Covering Web Site Costs and Online Fund Development

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Covering Web Site Costs and Online Fund Development
By Walter M. Higley
Assistant Executive Director
Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood Center
www.isaacscenter.org

It is the great hope of nonprofits that the Internet will significantly enhance fundraising opportunities. But fundraising on the Internet is still in its infancy. I would like to share with you some of the steps the settlement house I work with - the Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood Center - has taken, as well as the effectiveness of our efforts.

Developing a Web Site and Covering Costs
It's critical to have a Web site and ours is www.isaacscenter.org. A number of individuals and organizations can provide assistance on this front. For instance, PASA, Inc. at www.pasa.org was very helpful when we were embarking on our site design. Another group that provides assistance and may even be able to recommend a Web designer who can help you set-up your site at very low cost is www.voluntech.org.

The Web host the Isaacs Center uses is Interland.com. They offered four great incentives for joining them:

To help defray costs we enlisted sponsors for our Web site. We have two sponsors who each pay a monthly fee. Consider some likely sources for sponsorship as well as what incentives you might provide them.

Online Fund Development
If you click on the "Online Shopping" button on our Web site, you will see that there are a number of sites from which you can make purchases - these are our "affiliates." If you establish affiliate relationships, the visitors to your site can click on those affiliate sites and, for example, shop at Amazon.com or Proflowers.com. In exchange for the link presence, these affiliates give you a percentage of whatever your visitors spend on a purchase. One way to boost this activity is to send your visitors an e-mail or newsletter just prior to holidays, reminding them that by purchasing at one of your affiliates through your Web site they will be making a contribution to your agency.

We have also developed what we refer to as a Virtual Thrift Shop on the Internet using Ebay. If you click on the Ebay button and register, the Isaacs Center receives $3 from Ebay. If you click on Isaacs Center on Ebay, you go directly to our Thrift Shop and can view what we have posted for auction. We set this site up in August as an experiment. Since then, we have made over $8,000 through the Ebay relationship. We are now working on a business plan to assess and determine the best way to execute this type of fundraising.

Charity portals and charity sites are also options worth exploring. [See Michael Stein's article "A Primer on Online Fundraising" in this issue for listings.] These are particularly active come tax time when individuals and organizations are looking for charities to which to donate. Don't expect to make a lot of money through these sites but do look for exposure. These listings should be free so there is no reason not to take advantage of them.

Another way we have used our site to generate funds is by selling tickets to events we sponsor. During our first year online we raised $7,800 through donations and ticket sales. We are in the process of building an e-mail address database of our donors, volunteers, and friends so that we can more actively pursue fundraising through our newsletter and other online appeals.

Online fundraising is in its early stages and the Isaacs Center is testing out a number of options. In this way we can experiment, discover what works best, and then position the agency for a strong future in online fundraising.

You can contact Walter M. Higley at whigley@isaacscenter.org.

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