Introduction
Small charities frequently encounter the problem of gaining donors or the source of regular donations to support their operations. As a result, a substantial body of literature emerged in an effort to alleviate the issue as well as organizations that gather donations for an array of charities on their part. These platforms attract people with their reliability, accessibility, and sophisticated marketing – the elements that are difficult to achieve for individual small charities. Although charities and non-profit organizations aim to complete missions that benefit societies at large, methods that they employ potentially require determination and focus on a specific goal. Designing an effective strategy that would revolve around a core idea is the approach that is popular with non-profit organizations for its efficacy and could still need substantial assistance for implementation.
Executive Summary
Raising awareness of autism spectrum disorder and collecting funds to help children suffering from it access educational and recreational services is the task that one BLUE HEART at a time undertakes. Nevertheless, charities frequently face several obstacles when trying to complete their missions, such as lack of exposure, public trust, support from the government, and numerous others that aggravate the problem of regular charitable donations flow. Maximizing the charitable organization’s potential to collect giving is the area in which platforms and organizations explicitly designed for this purpose operate; still, a charity’s team is capable of effectuating changes on their own. In the case of one BLUE HEART at a time, several areas that need improvement were indicated, and the paper serves to delineate them as well as enhancement methods. It also encompasses questions related to methods to increase charitable donations, their effectuation time-frame, and expected results.
After investigation, it was established that the visual content of a website could impact an individual’s decision to donate. For instance, personal stories that feature images of faces tend to increase sympathy and compassion, which can provoke the desire to contribute to the cause (Mulder & Joireman, 2016). Furthermore, the peculiarities of raise-funding events and cultural impact on their financial output were discussed. Employing cause-focused campaigning on social media platforms and non-monetary incentives were recommended. Consequently, deliverables were outlined, and as a result of the recommendations, outcomes indicating a possible improvement in the donation flow (311.54%. ROI). It can be concluded that the designed methods could positively affect the charity under consideration, increasing its charitable donations, and thus assisting in completing its objectives.
Current Situation and Potential Solutions
One BLUE HEART at a time is a charity designed to raise funds for children with an autism spectrum disorder. It attracts attention to a public health problem affecting a large number of people across the country – the initiative to start the charity belongs to Stephanie Perez, a mother whose son happens to suffer from the disorder. This developmental disability is projected to become more frequent and concern a gradually growing number of people in the near future. A potential increase in the commonality of the disorder renders the awareness programs, organizations that provide services for people on the autism spectrum disorder increasingly essential for the well-being of the country. The primary service that one BLUE HEART at a time offers is fund-raising events for its cause, which due to the pandemic, can be postponed indefinitely. Taking this fact into consideration, it may seem that the organization needs to reconsider how it searchers and gathers voluntary financial contributions to be able to continue its functioning.
From the look of the charity’s website and its social media following numbers, one BLUE HEART at a time could be characterized as a rather small-scale charity to which the general public does not have significant exposure. This conclusion serves as a basis for the hypothesis that the charity would benefit from a change in its strategy and the ways it operates. Furthermore, the site does not reflect up-to-day information that can be found on the charity’s social media accounts and is uncomfortable in navigation. Assistance from a service aimed at individual organizations is what the charity under consideration could require to attract donations and gain public attention; the change can also happen under the influence within, initiated by its workers and volunteers. Therefore, it can be concluded that One BLUE HEART at the time is in need of a service or team effort that would refine its methods to donation-raising, especially in terms of their charity campaigning.
Objectives and Approaches
Varied approaches to increase charitable donations were elaborated and can be applied to one BLUE HEART at the time. For instance, one of the areas that researchers examine particularly in-depth is the relationships between the feeling of personal responsibility and donors’ engagement. Chen (2020) demonstrated that campaigns that create a semblance of heightened personal role of donors tend to increase their donations – the finding poses marketing implications for one BLUE HEART at the time. It also should be noted that this perception is principally achieved by changes in the advertisement strategy (Chen, 2020). Since the charity’s website can be regarded as a form of advertisement, its content could be revised. For instance, the homepage presents the story of the charity’s creation with a strong focus on its founder, a mother of a child on the autism spectrum disorder. It is possibly advisable to shift attention to the children’s stories, engaging a more extensive audience emotionally.
