What about the Big Fish?
Some things has been gnawing on me since I watched Steve MacLaughlin’s superb presentation on the state of online giving. Two slides, around the 1/4 and 2/5ths mark, caught my attention: They show that according to Blackbaud’s data, which is no doubt legion, 5% (and growing fast) of giving in the US occurs online, while 95% does not. Another slide discusses the online donations higher of $1,000.
I feel like I’m fairly plugged in to the nonprofit/cause based/NGO technology scene. I probably spend an hour a day consuming and thinking about information related to the sector. My non-statistical, unreliable gut says that most of the #nptech sector concentrates on smaller, online donations and social media. I’m sure this is biased by the fact that I don’t know that many people doing direct mail, galas, or grant writing. Still, I don’t remember hearing anything at all about how organizations approach and court big donors - using technology. I agree that the future is online, but for now, the offline 95% is too big to ignore, and a big chunk of that comes from high net worth individuals. How big? Does anybody have figures? Like maybe a histogram?
I believe it is safe to assume that the vast majority of donation dollars come from big fish – rich people, foundations, grants, the gub’mint. I also understand that most often, these big fish are courted via personal, resource intensive methods such as galas, dinner parties, face time with the executive director. I also have not heard of any instances where technology is being used to improve, streamline, or better analyze this arena.
I perused the NTC ’10 sessions, looking for topics that might address the topic – like potentially this one about ‘Optimizing the Ask’ and another about ‘Multi Channel Fundraising’. What better way to wed the staid, handshake-dinner-and-drinks world of courting big donors with all the young troops who grew up with computers? I hear they rarely talk.
Despite I’m sure I’m forgetting a few for the sake of rhetorical flourish – what were they? What’s happening? Is it true that the only innovation is in the still relatively small online sector? And what makes the difference between small and big online donors? If a single $5,000 donation is akin to 500 people donating $10, what can be done to make online giving more attractive to deep pockets?
The reason I’m writing a post about this is that I think it can be done – if it isn’t happening already. Thanks to DreamForce’s big crossover into the big money, for profit world, I learned of some interesting tools and techniques that nonprofits could use. A post for next time…
Dandy report from Convio from last year on ‘The Wired Wealthy’: http://my.convio.com/?elqPURLPage=104
[...] is a follow up to a previous post asking what cause based orgs were doing to pursue HNW individuals and their bags of tax deductible money. http://www.flickr.com/photos/scatty/ / CC BY-ND [...]