CharityVillage® Research: Cybergifts, Part 4

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Cybergifts, Part 4
By Adam Corson-Finnerty
Read Cybergifts, Part 1
Read Cybergifts, Part 2
Read Cybergifts, Part 3

Looking at Tactics
We have spent quite a bit of time on strategy, futurizing, and philosophizing. It's now time to get down to the real work of Internet-based fundraising: getting someone to make a cybergift.
For four years now, I have been collecting examples of Internet-based fundraising. Magazine clippings, folded-over newspaper pages, Netscape bookmarks, and "saved" emails are clogging up my data-management system. It's time to try to put them in some semblance of order, post them with appropriate URLs, and throw away or delete the originals.
What people are doing so far...

Donate Now. The first and most obvious tactic is to place "donate now" buttons and links all over your web pages and hope that people will take appropriate action. A great example of this tactic is the American Red Cross, which includes a green "donate now" bar as the first clickable option on its home page. The Red Cross also includes a "donations" button as part of its bottom page banner, so that wherever you travel on their site, a gift is just a click away.
When the visitor chooses the donation link, she is taken to a page that offers three giving options: Donate Online, Donate by Phone, Donate by Mail. Click on an option and you are given instructions. In the case of "donate online now" the reader is taken to a secure form, asked to fill out name, address, credit card number, purpose, and amount of gift, etc. I note that the Red Cross also creates a button that says "I may be contacted by email," with the button conveniently selected for the "yes" option. So the reader has to choose the "no" option to avoid being on their list. This is an example of "negative permission," and most people do not find this particular form offensive. (See http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate-now.html)

The American Lung Association takes an even more aggressive approach. When you first select their site, a java pop-up window appears. There are two cute kids smiling at you. The overlay message says "Help All Americans Breathe Easier! Give to the American Lung Association. Click here." If you ignore it, it goes away after five seconds. But if you click, a second java window appears that says "Thank you for your interest in donating to the American Lung Association." and brings up their main donation page.

The donation page is straightforward, and focuses on collecting an online gift. The form thoughtfully allows you to make the donation in someone else's name or honor, and enables you to fill out the name and address of someone to whom the Lung Association will send a gift notice. The form also asks if you would like to receive their e-newsletter--the beginning of a "permission marketing" relationship. It does not offer an 800-number giving alternative (probably a big mistake), though it does give a small note about sending in a check by mail, with an address.

Interestingly, the Donation site concludes with a "Cybercash" logo and these stirring words:

"CyberCash is recognized as the worldwide leader in secure e-commerce payment technologies and services. The American Lung Association takes the confidentiality of our information seriously. For this reason, we use CyberCash when dealing with your credit card information. To guard against fraud, your information is securely encrypted and automatically passed directly to the financial network for processing. At no time is this information made available to anyone else.

"We guarantee that every transaction you make at our Web Site will be 100% safe. This means that you will not be billed for unauthorized charges that are made to your card as a result of donating online. Our secure server software (SSL) is the industry standard and among the best software available today for secure commerce transactions."

I think it is a good idea to put something like this on your online donation site-perhaps even at the *top* rather than the bottom. After all, we are constantly told that people hesitate to make online gifts because of concerns about privacy and security.

(However, the effect of this statement is somewhat undermined by a sentence that the Lung Association has placed next to their donation "submit" button: "Click only once! Multiple clicks = multiple donations!" Somehow that didn't make me feel secure! (see http://www.lungusa.org/)

Some don't make it quite so easy...

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Amnesty International. I should preface this review by saying that I believe AI is one of the most important non-profit organizations in the world, and deserves our ongoing financial support. But they don't make it easy on their would-be donors! There is no place on the main page that allows the visitor to make a gift, or even to get directions for making a gift. That appears to be because the main page (http://www.amnesty.org) is the International site, and you have to go to the local branches to get solicited.

OK, so you search for your country's chapter, and in my case, click over to the U.S. (http://www.amnesty-usa.org/) On the left of the U.S. homepage, we are invited to make a donation. So we click and are taken to a page that allows us to choose between making a secure credit card gift, an 800-number gift, an email gift, and a postal gift. So we click on the secure credit card link and we are taken to a page that gives us a choice of Becoming a Member, Making a Donation, or Renewing our Membership.

Note that we have searched for the Amnesty International site, which took a while. But we couldn't make a gift there. So we went to the page that gave us the link for the USA chapter, and we clicked there but we still couldn't make a gift. So we chose Make a Donation, and we still couldn't make a gift, and we chose "by a secure credit card" and we *still* couldn't make a gift. Counting the search, that's six links and we still can't actually donate! I happen to have a cable modem and plenty of patience. If I had a 28.8 modem, I'm not sure I would have gotten this far.

