I use Quantcast a lot to figure out who is getting more buzz and who is not. I use it more than Alexa because Quantcast allows for sites to participate in the counting by adding Quantcast’s Javascript to their site. Those of you who have websites on this list but think your visitor count is under-reported, please add Quantcast’s Javascript to your site. I already have and the traffic report is available for viewing. I’ve used it for several months and it’s close enough to Google Analytics’ reports that we can all get a better view of nonprofit and philanthropy traffic if everyone used it.
The statistics below were gathered from Quantcast as of September 5th, 2007.
Philanthropy and Non-Profit Top 25 for September 2007
| Site | Uniques/Month | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| cancer.org | 760,128 | 2,096 |
| aspca.org | 342,314 | 5,255 |
| aclu.org | 246,967 | 7,495 |
| marchofdimes.com | 203,585 | 9,091 |
| charitynavigator.org | 99,668 | 18,691 |
| greenpeace.org | 94,945 | 19,568 |
| amnesty.org | 91,064 | 20,381 |
| guidestar.org | 88,671 | 20,915 |
| kiva.org | 42,171 | 41,778 |
| philanthropy.com | 40,197 | 43,600 |
| donorschoose.org | 23,676 | 69,453 |
| modestneeds.org | 22,039 | 73,964 |
| globalgiving.com | 18,157 | 87,120 |
| theirc.org | 17,651 | 89,071 |
| fordfound.org | 13,047 | 115,042 |
| chipin.com | 7,643 | 24,251 |
| changingthepresent.org | 5,951 | 221,707 |
| nonprofittechblog.org | 3,224 | 451,208 |
| change.org | 2,446 | 465,107 |
| nten.org | < 2,000 | 740,568 |
| beth.typepad.com | < 2,000 | 1,679,026 |
| glowfish.com | < 2,000 | 4,971,688 |
| postcards.typepad.com | < 2,000 | 5,235,367 |
| theagitator.net | < 2,000 | 6,258,941 |
| tacticalphilanthropy.com | < 2,000 | 7,913,145 |
Uniques/Month means Unique Visitors Per Month. As you can see, the big nonprofits head the list but you can see the three oldest online microcharities really doing well. Check out Kiva, ModestNeeds and DonorsChoose. They’re doing well after a few years of operation.
The purpose of showing this table is to encourage as much transparency as possible in our sector. In this case, the effort to actually make your site stats publicly available is minimal but it would really help bloggers like me to understand where people are visiting and whose marketing efforts are really improving their web presence. Generally speaking, estimated stats are lower than the real traffic stats but the purpose here is to get you to release your site statistics publicly. For now, only my site and chipin.com are using actual traffic statistics on this list. It’s my hope that everyone else starts implementing publicly viewable statistics. And don’t forget to check the demographics for sites on the list… It’s VERY interesting.
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I’m not using the QuantCast JS code, but I do check over the report for nature.org regularly @ http://www.quantcast.com/nature.org (134k monthly uniques, monthly rank of 13,801).
What I’m having a bit more trouble doing is figuring out how to make this data actionable. I can compare it with the information that my analytics package gives me (it’s different) and the sense of demographics is intriguing, but given that it’s hard for me to verify, I feel like it’s ultimately a toy and not very usable. Yeah, the numbers are interesting, but it’s hard to make decisions based on them since there’s no real accountability.
So: What’s everyone else out there doing with data from sites like QuantCast, Alexa, SEOmoz PageStrength and other third-party metrics services?
Well, Jonathon, it looks like Nature Conservancy has a big problem with racial diversity on the site. Caucasians are overrepresented and other racial groupings are underrepresented. I’d suggest that there’s probably a need to follow up with targeted surveys to see if what you’re seeing on Quantcast is what you’re seeing at Nature Conservancy’s events and donor lists.
Frankly, that’s how I tend to use Quantcast’s demographics. When I was working at the Coalition for the Homeless, the site demographics had a huge impact on the site redesign. We didn’t realize that many of our clients were using the site to contact the Coalition despite the fact that the Coalition was mostly interested in targeting donors with the site. The need for homeless services is huge so it seems that clients were doing everything they could to access the Coalition both online and offline.
BTW, I’m expanding the list to the Top 50 of Philanthropy and the Non-Profit Sector. Who else should I include? I want to include large and small web sites with a mix of blogs, nonprofits, foundations and other services like Charity Navigator. If you have any suggestions, please post a comment below.
I’ve used Quantcast quite a bit, and I do not work for any of those on your list. And there are a couple big things here we should note.
1. The racial numbers are a completely bogus construction. They are based on some assumed links and connections, and key words. There is absolutely no way that quantcast can have real data on this, unless every site collects and every user inputs in their racial data.
