Cancer charity uses online competition to recruit donors
Howard Lake | 14 October 2004 | News
The Association for International Cancer Research is offering free prize draws on its Web site to attract new donors.
The charity’s third online prize draw has just closed. This time they were offering an Apple iPod, the popular digital music device, the second time they have offered this prize. Their previous online prize draw closed in July 2004, so it looks as if this method is working for the charity.
The competition was very straightforward. Entrants had to answer a simple question, the answer to which could be found on the AICR Web site, and then complete their details. Making a donation was not a requirement for entry, but the charity did make a very gentle request that entrants consider this: “make a small donation towards our important work – it’s why we’re here after all.”
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On submitting the entry entrants were presented with a simple donation page with prompted levels of giving.
This is clearly a very low cost method of testing online donor recruitment. However, entrants might only be interested in the competition, and not the charity’s activities, so there is some risk in not attracting the right people. But this is not an Internet-only issue. The competition approach has been tried offline for some time by other charities such as IFAW, as well as AICR, so the returns are likely to be sufficient.
AICR say that although online prize draws are one of the cheapest methods of supporter acquisition, comparing favourably with direct mail, advertising, face-to-face, and telephone, they continue to use these
other tools as part of their fundraising mix. Indeed, their direct mail campaigns have been running for over 20 years and “continue to bring in a very significant proportion of our income.”
The Internet competitions are particularly relevant as AICR is an international charity, funding around 220 research projects in 19 countries. The competitions have generated donations from the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK and many EU countries.
AICR say that the online competitions are bringing in a new kind of donor for them. The profile of the online games player is very different to that of the current AICR donor in that they are much younger, and wouldn’t normally respond to the traditional donor recruitment methods of direct mail and telephone.
AICR told UK Fundraising that “In the same way that face-to-face has brought new donors into the sector, so the Internet allows us to widen the scope of what we do.” They added that the Internet should not be regarded as a mass medium: “messages have to be tailored to the individual segments”.
The charity has experimented with the duration of the competition, testing durations of between four to six weeks. They continue to fine tune this element. Not surprisingly they report a surge of interest at the beginning and end of each competition.
So far the charity has been “pleasantly surprised” at the percentage of people who make a donation, and both the number of people taking part and the average value of that donation (which continues to increase) have exceeded their plans and expectations.
They promote each competition on their own sites together with competition listings sites, international sites, search engines and Usenet.
UK Fundraising asked AICR’s Jack Cumming how they handled the data gathered, particularly that of those entrants who didn’t donate. He replied: “Our privacy policy is quite clear. We have a tick box on the entry form asking if they would like information from us in the future. If someone
enters and does not wish us to contact them then we delete their information as soon as the draw has been made. If they tick the box we add them to our database. We e-mail everyone who ticked the box with details of the next competition, as well as information regarding our work.”
He confirmed that the administration costs were very low indeed. The promotion on the charity’s Web site simply involved him adding the information using the site’s content management system.
The charity continues to test and refine this approach. It is based in St Andrews, so Jack said: “I would liken our online fundraising to a golf swing – there are dozens of factors that go to making it work. With each competition we make a slight adjustment and then analyse the results.”
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.