February 25, 2011 | Read Time: 2 minutes
How do you raise money with no cost and barely any effort?
More and more nonprofits are turning for help to Groupon, the online discount coupon company.
The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh worked with Groupon to create a deal-for-the-day for local residents that would give them access to four museums for an entire year.
In September, the organization offered a $40 one-year individual membership to all Carnegie-owned museums in Pittsburgh with other special features worth $102. For example, the deal included guest passes and drink vouchers to happy-hour Fridays at the Andy Warhol Museum.
The organization’s goal was 500 new members, says Nikki Williams, assistant manager of stewardship at the Carnegie Museums. But by the end of the three-day buying period, it had sold about 1,300 memberships, more than doubling the number of people with individual memberships. (Editor’s note: The previous sentence corrects an error in an earlier version that said it doubled the number of members in all four museums.)
The three-day Groupon offer produced a total of $55,480 for the organization, Ms. Williams says.
The secret to its success? Making a good deal even better.
Ms. Williams and her team monitored the online discussion on the Groupon message board and responded to requests by numerous people who wanted to use the Groupon deal to upgrade from their individual memberships to couple memberships, which cost $100, or to a family or a two-year membership.
Carnegie then offered those options right away and quickly started a Web page that describes different types of upgrades. When people redeemed their coupon for the Carnegie deal, they were offered a link to that page. As a result, 509 of the Groupon buyers were members who upgraded, Ms. Williams says.
It took a couple of months to complete the talks between Carnegie Museums and Groupon last summer, but setting up the deal was easy, Ms. Williams says. The charity didn’t have to pay upfront costs (although Groupon takes a undisclosed portion of every coupon sold).
For publicity, the organization announced the Groupon deal on the Twitter accounts of all of its museums and the Facebook pages of two of its museums, and it sent a Groupon link by text message to the cellphones of the people who were already members. “The advertising cost for us was zero,” Ms. Williams says, apart from some personnel time involved.
Ms. Williams say 81 percent of the Groupon buyers are first-time members of the museums. She says her organization has been quick to communicate with these Groupon buyers, sending them welcome packets and proving the value of their membership with offers such as art tours for members only. “So that they renew,” she explains.
For more examples of how deal-of-the-day sites have helped other organizations, read an article from our archive on the ways charities are benefiting from CauseOn, Deal for Deeds, LivingSocial, Mulamu, as well as Groupon.
And tell us: Has your organization offered a Groupon? What’s been your experience?