But it gets worse. I click on "Make a Donation" and being the savvy navigator that I am, I see that I have left the Amnesty site and gone to a site managed by Yahoo! The URL gives it away (http://st1.yahoo.com/aijoin/noname.html). This doesn't bother me, because I have heard that Yahoo is getting into the business of handling e-commerce, and I have confidence in them. But most visitors wouldn't necessarily feel that way, and Amnesty USA is not letting them know what has just happened.

On the "Make a Donation" page, I find an unusual format. There is a list of gift amounts running down the center of the page. The lines say "Donation Amount: $50" or "Donation Amount: $75," followed by a gray button that says simply "Order."

Order? Am I shopping?

So I click on "Order," and guess what? I am taken to a "Your Order" page which lines up just like a shopping cart page. I am told that "Item" is a donation amount. Then I have "options" which is blank. Then I have "Unit Price" which is $75. Then I have "Quantity" which is "1". And at the bottom of the page I have three buttons that say: "Place Secure Order," "Keep Shopping," or "Empty Basket."

Keep Shopping? I cannot believe that AI and Yahoo couldn't do any better than this. (And I am sure it will improve over time. AI may not be very sophisticated on the 'Net, but they are extremely sophisticated with direct mail. Stay tuned!)

In fairness to Amnesty International, their chief aim for going on the Internet is to stimulate and enable citizen action to promote human rights and free prisoners of conscience. Not to raise funds. The AI sites are packed with information, and feature online vehicles for taking action. Bully for them! They are taking their mission to cyberspace, and enlisting the power of individuals to make a difference.

Membership

Logic might suggest that I proceed from "donate now" to gimmicks like "adopt a turtle," but my own logic causes me to now turn to membership.

Membership acquisition is currently one of the most important mechanisms for online giving. After all, it combines a gift with permission to continue marketing to the member. Since members and "friends" are the lifeblood of most development operations, and the fertile ground from which major gifts can grow, it behooves us to pay careful attention to this particular cybergift.

It is worth noting that *you don't have to have a credit card facility to acquire new members online.* If your site is not "ecommerce-equipped," then simply have the visitor fill out a membership form, and allow them to click "bill me." See http://www.library.upenn.edu/friends/members/join.html for an example from the University of Pennsylvania.

There are a great number of non-profit web sites which solicit membership but one of my favorites is the Metropolitan Museum of New York. They have developed a special membership "level" for cybernauts. It is called the Met Net membership, and is billed as being "for Internet visitors to the Museum." Benefits include:

Free admission for one to the Museum and The Cloisters
An official Metropolitan Museum of Art T-shirt
A Metropolitan Museum of Art Screen Saver
Audio assisted guides on the Internet through selected special exhibitions and permanent installations and other special features for --Met Net Members only
Pass for one-time use of the Trustees Dining Room overlooking Central Park for Friday or Saturday dinner or weekend brunch
Discount of 10 percent on all Museum merchandise
Special merchandise offers available exclusively to Met Net Members through the Internet
Free copies of the Christmas and spring catalogues of publications and reproductions

Clever! Innovative! Almost brilliant. Almost brilliant because the Metropolitan then does something rather odd. You cannot just click and sign up as a member. You have to go to their online "store." There you find a list of gift items, but Met Net membership is not one of them. Instead, they rely on a small "button" at the upper edge of the screen-easy to miss.

OK, so the potential member eventually finds it, and clicks. He is given a list of membership levels to choose from, ranging as high as $3,000. Click on a membership level and the next page asks you what "quantity" you want. Quantity? We are back into the shopping cart motif. So now he has to go to checkout. Or do some more shopping. Since "he" is me, I decide to scope out the ties. The Tiffany grapevine tie looks nice, in purple. I order it, along with a Vivaldi CD. Now I am ready to check out. My total says that the member's cost is $104, counting the $50 Met Net membership. So I have saved $6 dollars and am benefiting already from my membership. Or am I?

Turns out I am not. To process my order as a member, I have to give my membership number, which I don't have yet. And, to add insult to injury, my shipping costs are jacked up by the value of my membership. Instead of saving money by joining, I appear to be losing money!

