30% of charity supporters inspired by social media to give, says Give as you Live
Howard Lake | 8 March 2013 | News
A survey of nearly 8,000 UK charity donors confirms that Facebook and Twitter conversations do generate charity donations. Give as you Live's Donor Survey found that 30% of UK charity supporters say that social media campaigns have inspired them to give.
Give as you Live is the online platform which generates income for charities when their supporters shop online. The funds come from the retailers’ marketing budget, at no extra cost to the shopper.
Digital Giving Review
The Donor Survey is part of Give as you Live’s Digital Giving Review and follows its Charity Review 2012, which looked at how over 500 charities were using digital media to fundraise.
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Give as you Live founder and CEO Polly Gowers, OBE, said: "It’s clear that in our multichannel world one of the many challenges any organisation faces is where to focus their resources. Our aim with our on-going research is to help charities by highlighting the best channels to communicate to their growing number of digital donors.”
Six types of digital donors
Levels of interaction with charities using social media is high: 50% of respondents follow their favourite charities on Facebook and 20% follow them on Twitter.
Give as you Live used the data with ACORN profiling to produce six distinct digital donor profiles, giving each of them a name. Their report then looks at how these different types of donors interact and give to charities using social media, which are more likely to use particular tools like smartphones, and which shop online more than others.
The six types are:
· Family man Clive: 8% of respondents – Occasionally uses text and online sponsorship sites
· Wealthy professional Jacqueline: 15% of respondents – Regularly sponsors via online giving sites
· Affluent oldie Margaret: 13% of respondents – Donates most via Direct Debit
· Comfortable families Marie: 31% of respondents – Heavy online shopper, uses Give as you Live
· Single young starter Neil: 18% of respondents – Most likely to give via text
· Squeezed families Rachel: 8% of respondents – Very engaged on Facebook
Charities that participated in the research will receive a breakdown of how their supporter base maps onto each donor profile, to help them understand their supporters’ digital behaviour and preferences.
What digital donors do
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Across the ten types of charities listed, health and medical charities are the most likely to supported by the digital donors surveyed.
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Children’s charities are the second mostly likely type of charity to be supported.
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Across all of our donors the main reason for visiting a charity’s website was for information.
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On average, 22% of the times the digital donors visited a charity’s website it was to make a donation, the second most popular reason for visiting.
- The least popular reason for visiting a charity’s website was to look for job vacancies.
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A friend or family member asking for sponsorship online is by far the most popular reason for giving reported by the respondents.
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Celebrity appeals did not inspire many to give: only 4% of all of digital donors who responded said that celebrity association was the reason they gave.
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The digital donors surveyed were also not inspired by print or TV adverts, claiming these to be amongst the least inspiring communication channels.
The Digital Donor Review is available for free download.
www.digitaldonorreview.com
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.