Another change could concern how one BLUE HEART at the time governs content on its social media. Its Instagram account serves to promote and inform followers about donation‑raising events (the charity’s main service) – their descriptions, to a considerable extent, revolve around the event’s features and material substance. Since cause-focused (as opposed to product-focused) campaigning was proven to be more productive, descriptions that accentuate the charity’s mission and goals rather than activities that would occur there should be incorporated (Chen, 2020). Additionally, advertisements and announcements that have individual faces on them may provoke an empathetic response from a looker and heighten the feeling of relatedness, leading to a higher likelihood of a charitable donation (Mulder & Joireman, 2016). Considering this statement, Instagram seems like a well-suited platform to exercise the outlined principle. Therefore, the content accessible on the social media accounts and site of one BLUE HEART at the time can play a significant role in donors’ engagement levels.
Investigating peculiarities of the community in which the charity operates also seems helpful in creating more comprehensive pictures of stimuli that would work in its particular case. The events organized by one BLUE HEART at the time can be an effective method to gather donations directly. Individualistic cultures, including the one prevailing in the United States, cultivate susceptibility to the observer effect (Siemens et al., 2020). Consequently, a person is more likely to donate under the weight of social pressure, for instance, in a gathering. Although such events as annual or even quarterly receptions can require substantial expenditures, they have the potential to cover costs with the price of tickets or donations gathered. However, given the current health-care situation, the implementation of this method should be postponed.
In addition to alternations that concern social networks, incentives in the form of gifts or gift cards should be considered. Charity gift cards present potential donors with multiple choices for their giving and by facilitating the process, create a sense of autonomy and association that increases the likelihood of continuing donations (Mulder & Joireman, 2016). As the charity under consideration directs its efforts at one principal cause, an extensive choice set that charity gift cards offer does not coincide with its needs. As an alternative, another non-monetary incentive in the form of small gifts can be utilized – they are useful for long-term campaigns and sustaining communal norms (Yin et al., 2020). Hats and t-shirts with the logo of one BLUE HEART at the time can serve this purpose and constitute a gift that directly relates to the organization’s cause, makes its community visually identifiable, and is cost-efficient. Nevertheless, this method has several limitations – non-monetary incentives, in contrast to monetary ones, do no increase giving as efficiently.
Deliverables
Given the potential impossibility to implement some of the recommended above methods in the near future, the planned results need to be adjusted. Certain approaches do not require large gatherings and can be effectuated through the usage of digital technologies. Specifically, the effectuation of the next actions is advisable over the following four-month in the fixed sequence:
- Assign or employ a person who would be responsible for the charity’s social media.
- The person necessitates taking a social media marketing course, which frequently can be accomplished over short time periods.
- The visual component and content of the website need to be revisited.
- With the help of a website builder, a more appealing visual representation of the content should be achieved.
- Establish the required amount of customized items for gifts.
- Select a company producing customizable hats and t-shirts.
- Prepare the gifts for their shipping to potential donors.
- Send the hats or t-shirts with a delayed appeal for support.
The Implementation Costs
The changes were selected with the consideration for the charity’s resources and how they can be economized without a decrease in efficiency. Educating in-depth a person who is already responsible for the charity’s social medial representation through free online courses and available literature can be a reasonable alternative for a social media manager. Using a website builder in contrast to buying a template is less complicated and requires an average expenditure of two hundred dollars. A customized hat is less expensive than a t-shirt, and its size can be adjusted; typically, the price is twenty dollars (less if bought in large quantities) including the average cost of shipping; the final cost is twenty-six dollars. Thus, the presupposed budget is one thousand three hundred (provided that the number of potential donors is fifty). If considering that the average online donation size is 107 dollars, ROI would be 311.54% (Smith, 2016). In this case, the indicator is mostly dependent on the received donations which are complicated to predict.
References
Chen, M. Y. (2020). Portraying product or cause in charity advertising: How execution style and appeal type affects prosocial attitudes by enhancing perceived personal roles. International Journal of Advertising, 39(3), 342–364.
Mulder, M. R., & Joireman, J. (2016). Encouraging charitable donations via charity gift cards: A self-determination theoretical account. Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, 28(3), 234–251.
Siemens, J. C., Raymond, M. A., Choi, Y., & Choi, J. (2020). The influence of message appeal, social norms and donation social context on charitable giving: Investigating the role of cultural tightness-looseness. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 1–9.
Smith, A. (2016). Shared, Collaborative and On Demand: The New Digital Economy. Pew Research Center. Web.
Yin, B., Li, Y. J., & Singh, S. (2020). Coins are cold and cards are caring: The effect of pregiving incentives on charity perceptions, relationship norms, and donation behavior. Journal of Marketing, 1–17.