Tips for Turning Volunteers Into Donors

Guest post by Amanda Winstead

As a nonprofit organization, your volunteers and donors are your lifeblood. You need them both to keep your organization up and running, and it’s hard to say that one is more important than another. 
But, at the end of the day, your volunteers won’t have anything to do unless your nonprofit is adequately funded. Without donations, things can’t keep running. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to ask someone who is already giving their time to open their wallet, too. 

So, how can you convert volunteers into donors without losing them altogether? What can you do to keep them passionate and on board with your cause while reaching into their pockets for even a small donation? Let’s cover a few practical tips that can make a difference with your volunteers, and keep your organization growing. 

Create a Positive Experience

If someone is already volunteering with your organization, they’re probably passionate about your cause. They might even like the people they get to work alongside. Or, maybe they’re doing it for personal reasons. 

Whatever the case, you should have a goal of attracting recurring volunteers. Whether you have events that need attention or you need people to cover your daily operations, volunteers are more likely to keep coming back – and more likely to donate money – if they have a positive experience each time they’re working. Some ideas to keep your volunteers coming back include: 

• Learning more about their motives

• Explaining your expectations clearly

• Making sure their experience isn’t burdensome

• Making it fun for them

• Showing them your appreciation

It’s also a good idea to promote a rewarding experience. Your volunteers already know who you are and what you do. But, if you can make it clear to them how much their work is impacting the community, not only will they come back repeatedly, but they’ll be more willing to go one step further and donate to the cause. Everyone feels good about serving the community, especially in times of need, so don’t be afraid to talk to your recurring volunteers about how far their donations would go. 

Build Lasting Relationships

No matter the size of your organization, it’s a good idea to build positive professional relationships with your volunteers. If they feel like they’re just coming in to work for a few hours and they aren’t getting to know anyone, they’re less likely to enjoy the full experience. They might even start to lose the passion they have for your group. 

Having steady relationships with your volunteers is one of the best ways to convert them to donors. Not only that, but it’s one of the best ways to make sure they continue donating, time after time. 

You can build better relationships by trying some of the following: 

• Making sure they understand their connection to your organization

• Setting them up for success

• Keeping your promises

• Promoting their positions

With these positive relationships, your volunteers will do so much more than donate their time and money. They’re also more likely to talk to others about your organization. It’s not just about the experience, it’s about the people. If you can showcase the importance of relationships and gratitude in your organization, your volunteers will spread the word for you, which can help to increase donations almost immediately. 

Offer Your Support

The last thing you want is for your volunteers to burn out. They might love what they’re doing, but if you ask too much of them without the right amount of support, they can feel overwhelmed and want to take a step back. 

Your volunteers support your nonprofit. You need to support them in return. Check in with them as often as possible, and offer your assistance however you can. That’s especially important on “event” days when things might feel busy and overwhelming. Equip them with resources that can make their volunteer experience(s) easier and more meaningful. 

Finally, celebrate them! Host occasional events that allow your volunteers to have fun and be acknowledged. Or, send them periodic gifts of gratitude. Even small “thank yous” can go a long way for someone who is donating their time. Feeling that kind of recognition and gratitude from your organization may encourage them to do more. 

With 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the U.S., not everyone can donate their time and/or money to every cause. That’s why it’s so important to find ways you can turn your volunteers into donors. 

The people who volunteer for your organization obviously already have an interest. If you’re trying to convert them into donors, explain to them how and where their money would be used, and why the funds are needed. Being open, honest, and continuing to show gratitude to the people who keep your organization running will help more volunteers be more charitable with their money, as well as their time. 

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About the Author

Amanda Winstead is a writer from the Portland area with a background in communications and a passion for telling stories. Along with writing she enjoys traveling, reading, working out, and going to concerts. If you want to follow her writing journey, or even just say hi you can find her on Twitter.

6 Best Practices for Asking Board Members for Contributions

Guest post by Amy Eisenstein, ACFRE, CEO & Co-Founder of the Capital Campaign Toolkit

When someone joins your nonprofit’s board of directors, they may be expected to give annual monetary donations to the organization in addition to fulfilling their governance duties. 

Securing those gifts can be a source of stress for nonprofit teams, especially because potential strategies can vary widely. Here are a few examples: 

• Including the ask in onboarding agreements when they first join

• Having a “give-get” policy that asks every board member to be responsible for a specific amount of money, whether they give it themselves or get it from other sources

• Asking board members to give a gift of an amount that is personally significant to them 

• Asking for personal gifts of an unspecified amount 

• Discussing board giving in person with each board member

• Tucking a pledge form in the board packet at the appropriate time of year and encouraging members to return them by a certain date

With so many approaches, you might feel like having a specific strategy doesn’t make much difference. However, through our work on many capital campaigns, we have learned that how you approach your board about their annual gifts makes a vast difference in how much board members give and how they feel about their giving.

Let’s explore six best practices for refining your own approach to board member annual giving. 

1. Create a small ad hoc committee on board giving.

The board giving process shouldn’t be driven by staff. That’s a bit awkward for your board members. And unless you have an enlightened board chair who really understands fundraising and how to do it effectively, you shouldn’t just turn the responsibility over to them. 

Instead, your executive director or development director should ask three or four board members to serve on an ad hoc committee to develop and implement a board giving plan. 

The ad hoc group should meet three times over one or two months. The meetings might be organized as follows: 

• Meeting 1: Discuss and agree on board giving goals and the process for presenting the giving process to the board. 

• Meeting 2: Review progress toward the goal and follow up with board members about their gifts. 

• Meeting 3: Review the results of the solicitation process and develop a plan for thanking board members and conducting ongoing stewardship. 

2. Determine a collective board giving goal.

Having a dollar goal for board giving helps board members make informed decisions about what their gifts might be. But because most board members have little or no idea of the capacity of their fellow board members, you must be clear and intentional about the process of determining that goal.

We recommend having your ad hoc committee review the list of board members and, using available information about each person’s giving history and other indicators of giving ability, determine a possible high and low for each member. 

Add those numbers up and you will have a collective giving range for your board. Present those results to the board and invite a discussion to determine a board giving goal.

3. Discuss board giving at a board meeting.

Designate a portion of your next board meeting to discuss board giving to the campaign. Topics to be discussed should include: 

• Relationship of the campaign goal and board giving to annual giving and larger strategic priorities

• Collective board giving goal

• Rate of board participation, with 100% being the ideal

• The process of soliciting gifts

• Deadline for when all gifts should be in

Your goal with these discussions is to get your board thinking about giving collectively. This helps your board members create a sense of accountability among the group and sets everyone up to motivate and encourage one another to meet the collective goal. 

4. Solicit each board member in person.

Following the meeting, members of your ad hoc committee should meet with each board member to make a case for annual giving and discuss the board member’s gift. Each person should be asked to consider a specific amount or a range that is personally meaningful to them. Remember: 100% participation in board giving is ultimately the most important part of the board campaign, even if you have to adjust your goal along the way. 

If it is indeed your policy that each board member has a responsibility to give to (or get for) your organization, be sure to have a plan of action for board members who do not participate in any way. Ideally, this expectation would be set before they join so it is not a surprise.

5. Report on progress toward the board giving goal.

The board chair or chair of the ad hoc committee should track the board giving process and gently nudge everyone to make their contributions before the scheduled deadline. 

They should also send progress updates to the board and push for a timely conclusion to the giving process. Frequent updates will keep the giving goal top of mind and reinforce the important responsibility each board member has to contribute a gift.

6. Celebrate reaching the board giving goal.

Once the board has reached its collective goal and has 100% participation, take the opportunity to celebrate your success! 

For some organizations, that means popping a couple of bottles of champagne after the next board meeting. For others, it might mean something more official. 

You should also recognize the people who served on the ad hoc committee and worked on the board giving process. For example, consider creating special recognition strategies for various roles people played during the board campaign.

Setting the Stage for Success

The way you solicit your board members can set your campaign up for success. If you take it seriously and leverage effective fundraising best practices like the ones above, you can lay the foundation for success for your annual campaign and future fundraising endeavors. 

For instance, when your board feels that giving is important, and when they are solicited in a way that respects them and their generosity, they will feel less anxious about reaching out to your supporters during other campaigns. This will make success with future fundraising initiatives much more feasible. 

If you’re on the board of an organization that is considering a capital campaign, there are a few things you should know. Get Capital Campaign Pro’s free guide for board members!

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Board Member’s Guide to Capital Campaign Fundraising

If you’re on the board of an organization that’s considering a capital campaign, there are things you need to know. This guide will help you understand your own role, and that of the entire board, during a campaign. Download this free guide today!

Amy Eisenstein, ACFRE, and Andrea Kihlstedt are co-founders of the Capital Campaign Toolkit, a virtual support system for nonprofit leaders running successful campaigns. The Toolkit provides all the tools, templates, and guidance you need — without breaking the bank.

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About the Author:

Amy Eisenstein | CEO & CO-FOUNDER

Amy Eisenstein, ACFRE, is CEO & Co-Founder of the Capital Campaign Toolkit. She is a veteran fundraising consultant. With over 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, she’s published a number of books, including Major Gift Fundraising for Small Shops. Amy is also an in-demand keynote speaker and an engaging board retreat trainer and facilitator.

