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Fundraising Tuesday | Nonprofit Marketing: How to Build and Maintain Donor Trust

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A guest post by Mike Snusz of Tatango

The success of your nonprofit hinges on the relationships you build within your community. To inspire donors, volunteers, and corporate partners to join in your collective impact, you must first establish a foundation of trust.

Your donors want to make a difference. Before they decide to give to your organization, they need to be sure that you’ll deliver on your promised impact. In fact, according to Independent Sector, 83% of U.S. donors state that nonprofits must earn their trust before they support them, and 80% need to see proof of impact to continue their support.

In this guide, we’ll discuss four essential marketing strategies to build trust and strengthen your donor relationships.

1. Use text messaging for one-on-one communication.

Modern technology has fundamentally changed how people interact with one another. Think about the most recent interactions you’ve had with your friends and family. Chances are, many of them occurred over text messages or phone calls.

Smartphones provide a convenient and personal way to stay in touch with your audience. After all, 46% of Americans spend five to six hours a day on their phones. By incorporating text messaging into your nonprofit’s marketing strategy, you can open the door to more authentic, one-on-one conversations with donors.

According to Tatango’s nonprofit text messaging guide, this communication channel is particularly powerful due to benefits such as:

  • High open rate. Subscribers open 99% of the text messages they receive from organizations they support, which is four times higher than the open rate for email marketing messages.
  • High read rate. 90% of text subscribers open messages within just three minutes of receiving them.
  • Personalization. Your nonprofit can segment its text subscribers and only send them messages that are personally relevant to their interests and preferences. In doing so, you can illustrate how much you value them as individual contributors to your mission.
  • Maximized reach. With the right tools, you can mass-send tailored text messages to your entire audience, saving your staff time without sacrificing personalization.

Beyond sending fundraising appeals and broadcasting important updates via text, you can make the most of the channel by encouraging donors to share feedback and ask questions. This type of direct engagement can make them feel like you care about their input and bring them closer to your nonprofit.

2. Make transparency a priority.

When donors give to your nonprofit, they want to know what happens to their generous dollars. By focusing on improving transparency across your marketing communications, you can enhance your organization’s reputation and convince donors that your mission is worth supporting.

A few key ways to boost your nonprofit’s transparency include:

  • Presenting detailed financial information. Make it easy for donors to find your Form 990 and other financial documents, such as your balance sheet or income statement, by adding them to your website. Consider adding infographics to help them visualize your financial performance.
  • Providing frequent impact updates. Through email newsletters, social media posts, and blog articles, inform donors about your latest accomplishments and how their contributions made them possible. If you encounter any challenges or setbacks, be open about sharing them with your audience, along with the steps you’re taking to address them.
  • Publishing annual reports. An annual report allows your donors and other community members to view a snapshot of your nonprofit’s activities, accomplishments, and financial health over the past year. These reports hold your nonprofit accountable for the goals you set at the beginning of the year and allow you to celebrate your most impressive wins with your community.

To ensure that you’re only communicating accurate progress and results to your donors, keep your nonprofit’s database organized and up to date. Double the Donation recommends following data hygiene best practices such as developing data entry standards and using data appends for more effective internal and external reporting.

3. Collect and share authentic stories.

Facts and figures can go a long way toward persuading donors that your nonprofit is a reliable and powerful force for good within the community. However, compelling stories are what leave a lingering impression in the minds of your donors.

To keep your donors invested in your mission, collect personal stories from:

  • Beneficiaries
  • Donors
  • Volunteers
  • Board members

Once you’ve curated a collection of stories that demonstrate your impact and the importance of your cause, share them on your nonprofit’s website and social media pages. Then, use text messages and email newsletters to encourage more donors to explore these stories and connect with the people within them. Just be sure to ask for permission before sharing someone’s name or picture in your marketing materials to respect their privacy and preferences.

4. Promote multiple ways to contribute.

As you spread the word about your latest fundraising initiatives and ask for donations, ensure that donors feel comfortable giving to your nonprofit by providing them with several ways to contribute. For example, you could create a “Ways to Get Involved” page on your website, where you describe various opportunities such as:

To provide options that appeal to your specific donor audience, send out a survey to gather their direct input. You may learn that your donors are interested in giving through their smartphones, using donor-advised funds, or exploring cryptocurrency donations.

