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Fundraising Tuesday: How to Make Your Online Fundraising an Overnight Success

March 10, 2020 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

GossipDid you ever wonder how to make an online fundraising campaign leap outside your little circle of friends and supporters and spread faster than a salacious rumor?

Did you ever watch something like the ALS challenge go viral on the internet and wish your nonprofit could do that?

Joe Garecht wants you to know a little secret: viral fundraising doesn’t happen by itself. You have to plan in advance to make it happen.

Here are the seven rules you need to follow, according to his post How to Launch a Viral Fundraising Campaign:

  1. Have a Plan in Place Before You Begin

  2. Start with Your Own Donors and Supporters

  3. Set Up a Hub and Spoke System for Your Viral Fundraising Campaign.  (In other words: everything points back to your website!)

  4. Never Call it “Viral Fundraising” *

  5. Treat it Like a Campaign

  6. Finding and Motivating Sneezers (people who spread it)

  7. Don’t Be Cheesy

*especially when people are worried about the coronavirus Covid-19!

If you read Joe’s full article, you will find fully detailed advice about how to set up and carry out your online campaign, including how to assemble your team and create and stick to a timeline.


Give me a couple of years, and I’ll make that actress an overnight success.

Samuel Goldwyn


If you want your online fundraising campaign to be an overnight success, you have to do a lot of good work before it starts.

 

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Top Fundraising Blogs, 2020

February 17, 2020 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

If you already read my Communicate! blog, thank you…and here’s a list of other #nonprofit blogs you might enjoy. https://garecht.com/the-best-fundraising-blogs/

Top fundraising blogs 2020

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TY Thursday: What Have You Done for Your Donors?

May 24, 2018 by Dennis Fischman Leave a Comment

Action speaks louderAre you trying to come up with more and better ways to thank your donors? Sometimes, what you need is not a new and improved thank-you letter, video, gift, or donor appreciation event.

Sometimes you just have to give the donors what they want.

What do the donors want?

Tom Ahern, the dean of donor communications, says the content donors want is the answers to the questions, “What did you do with the money I gave you? What difference did it make?” And they want the joy of feeling they have helped make the world a better place.

Take Tom’s advice and you’ll know what to put in your newsletter (and on your website, and on your social media)–and what to leave out. Put in stories about real people whose lives are better “because you helped.”

Everything else–the grant you got, the award your Executive Director won, the amount of money you have to raise before your fiscal year end–is what you should leave out. Unless you can find a way to present it so that your donors feel great about themselves! Then, include it. But check with some actual donors first!

Kivi Leroux Miller, who’s always both practical and inspiring, says donors want giving to be easy–and after they give, they want you to know who they are.

Take Kivi’s advice. Giving can be easy if your website has a good landing page and if once they give, you immediately acknowledge the gift (so they know “it worked!”)

Knowing who your donors are is so vital, and yet so neglected! “It’s amazing how little many nonprofits can tell you about their donors beyond their giving history, and that makes good marketing and fundraising tough,” Kivi says. If you know what your donors care about–including interests that don’t seem at first to touch on your mission–you can send communications that make them feel “This was written just for me.”

Joe Garecht, The Fundraising Authority, says donors want non-reciprocated value. In other words, be generous to them, too! Don’t just trade return address labels for a donation.

Take Joe’s advice. Find ways to be helpful to your donors, without expecting anything in return, “such as when you come across two donors who might find value in working together in their businesses, and offer to set up and attend a lunch meeting to introduce them.”

Customer service is the best thank you.

People in business know that their customers’ experience with them is reason those customers come back–or don’t. No amount of advertising can overcome a customer’s interaction with an employee who is rude, inattentive, poorly informed, or just plain unhelpful.

For nonprofit organizations, donors are our customers. Yes, they are “buying” services for other people–our clients! But customer service is still the key to seeing those donors again. Let’s put it in terms that fit the nonprofit sector:

The best way to thank your donors: think about what matters to the donor--and give it to them. Share on X

What have you done for your donors that they will remember with a smile?

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