I reached out to Facebook and Twitter for places to give and received some amazing responses. I even reached out to some of my favorite travel brands, Delta, Marriott, Kimpton, etc and asked for a place I could give to in their honor and ONLY ONE responded, Kimpton, giving me the Trevor Project. I made a generous donation and the fine folks at Kimpton even sent me a video of them dancing with joy over my donation- wooo.... good stuff!
Here is the spreadsheet tracking more than 30 donations made yesterday.
Here are some things I noticed:
Organizations still are not paying attention to the gift receipt/email confirmation process:
Those that have are making a great first impression- check out these examples!
Monthly giving is still not a primary option for many organizations- this is a missed opportunity- To look at someone who has done it well- Check out Planned Parenthood!
Also, it is 2015 and many forms were not mobile optimized. This is a shame, also many of them did not allow me to share my gifts on social media. Of those that did here are some images:
I tweeted EVERY single organization that had Twitter (don't get me started on the fact that some organizations didn't have Twitter) and not all tweeted me back. This is a FREE way to recognize your donors that ANY organization can do. Have someone monitor Twitter and reply to every donor. Check out the great conversation I had here:
Alas, the Michael J Fox Folks re-solicited me less than an hour later via email. I felt betrayed.
Michigan again wowed me with a GIF posted to my Twitter- bravo!
Some organizations still don't understand that their radio buttons turn donors off... Here is one that aimed way too high and one with an odd amount- $21?
Most innovative giving button goes to the Hawaiian Humane society letting me know that my donation fills the bowl. Cute!
Finally, THE BEST giving experience of the day goes to the folks at Florida Institute of Technology. Their giving site was PHENOMENAL- https://dayofgiving.fit.edu/ is the site. They sent us on a mission to rescue their deans. It was interactive, it was powerful and darn it it was FUN! It was so well executed. Here are just some of my screenshots:
Brilliant Idea and Execution. Well done. The best I have ever seen.
Top honors for the day also go to The Trevor Project http://www.thetrevorproject.org/ and the #elvesofcookchildrens idea will have me coming back every day! http://www.cookchildrens.org/elves
What organizations did you give to that left an impression? Next week I'll be following up on my 2014 donations that were made to show you how many times I was re-solicited by each organization and if I chose to give again this year... until then I would love to hear your #givingtuesday experiences in the comments!
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ReplyDeleteGreat blog post, Lynne! This is a very helpful recap of your giving experiences that will help improve our online giving process. All the best,
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure Tim!
DeleteThank you Lynne for the accolades for Florida Tech. We worked very hard over these past several months to make the giving experience fun, interactive and competitive, to give momentum throughout the 24 hour period. So far, we feel that our Mission was Accomplished! We look forward to next year and hope all of our participants do as well. We have lots of fun work to do though, to keep our donors (especially the new ones) engaged with the university. I must say, it was the fun-est day I have had at work!
DeleteDonna- please know your hard work did not go unnoticed! It was phenomenal- Now comes the fun work of telling impact of the gifts!
DeleteIt would be interesting to know the approximate size of each charity. I would expect "big" charities to have more resources for Twitter handlers, mobile friendly sites and nice e-receipts/Thank you messages. But perhaps it is the smaller charities that do it better. Can't really tell from your spreadsheet, but thanks for all your work on this - it's super helpful. And thank you for your philanthropy, that was a lot of donations to make!
ReplyDeleteHi BagelCat- This is something I can add to the spreadsheet for next year- But I will be honest- just because the nonprofit is larger doesn't mean they are better- please check out some of the examples, you will be amazed. To change an e-receipt it only takes on determined, donor centered soul!
DeleteLynne, Great examples of the good, bad, and the ugly of online giving. I also gave to a number of organizations online yesterday. I was pleased to see some donation pages that were easy to use, while others- were more cumbersome. Many of the landing pages and email receipts still feel more transacational than relational. That's not hard to fix. I'm also curious to see what types of follow up I receive.
DeleteThank you for the praise Lynne!!
ReplyDeleteLynne, this is fantastic. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteHi Lynn,
ReplyDeleteI was wondering if Michigan asked your permission before tweeting at you about your donation. Did you have to enter your twitter handle on their giving form? I love this idea, but had reservations about some people being turned off by this.
Thanks!
I entered my handle on their page and also tweeted them about it- twitter is a public forum... no need to have such reservations!
DeleteVictoria, we too ask for their Twitter handle. In fact our language is something like: "Tell us your Twitter handle so we can tell the world how awesome you are." I think it implies what we're going to do and why, thus by entering it, they are giving us permission.
DeleteLynn, thank you so much for giving to all the wonderful organizations!
ReplyDeleteGreat info and analysis!!! I'm curious what were some of the frustrations? This is such great feedback!!
Brenda
This is the most helpful, insightful, current and real evaluation of campaigns I've ever received -Especially for free! Thank you for the time and effort you put into to making your blogs valuable to readers. I'll continue to follow, share and recommend you to my colleagues and friends.
ReplyDeleteIt was my pleasure!
Delete