Online Guides for Donors

by Nick Allen

You can use the Web - your own site and several sites dedicated to nonprofits - to provide information to existing and prospective donors.

Of course, your site should tell donors all about your work, how you spend your money, who's on your board and staff, and much more. All the financial and other reports in your annual report can be posted on your Web site. Most Web visitors aren't interested in this level of detail, so this information probably shouldn't get prominent play on your home page.

GuideStar, VolunteerMatch, Idealist, and the Internet Nonprofit Center all contain searchable information on thousands of nonprofits. The National Charities Information Bureau and the Better Business Bureau also have lots of information on charities, though some of their ranking methods are dubious and incomplete. All these sites furnish prospective donors information about the charities they are considering. So you want to make sure your organization's information is up-to-date and as attractive as these sites' formats will allow.

GuideStar is an impressive site with information on more than 600,000 U.S. charities, drawn from IRS records. While much of it dates from 1993 reports, GuideStar has an ambitious plan - and a large foundation-supplied budget - to update information this year on the 180,000 largest and most active nonprofits. In addition, GuideStar invites organizations to update their entries either online (free) or by mail ($25). More than 2,500 groups have done so to date. Groups without a Web site can also create a page of information free at GuideStar.

Idealist, run by Action Without Borders, also invites nonprofits to list themselves with program and contact information, though it does not start with GuideStar's huge database.

VolunteerMatch, "where volunteering begins," is an online center for finding volunteers and volunteer opportunities. Groups list themselves free in a directory, along with their volunteer needs. Visitors can enter their zip codes, then look at volunteer opportunities in their areas by type of organization.

Recruiting donors is not the principal purpose of any of these sites, but they all hope they can help this way. GuideStar's mission includes helping "nonprofit practitioners enjoy lower fundraising costs." Their dream is that donors will more actively seek out charities, using the extensive information and links on the GuideStar site, rather than give mainly in response to costly direct mail or phone appeals. While this goes against most of our experiences - you have to ask if you want people to give - it could certainly have some incremental effects.

Meanwhile, FINCA, a D.C.-based international aid organization, reports getting a $5,000 donation from a woman who found FINCA on GuideStar, contacted the organization, and then was invited to visit.

In any case, as more and more potential donors are using the Web and may check out your organization online, it's worthwhile to make sure you're listed effectively, and that you update the often outdated and inaccurate picture provided by IRS 990 records and other public information. In addition, new regulations require that tax-exempt organizations make information "widely available," and the Web is an ideal tool for this kind of accountability.


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?
• Fundraising sites worth seeing
• Using e-mail to cultivate donors
• 10 ways to get more people to your site
• University fundraising online