The document outlines 10 things an organization must do to set up online fundraising and analytics. It discusses securing a domain name and social media handles, choosing technology tools for the website, email marketing, payments and CRM, and setting up analytics tracking. It emphasizes focusing on content generation over technology tweaks, and establishing metrics to track donations, prospects and abandonment rates to assess fundraising efforts. The document provides advice on setting up spreadsheets to track metrics and using analytics to find top traffic sources.

1. The first 10 things y must
g you
do to setup online fundraising
and analytics
Shabbir Imber Safdar
July 22, 2011
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

2. The Goal
Your goal is to fundraise online, not to:
• Tweak the fields in your database/crm;
• Endlessly analyze a too small sample of your analytics data;
• Re-arrange the layout and navigation of your website;
• Play with your email templates; or
y y
• Re-arrange your donor forms.
Don’t get stuck in the technology trap.
Modern online fundraising efforts are built upon your ability to successfully
execute your mission, and explain the impact that execution has on the world
around you to the public.
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

3. When is it enough to tweak my
g y
tech?
When
Wh you have consistently put out a small, original email every week f
h i t tl t t ll i i l il k for
four months that talks about your work without being repetitive or tired,
you’ve conquered the content beast.
(Or a bi-weekly newsletter for eight months)
You now probably have enough experience producing content that you can
spare a few moments to look at your technology and make some changes
changes.
When you have 10 months of data (Jan-October), you have enough data
to start doing planning for the upcoming year.
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

4. The pieces you need
y
Ideally, you want:
• Database + Payment processing + Email marketing
• Website
• Analytics
You may settle for:
• Database + Email marketing
• Payment processing
• Website
• Analytics
y
Integration costs money. You can pay a vendor for an integrated
package, or you can pay an integrator to integrate them, or you can pay
yourself to integrate them It all costs money
them. money.
Pick the combination that gets you up and running the quickest and revisit
your decision in 6 months.
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

5. Minimum functionality you need
yy
• You have a CRM that understands basic nonprofit donor management
(householding, donation history, etc).
• People who come to your website can signup for your email list without
your manual intervention.
• You can easily create multiple donation forms and link to them.
• You can place a piece of Javascript code on the donation form, the
donation thank you page and the pages of your website
page, website.
• You can compose an email (without using HTML); you can send an
email and track opens and clicks.
What
Wh you may h
have to suffer with:
ff ih
• Manually adding people from your donation forms to your CRM
or your email list. (A good problem to have!)
• A website th t doesn’t l k all th t great
b it that d ’t look ll that t
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

6. Some options
Analytics: Google Analytics
Website: Wordpress, Typepad…beware Drupal or any proprietary
templating system without drag and drop functionality.
Payment
P t
Processor: Piryx, DonationPay, Paypal, Google Checkout, Amazon for
Nonprofits + 99 others
CRM: Salesforce, CommonGround, CivicCRM + 25 others
Email: Constant Contact, MailChimp, MyEmma + 10 others
CRM + Payments
+ Email: CivicCRM, CommonGround, DonorPerfect, DonorPro,
CivicCRM CommonGround DonorPerfect DonorPro
eTapestry, GiftWorks, Neon, GiftWorks, TrailBlazer
See the IdealWare/NTEN Low Cost Donor Management Systems
report from June 2011 at www.idealware.org for a full matrix.
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

7. www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

8. Avoiding the technology trap
g gy
• Better to be up and running than picking a technology.
• This won’t be a permanent decision, talk to some other
groups,
groups find out the drawbacks, see if you can live with
drawbacks
them, take a few demos and signup.
• You will learn more by living with a product and it’s pain
points th b agonizing over th d i i
i t than by i i the decision.
Make this decision in less than a week.
Start a list of all the things you hate about your current
product that you can use when you investigate a switch a
year from now.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

9. The first six things
g
1. Secure your domain name as a .org (get the .com if you
can). Get your twitter handle and Facebook page. For in
house email go with Google Apps for Business
email, Business.
2. Get a copy of HootSuite to manage the latter two.
3. Pick your website product and deploy Google analytics
4. Pick your email product / donation processor / crm
5. Setup
5 S t your crm / email product and put your initial list of
il d t d t i iti l li t f
supporters into them.
6. Learn how to setup donation forms. Set up unique ones
every time y have a campaign or a unique p
y you p g q pitch.
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

10. Content
Your job as a nonprofit is to define and own your issue.
You don’t want to be in the business of only talking about
yourself, so define your issue broader than just the work you
do.
do You want it to be broad enough that you talk about other
people doing similar work.
Consider yourself “The XXXXXX News Network”, where
XXXXXX is your issue.
i i
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