Hello? Yo, Met, you've got some good potential synergy here. Get your IT people to fix it right. (See http://www.metmuseum.org/htmlfile/member/brochure.html )

IT people, try this: make the membership form separate from the store. But after you sign up, using a credit card, you get an immediate thank-you and your new membership number, and a message that says: "As a Met Net Member, you can start benefiting right away! Take your new number to our online store and save an immediate 10% on all purchases. Click here!"

And, if you start at the store and are not even considering becoming a member, how about if your "process order" screen says "Did you know that you could save 10% right now on everything you buy? Simply click here and become a member. Your benefits will start right away!"

One final criticism. Whenever you buy from the store, it appears that you have to tell the Met "How You Heard About Us." Was it the newspaper, TV, the radio, etc. This field is "required" in order to complete your purchase. Required? Puh-leeeze! (Make a note class: Permission Marketing never, never "requires" anything that isn't really important, and when it does, it gives you something in return for giving up a bit of your time and your privacy.)

Perhaps we should cruise over to MoMA, to see whether their approach is a bit more -- well -- modern.

After viewing their artsy "splash" screen, we click on the menu button and, surprise, a Java window pops up. "Take the MoMA Survey," we are urged:

"Please take two minutes to fill out our on-line survey. It's fun and easy, plus it helps us maintain our site at your high standards. When you've finished, see what everyone else said. Thank you!"

Interesting. Online Surveys are an excellent way to involve visitors, gather email addresses, and start a "permission marketing" relationship. Can't resist checking out just how far the MoMA survey goesÖ

Not very far, as it turns out. They didn't ask me for my email address, didn't ask me if I would like information, didn't make an offer of something special if I joined Now - and didn't thank me for participating! They did give me the results of the survey, with a column for my choices. That's pretty cool.

From their survey, I learned that the highest number of respondents had already visited the Met site (38%); that 60% of visitors intended to look at "Exhibitions, Programs, and Events," while only 5% planned to check out "Membership;" that the greatest percentage of visitors were between 25 and 44 (51%); and only 21% of visitors had children in their household. Good stuff for website planners, including me. Oh, and that 90% of website visitors were not members. This is not a problem, this is a fabulous opportunity!

A fabulous opportunity which MoMA pretty much wastes. Membership is just another category among 20 options on the homepage, and "membership" is generally not carried forward as a toolbar option on other pages. When our visitor clicks on "Membership," she finds no incentive for "online" membership, no MoMAnet or CyberMoMA special category. And we have to go to the online store to get our membership online. Once there we find that membership levels can go as high as $10,000 ("Gifts of $5,000, $10,000, and more help to advance the Museum's core programs, including exhibitions, conservation, and education. Donors enjoy increased access to MoMA, closer involvement with curators and trustees, and opportunities for private exhibition viewings.")

But even as fat cats, we have to go through the usual shopping cart routine: "I'll take two Dr. Skud Fly Swatters, one Kangaroo Lantern, and a Major Benefactor Membership pleaseÖ"

(For your own Modern experience, start at http://www.moma.org)

In marked contrast to the Met and MoMA is the membership site for The Nature Conservancy. The very large "Join Today" button is graced by a picture of a very ugly and very cute baby black-crowned night heron. Click on the button and you go straight to a choice of membership levels, benefits, and the online form. And a picture of the tote bag that you will receive when you join-with the "wild and wacky" bird imprinted on same. I want one! (See https://tncnt.tnc.org/tncforms/join.htm)

A few recommendations

Having cruised a number of sites, commenting all the way, it may be useful to take stock, and set out some recommendations for handling "donate now" and "membership" cybergifts.

Recommendation 1. Treat a gift like a gift. Not like a purchase. People who make an online gift are in charitable mode, and you want to nurture and reinforce that philanthropic mindset. I believe it is confusing, and potentially harmful, to shift your donor to a "shopping" metaphor. A membership should also be treated like a gift, even if a package of benefits comes with it.

Recommendation 2. Place your "donate" and "membership" buttons everywhere on your site. The most elegant form appears to be in your banner or "toolbar," as is done by the Red Cross. Always present, but not intrusive. (See http://www.redcross.org)

Recommendation 3. Even if you have followed recommendation 3, you should also ask for a donation or a membership wherever it seems appropriate. Again, the Red Cross does not just rely on their toolbar, they also ask for a gift, with a hotlink, in almost every page devoted to their work or to a situation of need.

Recommendation 4. Go straight from your "donate" or "membership" or "join" button to the actual form that people need to use in order to make their gift. People who study e-commerce say that the majority of people who shop online "abandon" their carts and never complete their transaction. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of them is that the customer is made to go through page after page of forms and instructions before making their purchase.

