I’d Like To A/B That!

Philanthropy.com published an article on 12/10/2010 by Raymund Flandez that reports nonprofit orgs raise more money directly through their own websites as opposed to third party portals. At the same time, the article indicates that donation pages and shopping carts managed by a third party provider that maintain the organization’s branding and/or display the name prominently are just as effective…

This isn’t earth shattering news but it is wonderful to have some reliable statistics to reference. For many nonprofit organizations, especially those in the orchestra field that don’t control their own box office, using a third party provider to process online donations is a godsend. As such, it is clear that when choosing a provider, organizations need to investigate whether or not the provider offers cost effective options that provide the branded or integrated options.

If nothing else, it would be interesting to find a few groups that haven’t engaged online giving or are in the process of redesigning their existing offering to see about putting together some A/B testing to determine which options/configurations and checkout processes are the most effective.