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How to Keep Your Organization Relevant Online: 3 Tips

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A guest post by Carl Diesing, DNL Omnimedia

Online conversations move quickly. Your nonprofit fundraisers can underperform if you aren’t able to capture your supporters’ attention.

Whether your nonprofit already has a digital strategy or is just branching out to online platforms, an overview of how to maintain attention online can be helpful for maintaining your audience. We’ll review three tips for attracting and holding your supporters’ interest in highly competitive online spaces.

1. Create regular engagement opportunities.

When determining your approach to a social media site, first consider why supporters use that platform. Are they looking to connect with friends? Interact with new people? Create content themselves? Knowing what your audience is looking to do on social media first will help you shape your engagement strategy.

Your audience will likely scroll quickly through most posts they see online. However, they are far more likely to remember content that invites them to engage with it. Your approach to engaging supporters will depend on the platform, but it may include:

  • Interacting with supporters online. When someone comments on one of your posts, whether they’re asking for more information or sharing a personal story about how your cause relates to them, respond to their message. This type of communication shows that there is a person behind your organization who is interested in what supporters have to say, creating memorable connections.
  • Creating content that encourages comments. Your nonprofit should aim to create shareable content that your audience will spread to their friends and family. One approach is designing content that encourages comments. These might be posts that ask questions, invite supporters to share a story, vote in a poll, take a survey, or otherwise share their thoughts. Many social media sites also have algorithms that will promote content with many comments to other users.
  • Encouraging supporters to make their own content. You can build a community online by encouraging your current supporter base to interact with your new social media accounts through their own content. For example, during and after a volunteer day, you might help supporters take photos of their hard work, then encourage them to tag your social media accounts when they post them.

Engaging content will help you create a strong first impression. Create a social media calendar to manage your posting schedule and ensure you are regularly engaging the supporters your first posts attracted.

2. Empower your supporter community.

Regularly creating new content for your social media accounts is important but also time-consuming. To cultivate an active online community, your organization should  empower supporters to hold conversations about your nonprofit between posts.

Nonprofits rely on highly dedicated supporters known as “superfans.” These superfans are passionate about your nonprofit and willing to advocate on your behalf. You can encourage these superfans to continue promoting your nonprofit by:

  • Highlighting key supporters. Public recognition can go a long way towards deepening a supporter’s commitment to your cause. Show your appreciation and draw attention to interesting projects in your community by creating support spotlights. These could be features in your nonprofit’s newsletter, blog, or social media accounts.
  • Providing communication channels. Supporters will stay engaged with your nonprofit if they have other supporters to talk to about your cause. Encourage supporters to interact with one another in the comments of your posts, whether they’re on a social media platform or your blog. Nonprofits with membership programs can consider creating forums where supporters can engage with one another and create their own discussion threads.
  • Establishing a group identity. There are many ways to build a community, and you can encourage supporters to form a connection with your organization faster with branding. Give your dedicated supporters a name to help them identify as part of a group. For example, the Big Brothers Big Sisters youth mentoring nonprofit calls their volunteers “big brothers” and “big sisters,” providing a sense of community identity.

Ensure your supporters are aware of the resources you provide to encourage their involvement in your community. DNL OmniMedia’s nonprofit website design guide lists “ways to get involved” as one of the top items supporters should be able to find upon landing on your website. This might take the form of either a single page with engagement opportunities listed or a dropdown menu with multiple resources, including links to follow your nonprofit on your social media accounts.

3. Conduct market research.

Staying relevant with your audience requires understanding your audience’s needs and wants and knowing when those needs and wants change. This could be as simple as your audience losing interest in one social media platform in favor of another or as complex as needing to reconfigure your entire engagement strategy after a major rebrand.

To stay informed, regularly conduct market research. This includes polling your audience and taking note of supporter demographics, as well as monitoring other similar organizations and how they engage with their supporters. Also, strive to stay up to date with broader changes in the nonprofit sector. Resources like NXUnite’s nonprofit conferences page and similar listings can be useful for identifying where and when professionals in your industry are gathering.

If you are unsure how to make sense of your market research or apply your findings to your strategy, consider partnering with a nonprofit consulting firm. Nonprofit consultants that specialize in digital marketing can offer a professional, outside perspective on your current strategies. Services like this can be especially useful for launching new types of campaigns and outreach your nonprofit is trying for the first time.

Carl Diesing DNLCarl Diesing, Managing Director – Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.

Troubleshooting Your Year-End Giving Challenges

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A guest post by Carl Diesling, DNL OmniMedia

The final three days of December are some of the most significant fundraising days of the entire year. But, when December comes around, will your nonprofit be looking back upon a successful year-end giving season or a series of challenges that prevented you from reaching your full fundraising potential?

