3 Fundraising Technology Predictions for the Coming Years

To coin a cliché, change is here to stay. Like it or not — and most people don’t — the pace of change means that many jobs being filled now did not exist 10 years ago (search engine optimization specialist anybody?).

Schools are now teaching students how to find stuff out rather than stuff itself — the skills necessary to find out what they need to know. So even though today’s students may not be leaving education knowing the capital of Kazakhstan*, they should at least be equipped to find it out … and therefore have the skills to progress in the modern world.

So what changes will we see in fundraising over the coming years? And what does that mean for the technology we use? Here are a few predictions.

Fundraising will be social
Organizations need to understand that their constituents, even the older ones, will expect to communicate with the charity and with one another online, using social media to do so. Nonprofits should not bury their heads in the sand, afraid of losing control of brands, but instead should be ready to equip donors to represent their causes on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And maybe provide a private social network to provide added privacy and a sense of community.

Fundraising will be all about the donor
Modern consumers expect to be able to research and buy online, and they'll expect their chosen causes to offer a similar experience. Imagine you are setting up a brand-new company to sell books and music. Would you (a) rent a store, buy stock, employ staff to work in the store and have a computer system to process the orders; or (b) build a website for customers to browse, buy and download your products for themselves without you needing to intervene? I’d guess the latter.