But I also think that applications for email and donations are some of the top priorities for charities and are therefore core to getting right when it comes to data compliance and security etc. But building a custom socially-driven supporter service area of a website is never going to be top priority and get investment, so it’s great that charities (even charities with big budgets) can launch these apps in litterally minutes!

Great example of this is GivenGain – http://www.givengain.com – full donations platform for minimal price and modularised so charities pay for what they need. Another great one is MailChimp. Quick and easy email platform which can scale according to need.

Having said this, I would not recommend doing any of this without a clear plan and strategy as to
1. what the actual benefit of doing this outside of the business is?
2. what happens to data and privacy of that data?
3. data and ecommerce security – in some cases these external apps are more secure that what businesses/ charities would build themselves – especially in relation to PCI compliance
4. How do you get any customer/ supporter data back into the business?
5. How sustainable it is – what’s the long term plan?
6. How do you track it’s effectiveness, if at all?

If you can answer these questions and you know exactly why you’re doing it and what you’ll save then go ahead