5 Ideas to Launch Your Next Data-Driven Marketing Campaign

Guest post by Gabrielle Perham, Director of Marketing for AccuData Integrated Marketing

As a nonprofit fundraising professional, you know the importance of understanding your target audience. By tuning in to what makes donors tick, you can craft outreach materials that are more likely to resonate with them. 

One of the most effective ways to get to know donors on a deeper level is to dive into your data. With data marketing, you can take a categorical approach to donor management and stewardship using information that you know to be true, rather than guesses.

There are a few different ways to put your donor data research into practice to launch a successful marketing campaign. Use these tips to kickstart your next campaign:

1. Take a more strategic approach to your email campaigns. 

2. Give digital targeting a try.

3. Revamp your direct mail strategy. 

4. Refine your supporter segmentation practices.

5. Put your prospect research to use.

Data marketing opens up untapped opportunities for your organization to explore. It allows you to tailor your marketing materials to align with your audience’s interests and preferences. Whether you’re looking to raise awareness of your nonprofit or launch a full-fledged fundraising campaign, these tips will help you make the most of your donor data.

1. Take a more strategic approach to your email campaigns. 

Email marketing has quickly advanced in the past several years. A basic email strategy will no longer cut it. If your email approach is generic or lackluster, your supporters will send your messages right to the trash. In addition, upcoming changes related to consumer privacy mean that emails will have a harder time making it to the inbox.

Whether you’re looking to promote an upcoming fundraising event or initiative, engage donors in your monthly giving program, or promote another aspect of your fundraising efforts, you can kick off your campaign with an acquisition email marketing strategy. 

Acquisition email marketing is the process of engaging new supporters using email communications. If you’re interested in kickstarting your next data-driven marketing initiative with an email acquisition campaign, there are a few best practices to keep in mind: 

• Craft your ideal audience with the help of a data marketing firm. You can build your organization’s database by partnering with a dedicated data marketing provider. These specialists help organizations craft their ideal target audience using prospect lists. Prospect lists are lists of potential supporters who are most likely to be interested in your cause. 

• Send prompt welcome emails to prospects. Whenever a supporter signs up for your email list, send a warm welcome email thanking them for their support. 

• Re-engage lapsed audience members. If certain prospects open your emails less frequently, reach out to them with a targeted message to win back their support. For example, you might send an email along the lines of “We missed you! Here’s what’s been happening since we last talked.” 

With a strategic email approach, you can capture your audience members’ attention, especially your millennial audience. Don’t underestimate the power of email marketing  — you can use this channel to speak directly to supporters and maintain their support. 

2. Give digital targeting a try.

Did you know you could send digital advertising to individuals based on their home address? IP Targeting/Addressable Geofencing is the process of identifying and marketing to audience members based on their physical location. 

According to AccuData’s guide to IP targeting, this process is an effective way to put your data research to use. You can pinpoint your organization's exact target audience based on their physical location and get your marketing materials directly in the palms of their hands.

You can use IP Targeting/Addressable Geofencing to access supporters on a certain network. Let’s say you’re looking to ramp up your marketing campaign ahead of your nonprofit’s next local donation drive, and you’re specifically seeking donations from college-aged students. Using these digital targeting techniques, you can market your event to individuals who access the network of a local college. You can do this by sending digital advertisements to all devices on the university’s network.

When conducting digital targeting strategies, keep these best practices in mind:

1. Don’t over-target. Keep your specifications for the audience members you are targeting to just two or three parameters. This ensures that you’re casting a wide enough net and not excluding valuable supporters.

2. Use A/B testing to refine your ads. A/B testing is the process of creating two ad campaigns with slight variations and determining which receives more engagement. In the context of digital targeting, you can change your audience parameters to determine which segments engage the most with your outreach.

3. Deploy effective ad copy. Even if you reach your target audience, they won’t respond to your messaging if it’s not compelling. Ensure your ad copy is streamlined and inspirational. You can also use A/B testing to create different versions of your ads and assess which is more effective.

This is another area where working with a data marketing firm can provide a boost to your strategy. Digital targeting is a more advanced marketing strategy, but it can be highly effective for reaching your desired audience. 

3. Revamp your direct mail strategy. 

Although it might seem old-school, direct mail is still a highly effective marketing channel for nonprofits. Direct outreach campaigns that combine direct mail with at least one digital media element have a 118% increase in response rate. 

Using your supporter data, you can revamp your direct mail strategy to only reach out to those who are most likely to engage with your content. This can decrease direct mail expenses significantly, as you won’t be sending mailers to individuals who are unlikely to respond.

For your next data-driven marketing campaign, pursue a combination of a housefile campaign and a prospect campaign:

• A housefile campaign involves sending direct mail to addresses already in your database. Marketing experts recommend starting your direct mail campaign with a housefile effort because it has a higher chance of success. You can reinforce and grow relationships with your existing audience. 

• A prospecting campaign involves sending mail to audience members who don’t have a previous relationship with your nonprofit. The objective of prospecting campaigns is to establish contact with those who are most likely to support your organization. This allows you to add more supporters’ information to your in-house database, growing your audience. 

Use your digital marketing efforts to supplement and support your direct mail campaign and vice versa. For instance, include a QR code on your direct mail materials that sends audience members to your website or online giving page. 

Additionally, you should use uniform branding across all marketing materials to promote cohesion and unity with your marketing strategy. Doing so helps you foster greater brand recognition and awareness. 

4. Refine your supporter segmentation practices.

Donor segmentation is the process of grouping supporters based on shared characteristics. 

The point of supporter segmentation is breaking your audience into smaller categories and marketing to them based on their unique circumstances or preferences. 

There are plenty of different options for grouping your donors based on your nonprofit’s marketing and fundraising goals. You may choose to group them based on their:

• Engagement type: You may have audience members who are donors, volunteers, advocates, or peer-to-peer fundraisers. Grouping supporters by engagement type allows you to send messages with information that each group is more likely to be interested in. 

• Demographics: Depending on your marketing goals, it may be helpful to divide audience members into categories based on demographics, such as age, gender, or location. 

• Communication preferences: You can segment supporters based on their preferred communication platforms and frequency. You may find some supporters prefer digital platforms, while others favor direct mail or phone outreach. 

• Engagement frequency: You likely have donors who give regularly, such as your monthly donors, along with those who give more infrequently. Most nonprofits also have plenty of lapsed donors who have gone longer without giving. Segmenting supporters based on how frequently you hear from them allows you to craft different stewardship strategies for each level of engagement. 

You can tie advanced supporter segmentation strategies into your next fundraising or marketing campaign. These techniques can be used on multiple platforms, from your direct mail outreach to your email marketing campaigns. 

5. Put your prospect research to use.

Prospect research is the process of identifying audience members who may or may not have a relationship with your organization yet, but who exhibit characteristics that indicate they would be willing and able to donate to your cause. 

Approaching your next data-driven marketing campaign through a prospect research lens offers many benefits. You can use prospect research to identify opportunities for:

• In-kind donations: Using prospect research, you can identify audience members who work for companies that offer in-kind donations or other forms of corporate giving. Then, you can specifically reach out to these individuals and encourage them to donate or participate. Your organization will benefit from greater access to necessary goods or services that support your mission. 

• Matching gifts: Similarly, prospect research can reveal supporters who work for companies that offer matching gifts. According to Double the Donation’s corporate matching gifts guide, these programs involve companies pledging to match donations that their employees make to eligible nonprofits. Matching gifts allow your supporters to maximize the impact of their single donations and provide your organization with a funding boost. You can reach out to individuals who have made match-eligible donations and encourage them to begin the gift match process.

• Major gifts: You can also use prospect research to identify audience members with a greater level of wealth and a high affinity for your organization. Search for individuals who exhibit certain wealth indicators such as stock ownership, real estate holdings, or a higher-up job title. Then, craft a dedicated strategy specifically for reaching out to and stewarding major donors. 

When you conduct your data-driven marketing campaigns through the lens of prospect research, you can save your organization time and money because you’re sending marketing materials to those who are actually interested and willing to give. 

By focusing on wealthier prospects or those whose companies offer corporate philanthropy programs, you can refine your marketing outreach efforts even more and create messages that resonate with these specific audiences. 

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There are plenty of ways to incorporate data-driven marketing strategies into your next campaign, from firing up your email approach to segmenting your audience for more targeted outreach. Consider your organization’s goals and needs to choose the best idea for launching your next campaign. A combination of these strategies will provide your organization with the reach it needs to market your cause effectively. Good luck!

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About the Author:

Gabrielle Perham, MBA, Director of Marketing

Gabrielle is the Director of Marketing for AccuData Integrated Marketing. She joined the organization in 2017 and possesses more than 15 years of experience in strategic marketing, branding, communications, and digital marketing. She earned a B.S. in Marketing and an M.B.A in Marketing Management from the University of Tampa.

