4Creative Fundraising Strategies for Animal Shelters
Fundraising secures much-needed resources for your animal shelter. Leverage these creative strategies to reach a wider audience and garner more support.
Guest post by Gingr
The ASPCA estimates that roughly 6.3 million dogs and cats enter animal shelters annually in the U.S. As an animal shelter manager yourself, you know how overwhelming it can be to keep up with the intake of new animals, offer them quality care, and adopt them out to loving forever families. Your shelter may be overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded more often than not.
However, fundraising can alleviate some of these challenges by providing your shelter with much-needed resources from animal lovers willing to help. As Gingr’s guide to pet industry trends highlights, Americans spent more than $147 billion on their pets in 2023—and that number is expected to grow. What can your shelter do to carve out a place in their budgets?
Take advantage of this growing industry with these creative fundraising strategies that will help you reach potential donors and inspire them to give.
Organize fun, relaxing events
A survey conducted by the American Heart Association found that 95% of pet owners rely on their animals for stress relief. Help your supporters soothe away the stress from upcoming exams, a rough week at work, or a hectic move across town by organizing calm events with your shelter’s animals!
Have supporters pay to attend events such as:
Puppy or cat yoga: Hire or partner with a yoga instructor to lead the class and let the cats or dogs roam freely. Pets may curl up on the yoga mats for a nap or perch on attendees as they flow through a cat-cow sequence or push up into a downward-facing dog. Not only will your supporters get some relaxing movement, but they’ll also be surrounded by adorable, adoptable animals.
Cat cafe: Convert a room in your facilities into a cat cafe for an afternoon (or long-term if you have the space) and allow attendees to book time slots. Offer drinks and snacks and allow people to work, study, or just hang out with the adoptable cats in the cafe.
Kitten and puppy cuddle sessions: These sessions allow you to socialize your kittens and puppies, secure funding, and relieve stress all in one. They are the perfect event for worn-out college students, frazzled new parents, and anyone else who needs a quiet moment with a fuzzy baby animal.
If you can, consider holding these events weekly or monthly. In addition to helping you raise money, they’ll serve as informal adoption events that allow supporters to bond one-on-one with your animals.
Start a Pet of the Month subscription program
Recurring or monthly giving programs are an excellent way to secure reliable revenue and foster deeper relationships with supporters. Supporters simply agree to donate a fixed amount each month, meaning your shelter doesn’t have to put in hours of work for each donation.
Get creative with your recurring giving program to keep supporters engaged. Frame it as a monthly subscription through which they sponsor a specific pet or pets in need. Depending on the size of your program, you might:
Select one high-needs animal per month for your recurring donors to support. For example, perhaps you take in an injured dog in need of extensive veterinary care. If you pick that dog as the pet of the month, all of your monthly donors’ contributions will go toward that dog’s surgery, medication, and rehabilitation.
Select multiple “pets of the month” and allow members to sign up for a specific pet they’d like to sponsor. Each pet might have two to three spots donors can claim. This keeps donors looking forward to each new month and eager to know about their animal’s progress.
Provide regular updates to your monthly donors to show them the impact of their contributions. Highlight the specific medications, care, toys, or bedding that their support provided, and share photos and videos of the animal’s progress.
Additionally, strive to attract new recurring donors by marketing these services across digital marketing channels. During the busy spring season, for instance, you might post photos of new mother cats and their litter of kittens on social media, urging followers to sign up for the program and sponsor them.
Work with local businesses
Local businesses and corporations in your area may be interested in partnering with your shelter for corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. CSR is the concept that companies should consider their social, economic, and environmental impacts and strive to better their communities.
By forming relationships with these companies or simply spreading awareness of corporate philanthropy, your shelter could enjoy the benefits of CSR programs like:
Matching gifts: When an employee donates to a charitable cause, like your shelter, their employer will match their donation. Matches are typically offered at a 1:1 ratio, meaning that a $50 donation could become $100 without any added expense for the donor.
Volunteer grants: Companies may also make financial contributions to the organizations employees volunteer with frequently. Spread awareness of these programs to your volunteers, help them track their hours, and encourage them to seek volunteer grants from their employers.
Corporate sponsorships: The company partners with your nonprofit to support specific campaigns or events. For instance, a local running store may sponsor your charity 5K in exchange for featuring their logo on event signage.
In-kind donations: These non-financial contributions may include items, equipment, or pro bono services (e.g., a dog groomer providing free baths, haircuts, and nail trims to your shelter’s dogs).
