AFP Nonprofit fundraising special events study highlights online tools

Exactly a week ago I wrote about a new study from the Association of Fundraising Professionals which takes an in-depth look at nonprofit fundraising via special events. The initial post examined findings pertaining to event fundraising including staffing, event types, revenues and frequency.

The success of special events are extremely reliant on donor response rates which is aided by successfully building awareness of such events. An interesting extra layer to the report was a study of the various tools and methods used by nonprofits in promoting these events in the first place which we’ll take a look at today. In addition to this the study asked a number of important questions about the technology used or needed to promote the actual events as shown in the graphic below.

In addition to the online considerations such as website communication and social media, nonprofits also recognize the need for spreadsheet software, fundraising software, online newsletter, donation processing tools, online ticketing and peer to peer fundraising. As you can see the examples that organizations would ‘like to use in the future’ (the red line) in many cases would be as popular in the future tense as they are in current practice. All of which demonstrates that many of the online elements for special event nonprofit fundraising remain in their infancy or are even yet to be implemented. Standing out on the survey was ‘tools to process payments/donations’ which showed about a third currently using and the remainder split between not currently using or would like to use.

When it comes to the advance promotion of events those surveyed said that event promotion was accomplished by word of mouth (92%), social media (85%), print advertising (73%) and online advertising (64%). Meanwhile the table below shows the preferred method of receiving information about events according to the survey. Each example was rated from 1 (lowest)  to 4 (best) which demonstrates the website searches, face-to-face seminars and online newsletters are clearly the three leading examples.

The report also provides wonderful information about the biggest obstacles that nonprofits face when planning and coordination special event fundraising which provide valuable insight for planning and developing checklists for your own event. I also found the answers to an open ended question very telling in terms of providing real examples for what can be a struggle for events. The question asked was ‘What are the three worst problems encountered with event planning and execution’. As this was an open question the responses were very broad but the report pools together the answers in a valuable way.

Technology related issues led the list as the most frequent problems with examples that included:

• Lack of integration among technologies, e.g., accounting software, donor tracking software, registration software are not compatible.
• Clumsy third party websites for sign up (resulting in missed registrations and therefore unexpected guests the day of the event).
• Spotty or slow WIFI for onsite registration.
• Technology (computers/A/V) failing.
• Fundraising database not event-friendly.
• Lack of participant registration via online tools (because they don’t know how to use the system, etc.).
• Lack of access to/affordability of technology that could make the job easier.

Such a list demonstrates that while technology both online and offline can provide notable benefits to fundraising events they can also hinder if the support/training/testing is not implemented effectively. While almost all organizations are keen to move as many processes as possible over to the online arena it shows that the donor/user ease-of-use for any given tool can be the difference between a benefit versus a hindrance. This particularly applies for ‘registration’, sign-up’ and donation software and scripting on both sides of the equation. Extended testing and collecting user feedback are both critical elements when rolling out new online tools which can often get overlooked.

I encourage you to review the full report from AFP which is available as a .PDF file via the graphic to the right. The report covers in great detail many of the aspects that I’ve written about and much more, all of which can help your next fundraising event to be a resounding success. My thanks to the Association of Fundraising Professionals for all of the data provided.

All data on reviewed by kind courtesy of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all our business decisions  and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.