Abstract | Methods | Results | Discussion | Conclusion

Abstract

The results of the first Nonprofit Email Survey are in. We surveyed 900 nonprofit organizations with an eight question instrument. The median size of organizations surveyed had between 1000 and 2500 stakeholders, but the range was from almost none to over 5 million.

Some of the highlights of the raw results include:

• 44% of organizations have email addresses for fewer than 20% of their supporters
• 64% of organizations do not collect email addresses on their web site
• 75% of organizations cannot survey their stakeholders online
• 78% of organizations do not have an email strategy

More interestingly, many of the answers clustered tightly into a set of benchmarks: collecting email addresses on the web site, publishing email newsletters, building the capacity to survey stakeholders online, and having an email strategy.

Methods

In the wake of the Email Manifesto, we surveyed 900 nonprofit organization representatives on their use of email. We used an eight question instrument, in which we asked:

1. Do you collect email addresses on your web site?
2. Do you publish electronic newsletters?
3. Do you publish paper newsletters?
4. For what percent of your stakeholders do you have email addresses?
5. How many stakeholders do you have?
6. Are you able to survey stakeholders online?
7. Can you do email fundraising?
8. Do you have an email strategy?

Our sampling method was self selection and our promotional mechanism was online. We conducted the survey through a web based instrument (Social Ecology's platform) tied to the email promotion of the survey. The answers were based entirely upon self assessment and self reporting.

Results

Highlights

The overall results for each question are displayed visually below. Not all respondents answered every question.

"DI one" "DI two" "DI three" "DI four" "DI five" "DI six" "DI seven" "DI eight"

The survey also asked for the organization's web site URL, which provides an interesting basis for comparison. Although we did not do any web site analysis, we did record that 725 respondents (or over 80%) have a web site.

Correlations

We did crosstabulations for five key indicators. Every single one of them correlated positively, some of them quite dramatically.

The following table compared the survey results for positive and negative answers for each of the five indicators. Percentage answers for each of the other four indicators are provided, along with a ratio indicating the difference. For example: Respondents who were able to conduct online surveys were five times more likely to say they could do email fundraising. For questions where there was not a simple Yes or No option provided, answers have been aggregated.

Discussion

There are several limitations to this research.

There are problems with the sample: (1) Respondents self selected. (2) They were drawn from a pool of mailing list subscribers. (3) They were responding through a web based survey tool. It is very likely that these three factors skew the result toward a higher level of online sophistication.

There are potential problems with the survey questions: (1) Some options to the survey questions are subject to varying interpretation as a result of their non-numerical nature. (2) Some of the answers are deliberately informal, which may have increased our participation rate, but increased the room for varying interpretations of the options.

Finally, there are the inevitable problems with studies of correlations. Without greater analysis, controls, and time testing, we cannot be certain that predictive factors are indeed causal.

This is the first large scale survey of its kind and, despite limitations, there are many interesting patterns worth looking at.

The first and most important observation is that nonprofits have not taken advantage of email in their work. Despite the overwhelming role that email plays in the success of the online marketing efforts of the for profit sector, despite the importance of email to users of the Internet, nonprofits have not integrated email into their communication.

Instead, nonprofits have fallen prey to the lure of the stand alone web site. Over 80% of our respondents had web sites, but nearly 80% did not have an email strategy, even as an afterthought.

Even though one of the greatest things a web site can do for a nonprofit is bring them new stakeholders, almost two thirds of our respondents fail to give visitors a way to offer their email addresses.

Second, the strong clustering of five indicators is an important pattern. Nonprofit organizations that understand one aspect of email tend to understand other aspects. Further, the five factors probably support each other, in that each one is in some way enabling of the others.

The dramatic correlation between the ability to survey stakeholders and the ability to raise money from them by email is worth pointing out. Organizations which can survey their stakeholders were five times more likely to be able to do email fundraising. The Internet is a powerful direct marketing medium and it makes sense that organizations who work to get to know their stakeholders online would be able to raise money from them the same way.

Conclusion

At least two important questions remain open for further work:

Although it's clear that some organizations are far more sophisticated about email in their work, we don't yet know what impact this has on their work. How does it help them meet their objectives? How do we learn what works and what doesn't for those nonprofit organizations that are trying to integrate email into their work? We need large scale, numerical studies conducted under controlled circumstance to pull us past the trap of thinking that anecdotes describe best practices.

We also need to understand the clustered factors in more detail. Exactly how do nonprofits become more connected through email? We need to indentify the patterns and systems that underly the correlations discovered in this report. We need to look at how these various pieces fit together and can be used to inform the planning and practices of nonprofit organizations.

As those questions start getting answered, one conclusion is very clear:

More than any other medium, it is email that actually connects people to each other online. To the extent that nonprofit organizations have not integrated email into the management of their stakeholder relationships, they remain profoundly disconnected.