Don’t Tell The Donor

*Editor’s Note: Don’t Tell The Donor is one of the hottest blogs in the sector. It’s written anonymously because the author is well known in the sector and he/she/its bosses wouldn’t be pleased. Be assured, The NonProfit Times knows the author’s identity, at least enough to write the check. You’re going to have to trust us.

Our Donors Are Talking -- What Are We Afraid Of?

How would you feel if you discovered that 500 of your donors had created a group on a social networking Web site like Facebook to publicly discuss their experiences donating to your organization?

I suspect some fundraisers would panic with a sense of fear.

Despite all the promising talk of the user-generated content in a “Web 2.0” world, there is still plenty of fear held by some nonprofit leaders regarding not being able to control what their donors would say about their organizations.

After all, who wouldn’t feel uncomfortable about walking into a room where hundreds of your friends were standing around talking about you?

It is naïve to believe that a fundraiser (or anyone else for that matter) would be able to stop online communities from eventually sharing any information with their donor peers. There is a growing sense that the tide is turning and nonprofits would be wise to get ahead of this trend by adopting a uniform approach to collecting and sharing anecdotal online donor feedback.

Online retailers like Amazon learned long ago that they could increase sales by allowing buyers to post personal feedback and ratings on their products. The online auction site eBay realized that buyers and sellers would both benefit from the trust created by a ratings system based on previous transactions.

In fact, I have a friend who refuses to book a hotel room or a vacation without first reading reviews posted to TripAdvisor to see if any recent visitors had negative experiences. Rather than scaring potential buyers away, all of these examples of user ratings systems seem to increase sales.

Currently, donors who thirst for information on whether their donation is being spent efficiently or effectively are too often left without enough information to make those decisions. Is it any surprise that faced with an absence of any real alternative, too many donors turn to simplistic (and often misleading) fundraising ratios?

Our donors will continue to turn to online communities in increasing numbers in search of the assistance in deciding where to direct their donations. Within the last three months, it seems this trend is gaining momentum.

Just last week, a U.K.-based Web site called theBigGive announced plans to allow major donors a chance to share their feedback on specific funding initiatives. In the past, the Web site enabled wealthy philanthropists to browse for charitable projects. Unfortunately, the ability to upload personal reactions to funding projects is limited to donors giving large gifts.

Last fall, Perla Ni received some great press for starting a Web site where donors and volunteers are encouraged to provide feedback on their personal experiences with their favorite charities. The Web site (GreatNonprofits.org) has been called a Zagat-style guide for nonprofits. From my experiences with the site, it appears more of a popularity contest since almost all of the comments have been glowing reviews without lots of critical or negative posts.

GreatNonprofits.org is still a relatively young Web site and the early focus of this innovative evaluation tool is limited to charities in Pittsburgh and San Francisco. Hopefully, more attention and funding will expand this model to more charities in a broader geographic area.

Google Finance provides another example of where we might be headed. On my Don’t Tell the Donor blog, I recently asked whether the online search giant was intending to make a move into GuideStar’s territory by posting key stats, ratios, management profiles, and news within a single page.

Users who enter a charity name at http://finance.google.com/finance will also find links to recent blog posts about the charity along with the ability to start an interactive discussion about the group. As the charity section of Google Finance grows in popularity, many nonprofits might find these reviews appear just as prominently as their own Web site when the name of their organization is Googled.

It wasn’t that long ago when nonprofits I knew actually sat around in meetings and debated if they should have a policy over what Web sites should be “allowed” to link to their official site. After realizing the futility of trying to control who can or cannot link to a charity’s Web site, the new line in the sand appears to be whether or not organizations who blog should allow posts from readers.

Nonprofits that attempt to limit this kind of feedback should be warned -- if you don’t allow donors to receive this type of engagement on your Web site – they will go and get it from somewhere else.