Choosing which charities to support is a very personal choice. In many cases, a donor to a charity is personally connected to the cause based on their own history and background.
The fundraising goals of most charities is to find those individuals or business that are connected to that cause and then build a long-term relationship with those people so that they can call upon them to continue to donate over time. It is the repetition of these donations that are the lifeblood of nonprofits.
Despite this approach, some of the most successful fundraising campaigns in recent history have raised money without focusing on building a relationship with every single donor. The first example is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge which raised over $115 Million back in 2014. While a good portion of the people who got involved understood the charity and what it was about, a significant portion got caught up in the viral nature of the activity (who doesn’t want to see their friends dump a large bucket of ice water over their heads?). Those interacting with the nonprofit were not interested in a longer term relationship. The grass root nature of how people engaged and connected is actually what made it so successful.
The money raised by the Ice Bucket Challenge had such an impact on the research that scientists at John Hopkins actually announced a breakthrough in the research last summer - directly tied to the ice bucket challenge campaign.
But can you imagine if the ALS association had said: “Stop!, before you do this challenge please register with us in our database so we can update you on all the great things we are doing”. Would they have raised anywhere near the amount they did? I seriously doubt it.
In some cases, the constant bombardment of charities who want to ‘build a relationship’ with me is exhausting and causes me to push back - not that I don’t think they are good causes, but rather I only have so much mindshare for charities that I find important. While there is definite value in building relationships, charities also need to embrace the viral - and a simple anonymous donation that can go with it.
We recently worked with Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto to launch a simple post-card campaign that allowed people to make a donation using cash or debit at Canada Post. The post card contained a QR code that identified the charity for the Canada Post clerk and allowed them to accept a donation and process the transaction in about 10 seconds. We handed these out at a recent industry conference as a way to build fundraising into our booth while at the same time demonstrating how our Loadhub solution worked.
By having this simple approach, individuals who might usually have been reluctant to donate actually took the time to visit a nearby Canada Post during the conference to make a donation. Even for weeks afterwards, we were still seeing donations coming through.
Here are my thoughts on why this campaign was successful:
- It was easy to understand
- It didn’t require the donor to provide any personal information
- It allowed donors to use cash on hand or make a quick donation on their debit card. As the amounts were smaller ($10-$20 was the average), tax receipts were not really an issue
- The postcard format was easily distributed and shareable
I believe there is an important lesson in this outcome. While nonprofits should continue to build and nurture relationships, they also need to embrace that not everyone who makes a donation wants a relationship with them - and that’s okay. In the case of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, embracing the anonymous donation actually unleashed the true power of a viral campaign and lead to some great outcomes.
