Fundraising: the air that nonprofits breathe, the energy they consume, and the water they drink. Essentially, without profitable fundraisers, nonprofit operations would cease to exist.
The established codependence of nonprofit organizations and fundraisers is clear. But, what is less clear is how to maximize the effectiveness of your organization’s fundraising strategy.
Who should my fundraisers focus on? Are there versatile fundraising ideas that my organization hasn’t tried yet, but should invest in? These questions and more will be answered here as we delve into how to revamp your organization’s fundraising strategy.
In this article, we will focus on 4 helpful ideas that your organization can incorporate to improve your cultivation of new donors while increasing your number of recurring donors:
- Streamlining Fundraising Software
- Optimizing the Online Donor Experience
- Providing Matching Gift Options
- The More, the Merrier: Increasing Donation Methods
Securing new donations is vital, but learning methods to develop steady, recurring donations should be the foundation of your fundraising strategy.
Let’s get to revamping your fundraisers and engaging your donors!
It’s no secret that technology can expedite projects and allow your nonprofit organization to expand your fundraising strategy to reach larger audiences. But, technology can also significantly expand donor engagement in your organization’s fundraising campaigns. And a boost in donor engagement leads to a boost in donor development and recurring donations.
Since most of your donors are now online, your organization should strive to thrive online.
Finding the right fundraising software for your organization can significantly streamline your fundraising process, allowing your organization to reach new depths of donor development and charitable collections.
With all of the nonprofit tools in the market, look for fundraising software that enables your organization to:
Expand engagement at events.
Your organization’s presence at an event should be welcoming, not technical. Allow the software to do the dirty work so you can schmooze with donors, promote your cause, and solidify relationships.
The right CRM software for nonprofits can alleviate the workload of a fundraiser by providing event management assistance, donor development data, donor management, online donation processing, and more.
Focus on speed and simplicity.
Do not impede the donor’s impulse to donate. Expedite the online donation process to raise more money. The more hoops the donor has to jump through initially, the less likely they are to finish their donation.
Promote pledges.
According to Snowball Fundraising’s article, pledge software can support streamlined user experience and optimize your organization’s online presence.
With pledge software, your organization can:
- Convert prospective donors into guaranteed donors by offering opportunities to pledge. Those who pledge are more likely to finalize their gifts than those using regular donation pages.
- Create campaign urgency by attaching a timeframe to your pledge drive. Urgency breeds action in many donors and adds immediacy to your cause.
- Expand on interested donors by conducting high-volume pledge drives.
- Secure a card and a recurring donor. With dedicated pledges, your software can store a card on file and set up a recurring donation with the supporter.
The brands of fundraising software currently available can certainly assist your organization in achieving these goals. But, because every fundraising campaign has its idiosyncrasies and nuances, be sure to find the software that best fits your organization’s size, goals, and budget.
Check out this list of some of the top fundraising software to help get your search started!
Guaranteeing online security is a surefire way to build trust with your donors and provide them with a satisfying and safe online experience.
To increase your website’s credibility and user experience, guide your website towards two-factor authentication solutions and online giving pages.
Two-Factor Authentication Solutions
By implementing a two-factor authentication security solution into your site, your organization will:
- Provide peace of mind to your donors by ensuring that their internet experience is secure.
- Reduce user aggravation by reducing the number of times donors need to log in.
- Increase donor retention and donations by optimizing the overall online experience.
Two-factor authentication solutions guarantee more safety than single-factor login methods because it requires a user to provide at least two out of three authenticating indicators:
- What you have. Which device are you accessing your account from?
- What you know. Do you know your login credentials?
- What you are. Can you provide a fingerprint? Access to your email account?
However, opting for more security can often prove to be a nuisance for your online users and might drive them away from your site. But, there are authentication solutions that allow your organization to provide two-factor authentication without the need for manual entry because it is passwordless and email-based.
That’s right: the user is granted secure access automatically.
Password-free authentication will increase your organization’s online security and improve your donors’ user experience, but only if your organization has an online giving page to begin with.
Online Giving Pages
Crafting the perfect online giving page is one of the key online fundraising strategies to incorporate in today’s electronically-emulous nonprofit world.
There are certain features of a donation page that your organization should include in order to emphasize impact:
Brand your organization’s mission.
You’ve seen it before on many donation pages: a nonprofit’s logo bolstered into the top of the webpage. These organizations are creating powerful images to encourage donor giving and promote their mission.
Images of those receiving the nonprofit’s aid make fantastic visual stimulation to connect donors to an organization’s cause. The incorporation of a nonprofit’s mission statement into the image solidifies the brand of the organization and its connection to the cause.
