Fundraising is an increasingly data-driven activity, just like most other forms of business and marketing today.
For nonprofits, this makes sense. Effectively stewarding your limited resources with quantitative insights derived from data is a responsibility that simply comes with running a nonprofit. It’s essential for growing your reach and pursuing your mission over time.
Looking towards the new frontiers of nonprofit technology, artificial intelligence can take much of the guesswork out of campaign planning. However, you still need a solid understanding of the data that drives more technically complex processes that you might adopt, like AI.
But where do you start? What are the most important fundraising metrics that a nonprofit should prioritize tracking?
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and different metrics will be important in different circumstances, but here are what we consider to be three critical top-line metrics that nonprofits should track, study, and seek to improve for healthier fundraising and donor stewardship over time.
Fundraising ROI
Fundraising return on investment (ROI) is a fundamental metric that compares how much money you raise against how much you spent to raise it.
ROI essentially tells you about the effectiveness of your fundraising campaigns—do they generate revenue through donations, or do they cost more money to run than they make? Both outcomes can be valuable learning experiences, but a negative ROI typically means you’ve encountered issues that need immediate attention to keep your program healthy.
How to Calculate It
To calculate fundraising ROI for a campaign:
- Subtract its total costs from its total returns (or the amount raised). This gives you your campaign or appeal’s net revenue.
- Then, divide the net revenue by the total costs. This is your ROI as a ratio.
- Multiply this number by 100 to present it as a percentage.
A positive ROI indicates that you raised more than you spent and generated revenue. The greater the ROI, the more effective the fundraising appeal was at securing donations. A negative ROI indicates that you spent more than you raised and lost revenue.
How to Improve It
There’s a practically infinite number of tactical ways to improve ROI depending on the unique context, audience, and goals of your campaigns. This open-endedness is the reason why digging even deeper with data is so useful but can also feel overwhelming.
There’s one core concept to understand: You need to raise more while spending less. The most fundamental way to do this is by better targeting your campaigns to specific donors in order to improve returns.
For example, rather than sending a direct mail appeal to an extremely broad segment of your donors, try tailoring your message to a smaller but more targeted list of donors who are actually likely to give right now. When you send the appeal, you’ll secure more and larger donations on average than you would have otherwise, and you’ll have spent less on printing and postage. The result is a stronger, positive ROI for the appeal.
Whether you’re seeking unrestricted annual gifts in a mail appeal, asking for support for a specific program via email, or inviting donors to your next big-ticket event, this underlying concept will improve your ROI. Machine learning technology offers the most direct way to get started targeting your donors, offering a quicker and more accurate approach than traditional data analysis techniques.
Donor Retention
Your nonprofit’s donor retention rate is the rate at which you retain active donors from one campaign (or other period of time) to another. How many donors who gave to one appeal gave again to the next one? What does churn look like in your regular giving program? How does your retention of those donors track over time?
Donor retention is critically important to your nonprofit’s bottom line. Retaining the support of existing donors is much more cost-effective than focusing solely on acquiring new ones. Tracking and continually seeking to improve your donor retention rate is a must.
After all, reaching new audiences, catching their attention, and inspiring them to give is a costly and time-consuming process. However, keeping existing donors excited about giving is an easier lift, and it allows your team to focus more on growing those relationships and gifts over time—meaning a larger base of support for more efficient fundraising in the future. This is especially true in your regular giving programs, where the cost of acquisition can be high.
How to Calculate It
To calculate your donor retention rate:
- Determine the timeframe or specific comparison for which you’d like to calculate your retention rate, for instance, annual retention in your regular giving program.
- Divide the number of retained donors at the end of the year (i.e. donors who stayed the whole time) by the number of donors at the beginning of the time period. This is your donor retention rate for that particular time frame.
- Multiply this number by 100 to present it as a percentage.
This will give you a top-line idea of how well your campaigns have retained the support of your existing donors.
But remember that this formula does not account for donor acquisition, meaning you could see strong retention metrics that are in fact inflated with new donors who joined halfway through the time period. Donor acquisition is great news, but don’t lose track of how well you’re encouraging them to actually stick around over time.
Effective data management software should make it easy to exclude specific types of donors, like those newly acquired, to keep your numbers accurate. The granularity to aim for will depend on exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, but it’s never a bad idea to dig deeper into the data when possible.