6 Nonprofit Tax Tips for Reporting In-Kind Donations

Guest post by Mathew Tooker at File990

If you’re looking for charity fundraising strategies with substantial untapped potential, consider in-kind donations. An in-kind donation is characterized as any non-monetary gift provided to a nonprofit organization. These types of gifts offer significant benefits to nonprofits, yet they’re often overlooked when it comes to soliciting donations, creating detailed fundraising plans, and mastering nonprofit finances.

Picture this: you run a nonprofit animal shelter in your community and a local business owner tells you they want to donate pet food and a gift certificate to their store  to your organization’s upcoming fundraising event. That’s great! But now you have some questions: Can they write off their donation as a tax deductible? How do you record the gift in your accounting and bookkeeping systems? Must you report the in-kind contribution in your annual Form 990?

Determining how in-kind donations play into your overall nonprofit taxes can be a challenge—which is why we created this guide. In order to keep your organization above board, it’s important that you consider the following in-kind donation tax tips:

1. Understand what is considered an in-kind donation.

2. Determine whether you’re required to acknowledge in-kind gifts.

3. Keep up with new regulations.

4. Calculate the donation’s fair market value.

5. Track and record in-kind donations throughout the year.

6. E-file your Form 990 with an IRS-authorized e-filer.

Are you ready to take a crash course on ensuring accurate nonprofit finances when it comes to in-kind donations, and uncover how to record these gifts in your nonprofit tax returns? Let’s get started.

1. Understand what is considered an in-kind donation.

It’s nearly impossible to report your in-kind gifts accurately if you’re unsure of what is actually considered an in-kind donation. The basic definition of in-kind gifts can even be a bit misleading (i.e. donations of time, goods, or services instead of money). That’s because, unfortunately, not all donations of time, or volunteerism, count as in-kind contributions. 

For example, general volunteer hours (such as setting up for an event or checking in guests) do not count as in-kind gifts, while individuals volunteering more specialized services (such as accounting, marketing, or catering) do.

On the other hand, product donations and other goods might include auction baskets, event swag, tickets to a theme park or play, clothing, food, supplies, equipment, and more. Gifts of goods like these are also considered in-kind donations, and should be reported as such.

Finally, in-kind donations can also be intangible goods as well as items loaned to nonprofits. In this case,  gifts like free or discounted advertising space, gift certificates redeemable for services, or use of an event venue may be considered in-kind gifts.

2. Determine whether you’re required to acknowledge in-kind gifts.

One of the first steps in understanding how to record and communicate your in-kind gifts is determining whether you have to acknowledge and provide donor tax receipts for these types of gifts. Whether you’re required to report in-kind donations can depend on a number of factors, including:

• The state from which your organization is based

• If you are subject to an external audit

• Requirements from lenders, grantors, or other key stakeholders

• The value of the in-kind donation in question

According to GAAP guidelines, the IRS requires tax receipts be provided for gifts of $250 or more. When it comes to in-kind donations, you don't have to value the gift yourself; just provide the receipt with the description of the donation and other basic information.

Even if you determine that your organization is not required to acknowledge these types of non-monetary donations, it’s a good idea to do so anyway. Effectively communicating your appreciation to donors allows them to better understand their impact and increase the likelihood of them giving time and time again.

This also means you’ll have detailed records of all in-kind donations for streamlined and improved ongoing financial management.

3. Keep up with new regulations.

Nonprofit fundraising and tax reporting each come with their own unique set of compliance requirements that can be difficult to keep track of. And unfortunately, these regulations are constantly changing as well to provide increased levels of transparency and accountability for charitable organizations to their stakeholders.

For example, the Taxpayer First Act signed into law in 2019 requires nonprofits to file their tax returns online rather than send a paper copy in the mail. While many organizations have already begun e-filing their taxes, most were not required to file electronically until December 15, 2020. Since then, there has been a transition period ending on July 1, 2021, effectively requiring all Form 990s (including Form 990-N and Form 990 EZ) to be filed electronically going forward.

On the other hand, regulations pertaining to gifts in-kind in particular are changing as well, including with new legislations across a number of states. For example, new rules in key states like California require nonprofit organizations to report in-kind donations where they were previously not required to do so.

That being said, it's a good idea to keep up with new and relevant tax regulations to ensure your organization continues to stay above board. Just because you are not required to record your gifts in-kind one year does not mean you'll be free from the same requirement the following year as well. Stay up to date with nonprofit news or consult a financial expert to determine how your organization will be affected by changing guidelines.

4. Calculate the donation’s fair market value.

Now you’ve determined whether you’ll need to report your organization’s in-kind donations in your yearly tax returns. But how? It’s not so cut and dry as with monetary donations that come with the financial value attached.

According to the FASB, or the Financial Accounting Standards Board, you must start by determining the donation’s fair market value (or FMV). This is defined as, “The price that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date.” In other words, it’s what the donation is worth in dollars.

Sometimes this is simple to calculate. For example, a brand new computer donated by a local tech retailer is worth the amount that would have been listed on its price tag should you have purchased it yourself. Additionally, a lawyer’s time donated to your organization would be worth their hourly wage multiplied by the amount of hours volunteered.

Determining a donation’s FMV is important for more than just your nonprofit tax return, too. In fact, this detail can be critical for choosing an opening bid for an auction item, creating individual tax receipts for donors, and maintaining detailed and accurate records of your finances. Do your research when receiving gifts in-kind, explore how other organizations credit similar items, and consider what value the donations offer your organization.

5. Track and record in-kind donations throughout the year.

One best practice to keep in mind leading up to tax season is to maintain detailed and accurate reports of donations throughout the year. This goes for both monetary gifts and for in-kind donations as well. This way, you won't have to worry about scrambling at the last minute to get your records in order prior to your Form 990 deadline.

After all, you’ll want to get started on your nonprofit tax return as early as possible. And having the information you need readily available can make a big difference—especially when it comes to choosing the right tax form! Most organizations determine the version they file based on gross annual receipts. Because your in-kind gifts count towards your total gross receipts, they can play a significant role in ensuring your tax returns are filed completely and precisely. 

In fact, this File990 resource on the 990-N vs. 990 EZ takes a closer look at the differences between the two abridged versions of a nonprofit tax return and how to determine which form you need. 

6. E-file your Form 990 with an IRS-authorized e-filer.

As previously mentioned, organizations are now required to file their tax returns online. Not only is this a new regulation put in place by the IRS to streamline the entire tax process as a whole, it also makes preparing and filing your annual Form 990 simpler than ever before. Plus, you can work with an authorized e-filing service for additional assistance!

When choosing your service, be sure to consult this list of approved Modernized e-File (or MeF) Providers from the IRS. This way, you know your organization’s financial information is in the right hands.

Re:Charity’s guide to Form 990 software also explores a few suggested solutions as well as an overview of why the right software is important. Whether your organization is e-filing for the first time, reporting a substantial amount of in-kind donations, or are affected by the constantly changing financial regulations, a certified tax expert can make a big difference and guide your nonprofit team through the process.

All in all, effectively recording, tracking, and reporting in-kind gifts to your organization doesn’t have to be difficult for your nonprofit. 

When you understand the nuances of these non-traditional donations and have the tools you need to record and track them, as well as ultimately submit your organization’s annual tax return, you’ll set your nonprofit up for better organized finances and overall success. Good luck!

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About the Author:

Mathew Tooker is an expert in sales forecasting, analytics, goal-setting, client growth, and business development. With experience serving the Greek life community, nonprofits, and other member-based associations, Mathew is dedicated to providing tremendous value to his clients. 

When he’s not moving organizations forward, you can find him on the golf course, spending time with his two dogs, Reagan and Teddy, running marathons, and watching the Atlanta Braves. He’s also a graduate of Auburn University and a part-time MBA student at Florida State University.

Leveraging Data to Support Donor Retention: 6 Takeaways

Guest Post by Jay Love, Co-Founder and current Chief Relationship Officer at Bloomerang

As a nonprofit professional, there are a few ways that you can leverage data to support your organization’s retention efforts. These strategies fall under two primary umbrellas: how you’ll use donor data and how you’ll use organizational data. 

Donor data is all about relationship-building. When you use the information you know about your supporters, you can develop connections with them. You can personalize your outreach to each supporter, appealing directly to their needs and desires to convince them to give and give again. 

Organizational data can help identify gaps in your nonprofit’s strategy. If supporters are leaving for specific reasons, you can strategically address those issues and fill the gaps. This is an internal view of your nonprofit that can give you ideas on how you can streamline your strategies to better reach your goals. 

In this guide, we’ll explore each of these types of data and various strategies for how your organization can leverage data to enhance your donor retention. 

Donor retention is important to nonprofit fundraising strategies and is the key to unlocking additional revenue for organizations. As Bloomerang’s retention guide explains, “Nonprofits with a low donor retention rate need to continually acquire new donors or larger gifts to keep up.” Meanwhile, high retention rates lead to lower acquisition costs and higher gift amounts. 

Let’s dive deeper into the types of data available to nonprofit organizations and how they can help improve your retention rate. 

Donor Data

In your nonprofit’s donor database, you should actively collect data about each of your supporters, organize it in individualized donor profiles, and leverage it to form personalized connections with your supporters. 

