“Where
do we sit on charity donations this year?”
How many companies do
you know that use this question as an integral way to increase clientele, to
attract database members and to improve business quality all while sharing some
jungle love in the name of charity?
Can’t think of any? Well,
SurveyMonkey, the world’s largest survey company, is leading with its heart. And they are challenging other businesses to
follow.
“Any more companies we can encourage to do
this kind of thing and bring charity to the center, it helps and makes a big
difference,” Brent Chudoba, Vice President and General
Manager of SurveyMonkey Audience said. “When
we first started, we were sending hundred and thousand dollar checks. Two years later we are donating a million
dollars. It starts to be really cool
that we can do this much good.”
Charitable donations is
the first topic addressed by Chudoba and his team at their monthly meetings.
“It resonates through
the whole organization of saying, look, if our goals are based around
charity, and we know they are connected to business goals, too,” Chudoba
explained, “that kind of helps people give back and it makes the people we work
with even more important.”
SurveyMonkey, has
formulated an innovative business plan that drives its business by donating to
the charity of the respondent’s choice for each survey that is completed
through SurveyMonkey’s site. This is
very different from anything anybody in the industry is doing, according to
Chudoba. He explains that the industry
standard generally includes paying survey takers with cash, points, or frequent
flier miles. This practice creates huge
problems with data quality because people speed through the surveys to get their
points, he added.
Chudoba believes the
charitable aspect (donating 50 cents per survey) has improved the quality of
survey responses.
“We do survey our respondents and ask what it
is that makes you want to donate to charity and what it is that makes you take
surveys,” he said. “Our respondents do love the fact that we’re donating
material amounts to charity…they really like to see that what they are doing is
making a difference. There is an
altruism feeling that it is worth 5 or 10 minutes of my time to complete a
survey.”
SurveyMonkey launched its new product, SurveyMonkey
Audience two years ago. This product
allows customers to purchase respondents to take their surveys. About one quarter of SurveyMonkey’s
subscribers is non-profit organizations.
Because of the tight relationships SurveyMonkey had with many of their
non-profit subscribers, the idea naturally progressed.
“Our first idea was to
partner with the charities and say, hey, if we can recruit respondents to take
surveys, we’d like to give them donations to charities instead of paying them,”
Chudoba stated explaining that they recruited two million respondents in the
past two years to take surveys.
When the charities
receiving donations began to see significant numbers coming from SurveyMonkey,
they began to realize they could drive some of their own donations.
“The Humane Society is
a great example,” Chudoba mentioned. “They escalated toward the top of our
donation list because they are solving a lot of great problems. I think people care about animals. Our members have flocked toward a lot of cause
areas.”
Chudoba explained that
when SurveyMonkey began cutting thirty
and forty thousand dollar checks to the Humane Society, people from the
non-profit began calling to see how they could work together to create something
even bigger.
“They actually put us
on their home page for a period of time and emailed two million of their users and
said, hey, this is a great program we are working with,” Chudoba noted. “They
said that if you want to sign up and help us raise donations, click and sign up
on SurveyMonkey.”
Instead of traditional
fundraising methods, non-profits can encourage their members to participate in
surveys to raise money thereby giving them more control over their own
donations. SurveyMonkey gives them the
option of putting a button on their own web page that links to SurveyMonkey
thereby increasing SurveyMonkey’s business.
“It’s interesting
because it’s a new business model for charities, “Chudoba stated. “We are
actually providing a business model and a set of metrics that say, here is what
happens when we work together. This is a
donation stream that doesn’t really go away.
These people signed up to donate and as our business grows, your
donations grow. It’s an interesting phenomenon.”
“With an approach as
innovative as ours,” Chudoba added, “it’s causing charities to rethink some of
the ways they do business.”
Since the inception of
SurveyMonkey Audience two years ago, SurveyMonkey has raised two million
dollars for charity and has announced a goal to reach one million dollars in
2013 alone. Chudoba indicated that they
tend to have a lot of “cause” groups that include non-profits working with
animals, youth, arts, environment, health and hunger/poverty.
In addition to the
donations per completed survey, the employees at SurveyMonkey get out to
participate in hands-on charitable work at monthly events with groups like
Ronald McDonald House.
“It’s in SurveyMonkey’s
DNA. Given how much of our customer base
is in the non-profit sector, we have a lot of nice connections,” Chudoba said
adding that he participated in a zoo clean up and helped build clay houses for
Habitat for Humanity.
Chodoba sees the
charitable element of his business as a win for all involved.
“I think the charity
component is really a game changer for customers,” Chuboda added. “When they
see a company partnering with charity to do some things in innovative ways, it’s
actually a good thing as we can showcase the charity partners that are great customers
of ours, and it definitely helps business in a lot of different ways.”
“Hopefully I can put a
five million dollar goal on the wall eventually,” he concluded.
