Digital Outlook Report offers excellent research for nonprofits looking to develop new strategies

Today we wanted to share another very interesting nonprofit fundraising report with you and not for the first time it comes partly from the creative minds over at NTen who have furnished the industry with a number of valuable studies in the past. The ‘2015 Digital Outlook Report‘ takes at look at current and future digital strategies being employed by nonprofit organizations but also takes that research to another level by assessing where the most potential for marketing may currently reside.

The study saw Care2, hjc and NTEN partner to collect data from 473 nonprofit professionals, 91% of whom are located in the U.S. and Canada. The respondents represent a diverse cross-section of the components and staff members needed to run and operate a successful nonprofit organization.

Much of the information reaffirms the changes that are being seen not only throughout the sector but also applies to the rapidly changing ways that people are engaging with digital media in general. Essentially many of the staple approaches of online and digital marketing and engagement are seeing the levels of effectiveness derived from their usage continue to alter. Choosing the trends with the most upward potential is therefore an important consideration for any nonprofit organization, especially in situations where time, money, personnel or a combination of all three are in short supply.

What is clear based on the graphics above is that nonprofits are modifying their focus, in some cases quite significantly, on a year-to-year basis as they refine their approach and determine what approaches bring the best results. The report does a very good job of explaining how the shift towards much more visual marketing is taking place at this very moment and seems to be accelerating. Regardless of the platform used to share content, the creation of custom graphics, infographics, videos and other visual presentation are each showing very strong results in driving engagement.

The report also provides a wealth of interesting data that assesses how organizations are tackling the challenge of creating a strategy that covers as many marketing avenues as possible. Conversely, the study shows that the challenges seen in the sector are fairly uniform with budget constraints, insufficient time for digital marketing and a limited budget devoted to the tasks associated with attracting new donors.

The report also looks at interdepartmental relationships and some of the true nuts and bolts behind how nonprofit fundraising strategies are developed, created and then implemented. Some of that data was perhaps the most interesting of all as you rarely see it examined in such rich detail.

In conclusion, the study also presents ‘seven steps for success’ for 2015 which I think offers some very good tactics to incorporate when planning just how to approach digital and online options for the year ahead.

We’d like to thank NTen for creating such an interesting report and you can download the entire study via .pdf after registration here.

________________________________________________________________________________

Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Pinterest or subscribe to our RSS feed. 

Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including PCI compliant 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.