Barnabas Notes

The Nonprofit Times recently ran a study concerning donor behavior when they receive a direct mail piece (Thanks Don’t Tell the Donor for the heads up).

Forty-four percent of donors are going online before a gift. Thirty-seven percent of them are going to the nonprofit’s website, but 42 percent are going somewhere else.

For me that second statistic is more important than the first. I’m not surprised that almost twice as many people than three years ago are going online to confirm their giving decision. I am surprised at where they are going.

Twenty-four percent are going to independent rating organizations, 10 percent are going to online discussion groups and 8 percent are going to blogs.

So if you’re a nonprofit you should be asking yourself a few questions:

1. What ratings organizations do we list on our site and which are we listed on?
2. Are we monitoring prominent giving and philanthropy discussion groups?
3. Are we monitoring blogs for our name?

If the answer to any one of these three is “we don’t know” you’ve got a problem.

I’ve done some work on systems to help with questions #2 and #3 (feel free to let me know if you’d like some insight into that).

Question #1 I’m a bit more unsure of. I’m not quite sure how donors are picking which rating(s) organizations they look at. Are they going to the nonprofits site and then clicking on logos in sidebars? Do they have a favorite bookmarked? What are those favorites?

I smell a white paper on this topic…