Nonprofits

Why do nonprofits need ecommerce? Just because you're a nonprofit doesn't mean you don't make money. Nonprofits still need income. In some cases, ecommerce can offer nonprofits new income streams.

Donations
First and foremost, ecommerce allows nonprofits to accept donations online. That can be huge. Rather than losing money to credit card processing fees, the ease of online donations can actually boost income and bring in new donors. Score.

Fundraising is often about minimizing barriers to giving, and online donations is one of the easiest ways to do it. It's full of benefits:

• Instant: No waiting for checks in the mail, no trip to the bank to make deposits. The transaction takes place immediately and processing begins right away.
• Available 24/7: Your supporters can donate whenever they want. No call center hours to worry about.
• No Staffing: There's no extra staff time to facilitate online donations. Once you set it up it's all automatic.
• Recurring Donations: Instead of simply accepting one-time donations you can encourage supporters to set up recurring donations. They can set up weekly, monthly or annual giving that automatically makes a donation. This can be an easy way to encourage a larger gift—$10 per month is easy on the wallet but adds up over the year.
• Donor List: It's easy to capture member data online and build your donor list. Opt-in subscription checkboxes can quickly and easily add donors to your email list. That helps build a donor list that's easier to track and ultimately more effective.
• More Options: You can give more options, which can encourage more donations. Accept credit cards, PayPal, Dwolla, bank transfers and more. Make it easier for people and let them donate however they want.

Online donations will incur some expenses. You've got credit card transaction fees as well as any set up and maintenance fees. But most nonprofits see an increase in donations and donors by accepting online donations. In most cases those 2-3% credit card fees will be more than offset by the increases.

Get the Most Out of Online Donations
If you're going to do online donations, you'll want to get the most out of them. You can't just add a donation page, bury it on your site and expect the donations to roll in. Like any marketing effort, you'll need to put some work into the rollout.

• Prominent: First, you need to make your donation button prominent. It should be part of your main menu or otherwise easily accessible from every page. Eager donors shouldn't have to hunt for it.
• Simple: Keep the donate form simple. You don't want to require too much information. It's important to grab an email address and add people to your list if you can, but each extra step or field in a form is like a roadblock.
• Answer Questions: Transparency is important for donors, so make sure you're answering questions and confronting any confusion with online donations. Let people know where donations go, make it clear if the donation is tax deductible and if you send a receipt.
• Trustworthy: You need to prove you're trustworthy. Provide links to financial accountability information, like annual reports or Form 990s.
• Security: Use the top notch SSL certification (it's what gives you the 's' in https://), even if it's not required. It's a good way to protect customer data and the top SSL certificate will build more trust with your donors.
• Disclosure: Have a clear privacy policy that states what you will and won't do with donor information. Link to a full-blown, legalese-infested privacy policy if the lawyers demand it, but give a simple summary the rest of us can understand on the donate page. Being up front about this is another way to build trust.
• Prove It: People donate to nonprofits when they believe in the mission and see real results. An important way to encourage donations is to prove you're doing what you say you're doing. You should have some sort of news or reporting section on your site where you can talk about your accomplishments.

It doesn't have to be a lot of patting your own back—it could be more of a celebration. But show people their donations are doing good. It's another way to build trust.

Noticing a theme there? A good way to encourage more donations is to build trust. This should be foundational stuff in the nonprofit world. But it's important to remember to include all those pieces when you add the online donation component.

Subscriptions, Memberships & More
Another approach is to take your donations up a notch. Instead of just accepting donations, offer more for your donors.

Recurring income is always a good way to go and offering subscriptions or memberships can be simple ways for nonprofits to encourage recurring giving. It could be a "suggested but not required" subscription to your newsletter or a membership that gives donors special access.

Another approach is to encourage donations with a gift catalog model. You make it clear exactly how much donation dollars help by matching them up to specific things. Oxfam has done this for years by allowing you to give gifts of livestock. Matching a specific gift to a price tag can make giving more concrete in donors' minds.

What's more engaging? $50 worth of unspecified aid to a needy family or a live goat, a living gift that keeps on giving? There's a story with giving a goat that will resonate with donors.

Events
Ecommerce for nonprofits isn't just about accepting donations. Nonprofits have other needs, like event registration. You could sell tickets online and simplify things for everyone. And you don't have to be a huge organization to make ecommerce for events work.

It works just as well for small events as big ones. No more mailing checks or having that one poor person toting around an envelope stuffed with cash and checks for weeks on end.

Online event registration makes it easier to track numbers, limit attendance, and raise or lower prices as needed (early bird deals, last minute discount, late comer price increase, etc.). You can also send tickets via email and not deal with the delay and expense of the mail.

Selling Stuff
And of course nonprofits can sell stuff just like anyone else. We'll talk more specifically about what you can sell and how to do it in later chapters, but there are tons of options for nonprofits.

If you create any kind of content there are ways to gather that material into a product you can sell. Letters from a founder, blog posts from a traveling worker, articles from a CEO or sermons from a pastor could all be turned into ebooks. If your organization has done any events or conferences with speakers you could be creating DVDs or selling the videos online.

Nonprofits have a tendency to give things away for free.

That can be a great strategy to get your message out there, but not everything has to be free. Maybe those blog posts or online videos are free, but when you collect them into an ebook or a DVD, you charge for it. You'd be surprised at how willing people are to pay for content, even if it's available elsewhere for free. People are more than willing to support your organization and they're also willing to pay for the convenience of getting everything in one place.

Ecommerce for Nonprofits
All of these options can be newfound income streams for your organization. As the unsteady economy of the past few years has shown, that kind of diversification can be an important foundation for the future.