Here are some strategies that we recommend employing when it comes to your organization’s use of donor data: 

Collect donor contact information

Contact information is the most basic data that nonprofits need to collect from their donors. Without this data, it’s next to impossible to reach out to supporters and continue engaging them in the future.

As a nonprofit professional, you know the importance of collecting supporter contact information. But keep in mind that you might need to collect more than just your supporters’ email addresses to get in touch with them. In fact, we recommend trying to get in touch using several different platforms, including: 

• Email. Email is often the backbone of nonprofit communications strategies, so you will need to leverage this platform to reach your supporters. 

• Phone calls. Bloomerang’s study shows that donors who did not receive a phone call after their first donation were retained at around a 33% rate. Meanwhile, those who received a single phone call were retained at 41% and those who received more than one were retained at 58%. 

• Social media. Ask your supporters if they’ll opt into messaging on Facebook or other platforms, so that you can take one-on-one conversations onto these social networks. 

• Direct mail. Physical letters pair well with digital strategies, increasing brand awareness and creating a more memorable experience for your supporters. 

When you reach out via these various marketing platforms, you can invite supporters to further engage with you in person as well. Don’t forget that you don’t only have to communicate at a distance. Invite supporters to meetings or to attend events so that you can have face-to-face conversations with them, especially with your major supporters. 

Segment your supporters

Some of the data you’ll receive about your supporters will relate specifically to their interests, values, and engagement with your organization. From this data, you can segment your supporters to create a more relevant experience for them in conversation with your organization. 

For instance, you might decide to segment your supporters based on their past engagement with your organization, such as separate segments for donors versus volunteers. Let’s consider the following examples of outreach to each of these groups. We’ll use the example of encouraging supporters to research their eligibility for corporate philanthropy programs: 

Dear Lizzy, 

Thank you so much for your continued support of the Build-a-Home organization. Your contribution of time and energy spent building houses has helped three new families find a place to live. 

But did you know that your time could make an even greater difference for these families? If you’re eligible for a volunteer grant, your employer might offer a financial contribution to the mission without requiring anything more from you! Click here to research your eligibility and to grow your impact. 

As you can see, this type of template is well designed for volunteers, but would not be an impactful message for your donors to see. Meanwhile, you might send your donors a different type of message, such as the one below: 

Dear Timmy, 

Thank you so much for your continued support of the Build-a-Home organization. Your contribution of $100 helped obtain the piping and supplies to install running water in two homes, providing this valuable resource for the families who just moved in. 

But did you know that your gift could make an even greater difference for these families? If you’re eligible for a matched gift, your employer might offer another financial contribution to the mission in response to your generous gift. Click here to check your eligibility for these programs and grow your impact. 

As you can see, segmentation creates a more relevant outreach strategy to connect with nonprofit supporters. 

Many organizations make the mistake of trying to lump together their various segments. We refer to this as “seglumping” when you might address a group of supporters as such: 

Whether you recently gave money, volunteered, or attended one of our events, thank you!

Compare this statement to those above and put yourself in your supporters’ shoes. Which would make you feel more welcomed and acknowledged by your organization? Use the data that you’ve collected about your supporters and leverage it for differentiating your supporters and making them feel unique, not “seglumping” them together. 

Leverage personalized engagement data

Segmenting your supporters is one way to make messages resonate due to relevance. The other way to make them compelling for your audience is by personalizing supporter messages as much as possible. 

Use the personal data you collect about your supporters to show them that they’re not just one member in a crowd—they’re a unique and special supporter who deserves your individualized attention. For example, when you craft a message, you might decide to include information such as: 

• The supporter’s preferred name

• The last campaign they contributed to

• The most recent event they attended

• An interest you know they have related to your mission

• The impact of their most recent gift

• The last advocacy campaign they participated in

Much of this information can be automated to be included on your communication templates. However, be careful when you automate this information. The last thing you want is for the automation to malfunction so that your supporters receive a message with the salutation “Dear %%valued supporter%%.” This can actually harm your relationships more than help them. 

Be sure you’ve built out your marketing strategy manually and optimized the process without automation before adding this valuable resource into your strategy. 

Organizational Data

As we mentioned, you can leverage individual donor data to build individual relationships with your supporters. Organizational data can be used for a slightly different purpose. 

When you collect organization-wide data from your various campaigns and interactions, you can determine what internal strategies you should employ to appeal to your supporter base as a whole. 

One of the great opportunities that accompanies organizational data is that you can determine the reasons why supporters stop giving to your organization and address those reasons. Bloomerang’s donor appreciation guide provides the following graphic showing the industry-wide reasons that supporters might stop giving to organizations like yours: 

By tracking your own campaign and marketing metrics, you can compare your organization to these industry-wide metrics, determining where your strategies are weakest. Then, you can address those weaknesses, creating a stronger, more holistic outreach approach. 

We recommend reviewing metrics such as your campaign success rate, donor lifetime value, and average engagement rate to start.

Campaign Success Rates

Which of your nonprofit’s campaigns produce the most revenue for your organization? Is it your annual auction? Your peer-to-peer campaign? Your Giving Day celebration? Year-end fundraising?

By tracking the revenue from each of your fundraising campaigns, you can determine which ones are the most impactful for your organization. From here, you can: 

1. Improve your top-performing campaigns. These are the campaigns that your supporters are most interested and engaged in. Make sure you look for opportunities to improve those campaigns and maximize that engagement for continuous improvement. For example, if your annual gala brings in the highest ROI for your organization, send out a survey after the event to determine any opportunities for improvement, whether it be the food, auction items, or other elements. 

2. Determine next steps for under-performing campaigns. For some underperforming campaigns, you may determine that it’s not worth it to continue hosting them in the future. For others, you might just need to determine the best ways to improve the campaigns to make them more impactful and effective in the future. For example, you may discover that your website donation page underperforms for mobile visitors and decide to conduct A/B testing for new mobile designs to improve the resource.

When analyzing the success of your various fundraising campaigns, be sure to consider the return on investment of your campaigns in addition to the raw revenue generated. 

By analyzing these metrics, you can determine ways that you can improve your wide-scale strategies, appealing to a large number of your supporters at once. This will create a better experience overall and encourage people to continue coming back to your campaigns. 

Donor Lifetime Value

Your donor lifetime value is the metric that estimates the amount of money donors contribute to your organization over the course of their lifetime as supporters. You can break this down further into different segments at your organization, such as the lifetime value of your major donors, mid-tier supporters, and low-level donors. 

As your donor retention rate increases, this value will grow. For one, the longer a donor gives to your organization, the more they’ll give over time. Plus, when donors give over time, they’re more likely to increase their gift size to your mission. 

Therefore, donor lifetime value is a great way to see the impact retention is having for your organization and to determine if it’s making a difference. 

In a previous section, we reviewed the reasons that supporters stop their contributions. You can address any and all of these to help increase retention and ultimately your lifetime value of supporters. Consider the following stats from that graphic: 

• 8% of donors stopped giving because they didn’t know how the money was used. When you address this issue and explain the direct impact of their donations, supporters are more likely to stick around. 

• 9% of donors stopped giving because they had no memory of supporting. When organizations don’t have adequate follow up after contributions, supporters are likely to forget about them. This leads to more one-time donations and a lower average lifetime value. 

• 13% of donors stopped giving because they were never thanked. Appreciation is important and helps donors feel good about their contributions. Giving supporters the appreciation they deserve helps them feel warm and fuzzy inside, increasing the likelihood they’ll give again. Therefore, simply saying “thank you” can greatly increase their value with your nonprofit.  

As you can see, the average donor lifetime value shows how well you’re keeping supporters around and the importance of encouraging them to continue giving. If you increase retention, but your lifetime value doesn’t increase, there is something amiss in your strategy.

Average Engagement Rate

The path to increasing your donor retention is not to pester them for donations over and over again. Increasing your number of asks could make your supporters feel like they’re ATMs for your nonprofit, actually harming your relationship with them. 

Instead, you should vary the interaction and engagement opportunities you provide for your supporters. Then, track the average engagement rate. When you have a donor database that measures this engagement rate for you, this metric becomes much easier to keep front-of-mind. 

A holistic approach to supporter relationships increases their commitment to your cause and their likelihood to continue contributing. For instance, volunteers on average give 10 times more than other supporters. 

To increase the engagement of your supporters, provide additional opportunities for them to get involved with your organization, such as: 

• Participating in volunteer opportunities

• Taking part in advocacy campaigns

• Attending stewardship events

• Reading educational resources

• Having conversations with your team

• Sharing campaigns on social platforms

• Raising funds for your organization in a P2P campaign

In addition to strengthening the commitment of your supporters, increasing your engagement rate can also boost the number of major gift prospects at your nonprofit. Major prospects are those with high engagement rates and high capacity to give. By increasing one of these factors among your supporters, you’ll increase your prospects for major and mid-tier support as well.

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Data plays a major role at your nonprofit. From understanding donor data and improving relationships to understanding organizational data that can help you improve your strategies, you can use hard metrics to help support your nonprofit’s donor retention efforts and amplify fundraising. 

