Focus on Your Donors

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How To Focus on Your Donors For Donations

 

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When it comes to fundraising, it is absolutely imperative that you focus on your donors. As much as you want to continue building growth and development with new benefactors, you want to make sure you cultivate a strong foundational relationship with the individuals who have already contributed to your cause. In the grand scheme of things, nonprofit organizations need to view their operations and logistics as a business. Providing that necessary investment with specific donors, especially your high-valued clients, can, in turn, provide a stronger return on investment.

To start, let’s first examine why so many nonprofits overlook this step. When it comes to focusing on donors, many NGOs and organizations look primarily for growth. While focusing on other avenues and aspects will always be the name of the game when it comes to fundraising, you cannot forget about the individuals who helped established your presence in the beginning. By focusing and investing in your previous donors, you can essentially meet your fundraising goals, quarter after quarter by simply reaching out to that already tapped potential. By involving those individuals with the process, the overall return can lead to either new donations or new donors simply from your interaction and relationship with one client.

To do this, you need to first and foremost build a relationship and rapport with them.

Any strong nonprofit organization knows that when it comes to landing a donation, it all begins with how you interact with the person on the other side of the table. Make sure you listen to their intrinsic goals. Ask them those overarching questions of what they believe in and what they are looking for. In many cases, your goals and vision align with their needs. By leveraging that knowledge, you can create that much-needed bond that can continue for years on end.

Once that bond is forged, it will be your job to communicate with that donor.

This can be done in a variety of ways. Start by reporting back to them. For many of these donors, they want to know that their donations are leading to something great. Provide them that necessary feedback by reporting how their gifts are making that transformational change on an individual or a community. This can be done through a simple newsletter, appeals, social media, your websites, an email, a phone call, or other communication channels. The more consistent you are the better.  

In addition to communicating and updating your donor, try sending gifts and acknowledgments to them.

This will always be important. When you make it a habit to send your donors a thank you letter or a gift of gratitude, you are forging that ever-lasting strong relationship. To continue building on that, consistently update them with information. Share various photos and sentiments of thank you cards from other parties. Here, an emotional appeal will play a large role. Not only will it give you a chance to connect with them, but also it will showcase the impact that their gift has done for another life.

Last but not least, stay donor focus. As stated before, it is easy to get lost within the operations of the day when it comes to fundraising. The simple idea of more donors leads to more donations absolutely works. But by hitting that low-hanging fruit of retaining donors on a long-term campaign, you will be able to see a stronger return as a whole when it comes to meeting your financial goals. To do this, continue communicating with those individuals.

Everything flows into communication. Being donor focus can spark a wide variety of opportunities, which will be fundamental for your nonprofit’s future.

Matt Kupec is a financial fundraising expert and has raised over $5 billion in funding over the past 35 years. Have questions? Ask Matt.

Strategy for Fundraising

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The Strategy Of Chess

In today’s volatile economic environment, charities need to continuously reassess their abilities to generate future funds. Like it or not, change is inevitable. The ability to adapt to relevant strategies and introduce innovative successful tactics will be the game changer for whether or not your charity or cause is able to hit their financial goals.

So how do you do this? What strategy planning should be utilized to help enhance my fundraiser?

The first thing you need to understand is that you cannot become too reliant on government grants. As much as these grants can give you a head start in setting up the foundational aspect of your charity, it cannot be the only financial game plan in keeping your organization afloat. For you to expand, you need to venture into new tactics that go beyond the austerities of leads or former donors. Instead, you need to constantly internalize, reflect, and revamp your system so that it can keep up within the tough climate that is fundraising.

Begin by looking at your organization holistically. Strong, successful, and effective fundraisers are powerful in their own right because they are still able to both engage with their previous donors and reach out to new donors year after year. To keep that continuous momentum alive, you need to understand what the problem is. Ask your team the following questions: What is your cause? What are your goals? How will these donations aid with supporting your causes? What happens if you do not meet your financial goals? Why is your organization qualified to tackle this problem? By asking yourself these overarching questions, you will be able to externally focus on any weaknesses you are seeing within your campaign.

Once you have internalized the strengths and weaknesses of your foundation, now you can begin to analyze the necessary steps for a successful campaign. Start by reviewing the numbers. Look at the statistical metrics of how your donors and donations grew or fell within the past three years. Even go as far as to analyze it on a meticulously month-by-month basis. By analyzing this information this way, you will be able to see your charity as a business. In addition, the numbers themselves will give you a variety of different levels to structure an efficient and effective attack plan that can further benefit your cause within the next up and coming months.

When building your attack plan, make sure you continue your research by identifying the specific donors you plan on targeting. Yes, as you can see, research will be a constant role in developing your fundraising campaign to its fullest. For this particular research, you are now looking at the market instead of your campaign. This will allow you to find new and exciting sectors that are looking to support your organization to the fullest. Start off by researching your current donors and their businesses. Ask yourself why they are affiliated with your foundation and what groups they are associated with that you can connect with them. This internal system of connections will allow you to tap an untouched market that can be incredibly fruitful in the future. Once that is done, incorporate a strategy of how you will reach out to them. Will it be by email, word of mouth, or through an in person presentation? Whatever is the case, you want to make sure you are well prepared. That means tailoring your pitch and your presentation (PowerPoint) to that specific organization. The more centralized and specific your cause is to an organization, the better opportunity you have in gaining new donors.

After the restructure attack plan, go back to see how well it worked. If it was successful, great! Continue the strategy and the overall process again. If it wasn’t, reflect upon what was its weakness and what you and your team could have done to improve upon it. Remember, the only way to see this continuous success is by understanding your campaign’s flaws and adapting to any changes that can lead you to your future financial goals.