As you prepare to infuse your marketing materials with transparency and build trust through meaningful donor conversations, make sure you have the right tools to support your efforts. Research nonprofit text messaging platforms, website builders, and other innovative marketing solutions to equip your team for success. Before long, you’ll have a well-developed multichannel marketing strategy that nurtures strong, lasting relationships with your nonprofit’s donors.

Mike Snusz, Director of Nonprofit Customer Experience at Tatango

Mike Snusz brings 19 years of digital fundraising experience to his role as Director of Nonprofit Customer Experience at Tatango, a text messaging platform for nonprofits and political campaigns. Prior to Tatango, Mike spent 15 years at Blackbaud leading a team of digital consultants that helped nonprofits improve their online fundraising, monthly giving, email marketing and peer-to-peer fundraising programs. Mike started his nonprofit career managing the Ride For Roswell from 2003 to 2005 in his hometown of Buffalo, NY.

 

Planning a Nonprofit Omnichannel Marketing Campaign: 4 Steps

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A guest post by Liz Murphy of Allegiance Group

Omnichannel marketing is a technique in which nonprofits connect with their supporters through multiple communication channels, with the goal of creating a seamless experience between the various channels. Each message should feel like part of one unified, cohesive strategy that guides supporters to take a desired action, whether that’s donating, volunteering, or registering for a virtual event.

These campaigns can be extremely effective in building awareness of your organization, inspiring more donations, and connecting more deeply with supporters. To learn more about how to plan your first omnichannel campaign, follow these four steps:

  1. Determine the campaign’s objectives.
  2. Identify a target audience.
  3. Select communication platforms.
  4. Evaluate your performance.

1. Determine the campaign’s objectives.

Marketing objectives are clearly defined goals that lay out what you want the results of your campaign to be. These goals should follow the SMART goal framework, meaning that they should be:

SMART goals

  • Specific: State what you want the campaign to do using specific numbers (e.g., raise $5,000).
  • Measurable: Identify the metrics or data targets you’ll need to track. Allegiance Group’s guide to fundraising tools recommends choosing software that offers a robust analytics dashboard to accurately track your marketing progress.
  • Achievable: Analyze past campaign performance and choose goals that are challenging yet possible for your nonprofit to accomplish.
  • Relevant: Specify why it makes sense for your nonprofit to tackle this objective at this time (e.g., it relates to your mission or benefits a key project or initiative).
  • Time-based: Lay out a timeframe for reaching the goal.

Let’s say your nonprofit is creating a campaign to promote its most lucrative fundraising event with your main focus being to increase registrations. In this case, your SMART goal might be to achieve a 20% increase in registrations within the three months prior to the event compared to the previous year by using a more efficient registration platform and leveraging targeted marketing messages.

2. Identify a target audience.

To attract potential donors, you’ll need to identify specific audiences and determine their values, communication preferences, and other key characteristics.

Take a look at your existing donors. Which qualities appear over and over? NPOInfo’s guide to donor data recommends breaking down your file into useful categories or segments based on those qualities. These segments may be based on donors’:

  • Ages
  • Locations
  • Giving behaviors (e.g., frequency and/or amount)
  • Interests or support for specific projects
  • Communication preferences (e.g., email vs. direct mail) and engagement

There are so many other categories to choose from, but it’s best to select those that will assist you in meeting your nonprofit’s needs and achieving your campaign goals.

3. Select communication platforms

Based on your findings about your target audience, choose the communication channels they are most likely to engage with on a regular basis. Nonprofits commonly use channels like email, social media, text, phone calls, direct mail, and print and digital ads.

