from NetWit's Think Tank: Do You Know Your Supporters? Nonprofits have an interesting challenge facing them. The ever growing social networking landscape makes it difficult to know if an existing or new supporter of yours is active on any of the current social networks (let alone the ones that haven’t been dreamed up yet). How do you figure out if someone who volunteers for you is using Facebook or if a donor is active on Twitter? How do you know if an advocate is using YouTube to promote your case or Blogging to increase the public’s awareness of a topic you support? This isn’t a new challenge by any means, but it is one that’s becoming more complicated to solve. It’s sort of like going from basic math to solving Trigonometric Theorems. Remember Ptolemy's Theorem? Yea, me … Continue Reading
The Starting Point for Change
In the UK we seem to have little curiosity about how fundraising colleagues in the rest of the English speaking world of fundraising go about meeting the challenges they face. This is all the more curious as the challenges are, by and large, the same as we face in the UK. They have the same need for core funding; they need to raise funds for specific projects and larger capital developments. And they need to raise funds in order to develop the long term organisational strength of their institutions. The challenges are the same, but the solutions they have developed are often very different to those developed here. And one of the most striking differences is the emphasis on major gifts. For reasons which are difficult to understand, in the UK we seem to have developed a “bottom up” approach to … Continue Reading
Wake-Up Call: Your Supporters Expect More
by Katya Andresen Dear Nonprofit Marketing Friends, The biggest thing that needs to change this year is how we think about our donors. We are in the midst of an enormous generational shift that has major implications for our work. The Greatest Generation of older, civic-minded Americans who wrote checks out of a sense of duty and expected little more than a tax receipt in return is passing the torch to a far more demanding series of predecessors. Boomers expect a sense of impact, and younger donors expect engagement and involvement. They are anything but passive. Think of it this way. Just as in marketing we have left the broadcast era where consumers passively take in promotional messages, we have left the low-expectation donor era. That means it’s not enough to declare a need … Continue Reading
Breaking the Ice: Cold Calling Does Not Do It!
In working with one of my clients over the last few weeks an issue was raised about how to reach out to potential donors. There was a discussion about 1) what strategy should be used when reaching out to these people to approach them for a donation, and 2) who should make the first contact? I would like to explore these questions and provide some suggestions for reaching out to people who do not have a relationship with the organization. Often the executive, the financial resource development professional or a volunteer fundraiser in an organization will receive the name of a person and be told that he/she is interested in the population that the agency serves. It will be suggested that one of these people call the potential donor and speak to them about a donation. Another well known scenario … Continue Reading
How Donor-friendly is Your On-line Presence?
by Laura E. Kaufman There is nothing scientific about this post. No studies were conducted, no metrics gathered. I am simply sharing observations based on the experience of one donor: me. This year, I did my year-end giving either partly or entirely on-line. I gave to multiple non-profits. They included local, national and international organizations. Some gifts were to grassroots projects and others to large, well-resourced non-profits. I used organization websites, and if I was less familiar with an organization, I checked their ratings on Charity Navigator. More and more non-profits are using Web 2.0 to promote their cause and attract donors. However, simply establishing a website, Facebook page or tweeting is not enough. Non-profits need to keep their web presence current. … Continue Reading
How to Raise More Money in Economically Challenging Times
This post was first published in September, 2009. It carries a timely message as donor conservation should be high on your agenda every day. by David A. Mersky If you are an executive or volunteer leader of a nonprofit agency, you know that you are approaching that season of the year when you expect to receive maybe as much as 70% of your annual philanthropic revenue. For some nonprofits, the last six weeks of the year brings in virtually all of their income. If you are a donor, then you can expect your mailbox - and, increasingly, your email inbox - to be inundated with solicitations to support every worthy cause imaginable. Regardless on which side of the envelope you sit, this will be a very interesting year. If you are on the receiving end, you have to be filled with anxiety. … Continue Reading
Predicting Who Will Give
from Philanthropy.com: A New York Cancer Center Uses Technology to Predict Who Will Give Almost every charity’s pool of donors includes plenty of people who have both the means and the inclination to make a far bigger gift than they ever did in the past. The trick, of course, is to figure out just which people will make the leap. To that end, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in New York, has become one of a small but growing number of institutions to embrace a technique known as predictive modeling to help it set priorities and decide which donors deserve the most attention. While the approach requires fairly sophisticated statistical software and a staff member or a consultant who knows how to use it, fund raisers say predictive modeling can be an option for even relatively small … Continue Reading
The Re-Introduction of the Major Gift
by Robert I. Evans and Avrum D. Lapin The push for major gifts re-emerges as a critical strategic focus for non-profits to recapture strength, meet goals, and move into “the new normal. Non-profit fundraising success in 2010 will be predicated on an organization’s capacity to become re-invigorated and to secure major gifts. The downturn in the economy clearly caused some donors to scale back and hold off on certain aspects of their giving, but that does not mean that charitable capacity or commitment no longer exists. Therefore, it is important to develop an understanding of your major donors’ interests as well as your abilities to accurately determine a realistic “ask” without being too cautious, inhibited or out of line. Too often, volunteer and staff leaders of non-profits are … Continue Reading
Have Non-Profits Forgotten to Say “Thank You”?
by Robert I. Evans and Avrum D. Lapin Following last Friday’s posting, “Saying Thank You in the Social World”, we felt compelled to elaborate on the importance of this subject and how non-profits should be incorporating donor recognition into their fundraising program. No two words have created as much consternation today for nonprofits as “thank you.” This is a topic that is always important, and punctuated during the difficult economic times when gifts may be more difficult to secure or when other pressures set varying priorities. Donors at all levels and from all walks of life want to feel appreciated and be assured that their contributions are making an impact. While some may think that the time-worn mandate to express appreciation is almost “old news,” we are regularly … Continue Reading
Cultivating Donors for the Long-Term
Some advice on whether to focus more dollars on your donors, the life-blood of every organization. by Misha Galperin One needs to have a long-term view. There are short-term problems and issues to be overcome always, and there is the immediacy of the moment and the pressure to give out money right away. But if you’re running an organization that you think is here for the long haul - and we’ve been here for the long haul and we expect to be here for a long time - you need to be thinking beyond the horizon of the next year or the next five years. In purely business terms, there are three considerations that argue in favor of building your donor base, even if you don’t have an immediate financial return on investment. One part of what is happening in the world is much of the wealth … Continue Reading
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