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How to get people to sign up for easy no-cost fundraising programs? Why are people not?

charityfundraiser

Senior Member
Messages
140
Location
SF Bay Area
I've been posting about easy no-cost (money nor time) fundraising programs from time to time for a couple years, such as eScrip and Benefit Mobile. In that time, exactly 1 person other than myself has signed up. Based on thread view counts, I estimate that maybe 100-200 people have seen the posts. So there is an action rate of maybe 0.5%.

The average person who uses eScrip and Benefit could contribute somewhere between $200-1000 per year at no cost to themselves in money nor time (maybe a few minutes). There are tens of thousands of people on these forums plus Facebook and Twitter. If only 100 people acted on these fundraising programs, that would be enough money to hire a researcher (which Ron Davis said is basically the bottleneck).

So can I get some help debugging this?

Many people sign up for AmazonSmile to earn 0.5% for a ME/CFS nonprofit. The average person contributes probably less than $5/yr from AmazonSmile to ME/CFS nonprofits. With the same amount of time and effort, a one-time sign-up that you never need to look at again, on eScrip you can earn 5% (10X the rate) and on a higher spending amount (since I think households spend more on groceries than on Amazon), to come out to several hundred dollars per year.
Why are people willing to sign up for AmazonSmile to contribute less than $5 but not for eScrip to contribute hundreds of dollars per year?
Is a 5 minute sign-up for eScrip vs. a 1 minute sign up for AmazonSmile the difference?
Are people afraid to give their credit card number to eScrip but not to Amazon?
Do people not understand the math? $5 vs. $500?
Do people not read posts in the Fundraising topic category much?
Inertia?
Would people sign up if someone such as Jen Brea spread the same message? Or if the message was posted via OMF Facebook page?

Similar questions for Benefit Mobile where you just use e-gift cards on your smartphone instead of your credit/debit card to pay for purchase at a vast number of U.S. retailers and their payouts are on average about 5%, 10X higher than the AmazonSmile and iGive programs that people are participating in.

What would get you to sign up?
 

MEPatient345

Guest
Messages
479
I have never seen your posts about this, or heard about these services, so yes it may be the forum you are using. I think if you get OMF, MEAction, and Solve to post about this on their Facebook and Twitter feeds all in one week, you may get more attention.

Something quick that defines the audience, service and benefit like “Are you in the US and order prescriptions online? Then sign up for escrip and send 5% of your annual payments to an ME charity. Do it today, takes 30 seconds!”

Make sure you include a link. (I don’t know from your above post what escrip actually is or who it’s for, and there is no link).

Hope it’s successful :)
 

charityfundraiser

Senior Member
Messages
140
Location
SF Bay Area
Thanks, Silencio! I did find that starting off with a question defining the audience seemed to work when I posted about Giving Tuesday last year. Your example sounds like when I've tried to write Google Adwords. You seem pretty good at it. :) Hope you don't mind if I use that as a template.

I didn't include the info about the programs in this thread since I had posted them under the Fundraising category. I was trying to use that as a smaller testing ground before asking the nonprofits to post on their sites.