no longer exists)

Hunting for positions online

We are now at a point where you can pretty much focus your entire search for a job online and probably not miss too many opportunities--or can at least keep yourself pretty busy getting resume's out.

The following were some of the key sites I had success with (in order of my preference):

1. http://philanthropy.com/jobs.dir/jobsmain.htm (which includes all job openings posted in the Chronicle of Philanthropy)
2. http://www.nonprofitjobs.org/sjob.cfml
3. http://jobs.pj.org/
4. http://www.nonprofitcareer.com
5. http://www.essential.org/goodworks/jobs/

Has anyone had success with others?

In general, it is probably best to focus on these kind of online resources--since they specialize in fundraising and non-profit jobs and are fairly plentiful in offerings because they list positions announced in traditional print form too.

If you do exhaust these, you might go to some of the general "any-category-of-job" sites, like www.monster.com. Some years ago, the general sites were dominated by technology jobs, but they are increasingly broad based now.

You can also check out the newspapers online. Many major papers have searchable job databases. This may come in handy if there is a specific region of the country you are trying to move to.

Finally, if you know exactly what employer you want to work with, you can see if they post their position at their site. Many large nonprofits do this as do Universities (which was a place I focused my search).

If you find a position announcement on that organization's own homepage--it can't hurt to mention this. I think it adds to your application for the job because (a) you clearly sought them out; (b) you demonstrate your internet savvy; and (c) the employer may feel rewarded to have their efforts at recruiting online pay off.

I've heard several stories and have my own too--of e-mailing employers through their posted job announcements to learn that I'd just made it under the wire.

Well that should just about wrap things up...let's take any questions on this topic--or on previous discussions. Also, please let me know if there was any topic area you feel like I may have missed.

Let me say its been a pleasure participating--thank you for the fantastic comments, questions and suggestions.

Gary Grant
Chicago, Illinois

Gary Grant received his BA in history from the University of Chicago in 1987. With the exception of three years spent earning a J.D. from IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law (1994), Gary has worked in Development at the Univ. of Chicago ever since his first year as an undergraduate student there. He served in Asst. and Assoc. Director positions and worked for 10 years at the School of Social Service Administration (the social work grad. school) eventually becoming its Assoc. Dean for External Affairs where he was responsible for completing a $10 million capital campaign. Currently, he is a Senior Development Officer at the University of Chicago Medical Center (serving both its hospitals and the biological sciences division). In 1998, Gary co-authored two books, the Social Worker's Internet Handbook and the Non Profit Internet Handbook, White Hat Communications and he has taught workshops mostly for social workers and community organizations since 1996. Gary is a Vice President of the Hyde Park/Kenwood Community Conference (his local cmty org) and manages a community website on its behalf.

This opening message was originally posted on April 12, 1999