Things aren’t predictable right now especially in the nonprofit world. We’ve heard from many of you that donations are down, grants are not being renewed, and your budgets are uncertain. And, extremely regrettably, we know some of you have been forced to lay off staff.
But, we are not writing this to focus on the bad. There are some important things you can do right now to retain and grow your supporters during this tumultuous time.
All too often, nonprofits get fixated on “finding” new donors and can overlook what’s right before our eyes. Raise HECK and S+R Consulting have gotten together to offer you 4 tips that focus on building from within to maximize donations.
Raise Heck and S+R Consulting have worked together on client engagements, and these interconnected strategies are the very ones we’ve used with them effectively! So here goes:
- Utilize your technology investments to the fullest. Now is a time to ensure that you are getting the most out of your technology solutions. Do an internal (or partner with Raise Heck!) assessment of your CRM and digital marketing solutions.
Make sure that you are utilizing all of the advanced and latest features. Are you setting up automations to move donors up the ladder of engagement, are you segmenting your emails effectively, are you personalizing your communications?
- Focus on Monthly Sustainers: These are some of your most loyal supporters – and provide recurring revenue that your organization can rely on. Evaluate your donation forms, email automatons, segments of low $ donors with the propensity to convert to sustainers, as well as current sustainers…could they upgrade?
Investing the time and resources to assess and implement programs and processes to convert and maintain this important donor base will pay off on reduced staff time and increased revenue for the organization.
- Create (and stick) to a fundraising + stewardship outreach calendar. Determine what is “doable” for you and your team in terms of frequency of outreach, the type of comms vehicles to use, and stick to it (S+R can help get you started!!). Your outreach to donors and prospects doesn’t have to be fancy; it can be a couple of paragraphs even. What’s important is consistency, frequency, and balancing out requests for support with gratitude-filled stewardship updates.
- Write succinct, impact-focused, donor-centric materials. This is a hard one because as fundraisers we tend to want to try to capture all our nonprofit is doing!
Your donors’ inboxes are inundated. So it’s your job to quickly catch them up to speed about the issues/problem and let them know that they are what makes all this work possible. Don’t forget that your donor is a stakeholder too!
Not sure where to start?
Reach out to Sally and Charlotte from Raise HECK for your tech needs or Edit and Diane at S+R Consulting about your donor stewardships/fundraising plans. We’d be happy to offer some advice and brainstorm. We are in this together!
Sally + Charlotte
Raise HECK
Edit + Diane