NonProfits: List Building for Email Donations

Nonprofit organizations also struggle with building their email lists. We had a person on our call last night who works for a Breast Cancer charity. They have the additional challenge of avoiding spam filters when they put their name in their email subject lines.

Here is a recent report from M+R Strategic Services and the Advocacy Institute, as reported by the Getting Attention blog.

• More Donations Online - Nonprofits raised 40% more money online in 2005 than the year before, likely driven by the cataclysmic Asian tsunami.
• Email Overload - The rates at which online constituents open their emails declined from 30% in 2003-2004 to 26% in 2004-2005 as supporters became overwhelmed with email.
• Budgets Matter - Nonprofits with larger online budgets had better online programs, building larger email lists, generating more online activism, and raising more money online.
• Email Lists Growing - On average, the nonprofits studied more than doubled their existing email lists over a 12-month period.
• Lots of Bad Email Addresses - For most nonprofits, over a quarter of email addresses on their list go bad each year.
• Activism More Popular Than Donations - Not surprisingly, more email subscribers took online political action than made an online donation — 47% vs. 6%.