Online fundraising

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Online fundraising is the use of Internet-based technology, marketing and communiation techniques to bring in donations.

Fundraising for Non-profit organizations and membership organizations has traditionally required a combination of personal requests, direct-mail asks, telephone solicitations and special events. Within the past 10 years use of the Internet has introduced a significant breadth of complexities, strategies, advantages, amazing success stories, challenges and unfortunately fraud.

The practice of fundraising online has evolved from the basic strategy of the Donate Now button, where organizations developed a simple web form to capture credit card gifts and posted a "donate now" button on their website, to more complex strategies using lessons from traditional direct mail appeals and the expediency of email campaigns to solicit gifts from a list of opt-in supports; and now organizations have begun employing new strategies with web based tools like blogs, community networking, social peer-groups and advanced virtual worlds. First coined by Vinay Bhagat, this practice has become known as Electronic Constituent Relationship Management as it is closely related to electronic customer relationship management. It is most effective when used as part of a broadbased communications and marketing strategy.

Email based campaigns reduce the need for door-to-door canvassing and can increase the safety of those individuals involved.