Tag: we can do better

Tips for Building Member Engagement

Importance of “Engagement”

For associations, clubs and other membership organizations, members are their reason for being, so getting and keeping members truly engaged in the organization is critical for survival. In his post, Building a Strong Nonprofit Part 7: Engagement Pyramid and Cycle Michael J. Brennan offers a simple equation for looking at engagement:

Engagement = Relationship + Action

As Andrea Pellegrino (Demand Perspective Blog) reminds us, “It’s All Engagement…every customer service inquiry, complaint, voicemail, email or other message. Every website visit, page click, email open and click-through…is engagement. Every online search that turns up your association or one of its products or services or initiatives…is engagement. Every forum where the issues that concern your members and industry are discussed (even if they are not yours) is engagement.”

Leveraging the “Engagement Touchpoints”

So if “everything” is about engagement, what member “touchpoints” should you focus your attention? That will depend on your members and their preferences for communicating with your organization as well as their online and social media habits. But here are some tips for building engagement through:

  1. your website
  2. your online communities
  3. social media

1. Engaging Members Through Your Website

In our post –If You Build It Will They Come? – we suggested that while building your online community is only part of the engagement equation, the reality is that “your website is still your primary identity online.” Your website is where your members go for information and insight; where they can participate in your online community; where they can register for events; manage their membership profile and even their yearly renewal.

This is where the membership equation really rings true – you want to build the relationship and encourage action with every website visit and as often as possible, to ensure you’re providing tangible member value.

Help with managing website development:

  • The Nonprofit Website Handbook is a comprehensive, “how-to” resource that offers an overview of the website design and development process. It was written and designed by Yesenia Sotelo, founder at Smart Cause Digital (a web development and digital strategy firm).  They also offer additional resources, such as the Nonprofit Website Tuneup.

Help in making your website “awesome”:

  1. Professional design
  2. Intuitive navigation
  3. Answers to common questions
  4. Strong SEO
  5. Sharable content

Fresh content is key to get members to your website and keeping them coming back:

The key goal for any membership website is to get members to the site and keep them coming back for more. This means offering the right content– fresh, up-to-date, targeted to your audience and easy to find – to keep them engaged and to ensure they experience membership value.

Developing fresh content:

In terms of how to approach content development, our recent post –3 Tips for Keeping Your Website Fresh – suggested that small organizations just getting started with website content development take “a meal planning approach”. In other words, when thinking about scheduling content for your website, think about what news you’d like to dish up each week or month and map that to your organization’s activities and information. What content do you have on hand and what do you need to develop? What ingredients do you need to shop for (develop, re-purpose, etc.). Start with a realistic and manageable time frame for planning – can you schedule one or two months of content?

In her post, 7 “Best Practices” for True Member Engagement, Anna Caravelli (The Demand Perspective) suggests that to ensure “your members use your site as an integral part of their daily life,” your staff and/or volunteers should consider developing new daily or weekly routines to promote connecting with members. Caravelli suggests that to ensure that “your discussions and concerns focus on understanding members” you develop routines such as these:

  • Weekly “make them happy” meetings for all staff: staff compares notes about what they heard from or learned about members; bring up member concerns or business trends; work on solutions or new ideas about how to better serve them.
  • Individual departments that interact with, serve or develop products for members have an abbreviated meeting on this topic daily, before starting work.
  • Weekly Click Through’s: “Assemble the appropriate teams (e.g. program developers, marketers, member service staff, social media staff etc.) to click through areas of your website to resolve problems, test new features and simply make sure everything makes sense from a customer’s perspective.

In her blog post – What They Want to Hear Versus What You Want to Say – Kivi Leroux Miller also offers some suggestions around content development strategy. She notes that when you’ve identified information you want to provide members (e.g., “your own agenda”) but you realize that there is other content that members want; you find a way of balancing the two agendas by “put[ting] some cheese sauce on that broccoli”. Kivi suggests:

On a quarterly basis … come up with a list of topics that you want to cover in your educational programming or communications, whether that’s new blog posts, website downloads, webinars or training videos. You’d pick the top five topics. This is the broccoli.

Next, you’d look at sources that give you clues about what the locals are interested in right now. You could look at recent keyword searches that brought traffic to your site, as well as searches within your site. You’d also look at comments on your blog and Facebook page. Since you regularly present webinars, you could look at the chat or evaluation surveys from those for comments. You’d compile this information into a separate top five list. Remember, this list is based on popularity with your target audience, not on what you want them to know. This is your cheese sauce.

