5 Lessons for Effective Professional Fundraising from Non-Profit Digital Report

I continue to be impressed with the number of information resources available to those of us working within the professional fundraising sector. We have featured a few key reports on our blog like 2011 donorCentrics Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report, the 3rd Annual Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report 2011, The Nonprofit Research Collaborative report (and Part 2), the 2011 State of the Nonprofit Industry Survey, the World Giving Index 2011, The 2011 Study of High Net Worth Women’s Philanthropy and The Impact of Women’s Giving Networks Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 and the latest findings and reviews from the Blackbaud Index released in January 2012.

Today we explore another valuable report, the Non-Profit Digital Teams Benchmark Research Results, which was released at the end of 2011 by Communicopia. Commissioned to better understand how leading professional fundraising managers build their online teams, the report is insightful and provides an excellent guide for nonprofits in all phases of planning and development. Research was conducted online from July to September 2011 with 67 senior level staff from mid to large sized nonprofit organizations. The listing of participating nonprofits is rather impressive and included organizations such as Greenpeace, DoSomething.org, Nature Canada, WWF, Imagine Canada, Unicef Canada, Amnesty International and the David Suzuki foundation amongst many others. The following are 5 lessons learned from this study:

1. Create A Digital Department. Based on the results of the study, work and tasks in digital channels are more geared towards communications departments as it accounted for 45% of nonprofit responses. Almost rarely is this area assigned to Information Technology departments and for good reason. The social media and online worlds require a specialized skill set that has more to do with marketing than IT so don’t be fooled by the fact that it is technology-based.
2. Allocate Suitable Resources. Currently teams are smaller in size and typically correspond with the size of the organization. 39% of respondents had 1-2 team members in their digital team and only 17% of respondents felt they were appropriately staffed.  It’s important to grow the team along with the demands and expectations of the department choosing enthusiastic and knowledgeable talent. It’s also important to involve members from other departments to contribute as over half of the respondents (55%) cited some form of digital work being shared with 6 or more team members in other departments.
3. Jack of all Trades. Interestingly the varied roles that are most often found on digital teams include Social Media Engagement (13%), Strategy (12%), Content Editing/Leadership (12%) and Project Management (11%). It’s clear that nonprofits are seeing the value of Social Media marketing and strategizing along with creating content that is engaging to supporters. According to the report, 60% of teams are expected to spearhead new initiatives as well so it’s important that they keep an eye on the big picture and not get lost in daily tasks.
4. Start with a Plan. An incredible 79% of respondents manage over 5 properties including websites/blogs, social media platforms, mobile applications and others. Ironically, the report also reflected that most digital teams are too small so it can easily be concluded that insufficient resources may be allocated to these teams. It’s important for nonprofits with limited resources for these teams to have a social media marketing plan that prioritizes action items so they can focus on the platforms that are most engaging to their target supporter demographic and maintain interesting content.
5. Appropriate Funding. An overwhelming 71% of respondents felt that their digital programs were either underfunded or significantly underfunded. As generally is the case in the nonprofit world, this tends to be a shared sentiment in general regardless of the department. As the line between digital programs and direct marketing continues to blur additional funding may be provided to future budgets. It`s encouraging to see that 57% of organizations plan to make some increase in their digital budgets for 2012.

The full 26-page report has many more insights and is worth a read as it can benefit professional fundraising team planning.
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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.