I was surprised at how many sites set up intermediate pages once the visitors has selected "membership" or "donate." The designers may think they are providing useful information. If it is *critical* then put it on the form page. Otherwise, you are just creating barriers to giving.

Recommendation 5. Keep the form page as simple as possible. Don't ask for information that is not critical to the gift. That can be done in subsequent communications.

I think the ideal donation page will have these elements:

Something like "Thank you for choosing to make a donation through our secure online form. If this the first time you have made an online gift, you may wish to read 'Our Guarantee.'" (See below)

Something like: "You can also use our toll-free 800 Number to make a gift. 800-123-123x. Or you can send a check. Click here for our address." But keep this really short, and don't turn it into an intermediate page.

A choice of gift levels, with check-off boxes or radio buttons.

The minimum required information for completing a credit card gift. I believe this does not require a phone number, and it is a big mistake to ask for it. I am sure I'm the only one who feels this way, but I loathe telemarketing calls, and anytime an organization asks for my phone number, I become immediately suspicious.

A "complete gift" or "Give Now" button which completes the transaction. Perhaps coupled with a "Start Over" button that wipes out the entries and allows the donor to adjust information, or cancel the transaction.

When the donor completes the transaction, he or she is immediately fed a page that says "Thank you for your gift to [goodcause]. You will receive a confirmation of your gift through email, followed by a mailed receipt." Now, *this* page can contain some of the things that you resisted putting on the donations page, including a sign-up for your newsletter, or e-news, or whatever. And a link back to your homepage.

People who have read Cybergifts, Parts 1-3 may be surprised that I have not built "permission-getting" into the donation page. That is, a checkoff asking for some sort of permission to communicate with the donor. That is because I believe that a donation is "implied permission" to communicate, and should be treated that way. I believe most donors see it that way as well. That is, they expect to hear from you in the future. (But, for God's sake, don't send them $40 dollars a year in junk mail in exchange for their $25 online gift. Personally, I find that highly offensive-not to mention the fact that my gift has directly resulted in a net loss to the organization.)

Recommendation 6. As noted above, it may be useful to have a button or prominent link that I'll call "Our Guarantee." If the potential donor clicks on it, a page comes up that says something like this:

"Sywash University uses advanced security methods for protecting the privacy of your transaction. We guarantee your gift will be handled in a safe and protected manner.

"Should you have any question about this gift, or our method for processing, you can call our toll-free number for immediate assistance. That number is 800-123-123x."

And this should be followed by a "continue" or a "return to page" button.

Wouldn't it be nice if we non-profits pooled our resources and set up a 24/7 800-number that provided support and hand-holding for a gift? That probably won't happen anytime soon, so the alternative is (a) to maintain our own call center support, which is done by some large organizations; (b) contract it out to a professional call center, with appropriate scripting put in place; (c) maintain our own 800 line, or give a "call collect" number, that is available during office hours. I suspect that some of the e-commerce enablers, like Yahoo or Cybercash, may have their own 800-number support that clients can utilize.

Basically, I believe any non-profit that accepts donations online should knock itself out to assist and reassure any donor of the safety of their transaction. And if you ever get a call with a concern, I believe you should make it your top priority until it is resolved. I have not heard of even one story of someone having their credit card number abused as the result of an online gift. But I, and you, don't want to be the first instance, or even the subject of the first rumor. The news will ricochet all over the Net.

Recommendation 7. Specifically on membership, I believe it is a mistake to clutter up your pages with $5,000 and $10,000 membership levels. Come on, do you really think someone is going to join online at that level? I don't.

I recommend that websites focus on the basic levels of membership, and consider adding a "net" membership as the Metropolitan Museum has done. The "net" membership can have cyber-benefits, in addition to traditional benefits. Perhaps even a "passworded" area on your website; or passworded "sneak previews" to your online exhibitions.

Don't get me wrong. People have and will make $5,000 donations online. So, in your donation forms, I believe you should go higher, and have a fill-in-the-amount box. But Membership? I don't think so.

The page that I believe comes closest to my ideal for donation or membership is the membership page for The Nature Conservancy, though they do have graphics that may slow down page loading. See https://tncnt.tnc.org/tncforms/join.htm
Adam Corson-Finnerty is a Development Officer, Author and Occasional Consultant. Reach him at: 215-635-4084 or corsonf@fund-online.com. Find his web site at: http://www.fund-online.com. This article was originally published as a series of three postings to the CYBERGIFTS mailing list at http://www.charitychannel.com.