Kivi Leroux Miller also offers guidance for developing website content in her blog post, Content Strategies: Mapping and Merging – including tips on creating an editorial calendar.

Ensuring content is targeted to your audience

While offering fresh content is a priority, it’s also important to ensure you understand your audience and are offering the content they need and want. One strategy you can employ to help define your target audience is to develop user personas. John Haydon offers a helpful blog post – How to Create User Personas for Your Website – that explains how this works. Haydon suggests“[d]eveloping user personas [fictitious characters that represent the various different types of people that visit your website] for your website will help you design a website that resonates with visitors, motivates content sharing, and converts …Personas will also help you optimize your website for search because you have a better understanding of the keywords they’ll use in search engines.”

Ensuring content can be easily updated

While developing fresh is important, another key consideration that goes hand-in-hand with this is ensuring your website can be easily updated. In our post – Tips for Keeping Your Website Fresh – we noted that many small organizations rely on volunteers or staff with limited digital skills to update content on their website. This means that you need to ensure you have a user-friendly platform or content management tool to make their job easier. Otherwise, fresh content may be put on hold while you wait for a “techie” volunteer or an outside service provider to upload the content to your site. This may leave you feeling like “the victim of a “hostage” situation with [a] web developer. …And what starts out as fresh content ends up a little stale by the time your supporters see it on your website.”

In a recent post – Can Moving to the Cloud Impact Member Engagement – we suggested that if your website content is being created by a number of volunteers, board members and/or staff, you might consider using cloud technology so that they can all create and share documents online. In addition, if your website is managed through a web-based or SAAS system that offers easy-to-use content management systems, you can offer a number of content providers administrative access to upload content to your website to ensure it remains fresh.

For example, you could have one volunteer responsible for managing the member’s forum, and another could be your blog writer, posting frequently on your blog. The Chair of your event could have access to administer the event registration and post event details on that area of your site. This way, you can offer up-to-date web content on a regular basis, without having to be “held hostage by your web developer,” waiting for an external provider or a busy volunteer to post the content to your site.

Ensuring members can easily find what they want!

It’s not just about the type of content, you also have to take a step back and take an objective look at your website to ensure members and new visitors can easily find what they are looking for. The technical word for this is “intuitive navigation.” Be sure your navigation menu is simple and easy to use so visitors can easily search for topics. To ensure your website is user-friendly or offers an effective “user experience”, you can refer back to your “user personas” noted above.  Think about how a typical member might use your website – what are they looking for regularly? What do you want them to discover?

2. Enabling Two-Way Communication and Content Promotion Through Online Communities

Engaging members on your website starts with offering fresh, useful content that is targeted to your audience. But keeping them engaged and participating involves – at the very minimum – alerting them to fresh content and enabling two-way communications.

  • Alerting them to fresh or new content: You can keep your members informed of fresh content by including information in other channels, such as:
    • regular updates in your newsletter: be sure to include a regular section and/or news article with updates on new content with live links to the new web material
    • any publications you create and/or send to members: for example, you can include an update to the bottom of any “member updates” or any regular email to members or include the link to your blog, member’s forum or other news page at the bottom of all outgoing emails.
    • in face-to-face meetings: e.g., have the Chair of the Board and any meeting Chairs alert assembled members of new blog posts, articles, etc. that might be pertinent to the meeting.
    • via social media: Social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook are also great ways to keep members informed of new content. For example, we alert our followers when we’ve added a new article in our Hub and/or blog post by Tweeting, and posting on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Find ways to leverage and promote new online content to get and keep members actively involved.
  • Enabling two-way communication: Your website should be the “mother ship” of your organization’s online community. But information shouldn’t just flow out to members; you need to promote two-way communication opportunities as well. This means opening channels so members can also communicate with your administration and leadership too. This can be done through:
    • online forums: here’s a resource that outlines How to Start an Online Forum
    • a blog: create a blog if you don’t have one and if you do, be sure you enable members to comment on your blog posts;
    • online surveys: you can conduct regular surveys to elicit member input or you can simply pose mini surveys or questions on your website or Facebook page to get conversations started. And once you get some two-way conversations going, be sure to respond to and promote (and amortize) feedback and comments by noting these in blog posts, twitter and in your newsletter as well.
    • via social media: e.g., encouraging communication via Twitter or Facebook – e.g., ask questions and listen to member’s comments; post mini surveys on Facebook 

3. Engaging Members Through Social Media

We noted earlier that the term “engagement” often refers to how an individual is engaging online – in terms of website visits, page views, and social media mentions. And while we cautioned that social media participation is only part of the member engagement equation, it is increasingly important to enable and promote two-way social media engagement with members.