How to Improve It
Failing to retain donors, also called donor churn, can be caused by an extremely wide range of factors. Whatever the specific reasons that individuals choose not to engage with your campaigns, the overarching issue is that you’re losing their commitment.
This is especially critical when it comes to your recurring donation program since these donors generate such high value for your organization over the long run and can be costly to acquire. The program only succeeds when the churn rate is low.
The best way we know how to address churn at its source is to proactively identify churn risks in advance. Artificial intelligence technology can be used to screen your nonprofit’s CRM, find patterns that lead to churn, and flag these individuals for extra attention. Engage them with phone calls, other forms of personal outreach, or event invites—just don’t ask for another donation right away.
Donor Lifetime Value
Donor lifetime value (LTV) is a measure of how much a donor gives to your organization from their first donation up until the time they stop giving. LTV is often averaged across particular segments of your donor base.
Understanding your donor LTV is important because it allows you to make all kinds of informed cost-benefit decisions relating to acquisition, retention, and stewardship.
For example, acquiring new donors can be costly, but if you know that your campaign will attract a segment of donors with a high average LTV, the cost of carefully acquiring them will be worth it. Additionally, tracking your donor LTV over time can reveal deeper retention issues—if the average lifetime value of a core segment of your donor base is falling, you’re losing them to churn and should address it.
How to Calculate It
To calculate donor lifetime value, use the following formula:
Donor Lifetime Value = Average Donor Lifespan x Average Donation x Donor Frequency
To generate the metrics necessary for the formula, you’ll need to make some initial calculations:
- Compile the set of donors whose lifetime values you’ll be averaging, whether that’s your entire donor base or just one segment.
- Determine the average number of years that donors in your segment actively give donations (Average Donor Lifespan).
- Divide the total value of donations made by those donors by the number of individual donors (Average Donation).
- Divide the total number of donations in a recent period (for instance, 5 years) by the total number of individual donors. Then, divide again by the number of years during which the donations were made (Donor Frequency).
- Multiply your Average Lifespan, Donation, and Frequency numbers to generate your LTV for that set of donors over that specific timeframe.
Here’s an example: If 100 donors have given 1,000 gifts (totalling $100,000) in the past 5 years, and your average donor gives for 10 years, your LTV is:
Average lifespan = 10 years
Average donation = ($100,000 / 1,000 gifts) = $100
Donor frequency = (1,000 gifts / 100 donors / 5 years) = 2 gifts per donor per year
10 Years x $100 x 2 gifts = $2,000 LTV
In other words, these donors give 2 gifts of $100 every year for 10 years. The retained support of one of these donors represents a total of $2,000 for your mission over time.
How to Improve It
Many factors and unique contextual elements impact donor LTV, so it can be difficult to lay out a one-size-fits-all improvement strategy. However, the underlying issue is that donors aren’t sticking around long enough to give more and larger gifts over time.
Churn and disengagement are often at the root of dropping LTV metrics—anything you can do to retain donors and keep them excited about your mission should help. Identify at-risk donors in advance so you can personally reach out, invite them to more events, diversify your campaign offerings, and send a wider range of messages than just the same appeals each year.
To proactively improve LTV, pursue new stewardship opportunities, like by using AI to identify potential mid-level donors and singling them out for individual outreach. You can also explore corporate giving connections to help donors generate more value for your mission without needing to make more donations themselves.
The exact strategies you roll out to improve any of these metrics will vary based on the unique context and goals. But most importantly, be sure to actively track them over time and use tools like AI and a robust CRM platform to simplify the process of organizing and studying them.
By taking a strategic approach backed up with data, you can begin to develop concrete acquisition, engagement, and retention strategies for each bracket of your donor base as your organization grows.
Nonprofit Graphic Design – Nonprofit Catalog
Among a sea of charitable causes, your nonprofit needs to do what it can to stand out and attract supporters. That all starts with creating eye-catching marketing materials that feature powerful nonprofit graphic designs.
From your nonprofit’s website to your direct mail outreach, graphics are entwined with your nonprofit’s overall image. Everything from your colors to your typography is associated with your cause. Let’s review the basics of effective graphic design for nonprofits, so you can capture your brand and pique supporters’ interest.
