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  • From: Gwen Franck <gwen AT creativecommons.org>
  • To: "cc-europe AT lists.ibiblio.org" <cc-europe AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [CC-Europe] Fwd: [cc-affiliates] CC fundraising - website appeals
  • Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2015 17:22:18 +0200


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ryan Merkley <ryan AT creativecommons.org>
Date: Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 4:46 PM
Subject: [cc-affiliates] CC fundraising - website appeals
To: cc-affiliates AT lists.ibiblio.org


Dear affiliates,

I'm writing to let you know about tests and changes we're making to our website donation appeals, and to invite your comments to enhance our communications to potential donors.

Creative Commons survives entirely on donations and grants, provided by individuals and organizations that support of mission and share our values. While we have enjoyed strong support for many years, our financial position is not sustainable without new donations and revenues. Earlier this year, I reduced the CC budget by $850,000 and reduced our staff by about 1/3 to ensure we were able to continue operations throughout 2015 and beyond.

At the end of 2014, we set an aggressive strategy to ensure we have sufficient revenue to support our core programs, meet our grant commitments, and support our global affiliate network with events like the Global Summit, which we estimate will cost over $300,000 this year. If we meet our revenue goals, we are in a good position to turn CC into a more sustainable organization with all the resources we need to do our work around the world.

Last fall, we identified individual donations as an area of growth that had remained undercapitalized. We have hired a fundraising agency, Trilogy, to work with us. Our two areas of focus: increasing donations via e-mail and optimizing our website for donations. Last year, we increased email donations by 55 percent, for our best year ever. Our most recent 10-day email appeal performed twice as well as other similar campaigns have in the past. So we're on the right track.

We are now working to optimize our site for donations, which will in the end be much more valuable, as CC has very high web traffic.

Earlier this week, we began testing two new donation options on the website: a new banner ad on content pages, and a timed pop-up on the deed pages that appears after several seconds. Matt Lee (our developer) and I were not aware that change to the deed pages automatically requested translations from affiliates -- we would have sent a note that we were testing if that had been the case. For that error, I apologize -- we want affiliates in the loop as we work through changes, but we also want to be able to test things as we go. The tests also mistakenly posted two versions of the appeal on the same page. This has now been corrected.

I know that asking for support on the deed pages is a big change, and some will disagree. CC receives nearly 4 million visits to our website each month, and nearly 1/4 of them are from visitors who come directly to the deed pages. We simply can't afford let that opportunity pass. We have taken care to ensure that the language we use on these pages does not imply that users must donate to use the content, and explains that CC's work helps ensure that content remains free and open for everyone.

I know that some of you will have comments about how we can refine our message and communicate better, and I welcome those ideas. This is an iterative process, and we will change and adjust until we have the right message, and the maximum donations possible to support all of our work.

Thank you, and I look forward to your comments.

Best,
Ryan

--
Ryan Merkley
CEO, Creative Commons
ryan AT creativecommons.org

+1 416.802.0662
@ryanmerkley

Get Creative Commons Updates http://bit.ly/commonsnews

_______________________________________________
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--
Gwen Franck
Creative Commons
Regional Coordinator Europe

Make a donation to support CC in 2015: https://donate.creativecommons.org


  • [CC-Europe] Fwd: [cc-affiliates] CC fundraising - website appeals, Gwen Franck, 06/04/2015

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