11. How do you g
y generate this?
Consider the following sources of information:
• Stories about your own work that you write. (hard, I
know!)
• Interviews with people relevant to your mission area
• Stories about similar work being done by other
organizations (a little easier)
• Stories and news about your mission area (let Google
News b your guide)
N be id )
• News from large companies that operate in your mission
area
• Commemorations of historical events
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

12. Example: privacy advocates
y
• Stories about their work to advocate privacy to various
governments
• Interviews with people making news in the privacy arena
(regulators, legislators, activists, victims )
(regulators legislators activists “victims”)
• Wins by other privacy organizations
• News about privacy pulled from Google News,
summarized and condensed for your audience
• P bli di l
Public disclosures (SEC filings) about privacy liabilities b
fili ) b t i li biliti by
large corporations. Other materials found in public filings
of privacy technology organizations.
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

13. Editorial schedule
Assemble all of this into an editorial schedule
Channel / Website Email Facebook Twitter
q
Frequency y (
(ASAP)) (
(Weekly)
y) (
(ASAP)
) (
(ASAP) )
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

14. Production schedule
Stories Stories about Interviews News News
about other with about about
our people s
people’s newsmakers your companies
work work area in your
area
Frequency 1x2 2x1 week 1x2 weeks 3x1 2x4 weeks
weeks week
Length 500 20 words ea. 500 words 30 500 words
words words ea.
ea.
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

15. Items 7 and 8
7. Come up with the list of content vehicles you are going
to use.
8. Create an editorial schedule and start writing!
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

16. 3 fundraising metrics
g
Donations: How often do they give you money?
This gives you an overall picture of giving during a given time period
period.
This metric will change depending on what you are doing in a given
week.
Prospects: How often do they start the process of giving you money?
This will tell you what sorts of things motivate people to give, and how
different pitches create more or less motivated donors.
Abandonment: How often do they fail to finish giving you money?
Your abandonment rate is also a sign of donor motivation. Paying
attention to it is a useful way to learn which pitches are more or less
effective.
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

17. Setting up y
g your spreadsheet
Week Unique Emails Prospects Donations Abandon Notes
ending visitors sent
8/23/10 5,632 2,500 112 65 41.9% Oprah!
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

18. Digging further
gg g
If you setup your thank you pages as “Goals” in Google Analytics, you can see
sources of donations with a custom Google Analytics report. It’s helpful to see
if people are finding you and giving after following a link from elsewhere.*
The “Traffic Sources” report in Google Analytics will tell you who is sending
you web visitors. It can be both helpful and frustrating!
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

19. Items 9 and 10
9.
9 Setup your spreadsheet to track data on a weekly basis
basis.
Configure Google Analytics to track goals and give you a report
on the sources of them.
10. Look at the data every week and ask yourself and your
colleagues:
• What did we do this week that changed our numbers?
• Is it repeatable?
• What about what I wrote was more or less effective
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

20. Turn prospective donors into donors
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
8/1/2010 9/1/2010 10/1/2010 11/1/2010 12/1/2010 1/1/2011 2/1/2011 3/1/2011 4/1/2011 5/1/2011 6/1/2011 7/1/2011
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

21. Value/Cost of X
Value of site visitor aggregate $ / unique visitors
Value of prospects aggregate $ / total prospects
Value of gift (also avg gift)
avg. aggregate $ / total gifts
How are these metrics useful?
• Benchmarking Google Grants
• Deciding whether to pursue paid media
• Cost per head of email acquisition
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

22. Sources of donations
If you’ve setup your donation form analytics correctly (not easy!), it shows
where someone came from who gave you a gift.
Particularly useful for website source.
Also provides data such as:
• Link traffic
• Search traffic (paid and organic)
• “direct” traffic
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

23. People who link to you
y
People who link to you help you (while you sleep!). Those links:
• Send you valuable traffic
• Juice your search engine rankings
• Provide free publicity
Google has already researched all the links to your site and cataloged them for
download in the Google Webmaster tool All you have to do is verify your site
tool.
with Google webmaster.
It doesn’t provide contact information, so you’ll still have to reach out to those
websites if you want to b ild a press li out of i (A d you should!)
b i build list f it. (And h ld!)
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf

24. Questions / Free E-books
The Seven Deadly Sins of Nonprofit Web Redesign
Shabbir Imber Safdar / December 2010
3 Fundraising Metrics For Your Nonprofit Website
Shabbir Imber Safdar / October 2009
Is Your Nonprofit Facebook Page Worth It?
Shabbir Imber Safdar / Shayna Englin / April 2010
www.safdaranalytics.com Twitter: @ShabbirSafdar / #thebridgeconf