What Is Nonprofit Graphic Design?
Nonprofit graphic design refers to the visual aspects of your nonprofit’s brand. It’s a craft that involves creating visual content to communicate messages and tell your organization’s story. Graphic design includes the typography, colors, images, and any other artistic components used in your printed and digital materials.
Visuals that require design work range from your logo to the images you use across your website, and they communicate to supporters what your organization is all about.
By applying layout and visual hierarchy techniques, your nonprofit can create artwork that helps communicate your message, spruce up your marketing materials to be more digestible, and strengthen your brand identity.
Types of Graphic Design for Nonprofits
Regardless of the cause you’re furthering, creating a strong brand identity is vital to your success. Your graphics are a major contributing factor to your nonprofit’s identity and can be broken down into a few main types.
Note that each type of nonprofit graphic design requires varying levels of design expertise, which may mean you should outsource some of the heavy lifting to a professional if you don’t have a dedicated designer on staff.
Now, let’s dive into the five main categories of designs your materials will fall under.
Nonprofit Logos
Your nonprofit logo is one of your most important brand assets. From your website to your fundraising letters, your logo appears across all of your brand creatives, meaning it will be one of the first things that comes to mind when someone thinks of your nonprofit.
Kwala’s guide to nonprofit logos breaks down a few core design elements that contribute to any logo:
Take the World Wildlife Fund’s logo for example. This unique logo features a minimalistic design, a symbol of the endangered giant panda, and the organization’s acronym.
By ensuring all of these elements shine through in a logo, any nonprofit can create a memorable graphic design that perfectly encapsulates its cause.
Digital Graphic Designs
In a digital-first world, visually-compelling content is more important on social media, email, and other digital platforms than ever before.
Here are some common types of graphics that will come into play when creating digital marketing materials:
These are just a few common nonprofit graphic designs you’ll use across your digital outreach. Whether you’re launching a fundraiser or sharing updates on a project, your artwork can play a part in connecting with supporters in the competitive online space.
Print Designs
The internet might dominate today’s world, but print marketing is still awfully important for pushing your cause forward.
A few common print materials that incorporate nonprofit graphic design include:
Our nonprofit marketing guide explains that well-designed print materials can help you connect with supporters who aren’t active online. Plus, it comes across as more personal since it takes a bit more effort than publishing a social media post.
Think of it this way: a well-designed fundraising letter among stacks of bills and junk mail is much more likely to mean something to recipients.
Environmental Designs
Nonprofit graphic design even plays into creating a unique and inviting environment at your organization’s office and events. Combine interior design and graphic design best practices to create an immersive environment that captures your brand with elements like:
Spruce up your office, events, and community with these types of designs. No matter what environmental designs you create for your nonprofit, make sure to focus on tasteful artwork that blends into your environment.
Additional Resources
Nonprofit Catalog – Read up on more nonprofit essentials by exploring our Nonprofit Catalog.
The Ultimate Nonprofit Board Report Template and Tips – Need some help formatting your board reports? Check out this guide that gives a rundown of effective nonprofit graphic design for board reports.
12 Best Nonprofit Graphic Design Tools to Amplify Your Cause – Build your arsenal of nonprofit graphic design tools with this ultimate list. You’ll find some great resources to launch your design efforts forward!
Bikeathon — Nonprofit Catalog
Hosting an a-thon style fundraiser is an engaging way to raise money for your nonprofit. In an a-thon fundraiser, participants collect donations based on their ability to do an activity as much or as long as possible. A bikeathon is a creative and scalable type of a-thon fundraiser that can attract a wide audience, plus it works for many types of organizations.
What Is a Bikeathon?
Also called a cycling fundraiser or cycle event, a bikeathon is a peer-to-peer fundraising event where participants ask friends and family to pledge donations based on how far they can cycle. As a peer-to-peer event, bikeathons involve individuals fundraising on an organization’s behalf.
During a bikeathon fundraiser, participants share individual fundraising pages where friends and family can pledge their financial support. For example, supporters might pledge $1 per mile or lap around a track. The further the cyclist rides, the more money they raise for the cause they’re supporting, offering a fun athletic challenge.