2. I track monthly uniques on our site. The numbers that Quantcast puts out for us are well, just plain wrong. We’re talking majorly off. Granted we don’t use Java Script, but how do we know whether the folks on the list do either? Without knowing this you can’t really rank them.
I think there is much more potential in measuring real impacts by using things within your google analytics like time on site.
I like your blog and find it generally helpful, so I hope this post isn’t too much of a whine:)
Actually, I think Quantcast does paneling for the demographic work. You can read more about how they do it at the FAQ section. I think your notion that Quantcast has to collect and have 100% certain racial data is somewhat outmoded and impractical. That isn’t how it is done at Quantcast or in any other firm that purports to measure site demographics. You can pretty much infer demographics pretty easily if you happen to know the geolocation of IP addresses. After that, it’s as easy as knowing the demographics of Census tracts in the US. I’m pretty sure Quantcast implies basic methods such as those I outline and more sophisticated ones besides.
The purpose of the post was to encourage your organization to give out site statistics. You can complain about how wrong Quantcast is but without a shared way to report on site metrics we don’t have a way to find out how wrong Quantcast is. You should either implement the Quantcast Javascript or live with an inaccurate ranking. The choice is yours and your organization’s to make.
Google Analytics is great — will your org make it available on-line? Time on site is a good metric too — you should show that as well.
Just so you know, this site averages between 5 and 6 minutes per visit.
It’s not too much of a whine but really, I urge you to get your org’s site metrics up online. It’s a Good Thing.
Will have to check this out. Unique visitors is one metric – for blogs subscribers is also important — but those folks are reading via readers and I wonder if they get counted in the monthly unique. The numbers are different from my google anlaytics, but I don’t have the code. Will definitely check it out.
Thanks Beth. I see you’ve already implemented the Quantcast JS. I also understand that blackbus.org is going Quantcast-friendly. Both beth.typepad.com and blackbus.org will be in the Top 50 list when it’s finalized. I want more nonprofits to adopt this as well. coalitionforthehomeless.org has been on quantcast for nearly a year now. And yes, putting your blog or org’s web site on Quantcast is a good reason for me to include your site in the Top 50 list…
Hey Allan -
I want to echo the sentiment that the numbers in your table are just plain wrong. Our uniques are closer to 10k per month.
But what I really want to know is why its so important that nonprofits publish their site visitors? What does that tell the public about how good they are at achieving their mission? Or how capable they are to administer the organization? Isn’t that what transparency is for?
H
Wow. These numbers are so far off I think they obscure more light than they shed.
According to Google Analytics, our monthly uniques over the past 30 days were 41,067.
I also suspect that Kiva’s numbers are much higher than shown.
I’m not sure there’s good reason for us to publish all our stats online, but I’d consider sending you a screenshot of our analytics page if you promise me one of the martinis that Holly was asking for
Ben
p.s. if this is just a way to get organizations to send you their real uniques, it’s Machiavellian brilliance
“Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
– Justice Brandeis
We use this quote above to complain about the private sector and our government. However, I think we should also apply it to our sector. I want the real uniques so that we can stop complaining in our sector. I’m tired of people saying “those aren’t the real numbers but there are these secret numbers I’m not telling you about”. We need metrics. People working in our sector need to report those metrics. That is transparency. How do we know if an organization is the real deal? What can we say about an organization that doesn’t seem to have adequate racial, gender, or economic diversity in its online audience?
Why is it that I know more about Blackbaud’s business model but not about most nonprofits? Why should I hold a nonprofit to a lesser standard than we do for publicly held companies? Doesn’t this seem odd?
Transparency isn’t only in the service of nonprofits who are using it as a way to further market themselves. It’s not just about answering questions regarding good governance but also an opening up of the conversation to different topics that may not necessarily be under the control of the original organization. I would like to see all the major players put their numbers up. This will allow people like me to see whether or not these organizations are worth writing about, worth paying attention to and even better, whether or not they are paying attention to racial, economic and gender diversity on their site. Wouldn’t it be odd if a nonprofit directed towards serving poor people of color didn’t actually have poor people of color going to their site?
This is not just an exercise in getting metrics but frankly, if nonprofits are not even willing to part with even these numbers, I’m willing to suspect that nonprofits have something to hide even if they’re not. And sure, Ben, I’d love to have people send me their unique visitor numbers, but really, I’d end up posting them on the blog anyway. So why bother doing that, when anyone can simply put the Quantcast Javascript up on their site? This really is the flip side of Web 2.0.
BTW, I’m working with Quantcast (for free) to put up a Nonprofit Top 50 list that can be used by donors and nonprofit workers alike to see which sites they should go to. I still have slots open for the Top 50 but preference will be given to those who are using Quantcast javascript.
