When building relationships with supporters and donors and building out your donor engagement strategy, it’s important to make donors feel valued. While you should continue to send online appeals and meet them where they’re at online, you might want to consider reaching out to them in a more traditional way: [...]
As you probably know, most nonprofits bring in the majority of their revenue at the end of the year. This is a time when many organizations are raising as much as 30% to even 50% of their total budget. To make the most of this end-of-year giving season, I recommend [...]
You know you have to keep accurate records for your nonprofit’s health and transparency and to be in good standing with state and local laws. Some of the tasks associated with maintaining records—like sending donation receipts—can seem tedious and unnecessary. Even so, you can’t opt out of sending them: The [...]
During a hectic work day where many can only squeeze in a lunch break between firing off emails, it can be hard to know if you’re making your donors feel appreciated or if you’re giving them the impression that they’re getting copy and paste interactions. This isn’t something to ignore [...]
When you started your nonprofit, you likely had a core group of supporters who provided donations and funding on a regular basis. This made it very easy to reach out to each supporter individually and personalize the communication. However, as you became more well-known in the community, the list of [...]
For many of us, summer fundraising can be frustrating because often our donor communications during this season yield less-than-ideal results. If that sounds like your nonprofit’s typical summer, here are some things you can do to offset that summer slump with an unexpected windfall: 1. Determine if a summer fundraising [...]
Did you know as many as 81% percent of new donors don’t return to give again? And only 43% of all donors remain loyal? Do you know what your retention rates are or how to increase donor loyalty? The sorry state of donor retention has been a topic of discussion [...]
This is part 2 in a 3-part series. Read part 1. Stay tuned for part 3. From my perspective, there are three pillars of transformation required of nonprofits that want to thrive in the post-disruption, post-COVID economy. In the first article of this three-part series, I explored why digital transformation [...]
The most effective type of donor cultivation is a donor-centered approach. In this donor-centered approach, nonprofits seek to discover as much as they can about the potential donor. It's not wise to rush the discovery process. Like an onion, it needs to be peeled one layer at a time. So, [...]
As COVID-19 took hold of the country, your organization had to undergo a pretty drastic change. Deciding whether to cancel your events or move them to the virtual sphere was just one of the many great challenges in 2020. In 2021, the coronavirus vaccine is available, and with it being [...]
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ve inevitably encountered the phrase “donor-centric” in the context of nonprofit fundraising. Apart from being one of the most ironic terms in the business—shouldn’t every organization that relies on funding from donors be focused on...donors?—its meaning has gone [...]
Framing the Extraordinary Within the Ordinary to Cultivate Connection and Build Engaged Case Studies As non-profit professionals, we know how important storytelling and personal case studies are to cultivate connection to our audience with our mission and raising money. Stories help create relationships. Stories help facilitate familiarity. Storytelling is something [...]