Benefits of Bikeathons
Bikeathons offer a unique and engaging way for supporters to raise money for your organization. They stand out among other fundraising events for several reasons:
As participants promote their pages, they’ll also share information about your mission and potentially bring in new supporters. So, a bikeathon can help spread awareness as well as raising funds.
5 Steps to Host a Bikeathon Fundraiser
Hosting a bikeathon fundraiser can be broken down into five simple steps:
During your bikeathon, you’ll have to manage a lot of moving parts. But if you plan strategically, your organization can successfully raise funds and bring your community together for a good cause.
Additional Resources
NXUnite Panel Accessibility
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T-shirt Fundraiser – Nonprofit Catalog
Have you ever seen a professional sports team full of players all wearing different jerseys? Of course not — that would be confusing for both the athletes and spectators. Sports teams and even sports fans are recognized by their jerseys.
The same principle applies to fundraising — people recognize your supporters by your branded merchandise. Mugs, blankets, hats, and other branded materials identify who is a part of your support team. For this reason, t-shirt fundraising is one of the most popular merchandise fundraising campaigns.
If you are ready to try out a new fundraising idea while increasing your brand awareness, t-shirt fundraising is a go-to. In this article, we will walk you through the t-shirt fundraising basics to help you get started.
What is a t-shirt fundraiser?
A t-shirt fundraiser is a type of campaign where a nonprofit sells branded t-shirts to supporters to raise funds for its mission. Your t-shirt should capture your nonprofit brand and mission with an attractive design.
A t-shirt fundraiser can stand on its own, or you can pair it with another fundraising opportunity, such as a 5K or peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. Encourage 5K participants and supporters to purchase a t-shirt to show off their team spirit. If your fun run is in the summer, consider purchasing lightweight, short-sleeve t-shirts.
Peer-to-peer fundraisers can use social media and link to their own web pages to sell your spiffy t-shirts. Recruit volunteers ahead of time to gather more t-shirt interest and make your campaign a success.
Steps to plan a t-shirt fundraiser
Running a t-shirt fundraiser can be a breeze if you follow a few general guidelines. If you’ve decided it’s time to launch a t-shirt fundraiser, it won’t take too long to get up and running. Use these steps to start your fundraiser:
1. Create a t-shirt design
You can develop a design internally or ask your supporters to send in their ideas. If you’re designing a t-shirt from scratch, start by brainstorming simple ways to illustrate your cause. Incorporate harmonious colors and consider your supporter’s preferences. What type of t-shirt would they be proud to wear?
When you have settled on a basic design, choose a typeface that coordinates well. Avoid cursive or script fonts which tend to decrease legibility. Instead, use bold type and a large font size to identify the name of your fundraiser. Then, place your nonprofit name in a smaller font size below or next to it.
Next, you can gather input on how to perfect your design. Try out different iterations to see which one suits your fundraiser best. You can even turn it into a contest by having supporters vote on their favorite design.
Whichever illustration you go with, make sure your design prominently features your nonprofit’s brand elements, such as your logo. That way, your artistically-depicted cause becomes associated with your nonprofit brand.
2. Decide how you’ll distribute your shirts
You can distribute your t-shirt either online or in person. There are benefits to either distribution process. Online distribution can simplify t-shirt pick-up — just be sure supporters can track their incoming orders. If a supporter’s t-shirt does not come in on time, consider stashing extra shirts at the fundraising event.
In-person t-shirt distribution can show off your design a bit more. Supporters may be able to determine their size preferences as well. However, in-person pick-up may be inconvenient for some. In this case, a combination of both online and in-person distribution would be ideal.
3. Choose a t-shirt fundraising platform
T-shirt fundraising platforms are resources to kickstart your online fundraising campaigns. Platforms like Bonfire or Custom Ink have pre-made graphics and templates you can apply to your t-shirt designs. They also include case studies you can browse to see which previous campaigns were successful.
Neither platform requires inventory and both utilize built-in promotional features. Bonfire ships order straight to buyers while CustomInk offers a hybrid shipping option. Browse each website to discover which option is best for you
4. Promote your t-shirt fundraiser
Now it’s time to reveal your beautiful t-shirt design to the world! Use several different channels to get the word out and reach different audiences. For instance, if you’re using your t-shirt fundraiser to increase school funding, parents may prefer to access your t-shirts via email and students would be more likely to snag a t-shirt from a social media page.
