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Fundraising Tuesday: Improving Donor Affinity–3 Event Ideas for Nonprofits

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A guest post by Sarah Tedesco, DonorSearch

Donors contribute to your nonprofit because they are passionate about your cause. However, with so many worthy causes out there, you need to nurture each donor’s personal interests in your nonprofit in order to retain their support.

This natural interest in your cause or nonprofit is called donor affinity. Cultivating donor affinity is an effective way for your nonprofit to maintain engagement and ensure donors remain connected to your cause.

So how can you encourage donor affinity? One great way to ensure your donors continue to care about your organization is to host an event that sparks their passion. Here are our top three event ideas for improving donor affinity:

  1. Charity Auction
  2. 5K Run or Walk
  3. Educational Webinar

Each of these events will allow your organization to connect with donors and build a stronger community among your supporters. By growing your community and reminding donors of their impact, you can improve donor affinity and ensure that your supporters remain engaged. Let’s take a closer look at each of these events and how you can plan them successfully.

1. Charity Auction

Auctions are not only a great way to raise money for your nonprofit, but they’re also a very engaging event for your supporters. Auctions provide an opportunity for your donors to support a cause they care about while also purchasing something they truly love. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when planning your auction:

  • Determine what type of auction you’ll host early on. Before you dive into the details of planning your auction, you’ll need to determine what type of auction you’d like to host. Will it be a traditional or silent auction? In-person, virtual, or hybrid? Once you determine the type of auction you’ll host, you can adjust your planning and marketing strategy accordingly.

 

  • Connect with local businesses. Local businesses can have a huge impact on your local community and how involved they become with your work. Consider reaching out to local businesses to see if they’d be interested in donating items to your auction to demonstrate their support for your cause. Local businesses can also connect you with patrons of their establishments who might already have an interest in your cause.

 

  • Emphasize the impact of bids. To cultivate donor affinity, you need to demonstrate how your donors are making an impact. During the auction, be sure to emphasize how donations and bids will help your nonprofit achieve your goals, launch new initiatives, and forward your mission.

While an auction doesn’t explicitly draw on a donor’s natural interest in your nonprofit, there are plenty of opportunities to nurture donor affinity. Because auctions are such engaging events, your donors will likely already be paying close attention to the event, meaning it’s the perfect chance to share important information about your cause.

2. 5K Run or Walk

One reliable way to improve donor affinity is to build community. A strong community of supporters can motivate, inspire, and educate each other, and there’s no better event to build community than a 5K race. These races can gather many of your supporters together and rally everyone around your cause. When planning your 5K run or walk, you should:

  • Encourage teams. Teams are a great way to add some friendly competition while getting more supporters involved! For instance, if you have an active alumni network, encourage them to form their own teams and see which alumni groups can raise the most funds.

 

  • Share content about your nonprofit and mission. In the registration process, follow-up emails, and on the actual day, be sure that you’re reminding participants why they’re there: to support your nonprofit. Consider having beneficiaries of your nonprofit speak at the event and share their story to deepen the personal connection that your donors have to your cause.

 

  • Host a celebration at the end. When the 5K run or walk is over, host a big celebration with food, games, and a ceremony to celebrate your fastest runners and most effective peer-to-peer fundraisers. A celebration will ensure that your participants enjoy their time and associate your nonprofit with happy memories!

To help your event run as smoothly as possible, invest in nonprofit software that allows you to register participants, track their donations, and identify relationships between donors (such as members of the same family who joined the same team). With this information, you can identify opportunities to grow donor affinity even after the event is over.

3. Educational Webinar

In many instances, donor affinity can grow out of newfound awareness or education. Perhaps a potential donor had no idea about the cause that your nonprofit is supporting or they were recently affected by the issue you’re trying to address. They will turn to your nonprofit to provide answers to their questions and knowledge about the issue.

With the right approach, your nonprofit can make supporters care even more about the issue, improving donor affinity across the board. To raise awareness about your cause, host an educational webinar featuring informed speakers and representatives of your nonprofit.