When choosing communication platforms, keep these tips in mind:

  • Focus on quality over quantity. Avoid taking on more platforms than your nonprofit can realistically manage. Instead, prioritize creating engaging content that persuades supporters to donate or get involved in another way. Consider using tools like social media calendars and email marketing software to stay organized.
  • Connect each platform for a seamless experience. On social media, include links to your website and profiles on other platforms. Encourage email recipients to follow your accounts and check out your website. You can even add QR codes linking to online channels to your direct mail campaigns.
  • Tailor content to the audience and platform. Become familiar with the unique preferences associated with both your target audience and the platforms you use. Make sure your message aligns with the tone and value that your audience will expect as well as the expectations for each communication channel. Social media posts, for example, should be short and attention-grabbing, while blog posts can be much more detailed.

Similar to goal-tracking, it’s important to measure your campaign’s performance on each platform. Make sure to identify which metrics determine success for each—for example, the clickthrough rate is crucial for email marketing whereas likes and shares are important for social media.

4. Evaluate your performance.

After your campaign ends, you still have work to do. It’s essential to take the time to analyze your findings, determine whether you met your goals, and plan for future campaigns.

If you met or exceeded your goals for the campaign, pinpoint the strategies that you think pushed your campaign over the finish line. For example, maybe you tried using a new campaign for the first time or sent targeted messages using your demographic-focused donor segments. Once you understand what resonates with your audience, you can replicate and refine those tactics in the future.

If you fell short of your goal, use it as a learning opportunity. Refer back to your initial goal and ask yourself if it was too ambitious for your nonprofit to achieve at this point. Additionally, make sure to identify the wins and losses from the campaign so you know which strategies to keep, which to tweak, and which to remove altogether.

As a result of your hard work, you’ll be able to create a nonprofit omnichannel marketing campaign that feels consistent and connected to your audience. This will deepen their relationship with your organization and inspire them to donate, volunteer, and share about your mission to further the work you do.

Liz Murphy, Allegiance GroupAuthor: Liz Murphy

Liz Murphy is an EVP at Allegiance+Pursuant Group, a direct response fundraising agency and technology company. Liz has more than 30 years of experience growing digital and integrated fundraising and communications programs for social justice, health, and international relief nonprofit organizations.

Liz is an award-winning copywriter and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including ANA, DMAW, Bridge, and NTC. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington Educational Foundation.

5 Ways to Leverage Social Proof on Your Nonprofit Website

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A guest post by Anne Stefanyk, Kanopi Studios

Imagine this: You’re looking for a new restaurant to try on a Friday night. In your research, you come across an option that looks intriguing. However, the restaurant has only a handful of online reviews. You decide to keep searching and come across another eatery that has hundreds of reviews that are mostly positive, including reviews from established local guides. Because it seems like many other credible people have tried the restaurant and enjoyed it, you choose to go to the second establishment.

This example demonstrates the idea of social proof—the psychological phenomenon where people determine the right way to act based on the decisions and opinions of others.

Social proof is a powerful marketing tool for nonprofits. It shows potential new supporters that your organization already receives support from many other reliable individuals, and is therefore worthy of their support, too. 

In this guide, we’ll review our top tips for leveraging social proof within your nonprofit website and online fundraising campaigns to build credibility and trust with your audience. Along the way, we’ll review examples from the best nonprofit websites to demonstrate what a few tips look like in action.

1. Feature supporter testimonials

Just like a restaurant review, a supporter testimonial shows potential donors that your nonprofit is backed by trustworthy people who make smart investment decisions.

To get a good balance of trusted voices, seek out testimonials from different types of supporters, such as:

  • Donors: Interview long-time or major donors about why they’re passionate about your cause and what drives them to give.
  • Volunteers: Ask highly engaged volunteers about their favorite aspects of your mission and what their volunteer involvement means to them.
  • Corporate partners/sponsors: Get quotes from your corporate partners about why their business values align with your nonprofit’s mission and why they sponsor your events year after year.

Showcase these testimonials on your nonprofit’s blog and online donation page, as well as in your email newsletters and social media posts.