Additionally, CSR programs may incentivize volunteering by offering volunteer time off (VTO). Similar to paid time off (PTO), VTO is time off reserved specifically for volunteering—in other words, employees can spend the time they would normally be working volunteering at your shelter. As Double the Donation’s guide to VTO explains, taking advantage of these programs provides a larger pool of support, opens the door to long-term partnerships, and allows you to devote more time and resources toward mission-critical work.
Hold percentage-of-sales donation day fundraisers at pet businesses
Speaking of local businesses, consider pairing up with a pet business like a dog daycare or kennel, pet groomer, dog training, or pet store to hold a percentage-day (or week, month, etc.) fundraiser. These businesses share a core value with your shelter—a deep passion for animals and their well-being.
During the fundraiser, a portion of the store's proceeds will be donated to your shelter. For the best results, your shelter and the pet business should jointly promote the campaign in advance, encouraging supporters to patronize the business while the campaign is in effect. When pitching this idea to local businesses, let them know what is in it for them—increased foot traffic, higher sales, and maybe even new customers!
To maximize these campaigns’ impact, you could also incorporate a donation drive. Put out a bin at the business to collect in-kind donations, adding a sign with your logo. Ask staff at the pet business to encourage customers to donate. Ensure you get the items you need most by auditing your nonprofit’s current inventory and creating a wish list.
It’s no secret that people are passionate about animals. These fundraisers could attract first-time donors to your shelter who are primed to become long-term, loyal supporters—as long as you cultivate relationships with them. Be sure to thank them for their support with personalized, donor-centric thank-you messages, share regular updates about your shelter, and recommend other ways to support your cause.
4 Survey Strategies for Soliciting Donors’ Feedback
Sending surveys to ask for donors’ feedback helps you build relationships, learn more about your donors, and retain them. Hear are four survey strategies to use.
Guest post by Mogli
Donating to a nonprofit or school is a highly personal experience. It’s not just about giving some money and walking away. Donors want to make an impact with their funding, but they also want to be a part of your community. By donating, they’re saying “I want to take an active part in furthering your cause.” But if you don’t invest in finding out how they want to take part, you risk losing their involvement and future donations.
That’s why asking donors for feedback is so important. Whether you want to engage parents in school fundraising or learn more about your nonprofit’s new donors, sending out a survey is the perfect answer. We’ll cover four strategies you can use to craft effective, engaging surveys for your donors:
Write questions based on your goals
Use a variety of survey formats
Leverage automation tools
Segment donors to ensure surveys are relevant
As we explore these strategies, we’ll also discuss technologies like your donor database and SMS marketing apps that can help you make the most of them. Let’s get started!
1. Write questions based on your goals
The first step in creating surveys that resonate with donors and provide actionable feedback is to set clear goals. Before you start designing a survey, think about what you want it to accomplish for your organization. Common survey goals include:
Boosting donor retention. Double the Donation’s donor retention guide explains that asking donors for feedback shows that you value their opinions and helps you build lasting relationships. If your goal is to retain donors, ask them if they enjoyed recent fundraising events, how you could better meet their needs, or what types of programs or campaigns they’d like to see in the future.
Learning donor preferences. Surveys are an easy and efficient way to collect data about your supporters’ personal interests and preferences. Ask how they’d prefer to be contacted, what their charitable interests are, and why they joined your community in the first place. This information helps you segment donors and tailor your fundraising appeals to their interests.
Improving your fundraisers or programs. If you want to host better fundraisers or launch more impactful programs, who better to gather ideas from than the donors who participate? To improve your school fundraisers, for example, you might ask what type of event parents want to attend or if they’d prefer selling products (like cookie dough) with their children to raise money. Or, ask recurring donors for feedback on your monthly giving program to improve its appeal.
These goals aren’t mutually exclusive—you may be able to accomplish all three with one great survey. However, determining your top priority upfront will help you narrow down your questions and ensure you get the answers that are most important to your goals.
2. Use a variety of survey formats
Remember when you used to fill out surveys on paper? Now, you can send donors virtual surveys via email, social media, and even text message. Different survey formats have distinct benefits and drawbacks, so it’s best to use a variety to make the most of all of them. Plus, this will differentiate your surveys enough to keep donors engaged even if they complete multiple surveys within a short period of time.
For instance, throughout the year you might use a mix of:
Text surveys: According to Mogli’s text marketing guide, text surveys engage recipients while providing immediate feedback for your organization or school. With the right tools, you can create interactive surveys that take place entirely within donors’ messaging apps. These surveys are quick and easy for donors to complete.
