miji.beFor NPOs and nonprofit organizations, balancing wider online awareness with gaining donations / support on a limited budget is a major challenge. Short URLs can be used for free or at low cost, and they make it possible to streamline link management and improve initiatives based on data. Many nonprofit organizations use social media as a main fundraising channel, and the optimization of link sharing is directly tied to donation amounts. In Japan as well, a Cabinet Office survey shows that the number of NPO corporations has reached about 50,000, and the importance of digital initiatives that produce the greatest results with limited resources grows year by year.
Guiding people to the donation page is the most important use of links for an NPO. Donation page URLs tend to be long because they contain payment system parameters, but converting them into short URLs lets you share them concisely in social media posts and emails. Issue a different short URL for each campaign (for example: npo.example/donate-disaster, npo.example/donate-education) and track which campaign gathered the most donations with click data. For donation appeals that nonprofit organizations send by email, it is common that the share of recipients who actually go on to the donation page is not high. Just changing the links in the email to branded short URLs makes it easier for recipients to trust the destination, and an improvement in the click rate to the donation page can be expected. Behind this improvement is the fact that branded URLs give recipients a sense of security and help distinguish the email from phishing emails.
Let us dig into the principle of why branded short URLs raise the donation rate. Because donating involves money, the trustworthiness of the destination is directly tied to the decision. With a short URL made of a random string (for example: bit.ly/3xK9mZ), the destination is unclear, so people tend to hesitate to click. On the other hand, a URL that contains the organization name, such as "npo-name.co/help", can visually convey that the destination is legitimate. Access from mobile devices accounts for a large share of online donations to nonprofit organizations, and in mobile environments with small screens, the trustworthiness of the link text has an even greater effect on the click rate. In general, it is thought that the more visual cues there are that convey the legitimacy of the destination, the more the hesitation to donate eases and the more likely it is to lead to a completed donation.
For event announcements, put short URLs and QR codes on printed materials such as flyers, posters, and brochures to guide people to the event details page or the registration form. Many NPO events are community-based, and offline announcements play an important role. If you issue a unique short URL for each event, you can analyze which distribution points bring in the most registrations. If you place flyers with a different short URL in each of several public facilities, you can see which location brings in the most registrations and optimize your distribution strategy from the next time onward. The reason this analysis becomes possible is that assigning a different short URL to each distribution point lets you visualize the effect of offline distribution through online click data.
Short URLs are also effective for volunteer recruitment. Share the short URL to the recruitment page on social media, mailing lists, and local bulletin boards, and track the status of applications with click data. If you set an expiration date to match the recruitment period, the link is automatically disabled after recruitment ends, and the expired page can announce the schedule for the next recruitment. Many people name the internet or social media as what prompted them to take part in volunteer activities, so optimizing the online recruitment path is directly tied to the number of participants. If you distribute different short URLs on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram for volunteer recruitment, you can see which channel has the higher application completion rate and decide how to allocate posting frequency based on data.
To share annual reports and impact reports, convert direct links to the PDF files into short URLs and distribute them to supporters and stakeholders. If you track viewing with click data, you can evaluate the distribution effect of the report quantitatively. With the password protection feature, you can also share an unpublished report only with board members. Short URLs can also be used in grant applications and project proposals. If you list links to reference materials and supplementary data as short URLs, reviewers can access them smoothly, and the proposal becomes more persuasive.
As drawbacks, let us lay out the challenges specific to NPOs. The first is the gap in staff digital skills. NPO staff often do not have specialized knowledge of digital marketing, and introducing and operating a URL shortener involves a learning cost. The second is the limits of free services. Free URL shorteners have limits such as showing ads or not allowing a custom domain. If ads appear on the path to the donation page, there is a risk of damaging donors' trust. The third is the problem of phishing wariness. Because the link to the donation page is hidden behind a short URL, there is a risk that donors become wary of phishing and hesitate to click. It is important to choose a service with a preview feature and set up an environment where people can check the safety of the destination in advance. The fourth is the continuity of data analysis. Free services may have a limited retention period for click data, which can make comparisons across fiscal years difficult. The fifth is the lack of operating rules within the organization. Because there are many cases where link management breaks off when the person in charge changes, it is essential to maintain a management register and establish a handover process.