Saturday, April 26, 2008

Australian charities look to the Facebook generation for donations and members

According to Oxfam, the Environmental Defense Fund, Community Information Strategies Australia (CISA), DonorTec and hundreds of other nonprofit organizations surveyed, the number of people who open or respond to e-mail messages is falling, threatening this previously powerful and low-cost marketing tool for nonprofits.

A new study shows that the percentage of people who opened messages from the charities fell from 21.3 percent in 2006 to 17.6 percent in 2007, while the percentage of recipients who clicked through to a web link included in the messages decreased from 4.9 percent to 3.8 percent. But surprisingly the amount of money that the groups raised over the Internet (by any means) increased 19 percent from 2006 to 2007.

The message is clear, says CISA CEO Doug Jacquier, organiser of the Australian national Connecting Up conference, charities need to start using the social web to stay up with changing habits of giving. See "Australian charities turn to Facebook generation for survival" for the views of Doug and leading nonprofit social media guru Beth Kanter.

4 comments:

JimBob51 said...

This is a great article. As the commercialization of the social network carries on out of control I am sensing already a consumer retraction from the game. Spam is Spam and that is all there is to it. As many people know I am involved in a charity and believe in the long haul. The bubble is about to, or may have already burst on these solutions. The whats in it for me principle will win the day and any form of commercial approach on line must remember one thing the client/provider relationship reigns supreme. Charities must get their message out and rely heavily on donation for survival. Equally we must not swamp or intimidate our target market.

BuzzTart said...

Thanks, jimbob - how did you find the blog (facebook, linkedin?) - I'm a newb (noob?) to blogging... a work in progress :)

JimBob51 said...

My Google Reader is set up with a number of keywords of interest in my life. I read(scan) about 400 articles a day as a result of that. Facebook and Charities are amongst my keywords as I am a Director of Multiple Sclerosis in SA it indeed is an article of great interest to me.Can I also recommend you to Twitter. People can then follow you because if you twitter on each new post your followers will no immediately.

BuzzTart said...

It's on my list - I assume you are twittering.