A colleague and I attended a digital marketing seminar this morning held by Cascaid in their new offices. We got there early to abuse the delicious free breakfast and took our places to be amazed.

In fairness to Cascaid, they promised no answers, just a thought provoking session. And my thoughts were provoked. The speakers asked us to raise our hands if we had signed up to facebook/twitter/del.icio.us etc. My hand stayed down until he asked if anyone had a blog! Unsurprisingly, my colleague, Mencap’s web development manager’s hand was constantly being raised.

So, as a fundraiser, should I be ashamed that there is all this technological development passing me by while I play online poker courtesy of William Hill?

I think no.

The internet offers so many opportunities that we seriously need to think about where best to spend our time and budget to drive online donations. Meanwhile we need to offer potential donors more reasons to interact with us, hopefully ending up in a donation. This isn’t something that fundraisers can do alone as the charity’s communication strategy and web development play an integral role in building an online community. At the same time, fundraising opportunities need to be considered as part of the overall strategy, not after the strategy is set.