March 2001

Family Violence Prevention Fund is one of the nation's leading nonprofit organizations working to end domestic violence and help women and children whose lives are devastated by abuse. They started out on the Internet earlier than most nonprofits, and have had half a decade to test techniques for outreach, fundraising and constituency engagement. Michael Stein talked with Jeffrey Betcher, Program Manager at the FVPF, about the various strategies and issues that they've wrestled with over the years. These challenges mirror the issues that many nonprofits face today.

Michael Stein: Jeffrey, when did Family Violence Prevention Fund start using the Internet?

Jeffrey Betcher: In 1995, knowing practically nothing. The Institute for Global Communications helped us get it going using the Rainforest Action Network site as a model. It was one of the best sites around. There was a buzz about the Internet, of course, and we knew it was an important new way to communicate, but we didn't know much beyond that. We took write ups of our various programs and put them up, put in a "give" device using early encryption software, and sat back to see what happened. We're working on our second major redesign now, and we receive 30,000 unique visitors per month, which we think is a lot of traffic. We're proud of that. But from the very beginning, I felt sure we were reaching people we had never reached before, and wouldn't have reached without the site.

The site went up shortly after we launched the first ever national public education campaign on domestic violence which focused on more traditional media, television PSAs and posters, etc. So, I think we were sensitized to anything that could be another avenue for the campaign. We also had a Communications Director who stepped forward to get the site going.

Michael: How does maintaining an Internet presence fit into your mission and goals?

Jeffrey: Initially our Web site was designed for general outreach, marketing and information dissemination. We're now shifting our Web site more towards constituency building, advocacy, wanting to construct a place where anyone who cares about our issue can get involved in a real way. We also have an e-commerce store that we built using Yahoo's tools, where people can purchase our complete line of awareness materials at cost with a credit card, and get technical assistance. The shift towards Internet advocacy is a very intentional strategy for us. The redesign of our Web site will make it clearer to advocates and movement people how they can connect with us. We're actually hoping that the traffic patterns this creates on our Web site will tell us something about our online audience and how they interact with us.

Michael: Regarding this shift in emphasis towards advocacy, how intentional was it? How did you arrive at the decision?

Jeffrey: The Web site follows our programmatic emphasis, which is absolutely strategic. We feel there is a need for a coordinated constituency and political action on the issue of domestic violence. And we know that the Web is an extremely useful tool for that. There's always been a group of Internet-interested people at the agency that have helped us push the limits.

Ultimately our executive director provides the leadership. She's a believer in the Internet. It's considered primarily a communications strategy. Whatever the configuration, it seems key to have a staff person who's responsible for tracking effectiveness and reporting back to the whole agency. Everyone has an interest in the Web site, and wants to know what's going on with it.

Michael: How do you evaluate the effectiveness of your online efforts?

Jeffrey: When we do specific targeted campaigns we're better about evaluating impact. We did a Web banner placement campaign around Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October 2000 where we closely tracked the access and referrer information. We looked at which banners generated the most traffic. For this example, we had a consultant that was working with us, so she did the evaluation for us, which made things easy. Most of the time, though, we don't know how to make sense of all the access and referrer information that is part of the Web site traffic data.

Michael: How has using email and email newsletters fit into your Internet strategy?

Jeffrey: We have an email news flash service that works like a Listserv, which goes out to approximately 4,000 people about every week. People subscribe to the service and we keep them posted on important news and events. It's particularly active when there is an issue in the news, and occasionally we use it to mobilize people to take certain actions.

Michael: When you sign people up for your Listserv, are you asking them just for their email address, or for their name, address, etc?

Jeffrey: Just email. Time, resources and technology limitations have prevented us from doing more. Obviously, we'd love to know more. Sometimes we feel like there's so much more that we could be doing, but we just don't have what it takes to accomplish it. Yet!

Michael: What kind of experiences have you had in online fundraising and membership development using the Internet?

Jeffrey: FVPF isn't strictly speaking a membership organization, but we do very intentional financial solicitations. We have a development section of the site that tells people about giving options like planned giving. People can give directly to us with a credit card using our Yahoo e-commerce tool, and they can also download a form and send us a check. We don't get that much money this way, but we do get some new donors, so we feel that it's worth it. The most intentional thing that we've done recently is a combined direct mail and Listserv appeal. A message went out from our executive director checking in with subscribers about the usefulness of our Newsflash and thanking them for being on our list. We followed it with a short appeal message, and then they could click through to our Web site where there's the full appeal: a story about a woman who was a homicide victim, to illustrate the trauma of domestic violence. We didn't get a big response, only half a dozen actual gifts, all new donors though. We have, over the years, received donations out of the blue from people who have visited our Web site, some of which have been pretty sizeable. Those few occasions continue to justify the effort for us.

Michael: What about your experience with online charity malls? You've got a link to one of them on your site.

Jeffrey: The charity mall we've tested hasn't been a valuable endeavor so we're going to drop it. It's a concept that may not work for us. If people want to buy a book they're likely to go to Amazon.com rather than to our site to click through to a mall. And, frankly, we would rather they hang out at our site. We're still experimenting.

Michael: What kinds of changes did your organization have to make to use the Internet?

Jeffrey: Using the Internet grew naturally out of the efforts of our Communications Department. We've had to train and encourage everyone at our agency to fit the Internet into their work patterns. When our front line staff are answering the phones, or any of us are talking to people, we're always telling people to check out this or that document on the Web site. And we've had to create feedback loops so we can put up the appropriate materials on the Web site. We've also had to deal with the new communications medium that gets opened up. We get a ton of emails from our Web site and our Listserv, and it's a quarter time staff person to respond and filter these. We've been positive about these changes, not resisting them, but turning them to our advantage.

Michael: Do you think that the Internet has helped you achieve your mission and how would you quantify this?

Jeffrey: I definitely think that the Internet has helped us achieve our mission. Many people have found us through the Internet who would never have found us. We tapped into a much larger constituency. People tell us regularly that this is how they found us, mostly via our Web site. We get a lot of emails from people this way. Our organization and work is well known to certain groups of people, but we're not nationally recognized as a "brand name" nonprofit. But people remember our PSAs and connect with our issues, before they remember our name. So if someone can find us by searching on our issue or some other key, it's a big plus for us. With our emphasis on public awareness, constituency building and political action, the Internet is mission critical for us. We are very aware of the impact of the Internet on our work and have been able to reflect this in our fundraising and in our program development. Our recent efforts are exciting because we're trying to create the next generation of our Internet presence to reach more people and be more effective. We want our site to be fresh, exciting, interactive, engaging. It takes more resources to build and maintain, but we're hoping it will help make us even more effective.