Nonprofits and fundraising

Every fundraising campaign completely depends on their donors. If you are a Nonprofit organization trying to raise funds, I hope you know that your donors are the soul of your fundraising campaign. They are the people who are going to make your dream come true.

Last year, Dr. Sunitha Krishnan with her campaign “Securing Prajwalla”  came on board with us to set up an emergency shelter and a rehabilitation unit for survivors of sex trafficking. She successfully raised $2,60,100 over 2 campaigns with the support of all her donors. Securing Prajjwala can be looked at as a classic case of making the most out of a fundraising campaign. 

Is your nonprofit also trying to make a positive difference but struggling with the finances to fund your projects? Do you feel like it’s almost impossible to reach your fundraising goals?

When it comes to online fundraising, many nonprofit organizations tend to fear the uncertainty of reaching their goals. Less knowledge about the overall process makes it very difficult for the fundraisers to know the right steps to take for successful fundraising.

However, to help you overcome all your fears, I have collated major points which will definitely help you in giving the right direction to your fundraising campaign. Let’s have a look at them:

Choose your campaign’s name and URL carefully:  The name of your campaign defines your goal and make your message reach your donors in just one line, if it catches your audience’s attention, consider him/her 40% convinced to be converted as your donor already. 

It’s really best if your campaign name and campaign URL match. It will help your donors to find you online.

State your cause: Always push the Nonprofit part, Good causes can generate a lot of interest.  And remember, you don’t get a second chance to make the first impression.

Most of the donors stay on your page only when they can relate to your cause, so always make your cause seen.

Create a specific landing page: Now that you have selected the right name for your campaign and have decided to make a related URL, do start making a specific landing page on your website that brings together the campaign's story/ images/ videos focused on emotionally connecting with the audience. 

Ask directly: Many nonprofits believe in telling their story to the audience but do not provide any call to action for the donors to donate instantly. These nonprofits believe that the donors know,  “where they are” and “have an intent to donate only”.

This idea ends up having a direct impact on the lead to conversion rate. 

Create a Social Movement: Connect your website to your social media channels. Showcase the impacts made by your nonprofit organization in the past. Always keep your donors and prospects updated about your milestones. Maintaining transparency and sharing your success with your audience only makes you more reliable.

Have your strategies in place: Divide your campaign's strategy into 3 stages: Pre-launch strategy,  Launch strategy, and Post-launch strategy. 

Make sure your strategy caters to all of your different communication channels- like email, social, mobile and web. 

Though the scope of this article doesn’t cover the strategies for Nonprofit funding, I thought it will still be a good idea to provide you a brief on the same.

So under Pre-launch strategy, define your donor base, these are the people who are going to make your fundraising a success. To identify your donors, try to do an elaborative donor profiling. 

Have all your documents in place that you might need during the campaign creation process. This is also the right time to define the social media and other platforms you want to leverage to reach your goal amount.

Keep all the images/ videos/ media articles related to your cause, as you are going to need them during the launch-strategy state.  

The Launch state is the time to engage your donors and make them take the right action. To do this, give our donor audience a perfect answer to the following questions:

1. Who are you and Why are you fundraising?
2. Who is the beneficiary?
3. What purpose does your organization aims to fulfill?
4. How are the funds going to be divided for the different goals you want to achieve?
5. How will making a donation help your donors?

Answer these questions through all the social media platforms you have chosen in the pre-launch stage. Create social media posts, informative emails, blogs, etc around the above-mentioned question to keep your donor audience informed.

The impact of Post-launch state often remains underestimated in most of the nonprofit strategy plans. But it is very important to give your donors a VIP treatment. Let them know the impact of their contribution. Never ever forget to show your regards and gratefulness to your donors.  

Set up a proper email marketing schedule: Don’t bombard your donor base with non-substantial material. Often nonprofits become overwhelmed while sharing their cause and end up telling a very long story, but please try to look at it from your audience perspective. Make the most of the time-frame which the donor's give you by providing the specific information and a relevant call to action button.

Find the key influencers: Once you find your influencers, approach them personally. By telling them how your cause is related to their vision, ask them to give your cause a voice on the social media streams. 

Have a referral program in place: You can devise a referral program to incentivize your existing donors, asking them to share your campaign among their friends/ families and professional network, which in turn can drive more donations.

Spread Goodwill: Give donors a chance to talk about their donations in your press releases and promotional materials. Identify top donors and rewards them.

Add Value to the donations: Apart from the perks an benefits, provide tax benefit slips to your donors. Keeping your donors on the same page with you will help you in converting that one-time donor into a long-term giver.

We spent the last 5 years helping many nonprofits by providing them with a 2-level deep network effect and automatons.  This allowed all of them to become profitable fundraisers. Book a demo with us and get to know all about our fundraising suite.