Web Sites as a Dialogic Tool for Charitable Fundraising NPOs: A Comparative Study

Abstract

Non-profit organizations (NPOs), which often dispose of a limited budget, can employ their Web sites strategically to communicate with important stakeholders. However, little research, especially in Europe, has been done so far exploring how NPOs are actually taking advantage of this. This study analyzes how charitable fundraising NPOs in Germany and Switzerland employ their Web sites for dialogic communication with donors and media. Results indicate that NPOs provide well-designed Web sites, yet, fail to engage publics in dialogue. New trends, such as Web 2.0, are still hardly taken into account. Whereas donor publics are often addressed, media are often neglected.

Notes

This research was subsidized by the Korean Public Relations Association (KPRA).

¹Only the organizations from the French and German-speaking parts of Switzerland were included into analysis.

²According to the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) country codes (ISO 3166-1) the two countries included in this study will be abbreviated as follows: Germany: DE; Switzerland: CH.

³In this study dialogic capacity refers to technical and design aspects as well as dialogic aspects of Web sites, defined according to Taylor et al. (2001).

⁴Germany: Deutsches Zentralinstitut für soziale Fragen (DZI); Switzerland: ZEWO.

⁵Information on the standards may be requested from the authors.

⁶For several variables (e.g., the possibility to donate online, chat rooms or forums) also pages were considered which had a different URL as long as it was clear that the site was provided by the NPO itself as smaller NPOs with a lower budget would have been discriminated that way.

⁷Germany (n = 109): 22 Web sites; Switzerland (n = 134): 26 Web sites.

⁸Ten variables addressing Web site features which are apt to change due to updating were not considered in the reliability test (C8, D1b, D9, F1, F3b, G4b, G10b, G11b, G11d, H6c).

⁹This adds up to the following number of coding decisions for each country: Germany: 164; Switzerland: 61.

¹⁰Results of a t-test comparing the means of dialogic capacity of German and Swiss NPO Web sites are available upon request.

¹¹More detailed information concerning the differences in dialogic capacity for organizations coded responsive nonresponsive towards media publics respectively may be requested from the authors.