To host a successful webinar, you should:

  • Discuss topics that are interesting to your donors. Each donor’s interest in your nonprofit likely grew out of different circumstances, but they probably want to learn more about similar topics. Design your webinar around certain topics that are the most interesting to your donors. And if you’re unsure which topics your donors might be interested in, don’t be afraid to ask!

 

  • Emphasize how your nonprofit has made a difference. While donors may be interested in your cause, they might not have a full understanding of how your nonprofit is making a difference. During your webinar, emphasize the difference that your nonprofit has made and how donations can help you further your impact.

 

  • Host a Q&A session. A great webinar likely prompts questions from your audience, so give attendees the chance to ask speakers their burning questions. Creating a dynamic and engaging conversation will also help donors feel like an integral part of your nonprofit’s dialogue.

Hosting an exclusive webinar is also a great way to nurture affinity among major donors. According to DonorSearch’s guide on major donor fundraising, creating events specifically targeted towards major donors can effectively deepen their engagement and encourage them to donate more. A webinar is the perfect way to combine education with your long-term fundraising strategy.

Cultivating donor affinity is crucial for any nonprofit. Not only can it help you better tailor your nonprofit’s marketing strategy, events, and programs, but it can also help you deepen each donor’s relationship with your nonprofit. Good luck!

Sarah TedescoSarah Tedesco is the Executive Vice President of DonorSearch, a prospect research and wealth screening company that focuses on proven philanthropy. Sarah is responsible for managing the production and customer support department concerning client contract fulfillment, increasing retention rate and customer satisfaction. She collaborates with other team members on a variety of issues including sales, marketing and product development ideas.

Fundraising Tuesday: Make the Calendar Your Friend. Easy!

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What if I told you there was a way you could reach out and touch your supporters more often, with less effort, with more impact, and raise more money for your nonprofit? Would you be interested?

There is, and it’s called an integrated donor communications calendar. And it’s easy!

Why Planning Your Posts and Your Asks Makes Life Easier

Did you ever have this experience? You open your computer, see that you haven’t emailed, Facebooked, tweeted, etc., to your donors in weeks. Your heart sinks.

“I really have to get in touch with them right now,” you say to yourself. “But what in the world will I say?”

I sympathize. There’s nothing more off-putting than a blank screen (unless it’s a blank piece of paper). Many’s the time I’ve got up and made myself a cup of tea, or cleaned the cats’ litter box…anything to delay that fateful moment when I have to have an idea.

The problem isn’t with you, or me. The problem is that we are leaving too much to chance.

Yes, a blinding flash of inspiration can strike just at the moment when you sit down to write. It can happen. But that’s not the way to bet.

Instead, we can more or less guarantee that we will have something to write about. Not only that, but we can make sure that we’ll be sending out the right messages at the right time, to the right audience, making them feel seen and appreciated (and more likely to donate when asked).

Planning ahead makes life easier for us and better for our readers and donors. So, how do we start? We start with a calendar.

What to Put on Your Donor Communications Calendar

The three types of content you want to share with your supporters are:

  1. Seasonal
  2. Campaign
  3. Evergreen

Seasonal communications

Topical content is what will be top of your donor’s minds and close to their hearts at any given time.

If you know your audience, you know what they care about, specifically. For example, the Martin Luther King holiday is just another Monday off for some communities. For others, it is the most important day of their year.

Think about what will be front and center for the audience that gives to your nonprofit throughout the year. Take out a calendar, go month by month, and list the topics. Then, think about what your organization is especially well positioned to say about them. (For instance: “Did Martin Luther King play a role in promoting Fair Housing?” is a good post for a Fair Housing Commission, but it would be weird and distracting for a group focused on environmental racism to put out.)

Now, put that precise topic on your calendar, on the date when you want it to go public. Plan backwards from that date f0r

  • when you want to finalize and schedule it,
  • when you want to create different formats for your email and your various social media,
  • when you want to write it,
  • when you want to assemble photos, links, quotes, etc., for it
  • when you need to interview anyone for it (because anything that involves more than one person will take longer!)

