Online Fundraising Trends to Watch

As Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and other players introduce new apps, experts wonder how quickly charities will make it easy to donate with just one touch of a smartphone. “It’s the tech vendors that will bring digital giving into the future,” says Brad Davies, a fundraising consultant. “The innovations could be revolutionary.”

The tech giant last month added “mobile friendliness” to the criteria it uses to determine which websites appear first when people search. Charity sites that aren’t easy to view and explore on smartphones and tablets will become harder for supporters to find.

New opportunities abound to persuade people to give set amounts every week, month, quarter, or at other intervals, just like they pay for Netflix and other services. “People have gotten so used to having these automatic charges and subscriptions, and it’s so much easier,” says Michael Lupetin, vice president of marketing and brand at KQED, a San Francisco public-broadcasting station. “This is where you can save a lot of money and resources.”

Mass online appeals will raise nearly $6 billion for social causes this year, according to Massolution, a research and consulting firm that has examined crowdfunding. That’s nearly double what the firm estimated such campaigns raised in 2014. “I have long held the belief that you can crowdfund for pretty much anything. It is just about how much effort you put into it,” says Breanna DiGiammarino, co-head of Indiegogo Life, which oversees crowdfunding drives that largely benefit individuals. She foresees charities adding staff positions that focus on raising money from social media.

Every charity website should have not only a “donate now” button, but a “fundraise now” button, say a growing number of experts. The idea is to allow supporters to set up their own fundraising pages or link to sites like Crowdrise that provide such services. “People making gifts spend a lot of time online determining what their peers are supporting and what their peers have validated, almost as much as they are interacting with the organizations themselves,” says Bryan Breckenridge, who heads Box.org, which provides cloud technology to charities.

“The Internet rewards the viral rather than the essential,” says Henry Timms, founder of Giving Tuesday. “It’s hard to make deworming initiatives go viral,” he says, adding that charities would do well to keep tabs on what’s blowing up on social media and take cues from the success stories. “Designing something viral is not necessarily the same thing as designing something heartwarming.”