Here’s a full list of communication channels to leverage:
Promote your branded t-shirts with photos of supporters wearing your shirt. Pictures of volunteers, families, and students sporting your branded gear will increase your nonprofit awareness and get people interested. Fun t-shirt flyers are an effective offline marketing material that can be eye-catching. Hang up flyers at local businesses or distribute them at an upcoming nonprofit event.
5. Track your fundraising progress
Keep a detailed list of t-shirts sold and funds raised. Let your audience know how much they have donated at the halfway point and how much more you need to reach your goal. If you’re a few t-shirts away, encourage supporters to share your fundraiser on their social media story to hit your goal.
T-shirt fundraising platforms have sales tracking systems built into their interface. Some platforms also count the number of site visits and donations. Refresh your chosen platform often to stay updated on your progress.
6. Thank your donors
As your t-shirt fundraiser wraps up, thank supporters for their efforts. Email or handwrite your thank-you messages to generous donors. Remind them why you are grateful to have them on your team. Whenever possible, share how their donation directly impacted your mission.
Additional Resources
The Basics of Microsoft Ad Grants – Nonprofit Catalog
In a world driven by digital marketing, nonprofits have to do what they can to stand out online. The Microsoft Ad Grant unlocks the power of search engine marketing for any sized nonprofit! All you have to do is target the keywords your supporters are searching for online and then write compelling ads that speak to those individuals.
What Is The Microsoft Ad Grant?
Known officially as Microsoft Ads for Social Impact, this program provides approved organizations with $3,000 each month to spend on advertising across Microsoft’s digital search and native advertising network. Participating organizations can boost their web content across Bing, Yahoo, AOL, outlook.com, MSN, and Microsoft Edge.
By strategically choosing keywords and boosting the right landing pages, your nonprofit can increase site conversions and fulfill all sorts of organizational goals, like:
Similar to Google Grants, all you have to do is meet the eligibility requirements, apply, and create ads that resonate with prospective supporters.
Note that for now, Microsoft Ad Grants are only available to U.S.-based nonprofits.
Eligibility Requirements For Microsoft Ad Grants
As with any corporate giving program, Microsoft only wants reputable organizations to participate. After all, anyone who participates will be associated with the Ads for Social Impact program, so if unsavory content is promoted, users will view Microsoft as responsible for allowing the ad to run.
Luckily, the criteria are pretty easy to meet for most organizations. Here’s what’s required to receive the Microsoft Ad Grant:
Best of all, unlike traditional grants, you don’t have to compete for the funds. Any eligible organization will receive the full $3,000 dollars.
Tips For Making the Most of Microsoft Ad Grants
Search engine marketing is usually an expensive strategy. Microsoft puts it into reach for nonprofits that couldn’t normally afford the extra spending. However, the Microsoft Ad Grant is only as powerful as you make it! Let’s dive into a few tips for squeezing the most out of your Microsoft Ad Grant budget.
Use it in conjunction with Google Grants.
If you’re interested in Microsoft Ad Grants, there’s a good chance you already leverage or have at least heard about Google Ad Grants. If not, get ready for another great marketing opportunity!
Google offers a similar program where they offer nonprofits $10,000 in ad spending. Both Microsoft and Google’s programs have their perks. While Google has the obvious benefit of a larger budget, Microsoft’s platforms have fewer advertisers and therefore lower competition.
Luckily, you don’t have to choose to participate in one or the other. In fact, you have a lot to gain from using them both and creating complementary strategies. You might:
Tapping into both programs will allow you to reach an astounding 93% of internet users based on each platform’s current search engine market share. Know that tackling both programs will take a lot of time, though. You might need to turn to a nonprofit search engine marketing agency to leverage both.
Use ad extensions.
Construct stronger ads by building them out with ad extensions. The more robust your ads are, the more they’ll stand out from other advertisements.
Microsoft gives you plenty of options to choose from, including:
In Getting Attention’s guide to Microsoft Ad Grants, they provide an excellent example of these extensions in action. Take a look at how The Salvation Army built out an ad using ad extensions:
Set clear goals for your campaigns.
