E-commerce in the Charity Sector

For the past few months, I’ve been exploring the role that e-commerce and retail can play in the charity sector. I wanted to see if today’s rampant consumerist values can be challenged to benefit people in need using today’s tools. What follows are just some thoughts around this.

I have found that it can benefit organisations in different ways.

We are offering the chance to buy virtual products, which may surprise some in the commercial sector. The items on sale on most online stores today will satisfy customers and offer them the reward of personal satisfaction when they receive or enjoy what they buy. In this case, the reward aspect of seeing the only tangible object customers receive is a card in the post. The reward customers may obtain by purchasing a floating garden is the personal satisfaction of having done something good for other people.

I thought this may be an issue when appealing to a broader audience of non-charity supporters or givers. This has proven to be not true, as PresentAid.org is still attracting a sizeable number of new users with intention to buy and effectively buying, despite its challenges. Customers have also responded well to commercial campaigns.

I tested waters with the Black Friday campaign last year. As a result, new users who made a purchase increased by 93% as compared to only the week before. The average order value also increased by 2.30% as compared to the rest of the month of November to date and the number of transactions went also up by 91.7%.

For the sake of comparison, we had a 55% of new users who made a purchase since 1 October to 17 December, which is a 4.22% increase as compared to last year and a 3% of new users as compared to this time last year. We even had more revenue and transactions from new users on Giving Tuesday, which is the charity equivalent to Black Friday.

Although this type of products may have a bigger impact on key dates during the year, such as Christmas, the numbers above make me think that it could also make a big impact throughout the year. They are a different type of products, a bit of fresh in the e-commerce spectrum.

The digital transformation is another aspect to take into account, as it can help bring both revenue and a different perception. Who would’ve thought that charities would tap into e-commerce and retail? Not many people were aware of this, despite some charities doing it for 10 years now.

It is interesting from a personal and professional point of view how digitalisation is happening across all industries.