Don't call us…
Howard Lake | 22 January 1998 | News
Michael Gilbert has produced a second valuable SiteAnalyzer report. This time he has analysed the interactivity of environmental organisations’ Web sites.
Gilbert found that “at least 65% of the front pages surveyed provided no online mechanism (either by email or by form) for contacting the organization sponsoring the site.” He goes on to report that “out of 408 valid samples, roughly one third (33.8%) of the pages samples had email addresses. Less than 2% had forms and only one had both email addresses and forms, for a total of about 35% that provide some form of interaction on the front page.”
He concedes that some sites might well have published telephone and postal contact details rather than Internet-based methods of contact, but his conclusion is valid. It should be noted in particular by fundraisers. “The vast majority of these pages provide no immediate way for a visitor to contact the organization over the Internet and thus have little to no capacity for building relationships.” Bad news for those organisations whose fundraisers need to create and foster relationships with supporters.
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Gilbert’s publically-available studies fill an important gap in the analysis of nonprofits’ uses of the Internet and help move the debate on from the level of anecdotal evidence.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.