Email surveys: Your donors are likely used to filling out surveys from businesses via email, so receiving a survey from your organization in their inbox will feel natural. You can use free online tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to create basic surveys and distribute them to donors’ emails.
In-person interviews: Surveying individual donors in person takes more time and effort, but it’s one of the best ways to get authentic feedback and strengthen your organization’s relationships. While conducting interviews, be sure to record video or audio or take extensive notes on the donor’s responses.
Along with varying the format of your surveys, it’s also crucial to vary the type of questions you ask. Include a mix of open-ended, multiple-choice, and short-answer questions so that donors stay engaged throughout the survey and have the opportunity to share more extensive thoughts.
3. Leverage automation tools
There are plenty of technologies out there that you can use to streamline survey creation and management, but one of the most impactful features is automation. Automation tools can save your team time, seamlessly collect and organize answers, and simplify the process for donors.
You can leverage standalone survey automation tools or automation features within comprehensive text or email marketing software. For example, if you use text marketing software with automated survey capabilities, you can:
Create simple and complex surveys. With the right tools, you can design surveys that branch off in different directions based on donors’ answers. For example, after asking if a donor enjoyed participating in your school’s latest fundraiser, you could set up different lines of questions for those who say yes and those who say no. This type of automation enhances your surveys’ personalization and can inspire better responses.
Automatically send data to your CRM. If you use a text marketing app that integrates with your CRM (such as a Salesforce-native app if you use Salesforce for Nonprofits), donors’ survey responses will automatically flow into the correct profiles in your database. From here, you can easily use this data to guide future communication strategies and fundraising appeals.
Add surveys to other automated journeys. Say that you set up a string of automated thank-you messages that gets triggered when a supporter donates. With the right tools, a survey can fit seamlessly into that cadence! For example, you might send an initial thank-you text immediately, then a survey about the donation experience the next day.
As you explore your options for survey automation tools, pay attention to features like branched logic surveys and CRM integrations. Look for a tool with an intuitive survey builder that easily allows you to design complex surveys without needing to be a tech expert.
4. Segment donors to ensure surveys are relevant
Finally, all of the strategies we discussed so far can be improved just by segmenting your donors. You know how important it is to send relevant, personalized donor communications to show donors you value them as individuals.
The same is true for surveys. If a survey is relevant and appealing to the donor who receives it, they’re likely to ignore the request for feedback, or worse—opt out of future messages completely.
To avoid this, create a variety of donor segments to send different surveys to. This might include sending a survey about volunteer opportunities to all donors who have volunteered in the past, or sending first-time donors a welcome survey designed to learn more about their interests. Use any existing segments in your donor database as a starting point, then don’t be afraid to create new groups as needed.
These strategies can make a big impact on your relationships with donors, but sending the survey is just the beginning. After receiving responses, make sure to thank every donor who took the survey and act on the feedback you receive. If one donor gave you a particularly good idea for your next fundraiser, let them know with a personal thank-you email. Show donors that you take their feedback seriously, and they’re bound to feel closer to your organization.
The preceding post was provided by a guest author unaffiliated with DonationMatch. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of DonationMatch.
6 Expert Sales Strategies Nonprofit Fundraisers Need to Steal
Guest Post By Tatiana Morand, Content & SEO Manager at Wild Apricot by Personify
You might think that your fundraising work is worlds away from that of Fortune 500 sales professionals. You’re cold-calling in hopes of a double-digit gift, while they’re landing six-figure deals over a boozy lunch.
But if you’re dismissing the strategies they’re using, it might be time to take another look.
You both have the same task: convince your prospects that your mission is a good investment.
So, before you pull your hair out trying to think of new “viral” fundraising strategies, take a look at how sales pros successfully pitch their products and consider how this could translate into funding for your organization.
1. Make It Personal.
Research has shown that consumers prefer personalized sales experiences. With so many analytic tools available, individualized recommendations have become the norm. Just think of the way Netflix curates “Recommended For You” selections based on your viewing history.
Mailing out stock donation envelopes doesn’t cut it anymore. Your donors and supporters expect communication that shows you’ve taken the time to get to know them.
That doesn’t mean you have to send handwritten notes for every gift. Instead, identify easy things that you can customize a bit more.
Possible Actions:
Use personalization fields (merge tags) to address donation letters and emails.
Send individualized welcome and thank you emails to new donors.
Handwrite thank you letters at major donors. Affirm their sense of importance by including specifics about the use of their gifts.
Create drip email campaigns to ask donors questions and elicit replies. Drip emails can be triggered by actions or criteria in your database to make them seem like personal inquiries.