These takeaways should give you some insight and ideas for how your nonprofit can use the data you have collected. However, before you can do that, you will need to make sure all information you have on hand is well organized, which is where an effective donor database comes into play. 

Make sure you can track both donor and organizational data in your database for a centralized location of information and an easy resource for improving your retention rate. 

About the Author:

Jay Love, Co-Founder and current Chief Relationship Officer at Bloomerang, has served this sector for 33 years and is considered the most well-known senior statesman whose advice is sought constantly.

Prior to Bloomerang, he was the CEO and Co-Founder of eTapestry for 11 years, which at the time was the leading SaaS technology company serving the charity sector. Jay and his team grew the company to more than 10,000 nonprofit clients, charting a decade of record growth.

Jay is a graduate of Butler University with a B.S. in Business Administration. Over the years, he has given more than 2,500 speeches around the world for the charity sector and is often the voice of new technology for fundraisers.

5 Tips For Creating Websites for School-Associated Orgs

Guest post by Murad Bushnaq, Founder and CEO of Morweb

Your website is the face of your school-associated organization, significantly enhancing your ability to connect with potential supporters and engage your audience. Building an effective website can be time-consuming, including researching design tips and gathering analytic information, especially without web design expertise. 

With years of working alongside hundreds of nonprofits, associations, and educational groups, Morweb has built websites for colleges, high schools, and other school-associated organizations. To help you get started building your new website, we’ve put together five key tips specifically for educational organizations.

Your organization should be able to implement each of these tips into your website with a bit of work and research. However, if you find yourself in need of additional advice or help, don’t hesitate to reach out to a professional web design agency that can answer all of your organization’s specific questions about your website. 

1. Find an affordable, intuitive website builder. 

Some website builders are more effective than others for different professional sectors. For example, nonprofits may use a website builder to build donation pages and establish trust with their donors, while schools need a solution that can enhance their educational effort and build smooth communication with all stakeholders including their supporters, parents and students.

While each organization will have its own priorities for what it's website needs to accomplish, here are a few key features to look out for when assessing different school website builders:

• Multimedia support. For many school-related organizations, sharing resources such as educational and how-to videos is a necessity. Assess potential website builders on how well they support these features and how they accommodate the slow loading times that multiple images and videos can cause. For instance, some website builders will automatically compress images, which decreases the file sizes and speeds up page load time.

• Customizable layouts. Your website builder should give your team options. If your team lacks experience designing websites, check out website builders that come with multiple school-specific templates and prioritize ease of use for front-end designers. 

• Mobile optimization. If you’re running a parent-teacher association, your members already have full-time jobs and will likely need to use your website while on the go. Many website builders have mobile options, but be on the lookout for one with automatic mobile optimization that prioritizes usability and fast loading times. 

Additionally, be sure to assess potential website builders’ security. Some platforms perform regular security updates for all websites they support, while others leave it up to individual organizations to protect themselves. If your team is less experienced with cybersecurity or would prefer to limit the number of responsibilities your team takes on, make sure to find a website builder that takes care of security issues for you. 

2. Make your mission clear. 

If you accept donations, recruit volunteers, or encourage website visitors to participate in your organization in any way, you’ll need to make sure your mission is straightforward and easy to find. Remember that your mission isn’t just a summary of your organization, but an external-facing document that new web visitors will want to see. 

A clear mission statement is especially important for fundraisers and donation drives as supporters will want to know how their contributions are making a difference. You can ensure that supporters will find and understand your mission on their first visit to your website by:

• Creating a clear navigation system. Your website will have a few core pages that the majority of visitors will navigate to at some point while browsing your website. For many organizations, these will include donation, services, and about pages. While getting creative with website design can create a new and positive experience for visitors, it’s best not to experiment with your navigation and ensure users will find your mission exactly where they expect to. 

• Branding all additional websites and other online marketing materials. Your website hosts your mission, but all additional websites and platforms (including microsites and social media) should also be branded to your organization and offer a brief explanation of your mission. There are numerous fundraising ideas for schools that your organization can host, and all of them benefit from presenting your mission as clearly as possible. 

• Using images and videos to demonstrate your mission. A plain text description of what your organization is and what your goals are is necessary, but sometimes, videos and images can help supporters visualize your services and role in education more clearly. For example, if your organization helps schools manage after school programs, you might feature photos from past programs you organized. 

Your mission will also be conveyed through other elements on your website outside of your mission statement. For example, the first piece of text on your website will form many visitors’ first impressions of your website, so carefully consider your homepage’s title, subtitle, and descriptive text. 

3. Ensure your website is accessible. 

The best organizations’ websites reach the widest possible audience by implementing accessibility features. Accessible websites improve the user experience and allow visitors using screen readers and other assistive technologies to engage with your content. You can make your website accessible by including the following features:

• Video captions and scripts. Videos are an effective way to break up text and get your organization’s message across in new ways. However, not every user can watch videos or rely on their audio. Subtitling your videos with closed captions or providing a separate script helps these users interact with your video. Similarly, providing captions and alt text for images can also help visitors understand what your images are displaying and why they’re important. 

• Meaningful text hierarchy. Dividing your content up by headers helps keep topics organized and prevents visitors from getting overwhelmed by big blocks of text. Make sure that your headers follow a sequentially descending order with no skips between them (e.g. heading four appearing before heading three). Otherwise, readers using screen readers may get confused since they typically tab through the different headings to understand what content is grouped together on the page.

• Legible text. Text can be unreadable if it’s too small, lacks sufficient color contrast, or is in a hard-to-read font. Use a legible font for the bulk of your page, and save fancy fonts for titles if you decide to use them. Ensure your site builder allows users to resize text up to 200% and adjust the page to greyscale to improve color contrast. 

When performing website maintenance, make sure to include accessibility checks, especially for new content. Doing so will make sure all of your visitors are able to use your page and help you quickly catch any minor slips that might occur during website updates. 

4. Identify key features to include.

Rather than thinking of your website as a collection of pages with text and graphics, try contextualizing it as a place where users accomplish specific tasks. After all, users don’t visit your website to read text; rather, they read text to learn about your organization. 

The features you choose to include on your website will shape your users’ experiences and how they go about completing their tasks. Exactly what those tasks are will vary depending on your organization. CommunityPass’ after-school software page outlines a few common features school-related organizations’ websites should include:

• Registration forms. School-related associations and any participant-based programs need to manage registrants and members, collect fees, and attract new participants. Your registration forms should be as streamlined as possible to encourage additional signups and include time-saving features such as automatic payment reminders and collection.

• Merchandise store. Whether you’re selling event tickets, merchandise for your school’s sports team, or school supplies, an integrated storefront lets your organization quickly update its catalog of items, adjust prices, and collect payments. 

• News page. Regularly updating your website signals to supporters that your organization is healthy and still operating. Plus, maintaining an active posting schedule looks good to search engines, too. Rather than producing brand new content pages every week, your organization can keep a news page or blog that updates supporters on recent events or provides them with new information about your school or organization.

You can monitor how effective these features are at assisting visitors by monitoring analytics. The analytics tools within your website builder will allow you see which pages users are navigating to and how they’re finding your website in the first place, helping you identify things your website is doing well and places where it can improve. 

For example, you might discover that your email campaigns are the most effective way to reach supporters, but that your registration forms are experiencing a higher rate of page abandonment than you prefer. 

5. Create valuable content for your website. 

To attract and engage your website’s audience, you’ll need to create valuable content that provides the insights and details visitors are looking for. This helps you build credibility and also enhances your organization’s visibility on search engines. 

Morweb's guide to nonprofit website builders recommends populating your website with blog posts, interactive content, and other engaging content. Once you’ve developed high-quality content, you can use tools like Google Ads (or, the Google Ad Grant, if your organization is eligible) to get your website in front of as many eyes as possible. 

The Gist

Building a new website requires dedicated time and research. Establish a website maintenance routine early and invest in a robust website building tool to save your team future headaches. 

With the right website builder and a clear, user-friendly design, your website can leave a positive impression, boosting your organization's credibility and trustworthiness.

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About the Author:

Murad Bushnaq is the Founder and CEO of Morweb, a custom-built website design and CMS solution that empowers nonprofits worldwide to achieve their missions through software, design, and strategy. Since its inception in 2014, Murad has acted as CEO & Creative, helping nonprofits amplify their online impact through engaging web designs, intuitive software, and strategic communication. Backed by expertise in both creative and technical services, Morweb is a trusted partner for nonprofits seeking to maximize their online presence.

Tips for Continuous Improvement to Your Nonprofit's Website

Guest Post by Anne Stefanyk at Kanopi Studios

These days, the internet changes rapidly. There are new tools, platforms, and best practices that come to light every day. Because of this, waiting for a large website overhaul project is no longer the recommended route when it comes to site maintenance. 

So, what does this all mean for your nonprofit’s website and online marketing efforts? 

Here at Kanopi, we work with a wide range of organizations to help them develop and maintain a successful website. We’ve found that the best nonprofit websites are those that take a continuous improvement approach to maintenance. This approach is much more valuable, especially for their sites’ long-term health.