Year-end giving in 2021 is rife with challenges both new and old, but that shouldn’t hold your organization back from funding your mission.

In this guide, we’ll cover two challenges that nonprofits are facing with the 2021 year-end giving season, as well as solutions to help your nonprofit confront them. For more tips, explore DNL OmniMedia’s guide to year-end giving.

Let’s get started.

Challenge: Balancing in-person, virtual, and hybrid events

Last year, in-person fundraising events were either pivoted to the virtual sphere or canceled outright as COVID-19 safety protocols prevented in-person gatherings beyond individual households. Now, with vaccinations widely available, in-person events are an option for your nonprofit once more.

While some thought the return of in-person events meant a return to normalcy, that has been far from the case. Instead, your nonprofit is facing a complicated year-end event atmosphere in which all of your supporters are seeking different experiences. For example, you’ll have groups that:

  • Feel safe returning to in-person events.
  • Feel unsafe and uncomfortable with the return to in-person events.
  • Enjoyed digital fundraising events and would like to continue with that format, regardless of safety concerns.
  • Are eager to return to in-person events as soon as possible.

Now, your nonprofit has to decide whether to host virtual, in-person, or hybrid events (or, a combination of all three). Only hosting one of the three puts you at risk of isolating a segment of your supporter base.

Solution: Create a strategy that incorporates a variety of event types to appeal to all supporters.

Incorporate virtual, in-person, and hybrid events into your year-end fundraising strategy to ensure you offer opportunities that appeal to all. Consider the following ideas for each event type:

  • Virtual Events: Livestream a comedy show, concert, or cooking course and raise funds through ticket sales.
  • In-Person Events: Host an outdoor walk-a-thon in which participants raise peer-to-peer funds in anticipation of their efforts during the event itself.
  • Hybrid Events: Host an in-person auction event and allow virtual participants to attend and place bids via virtual auction software.

Note that some of these events may require an investment into new virtual fundraising software solutions, such as livestreaming software, general virtual events software, or even event-specific software such as virtual auction software. You can also turn to your current event software to see if there is existing functionality to support new event types. For example, TeamRaiser, Blackbaud’s peer-to-peer solution, can be used to support virtual and hybrid events alongside in-person events.

Challenge: Decreased team capacity for intensive fundraising efforts

The year-end fundraising season represents the busiest time of the year for your nonprofit in all senses— you have more donations coming in, marketing communications that need to be shared, and events to host.

At the same time, nonprofits aren’t known for having an abundance of staff resources. You likely have a few team members who wear many hats, each of whom is responsible for crucial aspects of your fundraising effort. It can be challenging to cover the basic functions of your nonprofit, let alone try new efforts, like innovative new fundraising opportunities that can diversify your fundraising revenue and add stability to your mission overall.

The last thing you want is for your year-end fundraising campaign to stagnate due to limited staff capacity. However, it wouldn’t make sense to increase the size of your team permanently for the year-end season alone.

Solution: Partner with a nonprofit consulting firm to fill any gaps in your team’s capacity.

A nonprofit consultant can extend your team’s capacity during the year-end season, helping you maximize this valuable fundraising opportunity and optimize your strategy for the future. DNL OmniMedia’s guide to nonprofit consulting firms discusses a variety of consultant types that your organization can partner with for specific aspects of your strategy, such as:

  • Technology Consultants: This team can conduct a nonprofit technology assessment, help you choose new software solutions to invest in, implement any new solutions you purchase, and optimize your current technology to perform at its highest level.
  • Marketing Consultants: This team can develop branding materials and key messaging for your year-end campaign, design marketing materials, and analyze the success of your outreach efforts to continue improving them going forward.
  • Fundraising Consultants: This team can help you research prospective donors, develop fundraising goals and calendars to achieve them, and pursue innovative fundraising opportunities to diversify your revenue streams.

It’s important to find a consultant that not only specializes in the specific service you need but also in the type of organization you are. For example, DNL OmniMedia specializes in nonprofit technology consulting for mid-sized and large nonprofits. However, other consultants specialize in small and growing nonprofits as well.

The 2021 year-end fundraising season is rife with challenges new and old. However, these obstacles don’t need to hold your nonprofit back from reaching great heights in the year-end season. Whether investing in new fundraising software and diversifying your calendar or bringing in a new team member for the season, there are strategies to help your nonprofit troubleshoot your year-end giving challenges.

Carl Diesing DNLCarl Diesing, Managing Director – Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.