As we note in our blog post – Are You Engaging Members Through Social Media? – each organization’s social media strategy needs to be determined based on your particular goals. But here are some ideas to consider as you develop the social media component of your member engagement plan.

Show and tell to engage

While many non-profits are successfully raising awareness of their missions via social networks, membership organizations can also build engagement with both existing and potential members by showing and telling via social media. As Debra Askanase has suggested, “photos and videos have become key social currencies online.” Of course, it’s more than simply posting images for folks to “like” or “re-pin.”  The ultimate goal is to draw members to your website, where you can truly engage them and demonstrate member value. Here are some tips on how you can consider drawing members in using visuals.

Pinterest – more than pretty pictures:

So how – you ask – can a membership organization leverage photo and video sharing for member engagement? In a Movie Monday video – Is your nonprofit organization using Pinterest? – Noland Hoshino explained “why Pinterest is such a great tool for storytelling, for driving traffic to your website, for engaging supporters, and for finding out who exactly is sharing (“pinning”) your pictures and videos.”

Hoshino suggests that Pinterest’s open system offers a great way for a non-profit (or membership organization) to post numerous photos – “a whole storyboard” – about your organization which can be viewed by anyone online, not just those who have signed-up (as with Facebook). The key benefit is that when folks view your images in Pinterest, they are linked to the original source – your website! Each image pinned on Pinterest includes a “backlink” to the original source location, which drives increased traffic to your site and also increases your chances of ranking higher in search engine results.

A secondary benefit of Pinterest is that you can find out about your supporters or members by using the source to see who’s pinning or re-pinning images. The more you know about who your supporters are and how they connect with you, the easier it will be to truly engage them.

So if you haven’t considered Pinterest until now, Hoshino suggests that you think of it this way – while Google is all about searches, Pinterest is about inspiration. And in our hyper busy world, people can check out a visual that tells your story, even quicker than reading a 140 character tweet.

What about Facebook? Do images rule there too?

The short answer is yes! As Facebook guru, John Haydon, suggests, “[p]eople love pictures. People upload more than 300 million photos to Facebook every single day! Facebook users love liking, commenting on, and sharing photos more than any other type of content on Facebook. So posting photos automatically gives you an advantage in the EdgeRank game.”

In his post – Creative Ways to Use Photos To Increase Engagement On Your Facebook Page – Haydon offers “six ideas to help you get more from the photos you post on your Facebook Page.” Along with using Pinterest, Haydon suggests: posting large photos and “posting photos as links to gain EdgeRank advantage over other types of content.”

LinkedIn can provide recommendations and help with your Board

But engaging members on social media is more than just about images. With networks such as LinkedIn, you can raise awareness and build membership through peer recommendations. As we noted in a blog post a while back – Is Your Organization LinkedIn Yet? – while LinkedIn started as a social media tool used by individuals to network, find a job or further their career, some of the recent enhancements at LinkedIn might make it a better fit for your membership organization.

Creating LinkedIn Company pages

Recently, LinkedIn launched re-designed company pages that offer a new look and additional functionality. The LinkedIn Blog offers details and a video you can watch here. If your organization hasn’t developed a corporate page on LinkedIn, you might want to re-consider.  After all, we know that word-of-mouth and recommendations can have a strong influence on individuals’ decisions to purchase products and join organizations. As we noted in a recent post – Can LinkedIn Recommendations Grow Your Membership? – a recent MetLife/Ipsos survey found that: “[recommendations from friends, family and colleagues appear to have the greatest influence over a person’s decision to join. Nearly one-third (28%) of association and affinity members said that such recommendations were the most important factor impacting their decision to join. It was also important to many members that the association be well known and have a good reputation.”

When you have a LinkedIn company page, individuals can write recommendations about your organization, which in turn can drive membership growth and might also impact retention. Wild Apricot learned first-hand the impact LinkedIn recommendations can have.  With our focus on small nonprofits and local associations, we recognized that one of the best things for any company – particularly a smaller one – is good word-of-mouth from current customers. So to leverage positive customer feedback, we encouraged customers to post reviews on our LinkedIn page.

