Is The Web Still a Windfall For Non-Profits?
This week's feature series on Read/WriteWeb is non-profits and the Web. We'll be exploring how non-profit organizations use the Web and the tools available for them.
By non-profits, we mean charities, clubs and any "organization whose primary objective is something other than the generation of profit" (Wikipedia's definition). Non-profit organizations cover a wide range of areas - from the environment to politics and much more. The Web is often utilized by such organizations, because of the need to reach out to people - e.g. calls to action, fund-raising or just general awareness.
A Wired article back in 2004, entitled For Nonprofits, Web Is a Windfall, stated that there is big money to be made over the Web for non-profit organizations:
"With the Internet playing such an important role in everyone's life, online giving will become more the norm," said Kintera CEO and chairman Harry Gruber in a statement.
"Over $241 billion in total donations were given in 2002," said Gruber. "We estimate that more than $1 billion of those donations were made online, and that is just the tip of the iceberg."
And that was 3.5 years ago. In 2007, with the enormous popularity of social networks, non-profits have even more ways to reach their target audience. Change.org, a social network for social activism that we profiled at the beginning of this year, is one example of the current generation of Web enabled non-profits.
Please let us know your favorite Web-powered non-profits. Also, what Web tools and resources are you aware of that non-profits can use?
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We created a non-profits section on bla.st, our advertising/directory system:
bla.st/nonprofits/.There are a few other free advertising systems out there, such as adgridwork.com. Both these sites won't deliver huge traffic, but every bit helps and they can be used completely free.
Another service I recommend is PayPal, as a good way for organisations to add donate buttons to their sites easily, and accept payments via credit card. Any other options?
The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. We turn to "web 2.0" technologies and sites to find people who are passionate about nature and concerned about conservation around the world.
For example, we hold an annual photo contest on Flickr @ http://www.flickr.com/groups/thenatureconservancy/ and we're using Google Maps to showcase a selection of our U.S. nature preserves @ http://support.nature.org/site/PageServer?pagename=preserve_map
Beyond the big MySpace and Facebook social networks, how are nonprofits getting their message out and finding supporters on smaller, niche networks?
A couple of points:
Change.org is not a 501c3. It's a for-profit company. For myself, I don't really care one way or the other, but for many people in the nonprofit sector it does matter.
Harry Gruber doesn't even work at Kintera anymore. He made the mistake of discussing everything by looking at the total addressable market for nonprofit giving. There's been a tremendous consolidation in nonprofit CRMs lately because the revenue streams are too small.
The three biggest success stories so far are modestneeds.org, globalgiving.com and Kiva. None of those three are social networking properties. The biggest nonprofit social network is Project Agape's Causes with 4,000,000 users and counting. I would suggest that your readers visit my blog at www.nonprofittechblog.org for a much more in-depth view of all these nonprofit and for-profit players.
We're not a nonprofit ourselves but Firstgiving has been working with NPOs to change the way good can be done online since 2003. We're all about person to person fundraising for non profit organizations. The first challenge we looked to solve was that back then, for a NPO to have access to online fundraising tools, they'd be looking at an enterprise engagement running thousands of dollars to deploy. We believe that you shouldn't need to *have* a lot of money to *raise* a lot of money, and built up a service designed to make P2P fundraising within the grasp of any organization.
The next thing we saw is that there are tons of NPOs out there who don't have the resources to run a fundraising Event (note capital E) but can still benefit from the kind P2P fundraising that has been synonymous with fundraising events forever.
Fast forward to now and there is clearly a movement towards individuals making a difference on their own, rather than waiting for the NPO to tell them to do it. This is manifest on Firstgiving by people using the site to raise funds for whatever NPO they want whenever they want.
The catalyst for doing good could be a physical event like a bike ride, but it could be something like a birthday, or just because.
It has been amazing to see the way motivated people are stepping up to effect change by raising money online.
Check out pages like these to see what is happening right now:
http://www.firstgiving.com/markweimrescue
http://www.firstgiving.com/mattroy
http://www.firstgiving.com/wacc
http://www.firstgiving.com/badwatermpdlsb
The idea of P2P fundraising is made all the more powerful with the rise of social networking tools. Folks can pick up a widget on our site to drive donations to their cause, or use our Facebook app to spread the word wherever they spend time online.