Donor Stewardship from a Distance: 3 Tips for Communicating

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A guest post by Carl Diesling of DNL OmniMedia

How are you doing stewardship for your donors during Covid-19?

Loyal, supportive donors can see your organization through even the bleakest of crises. However, many nonprofits were simply not prepared with enough loyal donors to outlast the fundraising challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thankfully, it’s not too late to build those strong connections with your nonprofit’s donors. But, to do so, you’ll have to optimize your communications strategy.

At DNL OmniMedia, our team specializes in nonprofit marketing and technology consulting. From our experience working with nonprofits throughout this year, we’ve collected three tips that we’ve found valuable for mid-sized nonprofits looking to continue stewarding donors while social distancing:

  1. Communicate Regularly
  2. Use Multiple Channels
  3. Emphasize Impact

During times of uncertainty, it’s more important than ever to have strong donor stewardship tactics in place. Read on for our top three tips to stay in touch with your supporters.

1. Communicate Regularly

Take a close look at your nonprofit’s current communications strategy. Which dates do you have highlighted as key times to communicate? You likely highlighted the time leading up to key giving days, leading up to fundraising events, and the end of the year.

As a nonprofit communications director, you send out fundraising letters, coordinate event marketing, and follow up with thank-yous. However, if you’re only communicating around the dates when you have a big event going on, you’re missing out on key opportunities to connect!

Our first tip for stewarding donors from a distance is to communicate regularly throughout the crisis. Your donors shouldn’t just hear from you when you’re seeking something from them.

During times of crisis, the needs of your nonprofit and your response to the crisis change every day. Staying in touch during this fluidity is key to drawing supporters closer to your organization.

According to Dennis Fischman of Communicate! Consulting, some tips to stay in touch are:

  • Post regularly to your website and social media profiles.
  • Align your communications with the current events that your donors are interested in.
  • Tie your communications to direct action.

A few additional communications in the time between your main outreach efforts can go a long way.

2. Use Multiple Channels

In recent years, we’ve seen the fundraising landscape diversify. There is a decent chance your nonprofit is now seeking donations from five unique generations of givers— all the way from the Matures to Gen Z. Just as each may have different giving preferences, they will have unique communication preferences as well.

Our second tip is to use multiple communication channels to reach all of your donors.

By leveraging a variety of platforms, you’re more likely to reach a representative sample of your entire donor base. Consider using the following channels:

  • Website: This is often the first place a supporter seeks information about your nonprofit. In addition to providing giving information, share updates about your crisis response efforts and ways to connect (such as links to follow your organization on social media).
  • Direct Mail: Don’t discount the power of direct mail to reach supporters. According to Fundraising Letters, this is one of the most consistently effective ways to connect with a donor.
  • Social Networks: There’s a decent chance you have a wide age range of supporters connecting via social networks. This channel is particularly valuable for creating a two-way conversation with donors.
  • Mobile Apps: There are now mobile apps created to meet specific nonprofit needs, such as mobile advocacy apps. When it comes to communicating with convenience, mobile apps are a great tool to engage tech-savvy supporters.

Structuring your communications in this way is called multichannel marketing. When it comes to multichannel communications, be sure to create a comprehensive strategy where the channels work in sync, to structure messages to best fit the communication channel, and focus on the channels most popular with your audience.

With a multichannel communication strategy, you’re more likely to make multiple impressions on your supporters. As it can take up to 18-20 impressions to connect with a first-time supporter, multichannel efforts can be instrumental to successful stewardship during times of separation!

3. Emphasize Impact

When so much of the future feels out of anyone’s control, what your donors seek most is validation that the efforts they are taking are having a positive impact.

Our final tip is to emphasize your donors’ impact.

Donors give, both their time and resources, because they want to make a difference. This means that the best thank you, the one that will continue stewarding donors, will showcase donor impact.

Consider the following ways you can emphasize donor impact in your communications:

  • Sharing photos of volunteers giving their time on social media
  • Sending nonprofit email marketing communications with specific impact data
  • Sharing testimonials from constituents in blog posts on your website

The list can go on! But the key in each communication is to get specific. Let’s look at an example:

“In this year’s technology drive, you raised $500,000 to benefit elementary education. With this, X tablets were purchased for kindergarteners participating in distance learning this year.”

This isn’t a time to brag on the impact of your nonprofit! Highlight the direct correlation between the donors’ support and the impact toward your cause to make the message more personal and persuasive.

When you’re unable to host in-person events or meetings with major donors, you may struggle to steward donors into impactful, long-term support of your organization. With these tips, you’ll be communicating successfully despite the challenging circumstances.

Carl Diesing DNLCarl Diesing, Managing Director – Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals.

As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.

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