|
|
|||||
|
|||||
| Path: Main Street : Resources & Library : Research Articles : Feature Article |
Cybergifts, Part 6
By Adam Corson-FinnertyRead Cybergifts, Part 1
Read Cybergifts, Part 2
Read Cybergifts, Part 3
Read Cybergifts, Part 4
Read Cybergifts, Part 5
Ideas, Tactics, Gimmicks:
A Cybergifts list member recently wrote directly to me and shared this comment:
"A site that I think handles contributions EXTREMELY WELL is: http://www.heifer.org -- The Heifer Project International. I think they have such a great and easy site! When I was researching orgs that were fundraising via the internet they came up somewhere and I looked into them. I can't even count how many sites I looked at and I had never even heard of HPI before and I actually gave them a contribution (the only one in my research to receive a gift) and I will continue my giving to them. And it was ABSOLUTELY painless - actually it was quite fun."Cows? She gave money for cows?
Yes, and after I looked at their site, I was ready to dig into my digital wallet and give money for cows, pigs, goats, and bees. In fact, I really wanted to donate a whole Ark! Only $5,000!
Somewhere there must be an organization that gives awards for fundraising website design. If so, the Heifer Project International should get the blue ribbon. It is beautifully designed, poetically written, and brilliantly conceived and executed. I have never encountered a website that I found more compelling.
Heifer International is a Christian organization that works in the U.S. and in developing countries to combat poverty. Having worked in the international development field, I know that they have an excellent reputation for village-level work, and hands-on projects. The basic concept of HPI is very simple: field workers place donated animals with families. The family agrees to pass on one or more offspring to other families, so that they can derive benefit from the sheep, cow, or goat. This is grassroots development at its most personal.
The HPI site works with this theme brilliantly. On the homepage, we are shown a picture of a smiling boy cradling his goat in his lap. The section title says "The most important gift catalog in the world" and includes a prominent "Make a donation" button. My first thought was, "Oh, God, another tote bag and logo-item store, the proceeds of which go to help..." but I was delighted to find that the catalog is entirely philanthropic. The concept is very simple: make a gift to a family somewhere in the world, and make a gift to someone you love by dedicating the gift to them. Thus:
Decide in whose name you'd like to make your gift. Send a sheep to an aunt who likes to knit woolly sweaters or ducks to a child who likes to feed them at the lake in the park. It won't be hard to find a gift animal that feels right for someone you want to remember. You'll be giving something that means so much more than the season's best-selling gadget or must-buy toy. We'll send you an attractive card to send to your recipient that explains your gift.On the left of the page are buttons that allow the visitor to choose from a variety of animals, including llama. I chose honeybees, and this is what I learned:
From India to the Dominican Republic, HPI bees help struggling families earn income through the sale of honey, beeswax and pollen for medicine. Bees require almost no space and, once the hives are established, are inexpensive to maintain. As bees search for nectar, they pollinate plants--everybody's--rich and poor alike. Placed strategically, beehives can double some fruit and vegetable yields and bless a whole village. Most HPI partners who keep bees use them to supplement income, but some families depend on them for their total livelihood. Your gift provides a family with training in beekeeping, a package of bees, the bee box and hive.Shopping themes can work for you sometimes
Earlier in "Cybergifts," I argued strongly that a donation was not a purchase, and that websites should not use "shopping cart" software or the shopping metaphor. HPI breaks that rule, and to excellent effect. I see a button at the top that says my bees cost $30, and that I can click there to add my bees to my "order." Once I click, I am taken to a page that confirms my order, and asks if I want to "check out" or go back to the catalog. Well, since the bees are for cousin Ida, and I need something for Aunt Sue, I go back to the catalog. How much is a llama, anyway?Turns out it is $150. Not too bad, but I don't usually spend that much on Aunt Sue. Happily, there is a button that allows me to purchase a "share of a llama" for only $20. Not bad. Aunt Sue gets to share her llama with someone else.