I’m having a little bit of a hard time with this. I don’t think we should start judging how real an organization is by the web traffic it generates. It’s beginning to sound a bit like a popularity contest.
I can only speak about my organization, but our online presence is insignificant compared with our offline presence, but that does not mean we don’t deserve a blog entry.
I also don’t think it’s a big deal if a non-profit claims to serve poor People of Color but its’ web traffic does not show this (what about its’ foot traffic?). The vast majority of our target population probably (I say probably because we don’t even check our stats on a regular basis – blasphemy, I know – and because most of the inquiries we get are due to flyers we put up, postcards mailed out, etc.) does not use our website, but again does this mean we are not the real deal?
If anything it shows we could use a little help in this area because we are the real deal, but have not been able to use the full potential of a web presence.
Well, you’re a very small real deal then. And that’s fair. Look, if you refuse to put out serious statistics on your organization, and don’t even bother with installing a little Quantcast javascript on your web site, isn’t it time to rethink some of your online as well as offline priorities? Go to:
http://www.quantcast.com/coalitionforthehomeless.org
Here’s a website by my old employer. Did the walls come tumbling down for the Coalition for the Homeless? Was there ever a downside to publishing stats? No, there was not. No animals (or people) were harmed in the logging of these statistics on the web.
I think most nonprofit people are just uneasy with metrics for their efforts. It’s understandable but what I’m showing people here is that even a modest amount of transparency is useful and in this case, takes a minimal amount of work. Instead, I hear a lot of what I call, frankly, whining. Yes, it’s detractors whining about how these stats don’t match their mission but then refusing to divulge any further data. It seems to me that most people who whine about site statistics are also unwilling to share any other statistics that might highlight their organization’s mission. So let’s take some small steps everyone… first thing, post your site stats. Next, start posting some of your outcomes data. I’ve show you mine, you can show me yours
I implemented it .. and I wonder why the numbers on quanticast are so much lower than google anlaytics? Anyway, I just wonder the value of such side by side stat lists — even if I can say to you – my audience is than yours na na na na na and by three times! So, does that mean my blog is three times better quality than yours? What do the numbers mean?
Hmm… I’m not seeing a huge disparity between Google Analytics and Quantcast. I think that’s because I’ve been using it for longer and Quantcast is still estimating your hits. Wait until you have 30 days of data and you’ll see the numbers start to sync up.
Side by side stat lists? What’s the value? Hopefully, it will highlight sites both large and small and get people to just think a simple question, why does nonprofit so and so have more visitors than I do. Think of it as open-source research. They then have to make a decision, either stay niche or go big. Most people will stay niche but some people will want to understand what it takes to go big.
As for comparing my blog to yours in terms of site visitors, I don’t think people are that childish. This is where the real open source people divide from people who merely use it as a tool to pry open Microsoft’s grip from the masses. Real open source people understand open source as a philosophy of openness that extends far beyond software. It stretches into your thinking about how you run your business and how you feel about sharing your findings. That’s the deep philosophical concept that is rooted with the FOSS movement. It’s one that I support with very few reservations. In other words, to use street lingo, there “ain’t no shame in my game”. I’m not worried about the fact that you have 3 times more visitors than I do. There are both historical and operational reasons for that. It breaks down the other way as well. Should you worry that several hundred of my readers are complete addicts to this site, visiting it more than 30 times a month (who ARE you people anyway?) Am I supposed to freak out and worry that people will start visiting your blog exclusively? Or wait, should we worry if Techcrunch is a bigger blog than the both of us?
Hey readers, stop reading this blog — Beth has three times more readers than I do. Go there. There, I’ve said it. Will people do that? I’m pretty sure they won’t — our audiences overlap but they don’t commingle. However, I know that by looking at your stats and your operational methods, I’d have to definitely change the way I operate if I want to get to 10,000 readers a month. I’m not sure if I want to given my current time constraints but perhaps some more enterprising blogger can.
In a world of involuntary metrics, it’s better to simply embrace the nature of that information and do what nonprofits have always done best: give it away and share it. This whole notion that metrics are akin to performance reviews is so laughably ignorant of current trends (as if you could hide from the fact that people couldn’t do a site metrics comparison on you) that it shows there’s a deep-rooted misunderstanding of how technology works, what it can do and how you’re supposed to use it. Here’s a chance for people to understand the commitment of making blogs, running a technical nonprofit and even doing for-profit (in the case of Chipin and PicNET) work but instead people seem to prefer a closed-source approach that restricts learning chances for everyone who is still new to the game. I don’t think that’s how nonprofits should operate but apparently people still rely on the older business model of hiding their stats in a special private shoebox. Shrug. They’re wrong but I think they’ll turn around eventually.
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