Katya Andresen, COO, Network for Good

If you love data, you’re in for a treat.

Network for Good and TrueSense Marketing recently went mining through $381 million in donations through our platform. We looked at:

• 3.6 million gifts
• 1.879 million unique donors
• 66,470 different nonprofits
• Seven-year time span (2003-2009)
• Donations from a wide range of nonprofit sizes and types

The Big Finding: Relationships Matter!

When we talk tech, we tend to focus on the latest new bell, whistle, or widget for fundraising. But raising funds online is not about technology, any more than raising funds through the mail is about paper. It’s about the relationship between the nonprofit and the donor who wants to support a cause. People who give online are no different from other donors in that they expect a relationship -- not simply a transaction -- with the organization they support.

We found the following:

Ed. Note: As we prepare for the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference, we wanted share a wee bit of the wisdom our speakers will be serving up, so as not to overwhelm you when you get to Atlanta. We're asking them all to share their answers to five very important questions.

Speaker: Katya Andresen, Network for Good

Session: Persuasion for Techies: How to Win Your Supporter's Left Brain, Right Brain and Heart with Behavioral Economics

1. What's the most important trend in nonprofit technology for 2010?

Now that online outreach is coming of age, we’ll be figuring out how to integrate it fully into everything we do instead of treating it like a siloed experiment. Nonprofit techhies, this is the year we are part of the mainstream in our organizations!

2. Why do you think your session topic is important for nonprofits to address?

Well, we need to have the right messaging -- and to have that, we need to tap into human psychology and behavioral economics (my new favorite topic).

Rebecca Higman and Katya Andresen, Network for Good

Online donors can be summed up with a phrase that would make an excellent soap opera title: the young and the generous.

They tend to be under 40 and their gifts are around $100. We want more donors like them: they account for most of our acquisition, and they are a leading source of new revenue for most nonprofits.

The trick is getting them to stay once they give. We've developed some tips to help you learn how to improve your cultivation strategy (or combat a lack thereof) and what fool-proof avenue will satisfy donors and Board members alike.

Katya Andresen, Network for Good and Mark Rovner, Sea Change Strategies

Some very human principles make or break the success of absolutely everything you do online. These are the kinds of truths Buddha or Freud –- explorers of the deepest recesses of the human mind -- talked about.

To achieve true marketing "enlightenment," you need to tap into fundamental human needs with your technology rather than hoping technology can inspire alone. There are at least seven of these fundamental needs:

• To be SEEN and HEARD
• To be CONNECTED to someone or something
• To be part of something GREATER THAN OURSELVES
• To have HOPE for the future
• To have the security of TRUST
• To be of SERVICE
• To want HAPPINESS for self and others