January 4, 2012; Source: Sage Nonprofit Solutions | For those of you doing online fundraising, we’d love to hear your take on this assertion: According to the online donation processing service Network for Good, a full 22 percent of all of the year’s online donations come in on the last two days of the calendar year. Is this your experience for the past year? As the year ended, did your online campaigns do better than usual? Let us know!

Meanwhile, this article in USA Today reports that according to Atlas of Giving, donations to charities may be down during the first half of next year, because the elections will be making their own call on donor pocketbooks.

We’ll be interested to see if that prediction pans out. . . .

In the same article, Convio provides the following advice to online fundraisers (paraphrased below):

  1. Charities should build social as well as dollar capital online. Engage with donors and encourage engagement among them so they can help you build your program and organize your appeals.
  2. Reinforce this by promoting face-to-face, peer-to-peer engagement among donors.
  3. In promoting that peer-to-peer engagement, pay attention to the natural gathering times of donors. Tap into existing events.
  4. Tailor and customize your communications to address the donor as personally as possible. Pay attention to who they are.

There is really no dearth of information flowing out of such sources now. The wise fundraiser keeps an eye out for it but is always testing against his or her own experience.—Ruth McCambridge