# US non-profits receive large gifts online

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2003/10/29/us-nonprofits-receive-large-gifts-online/
- Published: 2003-10-29T00:00:00+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Do donors make large gifts online? Some US non-profits say they are receiving gifts
online of $1 million or over.
Rick Christ of American consultancy NPadvisors.com
shares news of some major gifts being received online by US non-profits.

 

 

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Writing in his monthly e-mail newsletter, Christ reports on an e-mail appeal on 
behalf of a client that generated an online donation of $50,000. The appeal had 
asked for “a gift of $100 or even more.” “The code assigned by the web donation 
matched that assigned to the e-mail” says Christ, so it wasn’t a case of the donor
being prompted by another perhaps paper-based appeal.

 

 

Even this though was small compared to what some non-profits say they are receiving
online. An informal online poll by online fundraising company Kintera revealed that
9% of the non-profits which responded had received an online gift of $1 million 
or more. Another 4% had received a donation of over $100,000, and 13% had received
a gift between $10,000 to $99,999. However, the majority of non-profits were not
quite so fortunate: 27% received a donation of between $100 to $999, and 31% had
not received an online gift larger than $100.

 

 

Christ offers two useful tips in the light of these figures. He suggests that you“
look at your automated ‘thanks for your online gift’ email and make sure it would
be as welcome to a $100,000 donor as it would be to a $10 donor.” In addition he
recommends ensuring that your Web site generates an automatic e-mail to you if a
donation over a certain amount is made online: this will then allow you to call 
the donor personally to thank them and perhaps elicit more on why they gave.

 

 * **[More major gifts received online in USA](https://fundraising.co.uk/2004/02/03/more-major-gifts-received-online-usa/)**(
   3 February 2004)
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 * **[The ‘Ask’ is key to Affluent Giving](https://fundraising.co.uk/2004/03/18/ask-key-affluent-giving/)**(
   18 March 2004)