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| When charity begins online |
March 17, 2008 |
 Technology is accelerating donations and improving the reach among Canada’s charitable organizations
By Sheldon Gordon
In May 2006, a Senate committee proposed the creation of a Canadian Mental Health Commission, but the federal government opted to ignore the idea for months. In light of this, the Schizophrenia Society of Canada decided to pressure the government using a grassroots campaign targeting federal MPs. It implemented a software package called e-activist 2.0 and used it to mobilize more than 800 of its supporters across Canada last January. The supporters e-mailed Members of Parliament about the issue and, just two months later, the Harper government announced it would establish the Commission. e-activist 2.0 is an online advocacy tool that can, for example, distribute a letter template to supporters and provide links to a database of federal and provincial politicians. A database of community newspapers can also be blitzed. The charity can also use the software to track the number of supporters who participate in each advocacy action and can survey that group.
“The idea is to use online advocacy in combination with other effective approaches, such as phone calls and face-to-face meetings,” said Chris Summerville, interim CEO of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada.
Charities, which were late adopters of digital technology, are now increasingly using online tools to lobby governments, raise funds and market their causes. “Charities were always two or three generations behind on the computers they were using,” said Gordon Floyd, former vice-president of public affairs at the Canadian Centre for Philanthropy. “But the gap has been closing in the last five or six years. The charities have been driven to use technology for financial reasons,” because tech aids are a cost-effective approach to lobbying, marketing and fundraising.
Advocating for change
The Schizophrenia Society is one of 25 Canadian charities that have licensed e-activist from U.K. software developer Advocacy Online. Others include World Vision Canada, the Make Poverty History campaign, the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Clean Air Coalition of B.C., the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, and Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.
This past August, when the B.C. government made a new insulin product eligible for coverage under the provincial PharmaCare program, the Canadian Diabetes Association (CDA), which had campaigned for its inclusion, used e-activist software to thank local MLAs for their support. The action let the politicians know their efforts were appreciated and built goodwill for future campaigns. The MLAs were also made aware that the CDA had communicated the government’s positive decision back to its constituents.
Advocacy Online charges an all-in licensing fee of $9,000 to provincial organizations and $14,000 to national organizations. “Its use needs to be built into an organization’s three-to- five-year advocacy plan to make the software cost-effective,” Summerville said.
e-activist 3.0, to be available in January, will make the software available as modules that can be bought à la carte. The upgrade, said Advocacy Online managing director Graham Covington, will include advanced features such as dynamic messaging, which is the ability to insert local content into the message a charity’s supporter is sending to a local rep. “It will allow messages to be more original and more targeted toward specific politicians.”
Marketing the message
Among the most important messages charities send are those intended to raise awareness among the general public. Until recently, they relied on fairly static Web sites for their online marketing efforts, but more creative Internet tactics are now being implemented. Amnesty International, the human rights group, has been using the Internet to mobilize opposition to the massacres in Darfur. The Canadian branch’s Web site has a petition urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to act. Petition signatories can indicate whether they want their identity and message to be visible on the site’s Speak Out message board.
“Most people may not have an obvious opportunity to do anything about Darfur except online,” said Tom Morris, public awareness coordinator at Amnesty. “Not only can someone sign the petition, but they can send other people a link to it so that they can sign, too.”
In a remarkable use of the online medium, Amnesty’s U.S. branch created the Eyes On Darfur Web site, which displays high-resolution real-time satellite images of a dozen vulnerable villages. The site breaks new ground in defending human rights by allowing people around the world to “watch over” the endangered population and notify their governments if the villagers are attacked.
 Smaller charities are especially inclined to use the Internet to spread their message. Ottawa-based MBAs Without Borders “is grassroots and small, so we don’t have the luxury of being a traditional NGO and putting technology on the backburner,” said co-founder Tal Dehtiar.
The organization sends experienced business volunteers to work in developing countries with local businesses and NGOs.
MBAs working in the field shoot videos of their projects and describe what they’re doing in posts to social networking sites. Dehtiar said MBAs Without Borders has 2,000 members on Facebook and it uploaded videos to YouTube shot by its volunteers in Haiti and India, with plans to add content from Colombia and Ethiopia. MBAs Without Borders also takes advantage of free advertising space on Google. Dehtiar estimates that of the 40,000 monthly visitors to his site, some 20,000 were driven by Google ads.
Christian Children’s Fund of Canada, which gives aid to children of all faiths in the developing world, is also on the cutting edge. It has posted its television commercial and other video clips on YouTube. “When we ask people who write in where they’ve heard of us, YouTube comes up a lot,” said communications manager Ian Robertson. The charity is exploring e-newsletters that would have 20-second video clips embedded, rather than relying on static text and photos.
Much needed funds
Of necessity, charities also spend a lot of time chasing donations, and technology can lend a hand here as well. CanadaHelps, itself a charitable foundation, enables donors to contribute through its Web site to 80,000 charities. In addition, 6,000 charities use a link to CanadaHelps to permit donations directly on their own Web pages. Charities are charged when a donation is actually made: three per cent of the donation, of which two per cent goes to Visa or MasterCard.
Owen Charters, executive director of CanadaHelps, said online giving is growing by 60 to 100 per cent annually. “The online world gives donors more control over their gift. You can not only give at 3:00 am in your bathrobe, but also control the information so as to remain somewhat anonymous and avoid telemarketing.”
Charities wishing to customize their donation page often turn to Artez Interactive, a Toronto software developer. It helped the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (CBCF) become the first charity to do fundraising online (once it received approval from the Canada Revenue Agency to provide electronic tax receipts).
For the Foundation’s signature event, the annual Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure, participants can register online, send e-mails from the site to potential donors across the country and then view on their Web page how much money they have raised. “It permits a different type of fundraising, one where there is a direct connection between participants and donors, where they can work together in support of the cause,” said Sharon Wood, CEO, Ontario Region.
This past October, the Run raised $26.5 million, of which $10 million came in online — up from $8 million in 2006. “Much of the online money might not have been raised through traditional means,” Wood said. Furthermore, the online tools help CBCF administer the nationwide event, significantly reduce administrative expenses through electronic tax receipting and make it easier to manage participant and donor information. It’s long been said that charity begins at home, but increasingly it begins on the home page of a Web-savvy organization.
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