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1. Find out more about your donors
Just like in any venture that you are planning, the first important thing is to understand about the donors, your target audience for fundraising. Understanding about the donors helps you to plan and strategize the efforts for your donors resulting in favorable outcome.
If you are planning to create a customized fundraising campaign, it is advisable to understand your audience completely before setting up any campaign. A customized campaign after understanding the target audience helps to reach more accurately and increase the conversion rate. A study by Campbell and Company at the Center on Fundraising Ideas Philanthropy at Indiana University reveals an interesting fact that irrespective of factors such as income, education, and religiosity, donors across all generations donate the same amount to charity.
The good news for nonprofits is that the overall giving has grown by 4.1% in the past year as per 2018 Global Giving Trends in Giving Report. Most of the donors are shifting towards an online method for donation and finding social media platform an instrumental tool to reach the nonprofit charity.
Stats also reveal that besides contributing funds, 67% of donors also choose to volunteer locally in their communities. The popularity of fundraising events has increased with 56% of donors attending them (2018 Global Trends in Giving Report).
It is easy for you to plan the marketing activity revolving around the donor to the relevant channels.
2. Refresh your online content
The donors' behaviour continuously changing and hence it needs to research about the donor behaviour and accordingly develop the content strategy.
Updating the old content periodically is one of the best ways to keep the audience engaged. It helps you to maximize the benefits from updated content.
However, refreshing of the online content should be done in a planned manner:
• Firstly, prepare a content calendar according to relevancy, timing, and the sequence along with the fresh content you will be posting.
• Understand the current audience requirements and what they are expecting and modify the content according to their needs.
• Research the keywords based on the latest demand and optimize the content accordingly.
• To keep your audience visiting the page regularly and improve the page in search ranking, you need to make the page dynamic by presenting the news about the nonprofit that creates interest among the audience.
• Ensure that your content is responsive.
3. Keep Social Media Updated
Social media has impacted the lives of all in one or more ways and nonprofits too not untouched of this influence. It is a platform through which you can engage with your donors by posting relevant content, emotion-inducing videos and images. Social media plays an ambassador role for your nonprofit and it serves as one of the best avenues to boost referral.
There are various social media channels that have proved to be effective for fundraising:
• According to The Non-Profit Times, Facebook’s charitable giving tools have topped a whopping $ 1 billion in 2018 since its introduction three years ago.
• Instagram hit a staggering 1billion active users in 2018. According to Megan Cotter, Social Media Manager, with the rising users of Instagram in all age groups, it is expected to become one of the most popular platforms for non-profits in 2019. In fact, Instagram can be effectively leveraged to provide donors and volunteers a glimpse of the impact of their gifts every day.
• As per Hootsuite, 1.9 billion logged in users visit YouTube monthly! And Cisco would have us believe that 82% of all internet traffic will be video by 2022! It is no wonder that fundraisers are using this platform for inviting donations. In addition to the popularity of the platform, YouTube is also rolling out a new suite of giving tools for non-profits.
• Twitter has proved to be one of the best channels for establishing ongoing and authentic engagement with your donors. Because of its incredible speed in spreading information, it helps mobilize supporters and interact with your audience.
• In addition to these, there are other social media platforms such as LinkedIn, etc. which offer their own set of benefits to non-profits.
An effective social media strategy nonprofit can adopt is:
• Communicate important information, send updates, and connect with potential donors using platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
• You can create a needs board on Pinterest where you can specify the items you need for the immediate functioning of your charitable organization. You can share this needs board on Facebook and Twitter.
• Online crowdfunding has also been found to be effective in raising funds for charities.
4. Host Events
The best way to raise the funds for the cause is by hosting an event. Events could be a marathon, polar, walkathons, dinners, picnics, etc.
A well-planned event can bring in more potential donors and a lot of funds. In fact, recent times have witnessed events such as head shaving being hosted for fundraising. The good news for nonprofits is that 56% of donors participate in fundraising events.
However, with proper planning, hosting an event can benefit an organization significantly.
Steps for hosting an event
- Define the objectives of your event
- Who is your Target Audience?
- Estimate how much you expect to raise from the event
- Estimate your budget for the event
- Set up a committee which includes your internal personnel and volunteers from the local community
- Assign tasks such as marketing, operations, logistics, etc. to specific groups
- Look for Corporate sponsorship for your event
- Don’t forget to thank everyone who was involved with events such as donors, volunteers, staff, vendors, etc.
5. Make it easy to donate
For getting donors to contribute to your non-profit, it is essential to simplify the process of donating.
Here are some tips on how you can make it easy to donate
- Simplify your donation form
Make the donation form on your site easy to navigate so that the donors find it easy to donate. - Suggest giving amounts
Instead of asking your donors to type in the amount they want to donate, include tabs with suggestions of specific amounts to contribute. - Encourage monthly donations
Instead of asking for one big donation from your donors, encourage them to contribute monthly to your non-profit as this not only grows your long-term fundraising performance but also enhances monthly revenues. - Mobile first
As per CIO Drive 2018, up to 70% of web traffic takes place on mobile devices! Since most users are looking at mobiles for accomplishing most tasks, having a responsive donor form is vital. Ensure that your donation form opens easily on the mobile making it easy to donate. - Add CTA in your Social media pages
One of the ways to make it easy to donate is by adding a “Donate Now” Button in your fundraising social media pages such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
6. Join iConnectX
If you are looking to be a part of a non-profit, join iConnectX! iConnectX is a social platform that enables professionals to connect with executives and experts for a fee that is donated to non-profit organizations registered with us.
The process of functioning of iConnectX is simple wherein professionals and executives connect through a private bridge. A private bridge is a paid meeting between the user and the executive. The user pays the executive for the meeting based on the executive’s bridge price. After the completion of the meeting, the fee will be given to a charity of the executive’s choice.
It is an innovative concept where the power of networking is successfully leveraged to raise donations and support causes. These registered organizations manage direct donations, host events, auctions, etc. For your convenience, we are available both on the web and mobile.
This platform offers complete transparency to the donors and is easy to use in addition to providing networking benefits to the user.
Although not exhaustive, these are some ideas that can help your fundraising throughout the year.
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