Posts Tagged charities

By Kim Hart and Megan Greenwell

It seems foolproof: nonprofits using the power of the Internet to raise money through a clever Facebook application. After all, the Web earned gobs of cash for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. And besides, going online means sending fewer fundraising letters, which makes it appealing to penny-pinchers and environmentalists alike.

But it turns out that approach doesn’t always work. The Facebook application Causes, hugely popular among nonprofit organizations seeking to raise money online, has been largely ineffective in its first two years, trailing direct mail, fundraising events and other more traditional methods of soliciting contributions.

Only a tiny fraction of the 179,000 nonprofits that have turned to Causes as an inexpensive and green way to seek donations have brought in even $1,000, according to data available on the Causes developers’ site. The application allows Facebook users to list themselves as supporters of a cause on their profile pages. But fewer than 1 percent of those who have joined a cause have actually donated money through that application.

The data conflict with the lessons many nonprofits took from Obama’s presidential campaign: that a well-run organization could raise huge amounts of money online. The problem is, nonprofit fundraising requires considerably more outreach than many political campaigns, which do not require as much relationship-building because they revolve around highly visible candidates.

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