Hi Richard, I am managing a project for Cycling Advocates Network of New Zealand - an NGO working with government and local authorities on behalf of cyclists, for a better cycling environment. Just recently we obtained a grant to fund an innovative community ICT project. Our project focuses less on fundraising and more on the provision of tools to improve communications, and foster activism and collaboration. Our challenge is to implement two levels of mobility: mobility of information (which is easily accomplished with the incredible technologies available today) and mobility of culture (which is significantly more difficult). In our project, we are planning to use an open source community software, and so far the best candidate seems to be Drupal. To learn more about our project, have a look at the Cycling Advocates' Network Digital Strategy Blog (http://www.can.org.nz/dsblog/), where you can download a copy of our Project Plan, and check the agenda of our Planning Workshop, which will take place in Wellington, New Zealand, on September 29th. It is a Saturday, there will be a free breakfast, and we will have Tama Easton from www.vorb.nz as our key note speaker. We will also have a session with Stuart Edwards, NZ risk management guru. If you care to accept our invitation to deliver a keynote on Web 2.0 for non-profits, we would be delighted to have you among us on a pleasurable local community mash. I am an avid RWW reader, and I find it a most valuable and informative resource, to which I turn my attention on a daily basis.
Great series, Richard! Thanks for featuring the nonprofit sector's web use.
NTEN, the Nonprofit Technology Network (http://nten.org) supports the vast array of nonprofits who are using tech and the Web to change the world. We showcase and highlight the great ways in which nonprofits use web tools to change the world. Our members are the communications and IT professionals putting these tools to work for their missions.
A favorite of mine is I Love Mountains - http://ilovemountains.org/, a campaign by Appalachian Voices using Google Earth and You Tube to vividly showcase the environmental degradation caused by mountaintop mining. It is a stellar example of how to tell a story for effective social marketing and change.
We here at NTEN offer webinars, an award-winning blog, and a feature packed monthly newsletter for nonprofits who want to learn more on how to use these kinds of tech for their mission. We also run the largest "technology for change" conference in the world, in 2008 in New Orleans (http://www.nten.org/ntc). I am looking forward to the series and hearing from NTEN members about how they use the web for change.
Because People Who Change the World Need the Tools do DO IT.
Best,
Katrin Verclas,
Executive Director, NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network.
http://www.nten.org
Our CMS, YikeSite (www.yikesite.com), was initially designed for Non-Profit groups. We've just launched it publicly (2 weeks ago) and are marketing it for general use however it still remains a tool that NPOs seek us out to use. Our mantra is "Easily Trainable" which is something that non-profits like to hear. We have trained Executive Directors, Admin assistants and summer students and all of the feedback is great. I feel that what NPOs struggle with in adopting new technologies is the training and support aspects. We feel that YikeSite is a great tool for non-profits. For more info on YikeSite, check out our site or listen to the interview at the Web 2.0 Show - http://www.web20show.com/
Great questions.
I think the Web is absolutely a windfall for nonprofits for several reasons:
First, we all know that the Web has made sophisticated services, which used to be available to large companies only available to small businesses as well. The availability of low-cost (or free) plug and play services that can leverage the time and energy of nonprofit employees is an enormous benefit.
Last summer, I discussed these benefits in an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review last summer, titled The Web Is Your Lever: How Extreme Internet Outsourcing Can Free Nonprofits to Move The World. The central idea of the article is that nonprofits achieve the greatest benefits when they leverage the time of their employees by using effective low-cost Web apps. Over the past year, the availability of Web 2.0 apps has mads these benefits even greater.
In fact, two weeks ago our development team launched a new service with nonprofits identified as one of our primary beneficiaries. Each day, our new service "Free For Today" (http://www.FreeForToday.com) highlights a particularly valuable service that offers a free version available on the Web. As I discussed in my blog,Ventures Without Capital the types of Web services we identify are likely to be particularly valuable for organizations with limited resources. The title of the article makes this point:
High Quality Free Services and Applications for Growing Businesses, Nonprofits & Individuals.(http://www.ventureswithoutcapital.com/archives/54)
In essence, the continuing trend to automate ever more sophisticated services and amke them available at low prices or free is an absolute windfall to nonprofits.
