I was just going through some interesting 2008 statistics from a study of 3000 donors across 23 major nonprofits by the Christian Foundation Grants. Although more recent figures should have changed, the research showed:

• 80 percent of those surveyed made donations both online and offline.

• 51 percent of those surveyed said they prefer giving online.

• Only 40 percent of those surveyed said that most charity websites made them feel personally connected to their cause or mission.

• 74 percent of those surveyed said it was appropriate for the charity to send an email reminding them to renew an annual gift.

Like most other areas, nonprofits are also experiencing a rapid change in the way fundraising and donor management is being done as a result of social web trends. Are we running the risk of losing the personal connection between donors and nonprofits as online donations increase and donors prefer giving online? Are nonprofits losing the personal touch that was the foundation of the relationships with donors? Not necessarily. What is required is to adapt those social donor management skills to the social web , build and strengthen bonds with donors online just as one would offline. A recent Mashable post on Twitter Fundraising highlighted the importance of

-recognizing volunteers and donors -keeping contributors in the loop with updates -keeping track of developing relationships.

By building a process of listening to what donors are saying (on social sites) and keeping conversations going with them in the form of replies, re-tweets, direct messages, emails and more, that personal connection can be forged back into fundraising and strengthened like never before. For example, how many donors can one personally meet and converse with offline in a single day? Few….if you compare it to how many you can connect with through the social sites enabled donor database that the Donor Tools software now sports. With the ability to pull up social accounts information on a donor such as their Twitter accounts and Linkedin profiles it’s possible to quickly know your donor and engage in conversation making them feel connected to the nonprofit and it’s work.

With the right tools and the right approach, the changes we are going through with social technologies is not likely to diminish the connections and relationships between donors and nonprofits. If anything….it can strengthen them.

Interestingly, the statuses simply read vague colors like ‘pink’, ‘white’, champagne gold’ and when you see everyone doing this and have absolutely no  idea what is going on but everyone seems to be in on it the effect is simple…you think….”I want in on it too!!!” So you turn to Google or Yahoo to see what’s going on and find that it’s linked to breast cancer awareness. While this is the point where unfortunately (or not) guys have to drop out of the game women jump on board with the trend and join the bandwagon by updating their own statuses, The end result may look like millions of people playing a silly game online but the effect was millions of people inadvertently becoming  a little more aware about the seriousness of breast cancer. An article published in Dallas Morning News by Darla Atlas highlighted the effect of the trend for Komen Foundation For The Cure Of Breast Cancer whose Facebook page got 134,000 fans on the first day alone.

While this is not the most recent news, it’s still a a fantastic example of what the combination of social software and the work of non-profits and activities like creating awareness for a cause. The campaign which tapped into our curiosity and created awareness is a stroke of genius to say the least. Strangely it’s still not clear exactly who this genius is and where this all started. If only we did.