4 Essential Steps to Increase Your Nonprofit’s Donor Base
In our article covering the latest nonprofit donation trends, we promised to share the 4 essentials to increase your nonprofit’s donor base.
From the data available on donors within the U.S., acquiring more donors and increasing your incoming donations isn’t such an impossible feat!
People are choosing to give everyday to the causes they care about, and ultimately, they will only give to the causes that resonate with them in a personal way.
So the question then becomes, how do you find and speak to this audience of potential donors?…
1. Improve Your Online & Community Presence
Online: Improving your online presence means that you’re providing information about your organization’s mission and activities on various online channels and making sure your website is user-friendly, attractive, and up to date.
If you don’t have one already, consider starting a blog or learning how to blog in a way that will help you attract more donors to your organization! An informative and regularly updated blog is a great way to improve the online presence of your organization.
Having branded online fundraising campaigns — that are visually appealing and include a simple way to make online donations — is another necessary component to improve your online presence and attract more donors.
Community: Your community presence is very likely to improve as a natural result of the progress made to your online presence…
However, be sure you’re not neglecting all the things you should be doing offline to improve your community presence and relationships, such as calling or writing to your donors to thank them in a more personal and meaningful way!
2. Increase Your Board’s Involvement
Ask your nonprofit board members to reach out to their own social circles. They should be engaging in some of their own peer-to-peer fundraising to help you out.
Even if they’re not donating themselves, there’s a reason these individuals are members of your board, so their lives should resonate with your cause in some way!
Remind them of this by showing each member genuine appreciation for their current support and keeping them updated — just like you would with your donors — on how your fundraising efforts are going and how much more you need to reach your goals.
3. Use Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
Get your supporters to fundraise on your behalf through your online fundraising platform!
With GiveGab, for instance, it’s easy for nonprofit supporters to become fundraisers for the organizations they care about.
You can send a request to your supporters to become fundraisers for a particular campaign through your online fundraising platform or by separately crafting a compelling email to send out.
Those who sign up as fundraisers can then do their own community outreach to help bring in more donations and more supporters to your organization!
4. Get Happy and Get Personal
This is a an important message, not only for nonprofits, but for any organization seeking improvement and growth.
In today’s fast-paced, business-oriented culture, more people are looking for that differentiating factor when considering where they’re going to do their business, or in this case, do their giving!
And what is that differentiating factor??
First, it’s putting your organization’s focus on having a positive, uplifting, fun, and overall happy message. And second, it’s making your interactions as personal or meaningful as possible!
Get Happy: Have fun with your message by getting creative, using visuals and fun or playful verbiage, sharing your successes with your community in a colorful and celebratory manner, holding fun events and sending personalized invitations, and making your messages inspiring and uplifting!
Get Personal: It’s great that things are increasingly digital and automated, but don’t let that stop you from getting personal. You should still be addressing people, whether it’s via email or otherwise, by their first name and tailoring your messages based on what you’ve learned about them.
For major successes within your organization, you should also reach out to some of the people who helped you and thank them personally over the phone or send them a hand-written thank you card.
Following these simple steps will help bring more donors to your organization and keep them there!
Stay tuned for our followup article: How Online Fundraising Platforms Should Help Attract More Donors!