But the most compelling gift is The Ark. I clicked on it to see what they had in mind, and the first thing that I saw was the pricetag -- $5,000. Ouch! Yet consider this description of the gift:
The Heifer Project Gift Ark carries hope to people who are poor and hungry. Your gift of $5,000 launches an Ark -- 15 kinds of lifegiving animals begin their voyage two-by-two, wherever they're most needed.And 30 families begin a journey toward better health, more income and self-reliance.
From Tanzania to Kentucky, each family who receives livestock from your gift will pass on one or more of the animal's offspring to other families in need. Like a stone dropped in water, your generosity will ripple out for years to come, providing family after family the means for a better life
- 2 FLOCKS OF CHICKS to help two Kentucky families improve nutrition and care for their land with pastured poultry;
- 2 SHEEP to help New York state families produce wool
- 2 TRIOS OF RABBITS to provide food and income to families in Guatemala
And so on, two by two and three by three. I must admit, I have never made a $5,000 gift before, but this presentation really stirred me. I imagined myself sitting by the tree at Christmas time, and saying to my family: "This year, I did something very unusual. I decided to give an Ark!"
So I clicked on the Ark button. Then I went to review my order. It told me:
Gift Qty Price The Ark 1 $5,000.00 Pig 1 $120.00 Honeybees 1 $30.00 Share of a llama 1 $20.00 TOTAL: $5,170.00 And then gave me "proceed to checkout" button. There I could fill out the usual information, and make an online secure credit card gift, or fax my order. I did neither, because I cannot afford such a gift right now, but if I could!
Be careful about how you position your giving opportunities
So the Heifer Project International site is a winner, and well worth studying for technique, design, and overall approach. There's only one small problem.The problem is summed up in a disclaimer that they place at the bottom of the catalog page:
The prices in this catalog represent the whole gift of livestock, technical assistance and training. Each "purchase" represents a contribution to the entire mission of HPI. When animal groups are fully funded, additional donations will be used where needed most to help hungry people. Heifer Project International, 1998.Ummmmm, let me think about this for a minute. Did I almost buy a pig or a "pig"? An Ark or an "Ark"? I go back to the Ark page. At the bottom, after the list of two by twos, is this disclaimer:
The price of a Gift Ark includes the purchase/transport of quality animals and the training/support Heifer Project gives recipients. Contributions to the Gift Ark program are symbolic and represent a contribution to the entire mission of HPI. When animal groups are fully funded, additional donations will be used where needed most.Oh, so my honeybees and my pig and my trios of rabbits are "symbolic." And what I am really doing is making an unrestricted contribution to HPI. Hmmmm.And therein lies a tale. Not a tail, that's a share of a pig. A tale.
Designated donations are often not too specific
Next to "donate now" buttons, and "join online" hyperlinks, perhaps the most frequent online inducement for a gift is to "adopt" something. The Nature Conservancy allows you to adopt a bison, the International Wolf Center invites you to adopt a wolf, Save the Children encourages you to sponsor a child, as does World Vision.Do such invitations raise money? Absolutely. Take Save the Children. Their website informs us that "Last year Save the Children sponsors donated $23.6 million, more than 20 percent of total operating revenue of $117 million. Sponsorship funds represent more than 55 percent of the agency's private income." (The $23.6 million was not from the web, but mostly from traditional sources. As for the overall figure, Save the Children, like many relief and development organizations, receives money from governmental sources, like USAID.)
So, we may ask, given what we learned from the Heifer Project review, does sponsoring a child through Save the Children or World Vision mean "sponsoring" a child? Yes, and no.
Save the Children invites you to fill out a sponsorship form. Would you like to sponsor a boy or a girl? Do you have a preference for a part of the world, or can it be "wherever the need is greatest"? Then you are asked to use your credit card to commit $288 annually for your sponsorship. World Vision goes a cyberstep further. They have placed pictures of specific children online. Would you like to sponsor Jesus from Bolivia? Here is his picture and his birthdate. No? Well, how about Alberto?
