Bread for the City is looking for inspiration from previous campaigns. For example, during the pandemic, the group held a campaign asking people who didn’t need the money from their COVID relief checks to donate it to the charity.
Some donors in the Washington, D.C., and Atlanta regions have experienced outsize effects of government cuts and job losses. As a result, nonprofits in those cities are rethinking some of the strategies they use to raise money.
To make the most effective asks during this time, consultants and nonprofits alike recommend that organizations stay engaged with donors, tailor their messaging, consider joining forces, and get creative.
Stay Engaged, Shift Appeals
When the economy is down and your go-to donors are hurting, some fundraisers worry they’ll appear tone deaf if they keep asking for gifts. But it’s still important to stay engaged with donors so solicitations can be strategic and more likely successful, says Ashley Domm, chief development officer at Bread for the City, a nonprofit that provides food and other services.
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Some donors in the Washington, D.C., and Atlanta regions have experienced outsize effects of government cuts and job losses. As a result, nonprofits in those cities are rethinking some of the strategies they use to raise money.
To make the most effective asks during this time, consultants and nonprofits alike recommend that organizations stay engaged with donors, tailor their messaging, consider joining forces, and get creative.
Stay Engaged, Shift Appeals
When the economy is down and your go-to donors are hurting, some fundraisers worry they’ll appear tone deaf if they keep asking for gifts. But it’s still important to stay engaged with donors so solicitations can be strategic and more likely successful, says Ashley Domm, chief development officer at Bread for the City, a nonprofit that provides food and other services.
“We need to make sure we’re doing a good mix of informing because that might be more what our donor base wants to hear from us,” Domm says. “If you’re giving to an organization and you’re invested in that organization but they’re not updating you as to their plans, you’re not really feeling like you’re a part of what’s going on.”
Some nonprofits are leaving time open for donors to chat and check in, so they feel that the support between them and the organization goes both ways, says Kerry Watterson, CEO of the consulting firm Fundraising Well.
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“I’ve seen a couple of organizations set up drop-in office hours, so to speak, but they call them community calls,” he says. “They say, ‘We’d love to hear from you. We’re all experiencing things. We’re going to be around. We’d love just to get an update here of how you’re doing, what we can do to support you. We can share some opportunities that are coming up.’”
Watterson says organizations can also reframe their appeals as a way to be of assistance to donors.
“Now’s a great time to move them from that annual gift to recurring gifts,” he says. “Get them locked into a monthly gift. You can even ask them for a little bit more annually, broken down month-by-month. Say, ‘Hey, we’re being impacted by all the craziness in the world. We know that you are, too. We’d love for you to continue supporting us, and we’d like to make it easy. Can you shift from your annual contribution to a recurring monthly gift?’ They might fall into that ‘set it and forget it’ mentality around their philanthropy with you.”
Stewarding, thanking, and engaging donors who are already in your database is likely to bear rewards, even in tough times, says Liz Livingston Howard, executive director of the Kellogg School Center for Nonprofit Management at Northwestern University.
“Times of uncertainty make it challenging to attract new donors,” Howard says. “So it’s a time to double down on the people that already support you. Even if they can’t give at the level that they’ve given in the past, can they stay involved at some level? Can you maintain a relationship with those donors?”
Cultivating those relationships will be crucial, says Marlissa Hudson, CEO of the fundraising consultancy English Hudson.
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“The strengths of your relationships will rule the day in a moment like this,” Hudson says. “If you have strong relationships, you can go back and ask for more money.”
Many Nonprofits Look to Large Gifts
Because everyday donors may be feeling pinched financially, many organizations are looking to make inroads with donors who have more capacity to give.
Fundraisers Are Stressed
It’s a hard time to be a fundraiser. The economy is suffering in some regions, and there are storm clouds on the national financial landscape. Some donors are already pulling back. Given that, it’s more important than ever to keep motivated, fundraisers say.
“People are feeling their feelings right now,” says Lynn English, a fundraising consultant. She says it’s crucial to “acknowledge that this is a tough time. People who are used to seeing success in their jobs as fundraisers are now finding it more difficult. And that’s really taxing on people emotionally.”
Fundraisers need to lean on their networks for support, says Liz Livingston Howard, executive director of the Center on Nonprofit Management.
“Everybody is challenged, and sometimes you feel like you’re alone,” says Howard, who spent 20 years as a fundraiser before her current post. “Many of us are not going to go tell our boss, ‘I had a really bad day. I had four people tell me no.’ But find a network of other development professionals. Share your stories, bolster friends. If you know somebody had a bad day, call them.”
They’re pivoting their strategies and “looking at major donors and mid-majors,” says Lynn English, president of English Hudson.
