New study published on how donors give online during disasters
Howard Lake | 29 August 2006 | News
US online giving portal Network for Good has published “Impulse on the Internet: How Crisis Compels Donors to Give Online”, which confirms that the Internet is becoming a key channel for online giving in the wake of disasters.
The report confirms that online donors typically give more than those giving offline: this latest report puts the average online gift to a disaster at $125, compared to the average offline gift of $27.
At the same time, online giving happens rapidly and then drops off equally rapidly, somewhere between two and six days. A delay of as much of 24 hours therefore can seriously damage a charity’s ability to secure online donations.
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Online and offline news drive most donors to the donation websites. Network for Good itself reports that half of all its traffic during disasters come from news links on AOL, Yahoo!, CNN and USA Today.
Network for Good recommends simple donation pages and websites. Donors are put off, it seems, by text-heavy appeals.
While donors want to give quickly, appeals for regular gifts should still be made. Some donors to emergency appeals will set up regular payments: Network for Good says that it is handling $100,000 a month in monthly gifts set up in response to previous disasters.
Online giving portals can help spread the benefits of online giving. The study reports that the American Red Cross received 80% of all donations made in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, whereas at Network for Good this dropped to 60%, giving smaller, less well known organisations a larger share of the donations.
The study includes confirmation that online giving is still continuing to rise. Despite the many disasters of 2005 the Christmas 2005 period was the most successful to date in terms of donations via Network for Good.
An executive summary of the study is can be downloaded in PDF/Adobe Acrobat format from the Network for Good website.
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.