Digital marketers and fundraisers in a recent international survey ranked organizational websites (84%), social media (65%), and email newsletters (64%) as the most important tools in their digital fundraising kits. But organizations must ensure their use of these tools stays current with best practices if they hope to maximize opportunities for online giving.

“Your nonprofit’s website is the foundation upon which your digital marketing and fundraising campaigns are built. How well your nonprofit’s email, social media, and online fundraising campaigns perform depends upon how well your website is designed,” wrote Heather Mansfield, editor of the 2023 Nonprofit Tech for Good Report. 

The report she oversaw was prepared based on responses from 1,732 nonprofit professionals to a survey designed to elicit a better understanding of how organizations use technology for digital marketing and fundraising. The report also lays out suggested upgrades that organizations can make to their websites to improve returns in these areas. 

“Moving forward, many nonprofits can significantly improve their online fundraising campaigns with a few simple tweaks such as accepting online ACH (Automated Clearing House) payments, upgrading to an AI-empowered CRM (constituent relationship management), utilizing pop-ups on donation pages, and improving automated email communications with donors,” according to Mansfield.

The same principle applies to email marketing and fundraising. Privacy and security regulations are causing more email to go to spam and junk than in the past, a trend that nonprofits can counteract by sending email more often and deleting lapsed subscribers. However, 68% of organizations that utilize email for this purpose send it no more than once a month and 38% are not in the habit of pruning their email lists periodically. 

Failing to remove unengaged subscribers can result in damage to a nonprofit’s reputation as well as unnecessary expenses since email marketing services typically charge fees based on the number of subscribers, according to Mansfield.

Social media is another tool that needs to be revisited if its effectiveness is to be maintained. The early years of social media saw many smaller nonprofits grow their online brands to levels never seen before, but algorithms implemented by Big Tech since then have worn away at some of the benefits. “In truth, social media is not very effective without investing in advertising,” according to the report.

Nonprofit managers increasingly recognize this as evidenced by the 53% of respondents who reported that their organizations now spend on social media advertising. However, the cost of this advertising is raising the pressure on them to create ad campaigns that convert followers into donors. Most of the other 47% that don’t invest in social media ads continue to use social media anyway because it’s free but have no program in place for tracking referrals or conversions. Most would therefore do well to consider if their time and resources could be better spent elsewhere, according to the report’s authors. Other findings from the survey were as follows:

• Nonprofits have made significant security upgrades in recent years to protect from cyberattacks, something that 27% of respondents have experienced.
• More than two-thirds (68%) of respondents now have a website security plan in place while 84% have a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate installed on their websites, which is up from 70% in 2019.
• 94% of nonprofits have a website that is optimized for mobile browsing.
• 67% of nonprofits use CRM software to track donations and manage communications.
• 91% of nonprofits accept online credit card payments, 53% accept PayPal and 45% accept ACH payments. The numbers are much lower for other payment methods such as Google Pay (7%), Apple Pay (6%), cryptocurrency (4%), and Amazon Pay (3%).
• 94% of nonprofits that use email for marketing purposes do so through an email marketing service such as MailChimp or Constant Contact.
• 54% of nonprofits utilize peer-to-peer fundraising, 46% have hosted online fundraising events, and 29% use some form of crowdfunding.

Participants in the survey spanned 116 countries with a majority based either in the United States (43%), Canada (7%) or Mexico (5%). Of them, 59% described their organizations as small, 33% as medium-sized, and 8% as large. Questions covered website and email communications, online fundraising, social media, and professional development in the nonprofit sector.

The full 22-page report can be found at https://bit.ly/3LfxtEq.