2. Showcase community impact

Show potential new supporters that your nonprofit receives backing and support from your entire community and that you’re a responsible community steward. Demonstrate the extent of your community impact by including these elements on your website:

  • Community member testimonials, including testimonials from beneficiaries who have been supported by your nonprofit’s services
  • Metrics that reveal your nonprofit’s impact, such as how many community members you help or the size of your geographic reach
  • Lists of your community partnerships, such as collaborations with other nonprofits or local schools

For example, let’s say your nonprofit provides healthcare resources and support to your local community. Kanopi’s healthcare website design guide recommends building trust through inspiring testimonials that include a photo of the individual and direct quotes from the patient or their family members. Consider creating a dedicated “Testimonials” or “Impact” page that also includes statistics about the number of community members you serve and other local healthcare organizations you partner with.

3. Include suggested donation amounts

Offering suggested donation amounts on your nonprofit’s giving form makes it easier for donors to determine how much to contribute. When donors see how much other people are giving, they’ll make their decision based on those amounts to align with the norm.

Bloomerang’s guide to nonprofit donation pages offers a few useful tips for choosing and displaying your suggested giving amounts:

  • Base your suggested donation amounts on your median donation amount. For example, if your median donation amount is $25, you can set your donation suggestions at $25, $50, $75, and $100.
  • Highlight your most popular gift amount. For example, take a look at how the CARE online donation page highlights the $300 option with a note saying “Most people are donating $300 right now.” New donors will think to themselves, “If most people are giving $300, then maybe so should I!”

Screenshot of the CARE donation page showing the $300 donation amount highlighted with a note that says “Most people are donating $300 right now.”

  • Use A/B testing to determine the best combination. A/B testing is the process of changing just one element on your online donation form (in this case, your suggested giving amounts) to determine which combination is most effective for driving conversions.

Be careful not to set your suggested donation amounts too low. Research from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business shows that low donation suggestions may increase your donation rate but decrease your overall average donation amount.

Instead, default to suggesting higher donation amounts. Even if donors don’t take you up on your highest suggestions, higher options tend to lead donors to give more than they otherwise would.

4. Create an exclusive donor circle

Invite donors to join an exclusive group of like-minded people by creating a donor circle.

Create different tiers for your circle based on giving level and offer varying benefits at each tier. Then, give each tier a name based on your nonprofit’s mission.

For example, Georgia Audubon’s Leadership Giving Circle is divided into these four tiers:

  • Cerulean Circle ($10,000+)
  • Roseate Circle ($5,000-$9,999)
  • Scarlet Circle ($2,500-$4,999)
  • Chestnut Circle ($1,000-$2,499)

Description of the Cerulean Circle of the Georgia Audubon Leadership Giving Circles

Each tier includes unique benefits along with an invitation to the annual Leadership Giving Circle birding trip, which is an opportunity to connect with fellow like-minded donors.

Feature a donor wall on your website or at your nonprofit’s headquarters that includes the names of all the donors in each circle (except those who wish to be anonymous). This can show potential donors the extent of your program and all the other donors who they’ll have the opportunity to connect with.

5. Display awards and accolades

Your nonprofit may have received awards or recognition from trustworthy organizations to acknowledge your positive influence. Feature any awards or acknowledgments on your website’s homepage, header, or footer to demonstrate your organization’s credibility.

For example, consider adding these accolades to your website:

Demonstrating recognition from these trusted organizations is another effective way to increase donors’ confidence in your organization and the likelihood that they’ll financially support your cause.

If you need more support as you incorporate these tips into your nonprofit website, don’t hesitate to reach out to a nonprofit website professional. A web consultant can leverage their expertise to help your nonprofit tell its story more effectively and promote the idea of social proof in every aspect of your web design.

As Founder and CEO of Kanopi Studios, Anne Stefanyk helps create clarity around project needs, and turns client conversations into actionable outcomes. She enjoys helping clients identify their problems, and then empowering the Kanopi team to execute great solutions.

Anne is an advocate for open source and co-organizes the Bay Area Drupal Camp. When she’s not contributing to the community or running her thoughtful web agency, she enjoys yoga, meditation, treehouses, dharma, cycling, paddle boarding, kayaking, and hanging with her nephew.

https://twitter.com/Anne_Kanopi

https://www.drupal.org/u/annabella

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annestefanyk/

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