What is a continuous improvement approach to website maintenance? 

Traditionally, organizations would create their website, design it, develop it, and then push it live. It was a very straightforward and linear process, that often resulted in a “set it and forget it approach.” Basically, after launch, the site risked being neglected, with the result being a large redesign and optimization project taking place a few years later to update the site again.

Hopefully, you would update the website’s systems and tools to the most recent version, refresh content and copy to be up-to-date, ensure that all pages and series were in working order, and more. However, these large maintenance projects also cost a lot of money and could take up to 6-12 months depending on their scope, leaving a large amount of time where the site is not up-to-par.

With the modern evolution of the current online world, it’s actually much more beneficial to think of the website development process as circular instead of linear, reflecting a more continuous improvement approach.  

This Kanopi article on how to make a website last states: “Don’t think about your site in terms of Strategy > Design > Development > Launch, and then let it sit untouched for a while…  Instead, think of a circular process of Strategy > Implement > Learn & Iterate, where after you Iterate, you revisit Strategy again! This will translate into a site that is always being refreshed and improved without breaking the bank.”

Here are some other benefits of taking a continuous improvement approach:

• All of your website’s plugins, modules, and integrated tools are up-to-date and work seamlessly with each other

• Your website is always fully accessible and compliant with all relevant laws

• Users can more easily explore your website, learn about upcoming projects, and access your services

• Every aspect of the donor journey, like mission research on your website, is seamless

• You’ll see increased online conversions, like gifts, event registrations, and volunteer signups

• You’ll set your nonprofit website up for long-term success, as your website health is much stronger when it’s constantly updated

Making small, minor tweaks on a more consistent and ad-hoc basis is more manageable time-wise and labor-wise than dedicating a large chunk of time to updating everything. And, this way there won’t be moments where users visit your site to learn something new and instead are met with outdated information or even broken pages or links. 

When does your website need improvement?

So, now that you know why a continuous improvement approach to your nonprofit website is essential and how it can benefit your organization and goals, when exactly do you make those critical updates?

It’s not hard to determine exactly when your website could use a little love. Here is a list of questions to ask yourself: 

• Has your organization or mission evolved?

• Do any of your software, tools, apps, modules, or plugins need updating?

• Has your industry evolved? Are there any recent news updates you should share?

• Can your users find what they are looking for? How navigable is your website?

• Have your website visitors’ needs changed? Garner feedback through an email survey for more insight. 

• Is your content presented clearly? Is anything confusing?

• Is your conversion rate declining? This can be the rate for online fundraising, event registrations, or any other organizational goals. 

• Have your search engine rankings changed? Has your landing pages’ bounce rates increased?

• Have other similar nonprofit organizations changed their approach? 

• Is your site fast enough? A page speed of under 2-3 seconds is recommended.

• Does your site look great on mobile devices? Is it compliant with other accessibility laws?

• Is your site easy to use and edit? Can different staff members access and update content quickly and as needed?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then it’s a good sign that your website could use some quick maintenance. Taking care of these needs immediately rather than waiting until the last minute is much more beneficial not only to your site’s health but also to your supporters’ user experience. 

What are some website maintenance continuous improvement best practices?

Ready to start taking a continuous improvement approach to your nonprofit’s website maintenance? Here are some additional tips that we recommended:

• Do a SWOT analysis of your website. This will help outline any strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats you have to your site. 

• Map out user journeys to see how different users navigate through your site. Determine the different pathways they take and how you can improve your website to better align with these pathways.

• Do a complete site audit to determine if your content is old or if there’s anything you need to update or archive. 

• Review major site components like your page architecture, overall design, site performance, and more. 

• Make small tweaks like removing links that people don’t click on, or archiving old content.

The most important part of your website maintenance plan is to always be open to learning and improving. As you continue to update and tweak your site, you’ll learn a little more about what works and what doesn’t. 

Make it a habit to measure your site’s health and do data checks on a regular basis. You can even schedule user testing to make sure that your website is consistently meeting supporter needs. Work with your team to set up sprints to integrate this feedback into your site.

Wrapping Up

If you want to make your website last and ensure that your mission is a high priority, taking a continuous improvement approach to maintenance is your best bet. Don’t let your online engagements fall to the wayside and pile up your maintenance tasks to do at the last minute. 

If you need any more guidance on how to track your website’s health and the small tweaks you should make, contacting a technology consultant for nonprofits can help.

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About the Author:

As Founder and CEO of Kanopi Studios, Anne helps create clarity around project needs, and turns client conversations into actionable outcomes. She enjoys helping clients identify their problems, and then empowering the Kanopi team to execute great solutions.

Anne is an advocate for open source and co-organizes the Bay Area Drupal Camp. When she’s not contributing to the community or running her thoughtful web agency, she enjoys yoga, meditation, treehouses, dharma, cycling, paddle boarding, kayaking, and hanging with her nephew.

https://twitter.com/Anne_Kanopi

https://www.drupal.org/u/annabella

https://www.linkedin.com/in/annestefanyk/

Using Google Grants Across Fundraising Streams: 3 Tips

Guest post by Grant Hensel, CEO of Nonprofit Megaphone

Nonprofit organizations are renowned for their ability to achieve great things with limited resources. Despite having tax-exempt status, being a nonprofit requires the pursuit of stable revenue streams. Often, this takes the form of fundraising. Successful nonprofits have a diverse range of fundraising activities, ensuring that their revenue isn’t tied to the success or failure of one particular venture.

Even if an organization has conducted a successful fundraising campaign for many years, these campaigns can stagnate. Stagnation, or the fear of stagnation, requires that nonprofit professionals find new ways to enhance and promote their fundraising efforts.

At Nonprofit Megaphone, we help nonprofit organizations share their mission with the world. To do this, we help organizations acquire, maintain, and utilize the Google Ad Grant. The Ad Grant is a cost-effective way for nonprofits to participate and thrive in digital marketing. While the Grant can be employed to achieve numerous goals, many of our clients use the Grant to boost the performance of various fundraising streams. 

Simply put, the Google Ad Grant is an opportunity available to eligible nonprofits that give them a monthly allocation of Google advertising dollars. With the Grant, your organization will run Google Ads, which are sponsored links that appear in relevant web searches. These links are valuable, as your team can use them to drive traffic to your website. Further, using the Grant is often more efficient than traditional marketing, as you can use the data provided by Google to tweak and modify your ads for better results. We recommend the Google Ad Grant because it’s a cost-effective way to meet nearly any fundraising, marketing, or communications goal.

With our experience, we have three tips that will help you use the Google Grant to enhance your fundraising strategy:

1. Use KPIs To Determine Future Fundraising Strategies

2. Optimize Your Email Outreach

3. Build Out Content In Your Website To Make The Most Of Your Google Ad Grant

Use KPIs To Determine Future Fundraising Strategies

There are many ways for your organization to raise funds. However, determining which are worth your time and resources is a crucial strategic decision. Whether you’re looking to enhance your current strategies or looking for a new venture, a data-driven approach will be to your advantage.

The Google Ad Grant gives you access to a full suite of data and analytics tools in the Google Ads interface. Further, Google Ads easily integrates with Google Analytics, allowing you to analyze the performance of your ads in addition to your overall website performance. Using this data, you can identify where you’re having fundraising success and where you may be able to benefit from future investment.

Important metrics are called Key Performance Indicators. What qualifies as a KPI depends on your organization and its priorities, but there are a few important metrics for nearly every Google Ads Account.

Impressions

Impressions are one of the most common metrics in Google Ads. An impression is registered every time an ad appears in a Google Search. Impressions can tell you a lot about your ad’s performance but often need other metrics to see the bigger picture. 

Strong impressions may indicate that your ad is relevant to a highly-searched topic, an essential part of any Google Ad campaign. However, if those impressions don’t lead to clicks, conversions, or other engagement metrics, it indicates that your Ad copy isn’t enticing enough. Even with good corresponding engagement metrics, low impressions may signify that the topic can only reach a narrower audience.

Clicks

A click is registered whenever someone clicks on your Google Ad and is taken to your website. As one of the most basic engagement metrics, clicks are an indicator of ad success. As such, tweaking your ads to generate more clicks is always a good thing. It’s also important to be mindful of your ad’s Click-Through Rate. This number is generated by dividing the number of clicks your ad generates by its impressions. Google requires that you maintain a 5% or greater CTR throughout your account. A higher CTR shows that your ads are operating efficiently, targeting the right audience and enticing them to engage with your organization.

Conversions

Of all engagement metrics, conversions are the grand prize. A conversion is registered any time a user makes an action of value on your website. In the context of fundraising, the act of making a donation, purchase, or other transaction would be a notable conversion. Using Google Analytics, you can set up conversion tracking and get detailed information about how users interact with your website.

 In conjunction with Google Ads, you can learn which ads directly lead to fundraising conversions and prioritize those campaigns. With these KPIs, you’re able to learn more about your fundraising audience and what’s important to them. You can also gain insights into which audiences and topics should be targeted for future fundraising campaigns.