Another new feature that might draw you to LinkedIn is Board Connect. LinkedIn suggests this enhancement will help organizations “deepen relationships and cultivate connections” which should help you identify and attract volunteers and board members.

Re-Defining Engagement at Your Organization

We hope this article sparks some ideas to help your organization develop member engagement strategies that meet your specific needs. Once you create a framework and establish routines for identifying and developing fresh content for your website; connecting with members through online communities and social media, you can build on this foundation over time to both retain existing members and attract new members.

By https://www.wildapricot.com

Reasons to Recruit Online Volunteers

Here are but 10 reasons for an organization to engage in virtual volunteering:

1. Extend Your Resources

Online volunteers, just as those volunteers who work onsite, extend the resources of an organization. The additional help augments core staff efforts and allows an organization to do even more. They and other volunteers are not, however, replacements for employees.

2. Expand Your Reach

An organization that embraces virtual volunteering gives volunteers new ways of supporting causes they feel passionate about. This can lead both to expanding the involvement of onsite volunteers and to involving new volunteers altogether.

3. Volunteering Anytime Anywhere

Virtual volunteering can remove some time and physical barriers for both current and new volunteers. While the time required for volunteering online is real, not virtual, volunteers can provide a service, ask questions, or provide feedback at whatever time is convenient for them, outside of a few required live meetings with staff or other volunteers.

4. Stay Ahead of the Curve

An organization that uses the Internet to support and involve volunteers is sending a message to its supporters that it is modern and efficient, that it wants to provide convenience to its volunteers, and that it understands the realities of the 21st-century workplace. As the competition for press coverage and funding becomes more intense, it has never been more important for nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies, and others to exude such an image.

5. Accommodate any Lifestyle

Virtual volunteering allows for the participation of people who might find onsite volunteering difficult or impossible because of a disability, mobility issue, home obligation, or work schedule. This, in turn, allows agencies to benefit from the additional talent and resources of more volunteers and allows the organization to demonstrate its commitment to being an accessible organization.

6. A New Way to Find Volunteers

Potential volunteers not reached by traditional means may be reached online. The Internet makes it easy to reach particular audiences quickly, such as people with a specific skill or representing a specific demographic. This does not mean the Internet will totally replace other forms of volunteer recruitment, such as a booth at a community event or registering with your local volunteer center (which these days is likely to put local information online as well). It simply means you have an additional avenue to use to recruit volunteers.

7. Reach a Younger Generation

The Internet offers a proven tool for recruiting younger volunteers, a difficulty many organizations face. We have noted earlier that online volunteers may represent a variety of populations. While it is certainly true that people under the age of 30 are more prone to use online technologies than any other age group, even people in their 40s have used the Web for most of their professional lives.

8. Increase Your Capabilities

Some or most of your organization’s mission may be best served by online volunteers, especially if your organization’s membership is dispersed across a region or a country, or even around the world. Three examples of entirely virtual organizations are: Project Gutenberg, mentioned earlier in this chapter; LibriVox, a nonprofit that coordinates volunteers making freely-available online recordings of public-domain books; and the Aid Workers Network, an online resource for people working in aid, relief, and development. These entirely virtual organizations could not exist if they only or primarily involved onsite volunteers.

9. Save the Environment

Online volunteers can be environmentally friendly. Online volunteers create no car exhaust, do not require a parking space, and do not need the organization to provide them with a desk or chair. And people are not buying new, additional technology just to volunteer online; they are using technology for a variety of other tasks. Even so, you may want to encourage your online volunteers to dispose of electronic waste in an ecologically friendly manner.

Moreover, volunteer resources managers who work online have no restrictive limits on giving and sharing information with volunteers. For instance, instead of printed volunteer policies, which must be copied for onsite distribution and quickly go out of date, managers can share the most current policies online, in a public or private area, for any volunteer to access at any time. Instead of giving a volunteer mounds of printed material that are not environmentally friendly, the manager can point to online resources for the volunteer to read from home. And the volunteer can read as much as he or she needs to for an assignment (and, beyond that, what he or she wants to).

