A basic rule of fundraising is to meet donors where they are — and nowadays that often means online. But with nearly all nonprofits now vying for donors through email, social media, texting, or a mix of communication channels, it’s vital to create digital campaigns that grab attention and motivate giving, especially during the last few months of the year.
As the busy “giving season” gets underway, the Chronicle spoke with veteran fundraisers at three organizations of different sizes — a higher-education institution, an animal-welfare group, and a nonprofit digital news outlet — about which online tactics and messages are working, and what isn’t. Read on to get their top tips and insights, so you can boost online results and reach year-end revenue goals.
Find Social-Media Influencers in Your Network
Influencers are the “lifeline of digital fundraising,” says LaShonda Williams, advancement executive at South Texas College of Law and a trainer for Fundraising Academy. “And when I say influencers, not just looking at the standpoint of how many followers [they] have, but being an influencer because they’re passionate about the organization and can share the compelling message about the importance of the work that is being done and that has been done.” That could include existing donors, volunteers, or others who are close to your nonprofit.
Williams’s work at her previous employer, Prairie View A&M University, where she was director of annual giving, offers an example of how to use influencers to amplify a campaign. During her six-year tenure, she helped increase alumni giving by more than 40 percent, she says, in large part thanks to digital strategies, including working with alumni influencers.
To identify potential influencers, Williams’s team looked for alumni who had high profiles on social media and were actively involved as undergraduates, and then invited them to “be a part of groundbreaking opportunities … to increase philanthropic support for the organization that they love” by serving as “ambassadors,” she says.
One of those opportunities was an online campaign that Williams led for “I Love My HBCU Month,” an annual recognition of historically Black colleges and universities in March. Throughout the month, Prairie View highlighted one ambassador each day in a social media post, an email, and a printed postcard. The featured alumni shared where they were in life and how Prairie View had helped elevate their careers, Williams says, and included the call to action: “I love my HBCU. Now join me and show some love.” Revenue from the campaign quadrupled over five years, she says, from about $20,000 to more than $80,000.
The influencers were critical to the campaign’s success, she says, not only because of their strong social-media presence, but because they focused on turning followers into donors. To help them, the fundraisers provided sample phrases and calls to action that the alumni could use in their responses, such as “Thanks for the likes — please join me by making a gift,” Williams says, or “Give me a heart if I can count on you to make a gift.”
Foster Competition
Another key piece of the campaign was a “digital reunion,” Williams says, which challenged graduated classes to compete to make the most gifts and involved the participation of ambassadors from each class. As donations flowed in, “leader boards” and “donor rolls” on Prairie View’s website ranked the classes by number of gifts and recognized individual supporters, respectively. Those mechanisms helped foster healthy competition, Williams says, because “everyone wants to see their name in lights.”
Lean on Your Volunteers
Identify those who are comfortable with digital tools, Williams suggests, and think about how to best put their skills to work. For example, one volunteer might be able to help create videos or graphics, while another might be better suited to help with thank-you phone calls, referrals to potential big donors, or social-media promotion.
As you develop messages for your campaign, you also could recruit volunteers to participate in a focus group, so you can test sample approaches and incorporate feedback from people who represent your community, Williams says. “Who knows better than those that currently support your organization in terms of how the messaging and the branding is looking?”
Don’t Forget About Your Board
Get trustees and other key volunteers to help with fundraising, Williams suggests, such as by asking them to make a gift early in the campaign, so you can highlight those contributions to help build momentum.
MLK50, a nonprofit news site in Memphis, focused on social justice, enlists members of its advisory board to act as online “champions” for its year-end campaign, says Andrea Hart, chief strategy officer. For example, champions might commit a $1,000 gift and use social media to encourage others to contribute too.
Thank and Follow Up With Donors
“Securing gifts is great,” Williams says. “But the big picture is not only do we want to secure donors, we want to retain them.” Before launching a digital campaign, create a stewardship plan, she says, and that should include more than just an automated email acknowledgement of online gifts. Send a thank-you letter, add donors to your email list, and show appreciation through social media, direct mail, and email outreach after the campaign ends, she suggests.
Report back on the results, even if you can’t do so until a month or two later, Williams suggests. Share how much was raised through the campaign and how the money was spent, including stats that demonstrate the impact, such as the number of scholarships donors made possible.
If a picture says a thousand words, a little video is a hundred thousand words, because donors feel like it’s a personal interaction.
Create Compelling Videos
“If a picture says a thousand words, a little video is a hundred thousand words, because [donors] feel like it’s a personal interaction,” says Sean Farnan, development director at SPCA of Northern Nevada, an animal-welfare organization. To make videos that resonate, focus not on what your nonprofit does but why, he adds, and then show the happy ending or positive results your work brought about.
But don’t just tell your story; show it, he says. Even if you don’t have cute animals like SPCA, you can still find ways to do this with a little creativity. Farnan shared a couple examples inspired by his work at previous employers:
- A climate-change organization that worked with groups developing alternative-energy projects like a wind or solar farm might show snippets of that process from beginning to end, such as getting county approval of solar panels and then showing the partners breaking ground on the farm.
- A domestic-violence group could share stats from its work and interview a survivor on camera — with the person’s face shadowed out — about how they connected with the organization and what the positive outcome was.
Use Your Phone
Don’t think videos always need to be highly produced or polished, Farnan says. When something good happens at SPCA’s adoption center, he’ll sometimes take a video for a donor with his phone — often from inside a kennel with an animal on his lap “jumping all over [him], which they love to see,” he says.
For example, he might share a 10- to 15-second thank-you message talking about what happened that day because of the donor. “That’s acceptable, and donors appreciate it,” he says. Depending on the content, he usually either sends such a video to a list-serv of top donors or texts it to a specific individual or two.
Stay Front and Center
SPCA’s online fundraising throughout the year includes two e-newsletters per month (with different names and headers to make them feel unique to donors), one social-media post every day, and two digital campaigns — one in the fall that leads up to Giving Tuesday, and one in the spring around Mother’s Day. That amount of outreach, along with about six direct-mail pieces that reinforce the story SPCA tells online, seems to work well, Farnan says. “We don’t need to do a lot more than that, and it doesn’t really seem to be too much.”
The key is to make sure you’re not just always asking for money, he adds. Farnan tries to put five non-solicitation communications — what he calls “stewardship drips,” such as a thank-you video, text, or handwritten note — between each ask. By showing donors you care about them and sharing positive outcomes from giving, you reinforce their choice to donate before asking again, he explains. “So, it’s not just ask, ask, ask, ask every single time — that’s critical.”
Start Small
If you’re a small nonprofit or new to online fundraising, you should “right-size your campaigns so you can build muscle,” Hart says. She suggests starting with a two-week campaign to try to raise a certain amount and see what happens and which messages work.
That’s also a way to get helpful insights that can inform future online efforts, she adds, such as identifying people in your group’s orbit who could be interested in donating, sharing their story, or helping with social media.
Also think hard about the length of your campaign, Hart says. Make sure to factor in the pre-work that will be required, such as securing gift commitments, influencers, and a matching gift, so you can plan announcements and build excitement as you make progress toward your goal. And whatever length you decide on, she adds, make sure you have enough good messaging to fill that amount of time.
Be Flexible
When planning a campaign, carefully consider your staff’s bandwidth to do the work, and be willing to push back the timeline if needed, Hart says. “I think because it’s fundraising, it can feel like you have to do it — you know, it’s just the most important thing,” she says. “But I think you should still be able to pace yourself out well and be honest about your capacity.”
