Fundraising Sites Worth Seeing

by Nick Allen

www.wwf.org - World Wildlife Fund

Clean, good-looking homepage with appealing animals front and center. Involvement devices include a free WWF screensaver (in exchange for your name and e-mail address). Nice promotion of Smart Money magazine's "top environmental charity" rating of WWF. (WWF International has another site at www.panda.org with a huge database of information and join options for dozens of countries and currencies.)


www.supportunicef.org - Unicef

Section of the Unicef site where you can make contributions, buy greeting cards, get a screensaver when you answer a survey, and find out how to help the 1 million Somalis affected by recent flooding. Soon you'll be able to send an electronic UNICEF greeting card from the site.


www.tnc.org - The Nature Conservancy

Among many cool features, the "Adopt-a-Bison" section shows photos of Buster, Hickory, Prairie Chief, Sweet Pea, and Thunderfoot and invites visitors to contribute: "Yes! I want to adopt a bison at $35.00 each and help The Nature Conservancy make sure there will be a Tallgrass Prairie where these magnificent animals can roam. Please send my official adoption certificate(s) plus a year's subscription to Prairie Thunder." (I adopted two of them, but they're eating me out of house and home...)

The site averages 3 million hits - about 80,000 visitors - per month, twice as much traffic as a year before. Between 50 and 60 new members are joining online every month, with an average gift above $25 (higher than in the mail). With minimum promotion, the Adopt-a-Bison and Adopt-an-Acre pages are bringing in about 20 gifts a month (at $35).


www.edf.org - Environmental Defense Fund

EDF offers free Web memberships, primarily to build its sophisticated e-mail activist alert system. The system allows EDF to target its members by state or Congressional district, then send them e-mail alerts which they can use to send faxes by simply replying to the e-mail - without going to the Web or making a call.

"Welcome! EDF Web Membership is free. Join today and enjoy these benefits. Receive FREE an EDF 'Nature Journal' Pocket Diary...Receive e-mail updates on exciting additions to our site. Read stories in the EDF LETTER before they are mailed to our regular members. Join in EcoForum discussions of timely environmental issues."

Another EDF site, www.scorecard.org, gives you incredible information about toxics in your neighborhood and what you can do about it - just enter your zip. This site is not yet seeking contributions.


www.aclu.org - American Civil Liberties Union

Huge site with information on dozens of issues. In a section on sexual privacy, the site says, "If you agree and wish to support our work against criminal sodomy laws and on behalf of the people they harm, you can become a member of the ACLU. Just click."

The Cyberliberties section, not surprisingly, is the most visited and the largest source of online contributions.


www.worldvision.org - World Vision

This dynamic site presents the digital version of the child sponsorship TV infomercials. For a while, the site featured photos and brief bios of children you could sponsor - and you could pledge your support instantly with a credit card.

You can also revisit Ethiopia, where the famine added tens of thousands of donors to the files of World Vision and other relief organizations.


www.cancer.org - American Cancer Society

Another large site with numerous gift options. You can sign up online for the Relay for Life event in your community or make a memorial gift, which could be developed into a significant source of income (and convenience).


www.nonprofitauction.com - NonProfitAuction.com/NetConex

This company - which closed its doors in June 1998 - specializes in managing online auctions for charities. Last year's auction of items related to Riven, the computer game, raised $20,000 for Oxfam America. (Site may be taken down any time.)


msuinfo.ur.msstate.edu/annual - Mississippi State University Annual Fund

A simple site that has raised over $20,000 for the university's annual fund.


www.alumni.berkeley.edu - UC Berkeley's California Alumni Association

Click on "Free Cal Alumni E-mail Forwarding" to see the feature that universities are increasingly offering alumni - a convenience that will also enable the universities to stay in touch with alums for fundraising purposes.


www.campaign.ucla.edu - UCLA's Campaign UCLA

Campaign site offers a variety of giving options, including a full range of planned gifts. One suggestion: a $5,000 gift in four quarterly installments.


Nick Allen is president of donordigital.com, which helps nonprofits do online fundraising, marketing, and advocacy. With Mal Warwick and Michael Stein, he is author of the first book on online fundraising, Fundraising on the Internet. E-mail Nick, or call (510) 647-2700, or visit his web site at www.donordigital.com.

Other articles on Fundraising and marketing on the Internet
• Raising money on the Internet
• Does your organization need a Web site?
• Using e-mail to cultivate donors
• 10 ways to get more people to your site
• University fundraising online
• Online guides for donors