Donors in this category often have donor-advised funds, which are giving vehicles that allow donors to get the tax break immediately when they put money in the fund and dole it out to charities later. DAF account holders at the Greater Washington Community Foundation are moving money out to help charities.
“For giving from donor-advised funds, we’ve dispersed at 25 percent annually, and we are on trend or even above the curve when it compares to dispersing over the same time last year,” says Tonia Wellons, the foundation’s CEO. “We’re not seeing the same level of movement of gifts into donor-advised funds, but we are still seeing generosity on the disbursement side.”
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Wellons says she’s seen nonprofits ask donors to give now, rather than waiting until the end of the year. That gives nonprofits that have lost funding an immediate infusion of cash to better weather the storm.
One way to engage major donors without immediately asking them for money is to invite them to partner with you to solve issues the organization faces. “Pull together your top 10 biggest donors and just use them as a brain trust,” English says. “Have a brain trust meeting without an ask. Really engage people as problem solvers and thought partners right now. And then you can have the additional conversations about support, but you can’t just be looking at people as dollar signs.”
Change the Messaging
Nonprofits are thinking carefully about how they craft fundraising messages to ensure their outreach is effective — and doesn’t land the wrong way in challenging economic conditions.
“We believe that there’s an opportunity for individuals to still care for community,” says Rosie Allen-Herring, CEO of the United Way of the National Capital Area. “We’ve changed our messaging around helping them understand the work that we’re doing and who we’re serving.”
United Way NCA
The United Way of the National Capital Area wants to tell stories that are more than 30-second snippets so people will understand the real implications of what it does.
The United Way wants donors to know the group is helping all of its typical clients plus an influx of displaced federal workers and contractors.
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“We have to tell deeper stories to be able to inspire others to act,” Allen-Herring says. “It’s not about the 30-second snippet, because someone who does not work for the federal work force may not understand the real implications. They may think: There are going to be big savings. Won’t companies just help? Aren’t there a whole bunch of jobs out there?”
English agrees, noting that stories have to be really specific to your organization and explain what’s at stake. A food pantry her firm works with recently told the story of how tractor trailers full of food were sitting in a lot, unable to get to their location. “That’s a very specific impact of what’s happening versus just ‘They’re cutting the federal budget,’” she says.
Join Forces
With money tight, it can help to join forces with other groups or lean more heavily on partners.
“I don’t think anyone is going be able to do anything significant in a silo,” Allen-Herring says.
The Latino Community Fund Georgia has traditionally used grant money to support meetings it holds in various cities across the state. As it has lost funding, however, the organization has asked community partners to do more — such as create a committee that pays for the cost of hosting meetings where the community fund provides the information and content, says Gilda Pedraza, executive director of the group. In the past, the community fund would have covered those costs.
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Nonprofits should be thinking how they can ask community partners and donors to assist, says Watterson, the Fundraising Well consultant. “Don’t try to do all the work yourself,” he says. “Really focus on how do we turn all of our key funders, our board members, our leadership, local officials, all these folks into ambassadors for us that will help make connections for us. We need an army of ardent champions who are out there talking about our work every day.”
Get Creative
Thinking outside the box may be a trite expression, but it’s not a trite concept. Ideas for new approaches are everywhere, says Domm, the fundraiser at Bread for the City.
“Make sure you’re subscribed to different newsletters, get together with other organizations that are like-minded in your area, and get a sense of what they’re doing,” she says. “It’s a good time to try some new things because what’s the risk right now? We’re already under so much risk. So let’s throw something new against the wall and let’s see what happens.”
The United Way has decided to extend its Do More 24 campaign. It used to be a 24-hour giving campaign, but the group has expanded it to 24 days to have more time to raise donations.
Things don’t have to be done the way they’ve always been done, Watterson says. He suggests nonprofits rethink capital campaigns, which have traditionally been for a specific building or other facilities project. He had advice for a client that wanted to raise money to build docks in Baltimore.
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“Our suggestion to them was to shift that from just being a capital campaign to being an ‘all-in campaign,’” he says. “You can now message: This campaign is going to help us improve those docks — but also help us with our year-over-year operating for the next three years.”
Fundraisers can also learn from the past and look for opportunities now. Juanita Sheppard, vice president of foundation and government partnerships at the United Way of Greater Atlanta, talked about a pitch the organization made to donors a few years back during the pandemic. “We had a campaign called Give a Lil’, because everybody can’t give a lot right now,” she says. “That plays into the sense of collective unification. You collaborate and collectively see the impact that even those small donations make.”
Domm is also looking to find inspiration from previous campaigns. For example, back when people got COVID relief checks, some people didn’t really need the money.
“We had a campaign for people to donate that check back to Bread for the City so that we could feed people with that money,” Domm says. “We’re trying to work through what is the 2025 version of those types of campaigns.”
