The holiday season is the peak time we open our wallets and donate to charity. One third of donations come into organizations between October and New Year’s Eve.

This year there will be the predictable noise around the increase in online donations, how the poor give a larger percentage of their income than the upper middle class, and how donations overall are flat or rising or declining.

But under that pile of data are early indicators of global changes that are, and will continue to, shift which charitable causes thrive and which ones barely survive.

Lesson 1: Who we give to online is different than who we give to through the mail or by dropping cash into a bucket

We give:

  • Online to organizations that touch our lives personally (faith-based, education, local medical and aid organizations)
  • Online to organizations that have a bigger or more emotional story to tell (international aid, environment, social justice)
  • When friends ask us directly to give
  • In person to organizations who have a name we trust

Pro tip: We usually write checks to organizations we wrote checks to last year, so for organizations trying to attract new donors, online is an easier win.

Lesson 2: The smaller the organization, the more online matters

Online donations grew the most for the smallest cause-related companies. Why? Because they can connect more meaningfully to their donors than they could before. They can tell a story online in a way that allows their followers to share that story, to spread the news out to the coveted friends-of-friends and increase the donor pool.

Friends attract friends like money attracts money. If our friends “like” the organization, it’s an easier win to get us onboard. The knowledge that the cause is supported by friends changes the filters we use when we read about that organization. We are more likely to believe their statements and be engaged in their stories, because they are “pre-approved” by someone we know and trust.

Pro tip: Giving to smaller organizations is on the rise. Because we tend to believe grass roots organizations make a bigger difference with every dollar donated.

Lesson 3: What you say online matters

The American Red Cross has 1.7 million followers on Twitter. They have a more than a half million followers on Facebook. A Red Cross tweet may get shared 100 or more times on average. But if it’s a tip on safety, it’s more likely to get shared by twice as many people.

Human Rights Watch has 1.5 million followers. Almost every tweet gets shared by several dozen people. HRW also retweets their staff members, many of whom are on the ground covering crises live. Those stories get passed on in much higher numbers, keeping the work of HRW front and center for their followers.

But smaller organizations can be just as effective.  GirlsWhoCode is a 2-year-old organization that focuses on working “to educate, inspire, and equip young women with the skills and resources to pursue academic and career opportunities in computing fields.”  Their 64,500 followers on Twitter actively engage in their daily content, getting a consistently high volume of replies and retweets on their content.

Pro tip: Content that has videos, images, and words that move people get shared more than just text or calls to action. Content that provides value to the audience is also more likely to engage.

Lesson 4: Honesty and integrity matter . . . more than ever

As you may have noted with the “empty truck” story for the Red Cross, the double-edged sword of news at the speed of Twitter is that a bad story travels far and fast. Your followers – as well as the public-at-large – are going to know about you and your performance more than ever before. Donors, particularly those in their 20s and 30s are significantly more likely to check you out online before they donate.  They will look into what you do and what the news is around you, and they will act accordingly. So, bad stories have long legs. Between Google, Twitter, and Facebook, there were a half million places for me to read about the empty Red Cross trucks during Hurricane Sandy. And many of those places had someone’s commentary about their decreasing likelihood of donating again, when the Red Cross comes calling.

Pro tip: We have a saying in marketing that one bad story has the same ramification to your brand as ten good stories. The marketing game is not a balanced see-saw. Bad outweighs good 10 to 1.

What to do

So, with this large megaphone that is the internet, are you being transparent? Are you effective?  Are you telling your story? Do you know what your audience cares about or why they follow you? Are you showing people where their money is going?  Demonstrating how you are making a dent in the societal problem you are tackling? Are you showing them why they should care?

Water:Aid in England harnessed the power of storytelling to raise more than $3 million in three months to build wells in Malawi—not exactly the core driving concern of the good folks of England.  But Water:Aid found a way to bring the emotional resonance to the public. Through an amazingly effective social media campaign, they were able to show in real-time how wells and access to clean water changes lives, which drove people to open their wallets and donate, and then follow the story and their organization online.

That ability to pull people in and make them care changes the relationship you have with your donors. It is more personal, more emotional and, if you do your job right, longer term. You are no longer the organization standing hat-in-hand at the door; you are a partner to your donors, where they feel as much a part of the accomplishments of your organization as the people on the ground do. And that changes everything, for the better.

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