10. Better Record Keeping

Managing volunteers virtually can create automatic, extensive records of both volunteer activities and interactions with volunteers—records that can be used to generate statistics, provide quotes for an upcoming grant proposal, or evaluate the overall volunteering initiative. An organization that manages virtually gains an archive of e-mails, instant messages, chats, online forum messages, photos, and audio and video recordings relating to volunteer discussions and activities.

This article is an excerpt from The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service into Volunteer Involvement, by Jayne Cravens and Susan J. Ellis, © 2014, Energize, Inc. Found in the Energize, Inc. Online Bookstore.

New Volunteer Checklist

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

A checklist and prompting questions to help you set up an effective and welcoming volunteer orientation process.

By Wild Apricot

Most non-profits and membership organizations depend on volunteers to help run projects, raise funds, organize events, and even manage day-to-day administration. These individuals are also likely members, supporters or donors – the very folks your organization is trying to engage and retain. So making the effort to get your volunteers off to a good start is critical. They need to understand – from the get go – how important their role is to your organization. They also need to feel they are part of a team working towards a common goal.

So do you have a process for welcoming, orienting and engaging your new volunteers?

We recognize that finding time to develop, customize and maintain a new volunteer welcome and orientation process can be difficult, especially for small organizations with few or no staff. Although they rely on volunteers, the staff or volunteer leaders are often time and resource-challenged.

So we’ve developed this New Volunteer Checklist to help you get started. Take a look through our checklist and check off the items you’ve got covered (for a great sense of accomplishment); identify items you need to address; or use this as a jumping off point for your own volunteer orientation “to do” list.

For more details, you can also check out our Hub article – Starting Volunteers Off Right – which offers additional ideas and resources.

Pre-planning:

How will you get to know the new volunteer?

☐ Did you capture information about the volunteers in the screening process?

☐ Is the volunteer a member or supporter – whose profile will be available in your membership database?

Who should be involved in the welcome and orientation process?

☐ Does each committee or event chair provide a one-on-one welcome for their new team members?

☐ Do you provide mentors or volunteer buddies to help welcome and orient new volunteers?

Do you have a structure in place for communication and performance management?

☐ Do team or committee leaders perform regular check-ins with volunteers?

☐ Does each new volunteer have an assigned coordinator or manager as a key contact?

What tools and resources will you need?

☐ Does each volunteer role have a job description?

☐ Do you have a volunteer manual?

Making new volunteers feel welcome:

☐ Do you have a process in place to welcome new recruits?

☐ Is someone assigned to greet the new volunteer in person?

Orientation that inspires and empowers:

☐ Does your orientation process inspire:

  • Enthusiasm?
  • Inspiration?
  • Empowerment?
  • Confidence?

☐ Can you customize your orientation based on…

  • The individual’s background with or knowledge of the organization?
  • The particular volunteer job?
  • Prior experience with this type of role?
  • Legal or liability issues around the job to be performed?

☐ Have you considered non-traditional ways of providing orientation information? For example:

  • Can some of the documents be available online (for mobile access) for review prior to a face-to-face session?
  • Would existing volunteers be willing to offer their insight and experience?
  • Are there documents or procedure manuals that some volunteers are required to read prior to starting their job? If so, how can you make these available and/or confirm their comprehension?

☐ Do your orientation materials include:

  • An overview of the organization – its mission, vision, values?
  • An outline of the organizational structure (e.g., key staff members, leadership volunteers and an explanation of their roles)?
  • A general overview of the type of volunteer jobs?
  • Physical orientation to your office, project location, event venue – so they know their way around?
  • An outline of any policies, rules, and procedures?
  • An overview of any volunteer training that is required and pertinent schedules?
  • Contact information and emergency procedures?
  • Training that motivates and engages volunteers

☐ Does your training style match your volunteers’ needs? For example…

  • Can you offer informal versus formal, classroom-style training?
  • Is peer-to-peer training an option you can consider?
  • Can you incorporate hands-on practice into your training?

☐ Are you overwhelming new recruits with too much material?

To avoid information overload can you:
  • Offer only “need to know” information?
  • Allow learners to check out additional optional information on their own via your website?
Saying thank you and recognizing volunteers’ efforts:

☐ Do you have a process for checking in with volunteers and offering feedback?

☐ Do you recognize volunteer efforts and explain how these are making a difference at your organization?

☐ Do you thank volunteers often and sincerely?

We hope this volunteer checklist helps you fine-tune your existing volunteer orientation process or acts as a roadmap for developing a consistent new process to welcome new volunteers.

