Digital fundraising has taken on a new urgency in recent years as the pandemic has accelerated the need to connect with donors online, whether through email, social media, or text.
Several fundraising experts joined the Chronicle to discuss how nonprofits can use data to supercharge their online fundraising strategies in an increasingly digital world.
“A lot of past thinking around websites and online giving was that it was nice to have but not a need,” said Cherian Koshy, vice president of development at Merit America, a work-force development nonprofit. Now, he said, it’s become an essential tool in nonprofit fundraisers’ arsenal and one that can be refined and enhanced by data.
Koshy was joined by T. Clay Buck, a consultant who heads TCB Fundraising. The session, Using Data to Improve Online Fundraising, was hosted by Drew Lindsay, senior writer at the Chronicle.
Read on for highlights, or watch the video to get all the insights.
Streamline Websites and Donation Pages
It’s key that nonprofits make donating online as “easy and frictionless as possible,” said Buck, who noted that any snag on a donation page, like a cumbersome form or a hard-to-find donate button, can make all the difference in virtual giving.
“The more fields you have to fill out, the more friction,” said Buck.
If nonprofits collect data on their supporters, they can in turn tailor their donation pages or auto-fill information for returning donors, he added. That can alleviate even more friction, or confusing steps, in virtual giving.
Listen to Your Donors
Buck often uses donor surveys to help his clients tailor their online fundraising campaigns to their supporters. We talk a lot about storytelling to donors and our communities. We don’t talk enough about listening to stories and feedback our donors are telling us,” he said.
However, there are risks in relying too much on surveys, said Koshy, who cautions against reading too heavily into surveys that aren’t necessarily representative of an organization’s donor base.
“I have very serious concerns around surveys because they introduce a tremendous amount of bias in terms of who you’re asking and what you’re asking about,” said Koshy. Instead, he recommends that nonprofits also talk with donors about how they like to receive information and use the anecdotal information to augment survey data, rather than relying too heavily on specific survey results.
Surveys can be an important tool for collecting data on different kinds of donors and, in turn, showing those donors that you understand and appreciate their feedback and their giving, said Koshy. This information can then set organizations up to personalize outreach by segmenting, or grouping, donors.
Master the Basics of Segmentation
It’s essential that nonprofits understand the basics of segmentation or the differences among different kinds of donors, said the panelists.
“The people that are interacting with your organization are not all the same, and you should not treat them all the same,” said Koshy. “Someone who’s given to your organization for 20 years is very different from someone who has not given to your organization before.”
“When we understand who we are speaking to, we’re able to communicate with them in a way that resonates even more deeply with them,” he said. “That drives their engagement with the organization further and faster.”
Use Multiple Communication Channels
Even as online fundraising has rapidly grown, a large percentage of donations are still made by other channels, like direct mail, said Buck.
After more than doubling in popularity in the past several years, online giving now accounts for 15 percent of giving, yet that still means that “85 percent of giving is happening elsewhere,” said Buck.
It’s important to acknowledge the need to communicate on several channels, he said. After all, some donors might decide to donate online after receiving direct mail from an organization, or vice versa.
“It’s really about what makes the most sense for them at the time,” said Buck, who cited another example of “channel hopping, noting that QR codes can make it easy to donate online for people who receive direct mail or see an ad on television .
Be Selective About Social Media
Nonprofits should be cautious of overextending their fundraising teams on too many social networks, the panelists said.
Data can be a useful tool for determining which social networks are truly worth fundraisers’ time, said Buck, who recommends that nonprofits measure their response rate on platforms like Twitter or TikTok and meet their supporters in the places they tend to congregate online.
What’s more, nonprofits ought to acknowledge the significant legwork that goes into running successful social-media outreach, said Buck. If a nonprofit doesn’t have the capacity to run profiles on multiple platforms, they should focus only on the platforms that their supporters use.
“If you can’t manage five channels, don’t do it if you can’t manage to do them well,” said Buck.
