Fundraising Online for Non-Profits

There was a time when non-profit fundraising efforts were limited to a choice between a bake sale and a car wash.  The options that exist today thanks to the Internet give non-profit organizations ways to reach far beyond their geographic and organizational limitations to reach donors around the world.  Non-profit fundraising isn’t as simple as just adding a “donate now” button to your website and hoping that willing donors will find you.

However, there are websites that specialize in helping non-profit organizations of every type bring in the online donations they need to continue their work by taking advantage of the strengths of the Internet.  The best sites include Fundly, which uses a winning combination of traditional Internet marketing strategies and social media marketing to raise money online for you while handling the details so you can continue the real work of running a non-profit organization.  If you are ready to begin online fundraising efforts, here are a few more things you should know.

There is no doubt that social media is the most significant change to our online habits since the unveiling of email.  An ever increasing number of adults report that they not only have a social media presence, such as a Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace page, but that they check it several times a day.  For your non-profit fundraising effort to be successful, you must have a presence on major social media outlets.  Again, this isn’t as simple as just creating a page for your organization- today’s wired users expect donating to be easy, and won’t spend hours – or even minutes – trying to locate your site so that they can give money.  The most successful fundraising sites are those that have already developed so-called widgets that can easily be added to existing pages and shared among users to make it fast and easy for interested altruists to donate to your cause.

As with any other Internet enterprise, it is very important to choose the right online non-profit fundraising site.  There are a number of start-up companies that do not have the experience to handle significant levels of donating, and who don’t have the relationships with online resources that are necessary to make your fundraising campaign all that it should be.  There are also a few companies that charge large fees, drastically reducing the amount of money that your organization benefits from.  Finally, there are some sites that are designed to steal your personal or organizational information.

When you do choose an online non-profit fundraising platform, your organization will quickly reap the benefits of having a professional fundraising site’s support.  You can raise money through traditional email campaigns, Facebook and Twitter, and directly from your website without the hassle of trying to manage these tools yourself.  Sites like Fundly work for only a small transaction fee, far less than the cost of hiring someone to run an online fundraising campaign.  In much the same way that ecommerce has cornered a large portion of the retail world, online fundraising is the future for non-profit fundraising for any and all non-profit organizations in the United States and worldwide.