When you put those steps on your calendar, you won’t wake up in a panic in mid-January wondering what to post. You’ll come back to work after New Year’s Day, look at your calendar, and have your plan for your MLK Day post in order. Simple!

Do the same thing for as many significant dates during the year as you can come up with. You’re off to a great start for the year.

Campaign communications

Let’s say your organization advocates for new policies when the legislature is in session–or runs a summer camp–or has an annual gala. Unlike the seasonal topics, these campaigns are not events that donors will necessarily know about by themselves. But you want them to pay attention!

Talk with your Executive Director and colleagues about what the organization will be doing over the course of the calendar year that you want the public to pay attention to, and perhaps even get involved in. Figure out the key dates, the essential themes, and the calls to action you want to share. Plan multiple messages across different platforms.

Now, block out the time on your calendar when most or all of your messaging is going to focus on that campaign.

Evergreen communications

Between seasonal content and campaign content, your communications calendar is starting to look substantial! Remember, though: consistency matters. Your donors and other supporters should look forward to hearing from you regularly. If you do a monthly newsletter, it should be every month. If you do a weekly Facebook post (I’d suggest more often), make sure you don’t skip a week. If you’re on Twitter, you can do variations of the same tweet multiple times a week, or a day. And so on.

Where are you going to get all that content? That’s where evergreen topics are so, so helpful.

Evergreen content is the kind of story that your donors will find interesting no matter what week, month, or year it is and what else may be going on. It’s what they care about, always. If you recognize what matters to them and serve it up regularly, they will keep coming back for more.

Cast your net to catch evergreen content when it shows up on the internet. (Google Alert and Feedspot are two of the many tools you can use for this.) Create a system for collecting stories from your staff, and a story bank, and you can pull from that treasure trove at will.

Betwixt and between the seasonal and campaign topics, at any time on your calendar, you can share your evergreen content with your readers. Sometimes, that will be what they remember the best!

Integrate Fundraising into Your Calendar

Most of fundraising is what happens between the asks.

Fundraising includes the thanks you send and the impact you demonstrate. It also includes the ways you provide value to your donors and the ways you make them happy to hear from you.

But of course, fundraising is also asking for money. And you should include your direct mail, email, and events fundraising in your calendar, too. That way, your asks can build off what you are already saying to your donors–and your communications can seamlessly lead into your solicitations.

The best day to start your communications calendar is today! List those seasonal, campaign, and evergreen topics and start plugging them into your schedule. Do yourself a favor and never have to wonder “What in the world will I say?” again.

 

Fundraising Tuesday: Crowdfunding vs. Traditional Fundraising, A Quick Guide

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A guest post by Lomesh Shah, Fundly

Traditional fundraising activities like nonprofit events are well-known to many of us, but other forms of fundraising, like crowdfunding, may be less familiar.

Regardless of what kind of fundraising you’re used to, this quick guide will explain the benefits and drawbacks of traditional fundraising and crowdfunding campaigns. Thoroughly understanding both of these types of fundraising activities will ensure that you engage in the most effective strategies for your organization, whether you use only one type or a combination of both. Let’s dive in!

What Is Crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding is a typically online fundraising activity that relies on social sharing and many individual donations to meet fundraising goals. These campaigns usually consist of

  1. A main online campaign page that describes the fundraiser’s purpose,
  2. A donation button for donors
  3. A fundraising thermometer or a similar feature to visually track the fundraiser’s progress.

Individual donors can share the link to the page with their friends, primarily on social media, to spread the word. On the campaign page, donors make a one-time donation with their credit card. Usually, these donations can be anonymous or choose to have their name attached, and their information will not be added to your donor database.

According to Fundly’s crowdfunding statistics, most crowdfunding campaign donors are aged 24-35, so this is a great way to reach new and younger donors.

What are the benefits?

