During the time when the internet was not as widely used as it is today, it was quite difficult for non-profit organizations to earn money that is needed to continue funding their cause. But, thanks to the internet and the World Wide Web, non-profit organizations have found a way to raise money for their project, and that is through affiliate programs. What is an affiliate program? And how does it help non-profit organizations get money? We will be providing the answers to these questions by enumerating the reasons why affiliate programs are beneficial for non-profit organizations.
What is an Affiliate Program?
In simpler terms, an affiliate program is a process wherein you will be able to get some profits from another company by promoting their products on your website, which means that you would need to add links to your website that will lead to a product’s webpage. For example, if you are an affiliate of Amazon, you can put links to the products they are selling online on your website. If a reader on the website clicks the link of the Amazon product, you will be able to get a commission or profit from the product if the reader buys it.
If you have a non-profit organization, you can apply as an affiliate on dozens of different websites that offer programs online. By signing up for these programs, your organization will be able to earn money without relying on donations. On the other hand, you can also set up an affiliate program so that other people or websites can promote your cause.
Benefits of Setting Up an Affiliate Program
As previously stated, you can create an affiliate program that will help you get more people involved in your organization’s cause. In addition, there are also other benefits that you can get from having an affiliate program, and here are just some of them.
Expand Your Outreach
By setting up an affiliate program, other websites and blogs will be able to promote your organization, thus expanding your outreach on the internet. Most of the websites, companies, or blogs that sign up for dozens of affiliate programs already have an established reader base, which that they will show up more frequently on Google Search and in ad placements. Through these popular websites, your organization will also be able to benefit from their popularity and gain more donors for your cause. But, you would need to make an agreement that the website will get profit or commission from every donation that their readers (the ones that clicked the link leading to your website) give.
If you are only a local non-profit organization, you can make your cause worldwide by setting up a website and affiliate program, and these will allow your organization to flourish since you will have a “global reach.” In addition, you will also gain international donors, although you must make sure that you set up an online wallet like PayPal so that you can store their donations there and convert it to your local currency once you spend it for projects.
Get More Volunteers
Because your organization’s website will be more known by having affiliates, there is a high chance that the readers on your affiliates’ website will volunteer to help you in various projects, including setting up forums, scheduling meetings, writing newsletters, and monitoring the website for any updates or issues. Besides asking for donations, you can also set up the non profit affiliate program in a way that allows the affiliate website to get profit from bringing in volunteers. Of course, they wouldn’t get a commission without any donations, so you can ask volunteers to donate first before getting work on your organization.
On the other hand, your organization can also get volunteers even without involving the recruitment process in the affiliate program. Getting volunteers will be easier thanks to the outreach that you get from being promoted by other websites, although the webpages that contain the link to your donation page should be focused on telling the cause of your organization and its need for more volunteers.
Save Money
Although you would have to share some of your donations to affiliate websites, giving them commissions is actually a lot less expensive than advertising and marketing the organization on your own. Creating advertisements for your organization means that you would have to set up ads on Google and popular social media websites. So, you would need to spend your own money to market your organization, which could be a bad move if you are just a startup org that hasn’t receive any donations or profits yet.
With affiliate programs, you will be able to market your organization on other websites for basically free or a lot less money, and the money that you will spend getting these websites to promote your organization will be from the donations that you get from their readers. As such, you mainly don’t have to spend on almost anything to market your organization.