Digital Donations for the Holidays

'Tis the season of giving, and now it is easier than ever with the latest online fundraising tools.

Blackbaud Internet Solutions has partnered with The Salvation Army to strengthen the organization's fundraising capabilities and extend its donor base. The organization's Red Kettle campaign, which expanded online in recent years, raised more than $1.6 million last year. And the organization is hoping for an even better turnout this year.

"We are excited that our 2011 Online Red Kettle is the first full campaign to use Blackbaud's next-generation Friends Asking Friends solution," says Jason Wood, director of Digital Communication Services at The Salvation Army National Headquarters. "Our goal is to provide supporters with a new set of online tools that will help them become more effective fundraisers using proven online best practices. We also are aiming to engage younger donors with a fun and easy way to support The Salvation Army."  

The Friends Asking Friends product is a peer-to-peer event fundraising solution that is used by more than 800 nonprofits. The solution was developed through an evaluation of data from more than 45 million online fundraising participants and 38,000 online events, which gave insights to trends and best practices from successful online event fundraisers.

According to Blackbaud's director of enterprise Internet solutions Mark Davis, an important aspect of success for peer-to-peer fundraising is social media and mobile.

"Blackbaud's next-generation Friends Asking Friends solution will provide participants online tools that were designed based on proven techniques used by the best peer-to-peer fundraisers," says Davis. "The power of this new technology is the ability for it to guide supporters through the fundraising process from appeal to follow-up to acknowledgement. Additionally, nonprofits will have greater access to more data by being able to track participants' recruitment, retention and fundraising success over multiple years."

And in addition to powering the 2011 Online Red Kettle, Blackbaud has helped The Salvation Army transition its email marketing and online giving operations to Blackbaud Internet Solutions, which enables the organization's national headquarters to centrally manage email communication and distribute key marketing tools. Furthermore, the organization is also using other Blackbaud services, such as Blackbaud's CRM and services from Blackbaud's targeting anaytics.