iRaiser, partner of the FAB, helps nonprofits with digital fundraising solutions. It is their mission to empower charities, hospitals, museums, schools, religious institutions and political parties to raise more funds. Gilles Van Doosselaere is Country Manager for iRaiser Benelux.
iRaiser keeps on investing in developing their 4 major tools for fundraisers. A CRM software with the latest technologies. Second is their online donation platform to create unlimited fundraising campaigns. This is currently the most used iRaiser product, it is used by many NGO’s (Medecins Sans Frontières, UNICEF, Amnesty, Red Cross, …).
As a third tool for fundraisers they have a Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Platform. Gilles explains: “We have been rebuilding our Peer-to-Peer platform completely this year and onboarded our first customers on this brand new platform which is very promising. We see that Peer-to-Peer fundraising is increasing. It was already widely used in the US and UK for years, but also in the Nordics, Netherlands and keeps increasing in France. In Belgium, there is still a way to go to put P2P in the habits of giving, but I am convinced it will happen. And as a fourth tool we have our Crowdfunding platform. Every tool is is linked and synchronised with the CRM to provide the best possible experience.”
Shift to more digital
Gilles: “Because of the COVID pandemic digital fundraising was a fallback for many non profits, since some of the traditional fundraising channels were difficult to put in place, such as street fundraising, door-to-door and events. Digital was the main alternative, together with mailing and telemarketing. Many events were changed to digital alternatives through our solutions, we saw many new creative ways to raise funds through the Peer-to-Peer platform for example. So our clients actually managed really well to raise funds through these difficult times by rethinking their way to fundraise."
COVID Benchmark Belgium 2020
The COVID benchmark by iRaiser pointed out that in 2020 the average gift given on iRaiser platforms in Belgium was 83 euro (single gifts only included). The average single gift had also increased by 20%. Based on a panel of clients active since January 2019, digital fundraising in Belgium has increased in 2020 by 106% in value, from 4,8 million euros in 2019 to 9,8 million in 2020.
What was striking is that 62% of single gifts in 2020 were done during the last term of the year. And also the conversion rate is much higher in November and December. “This can of course be explained by the campaigns that lots of organisations have at the end of the year and by the fact that many companies or people make a donation at the end of the year for tax reasons.”
“We were excited to work for several beautiful Belgian charities this year”, Gilles states. “We are particularly proud of working on regular basis with CAP48, Télévie, KBS, and at least 19 of the top 30 fundraisers in Belgium. We helped Red Cross Belgium raise more than 1.5 million euro in 2 days time for the floodings appeal in July.” Another special project iRaiser is working on is the TGE, Transnational Giving Europe Network. *
More online giving
Gilles: “People are definitely giving more online: we see this trend everywhere in Europe. Belgium’s online donations are behind the other European countries, except for Germany and Italy. And this is not because people don’t want to give online, it is because they are not given the opportunities to do so. Very little investments are done in these countries for digital marketing campaigns which is a pity as online campaigns do work. So digital is definitely growing. New payment methods are coming, crypto currency, mobile giving, AI, … It will help to make it even bigger. The thing that we should not forget also is that the old generations of donors, on which many charities still rely, will die. The boomers are the next big generation that will give and this generation is used to online giving so if no investment is done now in digital to prepare this shift, many charities that still rely on mailing for their fundraising, will suffer. Also, we see that the number of young donors is increasing year after year. You don’t talk to them with mailing nor telemarketing: digital is the only way to reach this audience.”
Feel free to download the iRaiser Benchmark 2020 and their COVID Benchmark 2020. End of March 2022 iRaiser will publish their Benchmark for 2021.
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More information on the Transnational Giving Europe network * The TGE network covers 21 countries and enables donors, both corporations and individuals, resident in one of the participating countries, to financially support non-profit organizations in other member states, while benefiting directly from the tax advantages provided for in the legislation of their country of residence. Examplehere |