Nurture the donor’s impulse.
The main objective of an online giving page is to facilitate the donation process to ensure that your organization secures more donors. Do not hinder your objective by squashing your donor’s impulse to donate to your worthy cause.
Avoid slowing down the donor’s impulse to donate by optimizing your online giving page to:
- Be concise
- Keep consistent branding
- Avoid distracting visuals
- Be simple and clear
- Provide mobile accessibility
- Automatically thank donors
Designing your donation page to be as streamlined as possible encourages your donors to complete the online donation process by plugging in their financial information.
Secure a card on file.
When a donor inputs their credit card information into your online giving page, it solidifies their commitment to your cause. Credit card numbers are highly valuable and secured information. This means that the donor not only trusts your organization, but is entrusting you with the code to their currency for future donations.
Once you have their card secured on file, encourage your donors to create an account with your nonprofit to save their card information. Make the process of creating a donor account easy and efficient to prove that it’s simple to support your cause.
Never make creating accounts mandatory to complete donations. Doing so will gain neither information nor donations. Your goal is to leverage this long-term relationship to consistently increase the frequency of donations your organization receives and focus on recurring donors.
Say thank you.
It is so important to your fundraising strategy this year, next year, and every subsequent year that your base of recurring donors stays strong and continues to grow. With a streamlined online giving page and secured card information, your organization must optimize your future fundraising endeavors by confirming the donation, encouraging automatic recurring donations, and simply saying thank you.
Showing your gratitude to the donor ensures that your donor database and your online donation page continue harmoniously, fueling the success of one another and your fundraiser.
With an increase in donor retention and online donations, it is imperative that your organization considers implementing matching gift options into your giving page and donor communication.
Matching gift options are hidden opportunities too many nonprofit organizations ignore. These corporate philanthropic treasures can double, triple, or even quadruple the size of a single donation without requiring the donor to give more.
How is that possible?
With corporate giving programs, companies match the donations that their employees make to eligible nonprofit organizations.
Here’s how the matching gift process works:
- Step 1: A donor (who is employed by Company X) makes a donation to your organization.
- Step 2: The donor uses a matching gift database to see if Company X has a corporate giving program.
- Step 3: If Company X has a matching gift option, the donor follows Company X’s guidelines found on the matching gift database and successfully submits the form before the deadline.
- Step 4: Company X matches the donor’s gift to your organization according to their company’s matching gift ratio (2:1, 3:1, etc.).
- Step 5: Your organization just doubled the donor’s donation and their impact!
While the corporation’s social equity increased from its matching gift, your organization’s financial equity increased without any extra effort on your part.
Consider implementing matching gift tools into your online donation page to revamp your fundraising by incorporating corporate philanthropy programs.
Matching gift options increase the ways in which donors can give. Providing more ways to give means more giving actually happens. And in today’s world, everything is expected to be on-demand. That includes donations. To revitalize your next fundraising strategy, consider implementing two crucial ways to donate:
Text-to-give fundraising software
To keep up with donations on-demand, your nonprofit can incorporate text-to-give fundraising software that will engage and retain the modern donor to maximize the scope and success of your fundraising campaigns.
With text-to-give software, your donors can easily give to your organization with just two taps.
Once your organization’s text-to-give campaign is set up, you can promote it to donors! Donors can now make donations to your organization in just 3 easy steps:
- Step 1: Text your organization’s text-to-give phone number with the amount they want to donate.
- Step 2: Follow the embedded link automatically sent from the text-to-give software.
- Step 3: Check their email inbox for the pre-written confirmation email to send.
Peer-to-peer fundraising
While this method of donating is not primarily financial, it does encourage more direct donor engagement with your cause by fundraising on your organization’s behalf!
With peer-to-peer fundraising, your supporters are given an opportunity to have a tangible, immediate effect on your organization’s fundraising success. By optimizing their individual social circles online and in-person, donors can fundraise for your organization by sharing the campaign on social media and encouraging their peers to donate to your cause.
Peer-to-peer fundraising will create deeper connections between your organization and your donors and pave the way towards increased donor stewardship.
In order to maximize the success of your peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, be sure to invest in secure software to host your fundraiser. You want to provide reassurance to donors and mitigate fears for they may have about the safety of their online donation.
With a continued need for nonprofit organizations to fundraise in order to serve their missions, there is a continued need to revise and revitalize your organization’s fundraising strategy.
Do not continue with the same old methods. Focus on streamlining your software, optimizing the online experience, providing matching gift options, and increasing donation methods to increase donor retention, acquisition, and engagement. Use these methods to revamp your fundraising strategy and help you achieve your goals!