It turns out that Save the Children and World Vision are not talking about a symbolic "Alberto," but a real Alberto. When you sign up for sponsorship, you receive a picture of the child you are sponsoring, and an address to write to. From then on, both organizations assist you in corresponding with your sponsored child. Save the Children will even arrange a visit, should you decide to travel.
However, your sponsorship money does not go to Alberto and his family. At least, not directly. Instead, it goes to fund the entire program of Save the Children or World Vision, a program which seeks to bring betterment to entire communities, and not just to individual families who were lucky enough to "get sponsored."
As Save the Children puts it, but quite a ways down on a different page:
The last direct check to a child was mailed in the early 1980s. Today all sponsorship funds are pooled for community development: hiring a teacher, training midwives and health workers, administering vaccine and teaching mothers about infant nutrition, oral rehydration and iodized salt, digging wells, teaching about hygiene and setting up micro-credit loans for small businesses.It appears, from delving into the World Vision site, that they take the same approach. It is just harder to find any explicit statement to that effect. Again, it seems that "sponsorship" gifts are in reality "general gifts" to the organization. Since neither organization states that explicitly on the solicitation page, a sponsor might be forgiven if he or she gains the impression that his/her $22 per month is going straight to Alberto and his family.Projects range from bricks and mortar, the things that can be seen and touched, to attitude change, the intangibles like treating girls the same as boys, teaching how to protect against AIDS and STD transmission, learning how to avoid landmines and understanding the importance of clean water. Experience shows that human development is more important than facilities development.
While development philosophy has changed over the years, sponsorship itself - the concept of relating to a representative child in need - remains a constant, bringing together caring adults and children in need. Sponsorship puts a human face to the often overwhelming and abstract needs of massive disadvantaged populations in far-off countries. It helps overcome "compassion fatigue" among potential donors who are bombarded by images of deprivation, suffering and hopelessness in much of the developing world. As sponsorship has evolved, Save the Children has led the way.
I would be the last to argue that Alberto should get the money. For every Alberto, there are a million other children, all in need of help. And direct aid is not necessarily the most effective method for raising the living standard of poor children and their families. Save the Children is right: digging wells and teaching about nutrition are far more important, and affect more needy people. Such projects also provide a "hand up" rather than a "hand-out."
Nevertheless, I think it is very important not to mislead donors. If donations are going into the general fund, an organization should make that absolutely clear on its donation page--not on some other page, or buried in a FAQ.
Online fundraising can be a good way to move donors from restricted to unrestricted gifts
All of us in the non-profit charitable field know the difference between an "unrestricted" gift and a "restricted" gift. In my opinion, the overwhelming impression given by the websites of HPI, Save the Children, and World Vision is that I am being asked to make a restricted gift -- that is, a gift designated for a specific project or purpose.Clearly, sponsorship and "adoption" pitches work. That is, they raise money for the organization. And there is every reason to think that they will work just as well in cyberspace. But let's not mislead or confuse our donors. In the long run, that is not good for our organization, or for charity in general.
I don't see any reason why HPI, for example, doesn't put every "animal" donation into a restricted program fund. The receipts from online giving cannot be so great that they are unable to spend the money on the actual purchase, transport, etc of animal donations. I would be much more comfortable, as a donor, knowing that my animal gifts actually went--in their entirety--to distributing animals. Then the task of HPI would be to educate me about the entire organization, and solicit me for an unrestricted gift. This is a standard fundraising mechanism: start with a restricted gift, and move donors into general support of your organization.
As for sponsoring a child, I don't see why Save the Children and World Vision, and other "sponsorship" programs cannot take a slightly more upfront approach: "Your unrestricted gift of $250 or more will entitle you to participate in our person-to-person program. We will link you with a child (and his or her family) who is benefiting from our program. You can then write to this child..." And so on. How hard is that?
Adam Corson-Finnerty is a Development Officer, Author and Occasional Consultant. Reach him at: 215-635-4084 or corsonf@fund-online.com. Find his web site at: http://www.fund-online.com. This article was originally published as a series of three postings to the CYBERGIFTS mailing list at http://www.charitychannel.com.
|
|||
