Any data on the effect of visiting the website on donations to highly-effective charities? I’m wondering what the return was. Also curious about the return to website ads to get a sense of the overall effectiveness of such outreach measures.
The difficulty of actually getting people to hand out pamphlets is interesting and, I think, an underrated reason why it’s a difficult way to spread a cause.
Unfortunately, we could only track website visitors as far as clicking a “donate” button on TLYCS “Where To Donate” page (http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/Where-to-Donate). After clicking the button they are directed to the individual charity website, so we don’t have visibility into if they actually followed through with making a donation, or how much that donation was.
That being said, we only had one visitor that plausibly came from the pamphlets that clicked a donate button; if we had paid closer to Vegan Outreach prices for the pamphlets ($0.07), the cost of the 3500 pamphlets would have been about $245, and so the donation would have had to be on that level to get parity. Would definitely have been an interesting data point to see if / how much our clicker actually donated.
Unfortunately, we could only track website visitors as far as clicking a “donate” button on TLYCS “Where To Donate” page (http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/Where-to-Donate). After clicking the button they are directed to the individual charity website, so we don’t have visibility into if they actually followed through with making a donation, or how much that donation was.
Does LYCS have any estimates which speak to that, even tangentially, for instance for it’s general impact evaluations?
They must have some visibility into how many people are donating via their website, because they release yearly estimates for money moved. I’m not sure exactly how they go about doing this; it can’t be via TLYCS website analytics though, so maybe they work with the charities themselves to track donations originating from TYLCS. I only partnered up with them for this study, so unfortunately I don’t have any details.
TLYCS’s (very) rough estimate is that on average each “donate click” equates to ~$100 in donations. However, that’s on overall average for our site, so my guess for a new visitor, currently enrolled in college, would be significantly lower.
As a reminder, TLYCS also expects to generate a multiplier on its expenditures, so the true breakeven cost would have to be <33% or so of the expected donations.
Any data on the effect of visiting the website on donations to highly-effective charities? I’m wondering what the return was. Also curious about the return to website ads to get a sense of the overall effectiveness of such outreach measures.
The difficulty of actually getting people to hand out pamphlets is interesting and, I think, an underrated reason why it’s a difficult way to spread a cause.
Unfortunately, we could only track website visitors as far as clicking a “donate” button on TLYCS “Where To Donate” page (http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/Where-to-Donate). After clicking the button they are directed to the individual charity website, so we don’t have visibility into if they actually followed through with making a donation, or how much that donation was.
That being said, we only had one visitor that plausibly came from the pamphlets that clicked a donate button; if we had paid closer to Vegan Outreach prices for the pamphlets ($0.07), the cost of the 3500 pamphlets would have been about $245, and so the donation would have had to be on that level to get parity. Would definitely have been an interesting data point to see if / how much our clicker actually donated.
Does LYCS have any estimates which speak to that, even tangentially, for instance for it’s general impact evaluations?
They must have some visibility into how many people are donating via their website, because they release yearly estimates for money moved. I’m not sure exactly how they go about doing this; it can’t be via TLYCS website analytics though, so maybe they work with the charities themselves to track donations originating from TYLCS. I only partnered up with them for this study, so unfortunately I don’t have any details.
TLYCS’s (very) rough estimate is that on average each “donate click” equates to ~$100 in donations. However, that’s on overall average for our site, so my guess for a new visitor, currently enrolled in college, would be significantly lower.
As a reminder, TLYCS also expects to generate a multiplier on its expenditures, so the true breakeven cost would have to be <33% or so of the expected donations.
Sorry to take so long to respond to this!