According to Charity Navigator, more than 70% of charitable giving comes from individuals. In 2017 that translated into $287 billion in donations. That’s a powerful number! Individual donors are the lifeblood of nonprofit organizations—a non-profit’s ability to fulfill its mission and achieve its goals is directly related to its ability to attract and retain private citizen donors. That’s why it’s critically important for non-profits to approach fundraising from a donor-centric perspective. Fundraising programs that put the donor at the center of every decision can yield much higher revenue and achieve larger year-over-year growth than ones that are more internally focused.
How can you ensure your fundraising program resonates with your donors? You can start by making sure every single interaction you have with your donors is relevant and feels personal. Combine that with a strategy that allows for flexibility—one that can be adjusted as needed to accommodate shifting consumer behavior—and implement it using a plan that’s sustainable over the long term.
Be Relevant
If you understand the science behind why your donors give, it can help you pinpoint what motivates them to support you. This gives you an opportunity to focus all incentives and messaging around content that resonates with your donors. There are many theories that strive to explain why people give to charitable causes, but most are focused around the central idea that individuals give out of altruism—they want to feel as though they’re making a difference in their community, or in the world. But how do you know what will make your donors feel good about supporting your cause in particular?
One surefire way to better understand what they need or want from you is to ask them. It’s perfectly fine to reach out to your supporters and ask them what kind of information they’re interested in receiving from you. Talk to your donors about what matters to them, and ask them how (phone, email, mail) and how often they want to hear from you. This will give you context, provide an outline for what kind of content you’ll share and will help you develop a custom communication plan that meets your donors’ specific needs.
It’s important to share the right information, but it’s equally important to present it the right way. If donors give to feel good, it should go without saying that they aren’t going to respond well when a message makes them feel bad. Phrases like “why didn’t you give last year” or other “negative empathy” messages designed to guilt a prospective donor into making a gift can be a turn off. Keep in mind that you want your donors to come away from every interaction with a positive feeling, not a negative one. Build up your donors as people who have the chance to change the world through their association with your non-profit. Tell them about the problem you are fighting, and then cast a positive vision for the better future that they will help build.
Get Personal
Always produce donor-centric communications, events and programs that focus on how the donor impacts your work and demonstrate how important their support is to your organization. A simple shift from “we/us” to “you” language is really all you need to change your content from internally focused to donor-centric. All of the relevant information stays the same; you’re just presenting it in a way that puts the donor at the center of the cause. For example, instead of saying “We need your help to reach our goal of making higher education accessible for all” try “your support today helps makes higher education affordable for all, regardless of financial means.”
Once you’ve secured a donation through your positive emotional appeal, you should be prepared to demonstrate to the donor how their gift directly impacted your organization, and present it in a way that defines how it helps your organization and how it affects the donor’s life and or community.
Stay Flexible
Be nimble enough that you can adapt to ever changing consumer behavior trends. Engage with your donors where they want to give, how they want to give. For example, more and more consumers are focusing on causes rather than on any particular brand/organization. Donors—especially younger donors—don’t really care which organization they give their money to, as long as it supports the cause they are interested in. Non-profits must work harder to engage donors with their brand, NOT just their cause. Focusing on loyalty programs helps, but not all non-profits do enough of this. For a good example of how to keep donors loyal to your brand and your cause, look to public radio and TV stations which offer content based member subscriptions.
If consumers are moving away from product based consumption that is subscription based, it makes a lot of sense to consider offering donation options that mirror that. If you aren’t doing so already, perhaps it’s time to put a larger focus on your monthly giving/sustainer program and use it to connect with donors in a way that works for them, in terms of both ease of giving and the benefits they appreciate.
Make it Sustainable
Keep in mind that your goal is to build lasting relationships with donors who continue to support your organization for the long term. Focusing on participation for lower level donors, stewarding them as much and as well as you would a major donor is equally as important as cultivating those high net-worth donors. They may not be able to support you with large financial contributions now, but if they’re committed to your organization and feel as though they’re valued no matter how much they give, it’s easier to keep them in and move them up the pipeline. Spend money on donor cultivation early and often. Focus on “effectiveness” (maximizing growth in giving) rather than “efficiency” (minimizing costs).
Enter into each cultivation with the knowledge that you’re in it for the long-haul. Even after you secure the gift, if you want to keep that donor returning and incrementally upping their gift size, your stewardship will have to be just as meticulous as your cultivation and solicitation—even at lower giving levels.
Once you’ve established a solid relationship try to drive donors toward major gifts, capital campaign gifts and planned giving. Everyone wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves and wants to make a lasting impact. Encouraging legacy giving helps make this seem possible to your donors—at least in terms of their impact on your organization.
As you know…
Fundraising is all about relationship building, and relationships are all about paying attention and being present. It’s also all about understanding the needs of the other party. It takes a lot of work, but the relationships that are cultivated thoughtfully and purposefully are the ones that are mutually beneficial. Those are the ones that last.
