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Ecards can be a great tool to remind your supporters about the fantastic work your organisation does. They can also allow your supporters to spread your message on your behalf in a fun and festive format. They are becoming a very popular way of sending a message and are both inexpensive for you and exciting for the recipient. Several of our charity customers are already benefitting from this form of increasing brand awareness and encouraging donation. Here are some reasons to consider eCards this year:
- Britain is falling out of love with the Christmas card. The number of festive cards bought in High Street shops has dropped by 20 million in the past two years.
- UK households send an average of 30 Christmas cards each at an average cost of 50p to buy and send each card.
- A new NOP survey found that 40 per cent of 16 to 35-year-olds are now happy to abandon traditional cards in favour of eCards.
- A study by Mintel, the consumer research company, found that 53% of consumers thought greetings cards were too expensive, even though Christmas card prices have remained steady for the past 5 years.
David Bird, Mintel's senior consumer analyst, said: "ECards are becoming increasingly popular among young people, businesses and government and other organisations. Cost was also a factor as people looked to cut their overall Christmas budget in difficult economic times and confidence in the postal system may also be down after the recent strikes."
The design of eCards ranges from traditional Christmas or winter scenes to modern images, with flashing lights and changing shapes. Messages, too, can be traditional, promotional or succumb to political correctness, wishing the recipient "winter greetings".
Best Foot Forward, a sustainability consultancy, calculated that the carbon footprint for the 750 million Christmas cards sent through the post, taking into account paper, printing and transport, is 36,261 tonnes of carbon, equivalent to the total annual energy use of over 5,300 typical British households.
So why not consider the environment, whilst considering Christmas!
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Online donation engines can provide a fantastic tool to turn your website into a donation generator and several of our charity customers are finding them to be an excellent way of attracting donations. A word of warning however, some will charge you a commission.
To give you a helping hand we have summarised the key points about each option for your information:
Committed Giving
For established charities who need a little extra help taking the stress out of online donation processing, there is Committed Giving. This company provide a package to be used alongside your existing website. A customer will make a donation online, and the Committed Giving package will process the donation, depositing the funds into your chosen bank account within three working days. An email query service answers any questions you might have, and if you need to keep track of who donates, and how much, the Committed Giving package provides a donation record. All this for a £350 set up fee.
Direct Debits Online
If your donators are likely to want to give regularly Direct Debits Online (DDO) offers an administrative service allowing you to set up your own mini site where customers can set up direct debits.
DDO then effortlessly authorises and validates the direct debit forms whilst recording the quantity and size of the donations you receive. You are able to access this report at any time from any internet enabled PC through their high quality encrypted website. This is a very useful service, but it is a little pricey at £2,750+VAT for hosting the mini site and processing the direct debit donations, with a £750 yearly fee after that.
Charities Aid Foundation
An alternative service for regular donations is the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). This service is very well known amongst charities and requires the donators to set up a bank account and asks customers to put a regular amount of money into their account to be used purely for donations, whether in person to churches or other charities using the chequebook and card provided or online to charities of the customer's choice. Customers are, however asked to provide a lump sum of £100 on registration or commit to pay £10 per month. For charities, they offer a free online profile for the charity. Once a donation has been made, CAF reclaims the Gift Aid and processes direct debits and cheques to the charity.
It also offers to take on the charity's membership administration including collecting subscriptions, sending out packs/reminders, managing the membership database and any queries the members may have. CAF's helpdesk is an easy to use form, broken down into departments with an easy-to-find phone number. CAF has also just been awarded the 2007 queen's award for innovation. This service will cost you a one-off £150 fee for its fundraising support service, and £350+VAT for its direct debit processing service. Charges per donation are calculated according to each charity's needs.
Other Options
If your charity simply needs to promote online donations or doesn't have the funding available for administrative systems, the following websites offer a more public-friendly interface for online donation. They offer a very user-friendly service, where users can create their own
profile web pages promoting their sponsored events and friends and
family can submit online sponsorship. These services automatically
calculate gift aid and deposit funds into your account.
The profiles
are very easy to set up and similar to the profiles set up in social
network websites such as Facebook. This familiarity encourages users to
create an account and to come back for their next fundraising event.
Each company offers a different set of charges:
- Just Give is a website that allows charities to create their own profile website and customers can donate online through the profile site, which will take a percentage commission.
- B Mycharity allows charities to choose whether to pay as they go or whether they pay a monthly fee of £50.
- Work With Us asks for a £350 set-up charge (other administration fees apply).
- Just Giving provides easily the most user-friendly and clearly communicated service. They charge £15 per month to list your charity and process all sponsorship and donations with a 5% commission fee per transaction.
Of course there are plenty of online donation options available, it really is about finding the right fit for your organisation. Alienation Digital's experience in delivering successful projects for the third sector can help advise you on the best fit for your organisation.
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In the past, paid search has often been seen as an expensive way to market your business or organisation. Alienation would encourage our clients to move away from this dated idea and start to see it as a crucial part of the marketing mix. By utilising an integrated campaign your organisation can achieve fantastic and most importantly, instant results.
The exciting news is that industry leaders, Google, have reached a helping hand out to the strained third sector and are now offering paid search opportunities for free, through their scheme, Google Grants.
- Google Adwords is a tool for managing sponsored links on search engines, which means you can ensure you are found when people search for you online and can be particularly useful for targeted campaigns.
- Charities can claim up to $10,000 US per month worth of free advertising on Google Adwords.
- Alienation will be working with some of our third sector clients over the next year to help make best use of their Google Grants.
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