Comments on: “Charities” vs. “nonprofits” in Google Trends

By: Are we a charity or a nonprofit? « National Center for Parents as Teachers

Are we a charity or a nonprofit? « National Center for Parents as Teachers — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:27:33 +0000

[...] words carefully when it comes to describing yourself. According to Sean Stannard-Stockton’s blog post in Nonprofit Tech Blog, it could make the difference in how donors perceive [...]

By: Philanthropy Daily Digest | Tactical Philanthropy

Philanthropy Daily Digest | Tactical Philanthropy — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:03:15 +0000

[...] Are you a "nonprofit" or a "charity"? See what Google users think | Non-Profit T… I tend to use the words nonprofit and charity interchangeable, but prefer nonprofit. In this fascinating Google News analysis, Allan Benamer shows that donors use the two words differently. (tags: philanthropy) [...]

By: Jaz

Jaz — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:03:49 +0000

Think Samantha has highlighted a good point about the name for the charitable sector varies from country to country. In the UK, charity and variations of are favoured. I think a charities/organisation's choice of generic tag has a big impact on how it is perceived by donors, funders etc. http://www.marketingforcharity.co.uk/2009/09/17/w...

By: A nonprofit by any other name? « Nonprofit Periscope

A nonprofit by any other name? « Nonprofit Periscope — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 22:42:57 +0000

[...] excellent December 2008 post from the Nonprofit Tech Blog discusses online search trends for the two terms, with some surprising results. But aside from disasters, what topics are most commonly associated [...]

By: Allan Benamer

Allan Benamer — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:04:23 +0000

Actually Samantha, you’re right about the world being a big place but I was pretty careful to makes sure that the article covered both US and international audiences. Google Trends normally defaults to a global audience and a screenshot of those results are available in the article above. The heights of the peaks and troughs are more muted in the global sample but both the international and US audiences closely correlate on this word.

By: Samantha Guilden

Samantha Guilden — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:26:40 +0000

You might also be overlooking the fact the word “charities” is used more in the UK, Europe, and other parts of the world. Other terms like “not-for-profit” are also more common outside the US. The world is a big place.

By: Marie Daniels

Marie Daniels — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:05:04 +0000

I love this article and have forwarded it to my colleagues at Kids Korps. It’s great to see this insight into the minds of the audience we are all seeking to emote through our missions.

In this time of quick answers and instant gratification, I am glad the internet has provided a global bulletin board to make our causes known, not only through our websites but also the social media saturation of Facebooks, Change.org, Myspace, LinkedIn, and so many more.

Marie Daniels
Director of MarCom
http://www.kidskorps.org

By: Tyme

Tyme — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 22:24:42 +0000

Keep in mind, when doing SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) for your organization, be sure to use all hyphenate/non-hyphenate versions of the word “nonprofit” (nonprofit, non-profit and non profit; non-profit organization, nonprofit organization, non profit organization). The more savvy search engines might recognize the searchers intent and serve all versions, but don’t risk it. Simply use all variations in your metatags, keywords, and content tags. Copy, paste, refine. Giddy up!

Tyme
Multimedia Specialist
http://www.TymeForChange.org

By: Allan Benamer

Allan Benamer — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:49:44 +0000

I’d LIKE to think that people are starting to home in on their charity of choice over the Web. That would imply that the best advice for nonprofits would be to improve their online strategies or get crushed in the stampede to consolidate Web traffic under a few large nonprofit sites on the Web. On the other hand, we’ve seen a lot of economic turmoil in the last couple of years as wages have stagnated. That might imply that people are less able to donate thus are less likely to search.

We would have to wait until the economy improves. When it does improve, we can watch how the search traffic plays itself out. If search traffic goes up by say more than two standard deviations, it’s probably the economy that’s causing it. If it doesn’t, then we can more safely say that people are starting to find their charities online. I wish Google Trends data stretched back into the 90s. That would allow us to do a good economy vs bad economy comparison.

By: Ryan Scott

Ryan Scott — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:40:20 +0000

Its quite possible people have found their online homes for charity. It used to be really difficult to find charities because there were not a lot of centralized sites for them, and the organizations themselves were not seo-optimized. Now that you can get your charity fix at sites like DoSomething, Change.org and our site, Causecast.org, you don't have to surfing around looking for charities, you know where to go. All of these sites (and more) have done a pretty good job getting the word out to the converted, and converting the newbies. Causecast.org was created in part because of the difficulty of finding good organizations online. Searching for 'charity' was just not very effective.