Drivers and Inhibitors of Online Donations to Nonprofit Organizations

Despite the overall economic and social importance of nonprofit organizations and the plethora of schol- arly literature on electronic commerce, few authors have combined these two fields to tackle the issue of online donations to nonprofit organizations. In this paper we first present a framework that illustrates several antecedents of online donations. After discussing the descriptive results from two surveys, we compare different user groups regarding their attitudes toward online donations. The results suggest that our scales exhibit sufficient reliability and validity and that the two groups differ significantly. Further- more, we conduct a regression analysis with the cause, trust in the organization, trust in the Internet, and privacy as independent variables and the people\u27s intention to donate online as the dependent variable. Trust in the Internet turns out to be by far the most important influencing factor, exhibiting a significant influence on people\u27s attitude toward donating to nonprofit organizations online

A Framework for Measuring People\u27s Intention to Donate Online

Despite the overall economic and social importance of nonprofit organizations and the plethora of scholarly literature written on online payments, few authors have combined these two issues to take a look at online donations. Accepting donations online helps nonprofits, which typically face budgetary constraints, to accomplish their tasks more effectively and efficiently and to put their resources to use where they are needed most. In this paper we first present a framework that illustrates several antecedents of online donations. We use the results of two surveys to test the scales we have developed and present the respective factor loadings. After discussing the descriptive results, we compare two user groups (members of nonprofits and students) regarding their attitudes toward online donations. The results suggest that most of the scales we present exhibit sufficient validity and that significant differences between the two groups exist. While the former is useful for researchers planning to conduct an empirical survey to assess the importance of online donations, the latter results demonstrate the applicability of our instrument to segment user groups according to their preferences. This can help nonprofits to address their (prospective) members with better target communication efforts

A Conceptual Framework for E-Branding Strategies in the Non-Profit Sector

Despite the economic significance non-profit organizations (NPOs) have acquired in recent years, the implications of the Internet for NPO marketing seem to have received only little attention from both researchers and practi tioners. Although NPO marketing has been the subject of academic research for more than 30 years, NPO brand\u27ing has been studied for just about 10 years (cf. Hankinson, 2001). Recent research on branding in the nonprofit s«:ctor includes, for example, an assessment of the impact of brand orientation on non-profit performance (Hanldnson, 2001; Hankinson, 2002) and the development of a non-profit brand orientation scale (Ewing and Napoli 200^1). In particular, the small body of literature on e-branding for NPOs calls for an investigation into e-branding stratsgie:s for NPOs. Ruscli (2002) rhetorically asks if investing in a brand can be seen as a frivolous activity for NPOs in view of their not-for-profit mission, but he concludes that a better understanding of NPO branding will lead to a more effective use of their donations, which eventually furthers the NPOs\u27 causes. Although the peculiar organizational structure of NPOs fosters creativity and innovation, they often lack the motivation to exploit these opportunities commercially. Also, it seems that NPOs have not yet seized the opportunity to fully integrate the Internet into their busraess processes with a view to enhancing their core competencies, even though NPOs - particularly educational institutions - vrere actually the first organizations to use the Internet (Clay, 2002). Based on the assumption that well thought-out strategies for internal and extemal communication will help NPOs to build such e-brands, this paper begins with an outline of relevant aspects of both NPOs and e-communication. The main argument put forward in this paper is that successful e-branding for NPOs is determined by the aligmnent of intra-organizational and extemal communication capabilities. The conceptual framework for NPO e-branding we arrived at is based on qualitative inten\u27iews with NPOs from different sectors and an examination of their public Web sites. The paper concludes with hands-on recommendations for NPO communication strategies and suggestions for further research

Web Content Mining for Comparing Corporate and Third Party Online Reporting: A Case Study on Solid Waste Management

This study investigates the coverage of solid waste management on 1142 websites maintained by companies, news media and non-governmental organizations to validate an automated approach to content and language analysis. First, a frequency analysis of waste management terms sheds light on the breadth and depth of their environmental discourses, revealing that corporate and media attention to waste management is small compared with that of non-governmental organizations. Second, an investigation of their attitudes toward waste management suggests that companies avoid negative information in environmental communication, unlike news media or non-governmental organizations. Ultimately, an automated tool for ontology building is employed to gain insights into companies' shared understanding of waste management. The ontology obtained indicates that companies conceptualize waste management as a business process rather than framing it from an ecological perspective, which is in line with findings from previous research