There is one avenue of potential revenue that hardly any organization is taking advantage of, or even know about. That revenue source is affiliate marketing. There are millions of dollars of revenue, that the biggest companies in the world are willing to pay you, that goes unclaimed each and every day. Affiliate programs started in the late 1980's and it was popularized by Amazon stating in 1996 with their "Associates Program". If you see an ad for Amazon today, there's a good chance it's an affiliate link.
What Is An Affiliate Program?
As mentioned some of the biggest companies in the world use affiliate marketing to increase sales. Companies like Walmart, Home Depot, Target, Amazon, eBay, and thousands more companies use it. Many companies use third party affiliate companies to set up and manage their affiliate programs for them, while some companies run their own in house affiliate programs. To find companies that your organization would like to promote you would apply to either a third party affiliate company or on the company's website, if they run their own. Example of third party affiliate companies are CJ.com, Ratuken, Impact, Awin, FlexOffers. Example of companies running their own in house affiliate programs are ClickBank digital prodcusts), Amazon and Ebay, through their eBay Partner Network.
What Is The Affiliate's Role?
The affiliate, which is you or your organization if you join an affiliate program, are really minimal. Basically the affiliate refers customers to retailers. The affiliate does not work for or represent the company in any way, does not stock any products or provide any services, does not take any financial or personal information and does not handle any customer enquiries. It is not the affiliate's role to recommend a company or product unless the affiliate uses that product or service themselves and can write a testimonial. The affiliate would place a link, banner write an article etc. to refer people to a certain company that sells a product or service that the customer is looking for. Basically saying, "you are looking for that product, you can find it with this company." Once the customer clicks through to the company you are referring, that company handles the customer from there.
Affiliate Disclosure
Many countries now require that anyone with affiliate links on their site must post an "Affiliate Disclosure". This disclosure simply states that the site in question has affiliate links and anyone clicking on those links will be taken to a retailer's site. And the best part, you can post in your affiliate disclosure that you may earn a small commission at "No Extra Cost To The Consumer". This is true! Whether the customer clicks through an affiliate link or finds that retailer by searching online, the cost to purchase a product or service is the same. The only difference is that the company selling that product or service will pay a commission to the owner of the site with the affiliate link, when a customer clicks on that affiliate link. The commission is paid once the transaction is completed meaning that there are no refunds or returns.
How Non Profits can Use This To Raise Funds
Of course Non Profits are not in the business of selling products and services. That is why affiliate marketing is perfect for them. Once set up then it is just a matter of collecting any commissions earned. Promoting this would be up to the organization but there are many ways to it. For example lets say an organization chooses to opt into a travel affiliate program, and there are many. The monthly newsletter could contain a link for fundraising where anyone booking a trip, a flight, a hotel, etc., could earn a commission for that organization.
Use A Donation Raising Company
There aren't too many companies doing this but one in particular will raise donations for your organization, without your organization joining any affiliate programs. The company Choice Canadian Tours raises funds for non profit organizations. They pay out 60% of the commissions earned for basically just posting a link to Choice Canadian Tours site. They use affiliate programs to raise money for non profit organizations. Although they are a Canadian company and feature Canadian organizations you can apply to them and they will set up an account for you. You can book travel anywhere in the world, and from anywhere in the world 24/7.
Summing Up
Affiliate marketing has been around for some time. Many people have made a lot of money promoting through affiliate links. There is no better time right now for non profit organizations to use this source of revenue to boost their fundraising campaigns.