Like we mentioned, nonprofits can achieve a wide range of goals through the Microsoft Ad Grants program.
If you want to boost your volunteer numbers, create campaigns centered around volunteer recruitment where you boost your volunteer registration and information pages.
To increase funding, promote your donation form, specific campaign pages, or your how-to-give page.
If you want to increase event attendance, promote webpages with information about your webinars, 5Ks, conferences, and other events.
To increase advocacy participation, share your online petitions and advocacy event pages.
With clear goals for your campaigns, you can choose the right keywords, pick the correct landing pages, and compose compelling ad copy that will drive more users to convert. The sky is the limit!
Additional Resources
Nonprofit Catalog – Read up on more nonprofit essentials by exploring our Nonprofit Catalog.
The Microsoft Ad Grant: An Essential Nonprofit Tool – Dive further into the program with our ultimate guide to Microsoft Ad Grants.
Nonprofit Marketing Ideas: Promote Your Cause Effectively – Learn how opportunities like Microsoft Ad Grants can take your marketing to the next level.
Annual Appeal Basics and Getting Started — Nonprofit Catalog
Nonprofits have a variety of impactful initiatives throughout the year that they prioritize in their fundraising calendar. Annual appeals, which can bring in some of the largest donations in a calendar year and often fund the core of a nonprofit’s activities, are one of those top priorities. Read on to learn what an annual appeal is, what you need to get started, and how to write an annual appeal.
What is an Annual Appeal?
An annual appeal is a message your nonprofit sends to its supporters, often toward the end of the calendar year, updating them on your organization’s accomplishments and asking for their financial support. These messages can be sent via email or direct mail.
Annual appeals are critical to the healthy functioning of a nonprofit. In fact, 25% of annual gifts are received in December, meaning that a quarter of all gifts that a nonprofit receives in a calendar year are driven in part by annual appeals.
Annual appeals not only bring in end-of-year donations but also allow for opportunities to engage and retain donors. Donors are interested in what your nonprofit is doing, and, more importantly, how you’re using their donations.
Annual appeals are essential across the fundraising sector, as colleges and universities can send annual appeals to solicit donations as well. Alumni and other supporters of colleges and universities are equally interested in learning what initiatives their alma mater is taking on, and annual appeals present the perfect opportunity to maximize university fundraising efforts.
What Resources Do You Need to Write an Annual Appeal?
Once you decide to capitalize on the benefits of an annual appeal, there are a few things you’ll need to actually write your annual appeal. These resources include:
How to Write an Annual Appeal Letter
There’s no exact formula for writing an annual appeal that will work for every organization. But there are a few best practices to keep in mind to ensure the success of your annual appeal:
The most important thing to remember when writing your annual appeal is that there’s a reason your donors have supported you in the past. Stay true to your mission and show appreciation for the donations that make your mission possible.
Additional Resources
Walk-a-thon – Nonprofit Catalog Copy
Walk-a-thon fundraisers are a great way to promote supporter engagement and boost morale. They provide a fun way for individuals to stay active, build community, and support their school or organization.
Walk-a-thons are popular school, nonprofit, and sports team fundraisers because they allow a large group of individuals to come together and walk to support their favorite cause. Host a walk-a-thon fundraiser to promote healthy lifestyles and raise money for your organization at the same time.
What is a walk-a-thon?
If you’ve ever participated in a fun run, then you might be familiar with a walk-a-thon. A walk-a-thon fundraiser is a fundraising event where participants walk a designated route. Participants collect pledges from friends and family, attend the event, then collect donations for their organization based on how far they walked.
Ahead of the event, donors pledge to donate a certain amount of money for each mile or specified unit of distance that the participant walks. During the event, each participant tracks their walking distance, and afterwards, your organization earns donations based on the distance that they recorded.
How to organize a walk-a-thon
With the right tools and resources, planning your event can be stress free and easy! Follow these simple steps to host your next walk-a-thon fundraiser:
1. Gather participants for the walk-a-thon
Once you’ve decided to host a walk-a-thon, the first step is to choose a date and location to host the event. Then, to gather interested participants from your community of supporters, use these tips:
Set a deadline for registering to participate, but make sure you give supporters enough time to decide and encourage their friends to join.