The second reason the Web is a windfall to nonprofits is the social component. We have become accustomed to thinking about social networking in terms of services like MySpace and Facebook.For healthcare nonprofits, the social networking aspect of the Web is of tremendous value: A great benefit many illness related nonprofits can now offer their members is the opportunity to talk with, and seek advice from, other people or families where the specific disorder has occurred.
For example, I am a former Chairman of the Children's Tumor Foundation (http://www.nf.org)(formerly the National Neurofibromatosis Foundation.) Neurofibromatosis is a genetic disease that often leads to tumor growth. The illness manifests itself differently as children age and then go through adolescence. The Web allows parents, for example, to connect with other parents who have been through these difficult passages and seek valuable advice.
Finally, an inherent aspect of the Web is it's ability to bring together communities of interest. In many cases, there may be a very few people in any one area who are concerned about an issue or suffer from a health problem. However, on a national basis, this same group may constitute a sizable community. The Web allows nonprofits to involve, serve, educate, mobilize, and raise funds from members of such communities in a far stronger way, one that was simply not possible before the existence of the Internet.
Bruce Judson
Founder, Free For Today
(http://www.Free For Today.com)
I like http://netsquared.org and http://nten.org - they're like totally meta. Great places for geeks to apply their skills to support a wide variety of web-engaged nonprofits.
Very much looking forward to what you're going to focus on this week. I come at this from 7 years in the museum sector: I'm currently Head of Web for the Science Museum in London but blog about all things to do with technology in museums at Electronic Museum.
My focus for the past couple of years, and the focus for many in the sector, has been about asking what the social web can do for us. We've just about got out of the rut of being scared about "all that editorial freedom" and are starting to understand that voices of real people on the web give much more currency to what museums are trying to do.
One of the things that I've found (and continue to find) most challenging is that the measurement of success in a NFP is often nothing whatsoever to do with, er, profit.. It's instead to do with things which are way less tangible: "social currency" is a phrase often used; "learning outcomes" is another. On the web we can and do report various KPI's to our funders, but they don't actually *mean* very much in isolation. Yes, bringing profit to an organisation (and I suspect this is going to be the focus of your posts) is of course important, but it's often the other stuff - the more ethereal bits - which are of more importance to educational institutions such as museums.
The other interesting thing for me is the difference between the UK and the US. Here in the UK we struggle hugely (even a large national museum like ourselves) to make ends meet: we suffer continued cuts in government funding each year. We're also much more reliant on big funding bodies (large corporates or lottery funds) to provide money. As I understand it, in the US the whole approach to museums is very different. US citizens are much more likely to give money (as individuals) to the museum sector via donations and bequests. UK museums need to get better at encouraging individual donations - I guess the question is: how?
Well, for professional development, there is the non-profit group for which I am editor-in-chief: www.keycontent.org and nccommunities.org.
For helping those in need there is Christian Community in Action (locally) and Global Health Ministries (globally).
For KeyContent.org, we are using TikiWiki and find that this is a great CMS/groupware package.
One of my favorite web-powered non-profits is idealist.org. Fantastic resource for non-profits.
I write a blog on this topic - how nonprofits are using the web for social change and cover this topic indepth on my blog (Beth's BLog - http://beth.typepad.com) and in my personal learning environment - my wiki - http://bethkanter.wikispaces.com
I have lots of examples of how nonprofits are using the many tools available to them for Web 2.0 for fundraising, outreach, programs, advocacy, and in other ways.
I am on the board of a nonprofit called the Sharing Foundation that supports orphans in Cambodia. Last December, I spearheaded a group fundraising campaign that raised $50,000 and was matched by Yahoo for a total of $100,000.
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/01/all_my_widget_f.html
I also think a great example (I'm biased) is the nptech tagging community. Folks who work in nonprofit technology tag items of interest to their peers with the tag nptech and that information is aggregated weekly over at Netsquared.
http://www.netsquared.org/tags/nptechsummary
Like Beth, I also write a blog on this topic (http://www.solidariti.com) with an Australian flavor.
I'm also the online campaign coordinator at a tiny Australian-based non-profit advocacy organization. We use whatever we can get for free or at very low cost. When selecting an online tool, we also take into consideration the amount of time it will take to maintain that tool, and ease of use.
