Cybergifts - using the Internet in library fund-raising

Library Trends, Wntr, 2000 by Adam Corson-Finnerty

The statistics are staggering: total pieces of first class mail delivered in 1998 was 107 billion; total pieces of e-mail delivered in 1998 was 3.4 trillion (Business 2.0, April 1999).

The total marginal transport cost of sending first class mail to 100 additional addresses is $33.00. The total marginal cost of sending e-mail to 100 or 1 million additional addresses is $0.

Surveys indicate that 80 percent of the people who plunk down hard money for an Internet Service Provider cite e-mail as their main motivation. Many of us have older relatives who acquire computer systems in their 70s and 80s to join the e-mail circle that children and grandchildren have created. Children thought the Web was boring (especially at pre-cable-modem speeds) but have abandoned television and even the phone for e-mail.

Earlier, we cited the USA Today cover story on the astonishing success of MoveOn.org. Says Joan Blades: "[Online giving] makes it simpler for people to contribute. You don't even have to find a stamp. It's pretty danged easy" (Drinkard, 1999, p. 1A). It's pretty danged easy, says the woman who has raised more money online than anyone else. What made it easy was the high level of political passion that Boyd and Blades tapped into. They did not accomplish their results through direct mail or even direct e-mail. They were successful because people passed the message on to their friends through chain e-mail.

The power of chain e-mail is tremendous. Chain e-mail is not spam, though sometimes it feels like it. Chain e-mail is what one friend passes along to another. If it is something that people feel passionate about, or think is funny, or cute, or insightful, or compelling, or alarming; it can literally go around the world in minutes.

This past spring, a fifth grade class in a small Canadian town sent an e-mail out into the ether. They told the recipients that they were trying an experiment. Their teacher had told them that e-mail connects people all over the world. They asked anyone who got the message to pass it along, and to e-mail back to them and say where they lived in the world. They said they wanted to see how far the message would travel in thirty days. Many recipients (including this author's wife as well as the editor of this issue of Library Trends) responded and passed the message on. After a day, participants received an automatically-generated message from the school's ISP. Messages were avalanching in to the school. The responses had shut down their computer after the first few days.

Chain e-mail can be a very powerful marketing tool. In fact, it already has been dubbed viral marketing. Viral marketing is just an electronic version of "word of mouth" marketing. MoveOn.org will not be the only NPO to profit from this technique. How can other nonprofits use viral marketing and chain e-mail for fund-raising?

CLICK TO GIVE

Tim Snyder, director of Advancement Technologies for Wake Forest University, recently discussed the establishment of online credit card giving mechanisms and its results in an e-mail exchange with this author. Wake Forest is using this technology very effectively. A number of Web-based gifts have been made, some in the $5,000 range. An e-mail with a link back to the giving site has proven an impressive way to collect on unpaid phonathon pledges. In fact, one alum who received an e-mail Annual Giving solicitation wrote back saying that if they promised to never phone solicit him again, but used e-mail instead, he would double his pledge.