Tips for Fundraising

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

An effective database allows you to keep track of all the interactions someone has had with your organization: actions they’ve taken, donations they’ve made, and of course their contact details.

By Holly Hammond

Collect details

You can’t contact someone if you don’t have their details. Every campaign activity should be an opportunity to build your list.

Know your people

Code the contacts in your database so you’re able to get a summary of who is interested in particular topics or has taken particular actions in the past. That way when you ask them for support you can tailor your request to their interests and level of commitment.

Start with supporters

People who already have a connection to your organization and support its mission are far more likely to convert that support into a financial contribution than ‘cold calls’. It is also much easier to reengage than to engage someone for the first time. That is, if someone has already made a financial contribution they are more likely to again in the future than someone completely untried.

Tell your story

Have a brief but compelling ‘elevator pitch’ which communicates what your organization or campaign is, why it is worthy of support, and what will be the result of a donation.

Ask for money

You’ll never get money if you don’t ask people for it! Don’t let awkwardness or feelings about money get in the way of asking for what is needed. Think of asking people for money as a way of giving them an opportunity to take action about something they care about.

Operational vs. Project costs

Many philanthropists and government funding rounds will not make money available for ongoing costs, and other donors may not view them as worthwhile. Look at how to ‘carve out’ parts of your budget into discrete projects, for example printing materials or holding events.

Welcome different kinds of support

If a person or organization or company is not able to make a donation can they provide in-kind support instead? For example, printing, use of facilities, labor… or can they connect you with others who can offer support?

Manage your finances

Ensure you are accountable for the money you receive and expend. Make sure you issue receipts to donors.

Research givers

Get a sense of the interests of philanthropic wealthy individuals so when you approach them you can make an appropriate request. Such people get numerous requests – you save them time and increase your likelihood of success if you’ve done your homework.

Say Thanks!

It is incredibly important to thank people for their support. It’s best to do this without too much delay – even if you thank them first and send out a receipt later.

How Much should your Donation Ask be?

Photo by Amber Avalona on Pixabay

For the 2013 federal election, an ask was put out to the GetUp list asking for donations to fund election advertising. The list was split into three groups:

  • those who have never donated,
  • those who have donated large amounts (over $400) before,
  • and other donors.

The group of people who have given large amounts is quite small, and thus the focus was on the other two groups. In both cases, we split the lists in half (roughly). All recipients received the same email, but the default donation ask on the page they clicked on was different. One confounding factor was that donation pages had very slightly different page names. All other content was consistent.

  • For non-donors, the amounts were either $5 or $30.
  • For donors, the amounts were either $30 or $70.

There is evidence that the increased default ask was effective for previous donors. While the number of members to donate was less for the $70 ask (14.7% of clicks, as against 15.1%), the average amount donated was higher ($71 vs $51), and the total amount raised was higher.

  • The $70 ask resulted in $10.50 raised per person who clicked on the page.
  • The $30 ask resulted in $7.70 per click.

There was a hope that reducing the default ask for non-donors from $30 to $5 would result in a larger number of donors giving money, which would hopefully result in an increase amount of money raised, even if the average donation was smaller.

However, non-donors were slightly less likely to donate on the page with the $5 default ask (3.2% of clicks) as compared to the $30 default ask (3.3%). The average donation was also lower for the $5 default ask ($37 vs $47).

  • The $30 ask resulted in $1.55 raised per person who clicked on the page.
  • The $5 ask resulted in $1.16 per click.

This experiment shows evidence for the idea that pre-existing donors have the potential to increase their donations with a relatively small impact on the number of donors giving money. No evidence is apparent that a very low default ask on the donation page is effective at broadening the number of donors.

There are a couple of design elements which may be hindering any potential for this to be more effective:

  • Flagging default donation asks in email – Non-donors may not be clicking on the link, as the email does not refer to the default ask, and someone who may be more willing to donate if a smaller ask is made may already be deterred before getting to the page.
  • Changing position of donation form so person selects their dollar amount before giving credit card details – at the moment the form asks for the dollar amount at the end, and on a 13-inch laptop screen this part normally does not appear without scrolling. May result in people being deterred before realizing that the ask is for only $5.

It is also possible that more sophisticated division of the GetUp list could be helpful in effectively differentiating GetUp members to determine the ideal default ask.

By Ben Raue, Online Progressive Engagement Network