Web tools:
* Facebook & MySpace
* Google maps, Gmail and Google analytics
* Thunderbird & Firefox
* An open source CMS
* Technorati for finding out what others are saying about the issues we lobby on, and in some instances responding to them
* Campaign Monitor for email newsletters (only 1c per email)
* Delicious for organizing the links page on our website
* Flickr for organizing our events photos
* We use an Australian donation facility at very low cost
In short, to answer your question, yes the web is still a windfall for not-for-profits ... our organization would not have the reach and influence it currently has if these mostly-free tools did not exist.
Hoping this isn't totally uncool but I'd like to give some stats for our company, cMarket, which one could generally think of as eBay for charities;
- Almost $30m raised for causes over last 2 1/2 years
- Over 2,500 auctions run
- 30% clients new to auctions (in-room too much hassle)
- Most successful folks are schools, arts, and health
- Enterprise has grown at 100% for three years straight
- Consumer portal www.biddingforgood.com now has 30,000 cause minded members (avg household income over $110k) and is driving 30% of winning bids for clients.
Auctions are the most pleasurable way for consumers to give and one place the net has truly been a game changer.
Food for thought.
I am glad to see N-TEN chiming in here, since it has helped lead adoption of Web in the sector, and also Beth Kanter, whose blog I recommend (http://beth.typepad.com). I appreciate Beth including ‚Äú‚Ķoutreach, programs, advocacy, and in other ways‚Ä? after ‚Äúfundraising‚Ä? in her post above, as I feel the conversation about the use of Web by nonprofits often turns too quickly to fundraising (understandable, but limited). My own bias is towards the use of online learning by nonprofits, as a tool not just for delivery of training but also for public education and advocacy. Some of examples of nonprofit e-learning I like are http://www.webjunction.org, http://www.nwf.org/wildlifeuniversity, and http://www.gcflearnfree.org. I also like the way OneWorld TV (http://tv.oneworld.net/) has used the Web and video (way before YouTube came along) to build a global learning community.
On the social media front, Todd Cohen recently posted ‚ÄúSocial media: Do nonprofits get it?‚Ä? on his blog at the Philanthropy Journal (http://philanthropyjournal.blogspot.com/2007/07/social-media-do-nonprofits-get-it.html). It summarizes a special report PJ recently did on nonprofit use of social media and has gotten less comment than it deserves.
Has the Web been a windfall for nonprofits? It's been a potential windfall for pretty much any type of organization. Like most windfalls, it can be squandered pretty easily, but I think an increasingly large percentage of nonprofits have really made it work for them.
Hi there... thank you for a great series. It is much needed and very relevant Always, please always distinguish between NGOs in developed countries and those in the rest of the world - such as in Africa.
Here, NGOs are generally under-resourced and (although doing essential grassroots work) there is not much luxury in using the web - partly due to the cost of access to the Internet. Average africans pay 20 times more for connectivity than residents in Europe or the USA. Then there is the bad practice of 'dumping old computers' in Africa for use by African NGOs and civil society, without looking at the usefulness or calculating the cost of maintenance and the impact on the environment.
So many NGOs have problems with technical support, that we now developed a customised remote management tool that will assist them to get technical assistance at the click of a button...
Looking forward to see how NGOs are using the web to be more efficient...
I - I'm at Network for Good (a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits raise money online). We've raised about $145 million for 25,000 different nonprofits since we were founded in November 2001. I do think the online world offers so much to nonprofits, and I wanted to share our data on online giving with the community.
First, here's a study of overall giving through our donation engine, called "The Young and the Generous" -- http://www.networkforgood.org/downloads/pdf/Whitepaper/20061009_young_and_generous.pdf
We also analyzed the $24.5 million in charitable giving done online through our Network for Good system in response to three major crises: the December 2004 tsunamis, Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and the Pakistan earthquake of October 2005. We discovered that crisis giving follows a ‚Äúfast but fleeting‚Ä? pattern and giving typically peaks between two and six days after disaster strikes. To read more findings about Internet giving and times of crisis, please visit:
http://www.groundspring.org/learningcenter/disaster_giving.cfm
Last, we started www.sixdegrees.org to enable fundraising with widgets. That's raised nearly $1 million since January through 6,000 widgets. Peter Deitz has a great benchmarking study on that kind of fundraising here. The data includes SixDegrees:
http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/funding/page7190.cfm
Hope all of these are useful to everyone!