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

February 1, 2022 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

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.

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Troubleshooting Your Year-End Giving Challenges

December 21, 2021 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

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.

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Fundraising Tuesday: 3 Favorite Hybrid Fundraising Events Your Nonprofit Can Host

November 9, 2021 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

A guest post by Kelly Velasquez-Hague of OneCause

Hybrid events have become far more popular among nonprofits in the past several months. They offer the convenience and flexibility of virtual events with the face-to-face connection of in-person events — all rolled into one. When a hybrid event is pulled off successfully, it can make a positive first impression with new supporters and deepen connections with existing supporters.

There is one thing every fundraiser should know! Hybrid events have a lot of moving parts. There are many logistics to consider, such as how to keep both remote and in-person audiences engaged, what activities you should plan, the software you should rely on, your registration, fundraising and checkout flows, and so much more.

That’s why we’ve put together this list of favorite hybrid fundraising events to help get you started. Here are our top three hybrid events:

  1. Auction
  2. Drive-In
  3. Webinar

Planning your own hybrid event might seem overwhelming, but shifting your mindset helps. Here’s the key: think of the in-person and virtual options as two ways to experience the event. When you think in terms of what the in-person and remote supporters will experience at key points in your event, it helps ensure you are maximizing engagement and fundraising for both audiences.

Let’s take a closer look at these three event types and see which one is right for your nonprofit!

1. Auction

Auctions are an adaptable and flexible event option for nonprofits of any size. The best part?  They can be adjusted to fit a variety of audiences. If you’ve ever hosted an auction before, you know that they require preparation, and that’s still true with hybrid auctions. To plan your  hybrid auction, use these tips:

  • Preview your auction items in advance. Giving your potential attendees a glimpse into what they could win to incentivize them to bid. This OneCause guide on charity auction item ideas can help you pick the best items.
  • Use mobile bidding software, which makes it easy for bidders attending in-person or virtually to compete for the same items simultaneously. Plus, you can easily keep track of winners, payments, and where to ship the items.
  • Keep the live auction fairly short so that virtual attendees do not become disengaged and log off. Consider pairing your auction with other activities, such as meet-and-greets or educational programs to keep everyone’s attention.

With compelling items, the right software, and an organized format, your hybrid auction can be an engaging event for participants attending in-person or virtually. And it’s a great way to raise money for your nonprofit!

2. Drive-In

Who doesn’t enjoy a night at the movies? Hosting a drive-in or a watch party is a great way to build community among supporters of your nonprofit. And of all of our hybrid event options, a drive-in is likely the easiest to pull off.

Once you secure a venue and set up your live-streaming software, there’s only a few things left to do to bring your drive-in to the next level, including:

  • Allowing attendees to vote on the movie: During the registration process, include a few movie choices and show the one with the most votes. You can even theme the movie around the time of year, like playing a Halloween movie in October.
  • Encouraging watch parties for viewers at home: Just because a participant isn’t attending in-person doesn’t mean they can’t spend time with others. Encourage your attendees to invite friends to watch with them.
  • Creating snack packs: Whether you participants are attending in-person or virtually, provide snack packs with popcorn, candy, and other treats. You can give them directly to in-person attendees and mail them to participants watching from home. This is also a great opportunity to include some branded materials to raise your nonprofit’s visibility.
  • Weave in Mission Moments: Be sure to orchestrate fundraising and donations moments before and after your movies. If you are doing a double-feature, have an intermission and do a Fund-A-Need moment.

To foster connection with your attendees and make it fun, you could plan themed activities for before, during, and after the movie (think Rocky Horror Picture Show or movie trivia). Adding a few creative elements and activities can boost engagement, and create a memorable hybrid event experience for all!

3. Educational Webinar or Event

If your nonprofit is looking to incorporate more educational events into your fundraising strategy, then a webinar, seminar, or other educational gathering might be the right hybrid event choice for you!

Webinars are a great way to raise awareness about your cause and ignite passion in your donors. You can offer in-person tickets to the speaking event to VIP guests while other attendees can stream the gathering from the comfort of their homes.

During your hybrid webinar, provide equal opportunities for engagement for in-person and virtual attendees. Allow both groups to ask questions and interact with speakers and each other. For virtual attendees, create breakout sessions to facilitate smaller discussions about what your speakers have shared.

Another option is to pre-record the speaker’s lecture and host a live Q&A session. This provides in-person attendees an opportunity to connect with each other as they watch the video, while everyone at home can keep up with the recording. With this option, be sure you have a moderator to run the online questions so that everything stays organized.

One last tip: When planning your hybrid event, start preparing early. Remember, there’s a lot of logistics involved, so it’s best to give yourself plenty of time to get everything up and running. Good luck!

 


Kelly Velasquez-Haguge head shotKelly Velasquez-Hague brings over 20 years of fundraising, nonprofit management, and sales/marketing experience to her role as the Director of Content Marketing for OneCause.

As a member of the OneCause sales and marketing team, Kelly manages all of the company’s content strategy and execution. She is passionate about empowering great missions and loves that her current role allows her to continue to help nonprofits reach new donors raise more funds for their cause.

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