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Redefining Fundraising: Eight Keys to Execution

Posted on January 30, 2012 by jagiddens

Ideas are everywhere. Through emails, blogs, conversations, keynote speeches, and media, we are endlessly bombarded with the latest and greatest idea, few of which are ever implemented. So how does a nonprofit organization create momentum internally to get a great idea put into action? Curt Swindoll details eight steps to creating forward movement both in the mission and in the fundraising disciplines of your organization. Being able to come up with great ideas is fantastic, but ultimately worthless if they don’t translate into action.

Click here to download this whitepaper and kickstart your nonprofit’s effectiveness and execution.

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Redefining Fundraising: Search Engine Marketing for Nonprofits

Posted on January 23, 2012 by jagiddens

How are you planning to augment your acquisition practices in 2012? You might have looked at your acquisition costs and thought that they were too high, but are unsure how to gain new donors at manageable rates. Tommy Swanson explains in this whitepaper how search engine marketing can help nonprofits find prospects that align with their mission or vision and convert them to loyal donors, year in and year out. You might think search engine marketing is only for commercial businesses, but the best practices hold true for fundraising.

Click here to download the whitepaper and change the way you acquire new donors.

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Redefining Fundraising: Maximize the Middle

Posted on January 19, 2012 by jagiddens

Many organizations have yet to tap the power of mid-level donors, instead focusing on the long development cycle of major donors and the acquisition needs of the annual fund. Both of these practices have been tried and true, and if done right, can yield great results. But what if you could quickly upgrade qualified donors from the annual fund and create a next generation of major donors? The new revenue would take donors from smaller gifts to mid-level annual pledges, giving your organization a fresh fundraising stream from within.

Tony Smercina and Erik Tomalis discuss the strategy used to gain mid-level donors in this whitepaper.

Click here to download your copy and learn how to make mid-level giving a part of your organization’s standard fundraising disciplines.

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Redefining Fundraising: Cross Channel Marketing for Nonprofits

Posted on January 16, 2012 by jagiddens

Each year many nonprofits say that they are going to integrate their communication channels, making them work together to raise more money and create deeper relationships with their constituents. Make this the year that you follow through on that commitment. This whitepaper by Allison Lewis Lodhi contains some great techniques to integrate fundraising channels and gain multiple touchpoints from your donors. Don’t wait for another year to go by, with more uncertain fundraising results.

Click here to download the whitepaper now.

 

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Redefining Fundraising

Posted on January 10, 2012 by jagiddens

Did you meet your fundraising goals this year? Maybe you did, but aren’t certain that the same tried and true methods will work next year. You want to innovate, but aren’t quite sure how. Maybe you didn’t meet your goals and are concerned for the mission and momentum of your organization.

Do you know where your organization struggles in the fundraising process? Clear knowledge of the problem is essential before we can craft a solution.

Download this whitepaper by Curt Swindoll to learn how to form a comprehensive fundraising strategy, strengthening your fundraising program and delivering results like never before.

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Redefining Fundraising: Rethinking a Culture of Philanthropy

Posted on January 6, 2012 by admin

Gary Cole wrote an excellent whitepaper in 2011, exhorting organizations to focus on creating an internal culture of philanthropy. So many nonprofit employees develop tunnel-vision around the mission of their organization and fail to make themselves better fundraisers. At the end of the day, there is no mission if there is no money. Educating everyone in your organization on basic fundraising principles can begin to raise the watermark of philanthropy at your organization.

Download this whitepaper and rethink the way your organization thinks about fundraising.

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New Year, Same Old Fundraising?

Posted on January 4, 2012 by admin

As a new year begins, it is the perfect time to examine the health of your organization and the effectiveness of your fundraising practices. Over the next two weeks, we will be posting links to helpful whitepapers and resources that will give you the opportunity to redefine fundraising for your organization. Will you take advantage of it? Only you can answer that.

Make this the year that you become more efficient, listen to your data, send your donors more relevant communication, and blow the roof off of your fundraising goals.