Crowdfunding is a great digital-first form of fundraising that any nonprofit can engage in. If you’re considering trying crowdfunding, consider some of these benefits: 

  • You can reach more first-time donors. Because this is entirely online and your supporters will be sharing it on their own personal social media pages, your exposure to new donors is much higher.
  • It has a very low cost. Many crowdfunding platforms, like Fundly, have very low platform fees that make it easy and affordable to start your crowdfunding campaign in just a few minutes.
  • It requires less planning than an event. In order to be successful, some planning will still be required. However, not having to plan an entire event to raise money can save you a lot of time.

What are the limitations?

Despite the many benefits, it’s also important to consider the potential limitations of crowdfunding: 

  • Individual donations are often small. The average individual donation is $66, which simply means you need to ensure you receive more individual donations than you might in a traditional fundraiser.
  • The platform you use is important. Picking the right crowdfunding website that is affordable, mobile-friendly, and has all the features you need can make or break your campaign. Do your research and offer a great user experience to your donors.
  • You will need your community’s help to spread the word. While you will do some marketing of your own, in order to be successful, your community members must spread your campaign far and wide on their own social media channels. After all, 12% of Facebook shares convert to donations!

What Is Traditional Fundraising?

Traditional fundraising involves many of the activities we associate with fundraising, such as silent auctions, bake sales, galas, and other fundraising events. These fundraisers used to be exclusively in-person, but now also take place in hybrid and even fully virtual formats.

While first-time attendees and donors are always welcomed and encouraged at these events, you are likely to see many more familiar faces of dedicated supporters. However, other types of traditional fundraising activities, like pledge fundraisers, can garner donations from many different people, while the actual participants are often still your existing supporters.

Traditional fundraising is a great way to engage your supporters and secure larger gifts or recurring donations while hosting an exciting fundraising event.

What are the benefits?

You’re likely more familiar with traditional fundraising, but you may not have considered all of the benefits that it brings, such as: 

  • Traditional events can reinforce donor loyalty. Seeing your donors in-person or even connecting during a hybrid or virtual event is a great way to grow their sense of community and dedication to your specific organization.
  • You can use prospect research to secure larger donations. When it comes to finding major donors, prospect research is the “perfect tool” according to Double the Donation. This can help you reach your fundraising goals, even with a smaller donor pool for a specific campaign.
  • You have more control over the marketing efforts. Unlike crowdfunding, you won’t have to rely on your supporters sharing your campaign for success. You’ll be able to use email marketing, direct mail, social media marketing, and more to reach all of your existing supporters and potential new donors.

What are the limitations?

While traditional fundraising has a longer track record, it still does come with some limitations that are important to consider: 

  • Events take much more planning. While events can be very impactful, they do take a lot more planning to be successful and ensure a great experience for everyone who attends. There are many more moving pieces to consider when planning an event.
  • The cost of an event is higher. In addition to more planning, you’ll also have to spend more to host an exciting event. Depending on how much you raise, the cost can be more than worth it, but this is a factor to consider when deciding on what kind of fundraiser to host.
  • You will likely reach fewer new donors. This does not mean that you won’t reach any new donors. It simply means that with traditional fundraising, your established supporters are often much more likely to participate.

Both types of fundraising can be very successful for your organization with the proper planning and preparation. Take your budget, staff, goals, and current donor base into consideration when deciding which fundraising activity will be best for you.

 

Lomesh Shah head shot for crowdfunding

Lomesh Shah has over 25 years of experience in international corporate leadership with a strong emphasis on marketing technology and data management systems. Lomesh has worked with small to mid-size businesses, privately-held companies and Fortune 500 corporations in various capacities; from sales and marketing to overseeing automation and re-engineering of processes and operations.

As CEO of Fundly, Lomesh spends much of his time immersed in the nonprofit industry both as an industry leader, speaker, and in service to several organizations as a board member and volunteer. Outside of the industry, Lomesh is a technology junkie and will give anyone willing to listen an assessment of the latest trends in anything from espresso makers and mobile gadgets to electric cars and wind power.

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