Guest post blog submitted by: RSVPify, which offers a set of online event invitation and registration tools
Even if you are an established organization, you might still face challenges with meeting fundraising goals. Finding the best fundraising strategy is a common concern for nearly every organization.
A fundraising strategy is a planning tool used to strategically generate income to fund the organization. This plan should be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure it is relevant and meeting revenue goals. The plan may include a number of different fundraising strategies, from government grants to collecting personal donations to large sponsorships and corporate partnerships.
As fundraising is essential to the work of your organization, it requires a lot of staff time and resources. Because of this, even the most capable teams are constantly on the lookout for fresh new strategies that will increase donations while minimizing cost.
To help you out with this task, we’ve put together 5 ideas to drastically level-up your fundraising strategy today. Keep reading!
Tip 1: Fire Up Your Team
Our first tip is to start with your internal teams (whether they are employees or volunteers) and think about how you are encouraging them to become your organization’s biggest promoters and cheerleaders. From acquiring new donors to spreading the word to researching new marketing techniques, a passionate team is important for a number of reasons.
Here are some ideas for keeping your team engaged with your organization:
- Host frequent meetings/events to share updates on the organization’s initiatives and fundraising goals.
- Give employees with ‘back office’ responsibilities chances to volunteer and be engaged with the cause directly.
- Provide incentives and/or recognition for employees/volunteers who go above and beyond. Highlight them in meetings or even host an annual award night!
Tip 2: Provide a Personalized Approach
Let’s move the focus now from your internal teams to nurturing your most dedicated supporters with a personalized approach. To best utilize this strategy, you’ll want to spend some time getting to know your biggest donors. Once you understand them, you’ll be able to use this information to map the perfect strategy for engaging each donor.
So how do you gather this key information? That depends. For your biggest donors or prospects, a phone call or in-person meeting should be utilized to ask questions and have more personal conversations about how you can best work with them. Small and mid-size donors may receive a personal email outreach or survey.
A few key pieces of information to gather may include the donor’s communication preference (snail mail, email, phone calls) and specific times of the year when they are willing and able to make their contributions.
By reaching out with a personalized approach to cultivate the relationship, donors will feel that you appreciate their value. You will also be able to use what you learn here to improve your email marketing strategies for each group of donors that fit certain criteria. This can highly increase your success rate with these efforts.
Tip 3: Implement Marketing Strategies
People often think of marketing strategies as something exclusive to for-profit businesses. That’s not really the case. Promoting your nonprofit as if it were a for-profit company is an important way to grow your organization and bring in more money.
With a good marketing strategy, there will be more chances to reach potential new donors, as well as volunteers and other important pieces of a thriving organization. Here are a few things to look at when it comes to your organization’s marketing strategy:
- Implement an email marketing strategy, or re-imagine the one you already have. Check out some fun ways to make your campaigns more creative.
- Send press releases to your local news stations, newspapers, and radio stations or ask if someone from your organization can be interviewed.
- If you have the budget, consider trying paid social media or offline advertising to reach new audiences. With social media advertising, you can specifically target people who are more likely to care about your cause.
Tip 4: Boost Social Media Presence
Speaking of exposure, increasing your social media presence is a key way to take your fundraising strategies to the next level. It is estimated that more than 2.7 BILLION people use social media. In today’s world, making your organization present on these platforms is almost a necessity.
For example, on Instagram alone, you have a chance to gain exposure to a fraction of their 77 MILLION users. Your social media presence is a great way to tell your organization’s story and demonstrate the important work you are doing.
As a rule of thumb, about 80% of your content should be about the company’s principles, values, and work. About 20% of the posts can be direct asks for fundraising efforts. While this may seem counterintuitive, this strategy can be much more effective than having 100% fundraising centric content.
Why? People donate because they believe in your cause. By creating an account on Instagram and other platforms, you can start sharing your story to a new audience. This will help broaden your reach and to bring in potential new donors.
Tip 5: Host Events and Fundraisers
Events are one of the most fun parts of fundraising. A successful nonprofit event is a great opportunity to interact with your current donors, spread the word about your organization, and of course, raise money.
Events can also be a great way to turn prospects into donors after they have found your company on social media or through marketing advertisements.
To easily manage your events, you can use an online registration platform to make things easier for both you and your invitees. You’ll want to make sure you can create an RSVP process that positively reflects your organization’s brand while also making it super simple for them to register, purchase a ticket, and make a donation.
The event registration process is also a great way to grow your email list. Add a question so attendees can opt-in to receive your newsletter and other updates from the organization! Boom. Your email list is key to growing your fundraising efforts!
The Bottom Line
Did you enjoy these tips to boost your fundraising strategy? Of course, there are so many strategies that you can use. Hopefully, these 5 ideas gave you a good starting point for brainstorming how to level up your own organization’s current fundraising strategies.
The most important thing is to remember that, as an organization, you will always have ups and downs. Keep challenging yourself to be creative and innovative, and experimenting with your fundraising strategy to see what works best and produces the best results for your organization.
