Virtual Promise enters its 6th year – are charities mastering or hashing new media?

Howard Lake | 5 October 2006 | Blogs

Virtual Promise is the only piece of regular research into UK charities use of the Internet / new media. I have supported it since it began in 2000, helping with the design of the questionnaire and completing it for CAF when I worked there. I have found it invaluable: as a yardstick for what uses charities are making from the Internet, as a data set for internal and external presentations to educate, evangelise or analyse, and as a perpective on the trends, opportunities, challenges and contradictions inherent in working in the online field. I encourage everyone to download and read the free reports from previous surveys available from the nfpSynergy website.
As always, nfpSynergy are interested in responses from charities large and small, and categorise the results into 3 annual turnover streams to reflect organisations of different sizes. Do please contribute to this year’s survey. It should only take about 15 minutes. Go to http://www.nfpsynergy.net/vp06. The deadline is 31st October 2006.
I felt that Virtual Promise 2005 really highlighted the contradictions the online charity sector is fraught with. Whilst high numbers of respondents felt the Internet had changed their charity’s dealing with clients and supporters, that their organisation was making the most of the Internet, or that the Internet was an important part of their organisation’s brand and reputation, very few, by contrast I felt, had the essential tools to exploit it effectively.. Against the growing numbers of sites (the average was 4), increased functionality and budgetary spend, things like profiles of online users, integrated cross-media strategies and analysis of results seemed very low.
This is born out by other research which shows the same old chestnuts of low levels of senior buy-in, internal silos or conflicts, poor internal and external funding, resourcing and project management, and fragmented strategies (or activities) for marketing and fundraising.
It seems to me new media still isn’t accountable and is principally the domain of internal champions. Does anyone agree or disagree?
Whatever your thoughts, I look forward to the results of Virtual Promise 2006 and hope for the signs of a strategic, directional, analytical approach to long-term online success.
 
 

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.