Look for commonalities and create targeted segments. Let’s say you work for a literacy organization and realize that 10% of your donors and members are licensed educators. Why not send them unique volunteer opportunities perfect for teachers? Figure out how to leverage their common experience for your organization’s benefit.
2. Go Beyond Your Direct Connections.
A survey by LinkedIn found that consumers are five times more likely to engage with a sales professional if an introduction is made through a shared connection. In your case, this could mean asking your current donors to invite their friends and families to a fundraising event or encourage your current followers to share a post about a new campaign.
Possible Actions:
Start a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign via your current supporters to grow your network.
Look at your executive leadership team’s LinkedIn connections and make a prospect list.
…And then move to your board and do the same!
Create content for your board members to post on their social media feeds. For example, ask them to share a link to a blog post or event announcement.
Familiarize yourself with the community through local chambers of commerce and networking groups. Learn who might want to help your organization.
Introduce yourself to local media outlets. Offer to write articles about the nonprofit sector or mission-related issues.
Pay for your leadership staff and board chair to attend a few key events, such as trainings, conferences, or even other fundraisers. This allows them to network with philanthropists and other nonprofit leaders in the community.
3. Be Confident.
Another essential way sales professionals build trust is through professional competence. They speak with conviction about the products and services they’re offering.
We know that people, unfortunately, perceive nonprofits as dysfunctional or financially unsound.
As a result, you may face an uphill battle when speaking about your organization’s stability and success.
Possible Actions:
Refine a succinct and clear elevator pitch, and professional and consistent branding.
Train your employees and board members to give statistic-backed responses to questions.
Equip your employees and board members with case study examples that prove your organization’s success.
Prepare a 5-10 year strategic plan that can be shared externally. This shows you’re confident that you’re in it for the long haul.
4. Try Out This Tactic.
It seems counterintuitive, but some of the most successful sales pros encourage customers to explore competitors.
While it may feel terrifying or downright foolish to lead potential donors away from your organization, this type of honesty shows you’re so confident that you know they’ll ultimately choose you.
More importantly, it shows that your primary concern is the mission, which will reassure your prospects.
This may mean discussing the other organizations in your area that have similar programs. This openness lets prospects know that you have a mission-first mindset. Potential supporters will appreciate that you care about the greater good, not just the good of your particular organization.
(But hopefully you’ve sold them on why you’re the best option!)
Possible Actions:
Understand others in your nonprofit niche.
Develop your value proposition so you can effectively compare and contrast your organization with others.
Foster and emphasize collaborative partnerships with other nonprofits, so it’s clear you’re willing to share resources if it leads to greater impact.
5. Think Outside the Box.
When it comes to fundraising, it feels safe to play to the audience we already have a relationship with. However, creating new donors is necessary for organizational growth. Businesses are always trying new ways to expand their market share and reach new populations. That means taking risks and allocating resources to new products or novel marketing approaches.
For your nonprofit, this might mean investing in online outreach to engage younger donors or trying a new theme or venue for your annual fundraiser.
Who knows… you might find a huge new base you didn’t know existed!
Possible Actions:
Dedicate a small portion of your budget to experimentation.
Track results in terms of cost-benefit as well as engagement and retention.
Try out a few different fundraising ideas.
6. Less Is More.
One of the most important characteristics of a successful sales pro is tenacity. The same goes for a nonprofit fundraiser.
You’re probably accustomed to being hung up on and just picking up the phone with a smile on your face and trying again and again… and again.
But some sales pros suggest backing off and giving the prospect some space. When it comes to donation calls, less can be more.
So, equip your prospective donors with everything they need to know about your organization within the first couple of touchpoints, including ways to give. After that, the ball is in their court.
This strategy has two benefits: they’ll feel empowered, and you’ll be freed up to pursue other new supporters.
Possible Actions:
Prepare call scripts, sponsorship packages, and presentations that include a clear expectation of follow-up communication and call to action. (i.e. “We will send you an email and follow up in a few days.”)
Donors can also feel empowered by a challenge. A recent study shows that creating fundraising challenges (for example, saying “A generous sponsor has committed to give $1000 if you and your coworkers raise $2000 by the end of the month”) can positively influence giving. These types of fundraisers appeal to humans’ competitive nature and makes donors feel urgent and integral to the operation.
At the end of the day, a top sales executive and a fundraising manager aren’t that different (although the beverage selection may be a little better at one of their offices...).
To get yourself started, think of something you were recently compelled to purchase and consider what made you make that decision. How can you evoke that same feeling or experience for your potential donors?
Start thinking like a sales pro, and it might just pay off.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company.