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10 Ingredients That Produce Wildly Successful Appeals: Stewardship and Report, Analyze and Test

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Matt McCabe

In October, I presented a webinar on 10 ingredients that produce wildly successful appeals. Combining research with practice, we will be breaking these down in the blog over the next few weeks. Read the full series here.

9. Stewardship

To have wildly successful appeals, we need to communicate with our donors year-round. Your donors should hear from you at least quarterly, with intentional communication that doesn’t make a hard ask.

You can also do stewardship with people who are not donors yet. We developed a welcome series for Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, specifically for the parents of patients. The first round, an email, got a 3% response rate, which shows that the campaign is resonating with recipients. The second got a 48% open rate, well above the industry average of 17.5%.

10. Report, Analyze, and Test

Too many nonprofits are content to achieve their goals without dissecting the factors that made them a success. Which donors are upgrading and renewing? Which communications and calls to action worked best?

An analytics engine like a donor migration report can help you see the trends in your donor base — from donor churn, to acquisition. These have to be segmented into the different levels of donors, so you know where to focus.

In addition, we must make sure that we test. In an ideal world, every appeal should include a test. Testing disproves intuition that can lead to failure.

Throughout this entire series, I have spoken about several techniques that can increase the success of your appeals. You don’t have to do these all at once — keep it simple! For your next appeal, try introducing two new ingredients, analyze the impact, adjust, and move forward.

 

Good luck!

 

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10 Ingredients That Produce Wildly Successful Appeals: Acknowledge AND Thank Donors

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Matt McCabe

In October, I presented a webinar on 10 ingredients that produce wildly successful appeals. Combining research with practice, we will be breaking these down in the blog over the next few weeks. Read the full series here.

#8 Acknowledge AND Thank

There are 4 basic keys to thanking donors:

1. Online gifts receive an immediate acknowledgement

People receive this from regular eCommerce sites, and this is the very least they should receive from you.

2. All gifts receive a personalized, appeal-specific thank-you letter with receipt (not just a receipt) mailed within 48 hours. 

The receipt can be attached, but the important thing here is personalization and making the letter appeal-specific.

3. Target key donors with thank you calls from staff

Of course, all major and mid-level donors get calls when they make a gift. But what about new donors? If you divide up 10 or 20 new donors each week, even just leaving a voicemail can have a tremendous effect on connecting the donor with your organization. It can also initiate some conversations that lead to better prospect identification. We have found that anywhere from 46 to 53 percent of major donors in the last five years have originated from a gift of $100 or left.

4. Send follow-up emails one month after the appeal communicating results and the impact of the donor’s gift. 

Gift reporting and storytelling have shown to curb donor churn and turn one-time donations into the key, multi-year relationships that sustain organizations.

Many organizations are good at either acknowledging or thanking donors. How can your organization be better at both?

 

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10 Ingredients That Produce Wildly Successful Appeals: Eliminate Friction

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Matt McCabe

In October, I presented a webinar on 10 ingredients that produce wildly successful appeals. Combining research with practice, we will be breaking these down in the blog over the next few weeks. Read the full series here.

#7: Eliminate Friction

World Vision is a wonderful organization doing amazing work, but their website recently caused some friction for my wife. Let’s walk through a click count. She visited the 30 hour famine site, and wants to give a gift.

Click #1: Donate button

Click #2: Donate page — looking around, seeing “sign up now”, “get more info”, and can’t find a way to give a gift.

Click #3: “Donate now” — isn’t this what I thought I was doing on the first click?

Click #4: I am clicking donate now for the third time and am a little thrown off by the screen change. I guess this is still World Vision.

Click #5: brings me to a shopping cart, where I can “check out”, which is a little different than “make a donation”.

5 more clicks to get through the checkout process include registering for an account, updating my mailing address, entering my credit card information, and submitting my information. The first rule is not to frustrate or irritate those who want to give to us. Looking at the Wycliffe site, you can see the one-click giving point right on the page. Contact info, credit card, and submission all happens on one page. How can you make it as easy as possible for your donors to give?

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