Concerns about a possible tech meltdown are always on fundraisers’ minds on giving days. Many fundraisers are still smarting after the failure of thousands of donation pagesfor Give Local America, a nationwide event. And tensions grew higher after Blackbaud customers experienced temporary service outages during the last two Giving Tuesdays.
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Technology experts understand the frustration but say it’s naive to expect even a robust system to handle the volume of donors who give in a single day without the occasional hiccup.
Amy Sample Ward, CEO of NTEN, a group of nonprofit-technology professionals, said in an email to the Chronicle that charities need to be wary of “putting so much emphasis on a single day. Any day of the year there are things that may happen beyond our control.”
Participating in giving days, Ward added, “should be part of a larger and more holistic fundraising strategy and campaign. This is how organizations can better manage issues that arise in real time.”
Still, nonprofits are finding ways to take advantage of the excitement a single day of giving offers while minimizing the risks of technology snafus.
One way some giving days are managing the crush of gift processing is to allow donors to pledge gifts ahead of time, as Amplify Austin and other regional events have done. It’s intended to give charity supporters more flexibility in deciding when to give.
But there’s another advantage: Processing those early-bird gifts overnight, when most users are sleeping, makes a platform less likely to crash, notes Catherine Lucchesi, former director of communications and programming of I Live Here I Give Here, the nonprofit that runs the seven-year-old Amplify Austin event.
I Live Here’s chief operations officer, Lindsay Muse, keeps an eye on giving-day technology; the organization switched from Civicorps to GiveGab for this year’s Amplify in February because of its integration of giving-day and peer-to-peer fundraising functions, she says.
“We’re constantly evaluating the landscape and looking at how we can meet donors where they are,” Muse says. “And that changes.”
This year, for instance, Amplify, which raised $11.2 million for more than 740 local charities, experimented with Hustle, a texting platform that allows charities and their supporters to remind friends to give. Groups like Planned Parenthood have had success with it, finding that the texts have a higher open rate than emails do, Muse says.
More charities are finding that giving days, and online fundraising more generally, are unearthing robust support, she says: “We’ve had a lot of organizations that did big galas or fundraising events sunset those because they realize they can meet new donors so much easier when they put their marketing resources behind an online fundraising campaign.”
Tech’s role in giving days will certainly grow, she says. “Who would have thought when we started Amplify that people would be donating by Alexa, and chatbot? Those are places we want to go.”