Optimize Your Email Outreach

Email outreach is an integral part of any marketing or communications campaign. Having a base of engaged email subscribers allows you to easily broadcast updates and opportunities to those who support your organization. Further, a solid foundation of email outreach can bolster existing fundraising streams and help launch new ones. There are a few ways the Google Ad Grant can help you grow your email list and identify what these users want from your organization.

Successful campaigns will track conversions that harvest email data. Your team can do this in a few ways but most commonly, in the form of a newsletter. Newsletters are a great way to spread your message, but also to keep stock of your engaged supporters. The Google Ad Grant can help grow your email list by driving users to pages where a newsletter sign-up is a prominent Call To Action on the page.

You can also gather email addresses in a few indirect ways. For example, you could require an email for other conversions that happen on your website. These conversions include:

• Making a purchase

• Downloading a file

• Registering for an event

Users who make these conversions are unlikely to be dissuaded by entering their email address beforehand. Attaching email submissions to conversions is an efficient way to use your Google Ad Grant and enhance the overall effectiveness of your website.

Build Out Content In Your Website To Make The Most Of Your Google Ad Grant

Successful users of the Google Ad Grant have one thing in common: they consistently produce high-quality content that their audience wants to engage with. High-quality content is content that engages, interests, and is easily presented to a user. It leaves a mark in a user’s mind, often leading them to make a conversion or return to your site in the future.

Any site will benefit from high-quality content, but the Google Ad Grant can help drive traffic to the content. This increases the overall efficiency of producing content and gives you opportunities to introduce yourself to new users.

Good content will make users more likely to make conversions, some of which may be connected to valuable fundraising streams or necessary programs. Finally, the Google Ad Grant can give you a way to expand your audience by producing content that appeals to trending keywords or an underserved portion of your existing audience.

What constitutes high-quality content will differ between organizations depending on size, mission, or scope. However, things like videos, podcasts, and infographics are great candidates. For some organizations, users are looking for written content like blogs, essays, or Frequently Asked Questions. The key to producing high-quality content is identifying what your users want and presenting it to them in an easy, satisfying way.

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Successful nonprofits will have a diverse set of programs and fundraising streams. This allows them to adapt, change, and grow as conditions develop in their communities. However, getting the most out of these strategies requires an investment in marketing to grow and maintain their audience.

The Google Ad Grant is an affordable and flexible way to maximize the value of your nonprofit’s existing investments. Taking advantage of the advertising provided by the  Google Ad Grant allows your organization to identify better where your fundraising streams are having the most success and where further investment is necessary. If your organization is running successfully but wants to maximize efficiency, consider applying for the Google Ad Grant yourself or by consulting a marketing agency.

About the Author:

Grant Hensel is the CEO of Nonprofit Megaphone, an agency focused 100% on Google Grant Management for nonprofits. NPM is honored to manage the Google Grant for 370+ leading nonprofits worldwide and to be an inaugural member of the Google Ad Grant Certified Professionals community. 

Nonprofit Marketing: 3 Tips for Tuning in to Donors

For nonprofit teams, communicating with potential supporters about how they can get involved is obviously very important to the survival of the nonprofit organization - but sometimes, it can be difficult to know where to start. Grant Cobb, Head of Marketing and Analytics at GivingMail, dives in with three actionable tips for maximizing impact in your nonprofit communications. 

Looking for the best way to reach your target audience? When promoting your organization with a cohesive marketing strategy, you’ll want to tune into what you know about your donors already to connect with them effectively.

This may seem like a challenge to undertake as an organization. However, you already have most of the information you need to make intelligent decisions for your marketing strategy. GivingMail knows that marketing for nonprofit organizations helps your team gain access to invaluable engagement data and can help you make even more targeted appeals and outreach content.

Ready to simplify the process of tuning into your donors for a more pointed marketing strategy? Let’s unpack the following tips:

• Use your data to create donor segments.

• Offer multiple ways to get involved.

• Track your donor engagements per platform.

We’ll start with one of the essential sources for learning more about your donors, using your database to create donor segments.

Use your data to create donor segments.

Donor segmentation is the process of dividing your existing constituents into subgroups according to shared traits. 

This practice is essential for tuning into your donor base and understanding your audience to the best of your ability. You can use these groups to determine trends and insights from the best outlet for sending out targeted communications to the opportunities that excite different groups. 

Luckily, a lot of this information is available in your CRM and the donor profiles within your donor database. However, many nonprofits struggle with finding somewhere to start. After all, you hold a large amount of information on your database. Here are some categories to begin your segmentation process with basic demographics:

• Age

• Household size

• Location

• Interests

This way, you can begin to make crucial insights according to what may interest them. You’re able to determine which outreach will resonate with them and predict further actions. For example, if your donor is located in your area, you can send them information about in-person events that they can easily attend. 

Once you have basic information about your constituents, you can start to tune into how they have directly engaged your organization. Take note of the following types of questions:

• How do they give to your organization?

• How did they find out about your organization?

• Have they volunteered in the past?

• Which campaigns did they give to?

From these helpful insights, you can begin to fine-tune how you reach out to donors and simplify their donor journey based on past giving data. For example, if you determine the most popular route for your donors is through direct mail, you can implement this insight into simplifying their experience.

This way, you can choose the best marketing channels for your target audience. 
Based on your social media engagement and messaging information, you can begin to answer the following:

• What social media platforms are they using?

• Have they replied to any direct mail outreach?

• Are they opening your emails?

Again, your organization’s donor segmentation process will be different for every nonprofit, as they’re dependent on how available and in-depth the information is that you collect. Now that you’ve developed helpful subgroups, begin to adjust your marketing strategies as such to resonate with your audience in the best way possible.

Offer multiple ways to get involved.

Your donor data, as mentioned above, can provide crucial insights into how to involve your donors with your mission best. After you’ve nailed down the initial segments by general demographics and involvement, consider the ways donors give to your cause. Then, meet them where they are to maximize their impact on your mission.

To get started, look into your donor’s engagement history in your CRM. Here are a few of the most common ways individuals can engage with  your nonprofit:

• Monetary donations: These are any sort of cash or online donation. These are the donors you’ll reach out to when hosting an annual fund campaign, are raising money for a specific cause, and anything having to do with writing a check to your organization.

• In-kind donations: These donors give valuable products or services to your organization. This can be from a company, an individual, or a trust. For example, if your team is hosting an upcoming charity event, search for product donations or auction items to make the event as successful as possible. 

• Time: Separate your donors by those who have contributed time to your cause. This group will most likely be the audience you’ll turn to when you are in need of volunteers to show up for your organization in person or virtually to help facilitate a fundraising event or other gathering.

• Promotion: Make a note in your donor profiles whenever someone shares your organization’s content on their social media feeds. You’ll know who to depend on if you ever need to ask a group of supporters to promote your posts further to their networks of followers.

By tracking your donors and their engagement history, you can begin to clarify your strategy on meeting them where they are. According to GivingMail, asking for donations should be tactful based on previous engagements. You can even maximize your donations with a few pointed questions like these:

• How are you asking for donations?

• What are you requesting from each group to push your mission forward?

• Who are you asking for support, and why?

When your organization begins to tune into donors based on their willingness and preferences to give, you can easily meet their needs where they are. Let’s get into the final metric to track when making insights about your donors: your platform KPIs.

Track your donor engagements per platform.

Finally, your team can clarify its outreach strategy by paying attention to your social media KPIs. According to these social media insights, social media marketing is a preferred platform for nonprofits due to its cost-efficiency and ease of content distribution to supportersYour team can determine a few things about your donor audience per your social media platforms. Namely, you’ll have an inside look into:

• The most popular platform for reaching your audience.

• When your donors are seeing your content.

• Which outreach methods are most effective for your donors.

As a result, It’s likely that your marketing strategy can most effectively reach donors with a  multi-channel approach. To get a better read on your donors and their behaviors, you’ll want to post content on multiple channels for the best results. Let’s take a look at how each platform can help you learn more about your audience:

• Instagram: Determine who, where, and when your supporters are interacting with your content. You’re also able to see who views your 24-hour stories and if it’s the most effective way to make quick updates to your audience.

• Facebook: This social media platform can alert your organization to who is responding to your Facebook fundraising events most often. More importantly, you’re able to see who is sharing your content to their Facebook feeds and which posts resonate most with those who are sharing.

• Twitter: This short-form post social media platform can alert your organization to how quick updates are resonating with your followers. Look into the retweets and favorites on each post and determine if this is an effective route for communicating with donors.

From these KPIs, refine your social media strategy to communicate with donors in the most effective way possible. Be sure to create donor segments based on the most popular social media platforms for your supporters, and plan accordingly to reach them.

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When you begin to tune into your donors with the rich and hard-earned data your organization has retained through events, outreach, and online engagements, your team benefits heavily. Use data to create accurate insights about your supporters, clarify your strategy, save time, and meet your donors where they are. Good luck!

Raffle Fundraisers: New Year, New Compliance Requirements?

In 2020, the California Attorney General’s office updated forms relating to charities and nonprofits, which includes newly updated Nonprofit Raffle Annual Registration and Reporting (CT-NRP-1 and CT-NRP-2). Even if you are not based in California, don’t forget to check with the governing body in your own state (or province) to ensure that your fundraising practices, registration (if needed), and reporting are compliant.

The California Attorney General’s Nonprofit Raffles Frequently Asked Questions hold good reminders about:

• Determining whether you have an “eligible organization”

• How to register with the Attorney General's Registry of Charitable Trusts before the raffle

• The importance of September 1

• The 90/10 rule

• Required recordkeeping and reporting deadlines

• How raffle proceeds are allowed to be used (in California it’s within the state only, per Penal Code section 320.5, subdivision (b)(4)(A))

There’s even a Raffle Registration Checklist to make it easier to be compliant.

If your organization plans on holding a raffle or other fundraiser, we highly recommend doing an annual review to make sure the rules haven’t changed!

Disclaimer: This article is not intended, nor should it be received, as legal advice. Please consult with your own legal advisors regarding your own situation.

10 Things to Know about Volunteer Recruitment and Retention

By Kibrett Facey, Marketing Associate at Mobilize

Organizations of all shapes and sizes rely on volunteers to turn their missions into concrete action. No matter what your organization's volunteers and supporters do to further your mission, you have to provide them with solid management strategies and the right tools. But most importantly, you have to recruit them!

For mission-based organizations that are new to volunteer management or working with volunteers, figuring out where and how to start can be overwhelming. 

At Mobilize, we've hosted more than 8.5 million volunteer actions by over 3 million supporters for organizations of all sizes, and  we want to share a few tips and tricks we've learned along the way.

1. Create volunteer recruitment guidelines. 

To build a recruitment strategy, it is important to understand your organization’s needs and how you will maintain your efforts. Here are some questions to consider: 

• What will our first volunteers do, and what skills are we looking for? 

• How many volunteers do we need right now? 

• Who will handle volunteer recruitment? 

2. Determine how you will recruit your volunteers. 

Think about the specific tactics you'll use to reach and engage potential supporters. These are the most common channels organizations use to recruit new volunteers:

• Volunteer recruitment platforms that allow you to post new opportunities

• Word-of-mouth from staff members, board members, and current volunteers

• Digital marketing, including mass appeals and more targeted campaigns through social media or email

• In-person outreach at community events or at spots where your target supporters might be, like college campuses

• Print marketing, like postings on community bulletin boards or in your monthly newsletters

Many organizations combine multiple tactics in order to reach new volunteers. 

3. Refine your strategy.

As new volunteers begin to trickle in and support your mission, be sure to check in on your current efforts. Review your strategy and ask yourself:

• How effective was our strategy?

• Did we meet our recruitment goals?

• How long did it take to recruit our volunteers?

• What were our most effective outreach tactics?

• How many supporters did we turn away because we couldn't currently use their help or because they didn't fit our job description?

• Are there other areas of our work that need volunteer support?

Reviewing your strategy's performance during and after each new recruitment push is critical if you want to strengthen your effort. Using dedicated volunteer management software will help you do this with ease by providing you with data to analyze. 

4. Offer a wide range of volunteering opportunities.

As your organization and base of volunteers grows, offer a range of ways to get involved. Dedicated supporters will appreciate more options, and offering more types of opportunities will help ensure potential volunteers find a role that suits their skills, abilities, and interests. Event support, virtual opportunities, phone banking, and more can give everyone an opportunity to support your mission.

5. Target specific groups.

Get specific! Targeting groups of your supporters for specific volunteer opportunities can help boost the effectiveness of your recruitment strategies overall. Think about different segments of your base, and what types of opportunities and messages will be most engaging for them. This strategy will help you boost engagement, especially if you have a specific goal in mind like converting volunteers into donors.

6. Tap into existing networks.

For many volunteer opportunities, casting a wider net is the one of the best ways to increase your support. Volunteer recruitment platforms like Mobilize allow you to post new opportunities, tap into existing networks of supporters, and offer a streamlined sign-up process all at once. Our growing network of over 3 million users is home to many individuals seeking out their next cause to support. Reaching those new supporters and retaining their support over time can be game-changing for your organization.

7. Create “job descriptions” for opportunities.

Describe each volunteer opportunity and your mission in detail. It is also important to outline any specific skills and time commitments needed. This description will be useful whenever you're promoting your opportunities, and it gives potential volunteers a clear picture of the role. This information will help them determine whether or not they fit the role. It will also result in more sign-ups from qualified volunteers and less time needed from your team to sort through registrants and match them with appropriate roles.‍

8. Optimize your social media strategies.

Social media is an incredible tool for reaching new audiences and engaging supporters. Create concrete social media strategies to maximize the effectiveness of your organization’s reach on these platforms. Share exciting, engaging content and encourage volunteers to post about their own experiences, too. Peer-to-peer recruiting is a great way to increase sign-ups and boost visibility for your cause. In fact, 14% of all RSVPs on our own platform come from automated bring-a-friend prompts! Use volunteer management software that empowers supporters to easily post about their next opportunity and share custom sign-up links with their friends and family.

9. Offer unique perks and opportunities. 

An extra incentive might be the perfect push that encourages a potential supporter to sign up to volunteer for your events, campaigns, and other opportunities. Perks such as free merchandise and discounted memberships can be effective, but don’t forget to  think of additional exclusive experiences you might offer. Training opportunities and volunteer-only virtual events like roundtable discussions or town halls with your organization's leadership are popular examples of opportunities that your supporters can benefit from. 

10. Put your volunteer recruitment strategy into action with the right tools! 

‍Volunteer recruitment platforms and management software are essential for organizations that want to get serious about taking a strategic approach and continually improving their strategies over time. Today we are seeing organizations of all sizes rely on online recruitment and virtual engagement more than ever. 

The Mobilize platform is the leading choice for mission-based organizations, including nonprofits, political campaigns and committees, labor unions, and advocacy organizations. Organizations using Mobilize have doubled their signup rates for volunteer opportunities and increased event attendance from online signups by 30% or more. Saving your team's time, reaching wider audiences, and empowering more supporters to take action for your cause translates into significant growth for your organization.

Get started with a free Mobilize starter account or a demo from our team to see our platform in action! And to keep things going with your volunteer recruitment and retention research, check out these additional resources:

• Virtual Labor Organizing: The Ultimate Guide for 2020. This guide will come in handy for labor unions hoping to recruit and mobilize supporters for outreach and advocacy projects. 

• Virtual Volunteer Strategies in a Time of Social Distancing. Many organizations are still dealing with the virtual shift due to he COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s our guide for keeping volunteers engaged while following social distancing guidelines.

• Volunteer Training Best Practices: 11 Strategies and Ideas. Need more help training your volunteers? Check out our best practices to help your volunteers transition onto your team seamless. 

KIND Snacks Founder Daniel Lubetzky: "I wish I had understood the benefits of product sampling"

Republished from SamplingForGood Blog, Feb 18, 2015

In a rare opportunity to learn from the founder of a now-successful CPG brand, Daniel Lubetzky, founder and CEO of KIND Snacks, shared lessons and regrets growing his company in a Fast Company article ahead of the release of his new book, Do the KIND Thing (released March 31, 2015). 

A lesson Daniel shared is a typical marketing mistake we often see with new brands:

"I wish I had understood the benefits of product sampling. In the early days, sampling was a missing piece of my strategy because I viewed it as an expense rather than an investment. Around 2009, I finally realized that, given our products’ high quality and taste, letting people try KIND bars was the best way to build awareness. We expanded our sampling budget and the brand has grown fast and furiously since then."

What have we at DonationMatch seen sampling do better than other marketing?

• Generosity & Reciprocity: Receiving a samples as a gift, especially when it is unsolicited, elicits a natural tendency to want to pay back the favor. Delighted consumers purchase products and share you with others.

• Getting Personal: The ability to try something for free is more powerful than any advertising. If your brand can say, "when they try it, they'll buy it," enabling these experiences is the most direct path to purchase. Other channels try to drive consumers to real-life interactions; with sampling, you're already there.

• Cut the Marketing Funnel: Unlike digital marketing, sampling can provide awareness, trial, and a call-to-action (coupon, email opt-in, or invitation to engage)—all at the same time. Remove any doubt about liking your product in one touch.

As a consumer, I can personally testify to the success of Daniel's sampling strategy.  I first tried a KIND bar at a 1 Million Cups event in San Diego in 2014 (startup founders are prime targets for convenient, healthy foods). KIND Snacks had shipped a generous amount of bars for attendees. I grabbed one for breakfast, and within hours I had ordered a boxful on Amazon.com. Once that arrived, my kids dug in, and our home was never without KIND bars in the cupboard.

Having spoken to friends who have discovered their own favorite products through receiving them as gifts for sampling, this is a pretty typical result. Sampling is such a simple concept, yet a misunderstood strategy, that Daniel thankfully embraced in time for KIND Snacks. The question every CPG marketer should be asking is: How are we engaging consumers with our products in ways that compel them to pay it forward?

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Disclaimer: DonationMatch may earn a commission for any purchases made through links provided.