2. Participants collect pledges
Using your fundraising platform, participants will start sharing their individual campaign pages to collect pledges. Be sure to provide your participants with support and advice about how to ask for donations and the best places to share their campaign pages. With an intuitive fundraising platform, you can easily keep a record of pledges for each participant.
3. Host your walk-a-thon event and raise money
On the day of the event, make sure to arrive ahead of time so you can properly set up before the attendees start showing up. Once the walk-a-thon kicks off, join the fun! Don’t forget to communicate with your participants and volunteers and thank them for their support.
Now that you have all the information, you’re ready to host a walk-a-thon!
Additional Resources
Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits – Nonprofit Catalog
When backed by Google Ad Grants, your nonprofit organization has the power to strengthen its digital marketing, supercharge its fundraising efforts, and connect with more prospects than ever. Make sure you understand the basics with this quick guide.
Let’s dive in!
What Are Google Ad Grants?
The Google Ad Grants program provides free advertising credits to participating charitable organizations.
You’ve likely seen Google Ads from nonprofits before. A search engine results page (SERP) with these ads looks like this:
Here are some other key details about the Google Ad Grants program:
Through this program, Google’s goal is to empower nonprofits to supercharge their search engine marketing (SEM) efforts. With a more effective SEM and digital marketing strategy, your nonprofit can help more donors find and support your cause, drive more attendance to local events, enhance your social media efforts, and even help you compete with larger peer organizations.
Use Cases For Google Ad Grants
While you may think that the benefits of using Google Ad Grants are limited to increasing web traffic, one of the best parts about leveraging Google Ad Grants is that you can push your mission forward in several ways.
Some ways nonprofits use the program to achieve their goals include:
How to Apply For The Google Ad Grant
Before applying, it’s important to check that your organization is eligible for the program. Keep in mind that the Google Ad Grants program excludes any organizations that are governmental entities, healthcare organizations, or educational institutions.
Google’s eligibility rules state that applicants must:
After confirming your eligibility status, you can confidently move forward with applying for the program. The process is pretty straightforward, but if you’re unsure about your next steps a Google Ad Grants agency can step in and help you complete the process.
Step 1: Register with TechSoup.
TechSoup partners with corporations to provide free or discounted software, hardware, and services to nonprofits. They confirm nonprofits’ legitimacy so that companies like Google can trust that they’re providing resources to trustworthy organizations.
To register with TechSoup, you’ll need to visit the TechSoup registration page and provide some identifying information about your organization. If you’re approved, they’ll reach out with a validation token within 30 days that you’ll need to provide to Google in order to move forward.
Step 2: Create a Google for Nonprofits account.
Once your organization is verified by TechSoup, you’ll need to visit the Google for Nonprofits registration website. Once you register through this website, you’ll be granted access to the Google Grants application.
To successfully apply for Google for Nonprofits, follow these steps:
Beyond Ad Grants, Google for Nonprofits gives you access to a range of other tools, like Google WorkSpace and The YouTube Nonprofit Program. The approval process may take a few days, but you shouldn’t have any problems if you’re registered with TechSoup.
Step 3: Submit Your Google Ad Grants application.
Once you receive an email that you’ve been approved for Google for Nonprofits, you can move forward with applying for Google Ad Grants! Complete these steps to access and fill in the application:
From here, you can create your first campaign and start using Google Ads to spread awareness for your mission!
The best part is that the grant automatically renews each month, so you’ll never have to apply for the grant again. Once your organization is accepted, just make sure you comply with the program’s ongoing regulations to retain access.
How Are Google Ad Grant Accounts Structured?
After being accepted into the program, you’ll need to structure your account in a specific way so that your ads will appear on Google Search.
Here’s how Getting Attention’s guide to optimizing a Google Grant account breaks down the required account structure:
While Google does require you to follow this account structure, it is meant to make your ads more effective. Following this structure will allow you to collect sufficient performance data to make sure your ads are set up to succeed!
How to Get Started with Google Ad Grants
With this understanding of how to structure your account, you have most of the essentials needed to start launching Google Ad campaigns. But how can you ensure you’re taking full advantage of the program?
Here are a few tips to consider when you’re getting up and running:
There are many other strategies your organization can employ to make its Google Ads more effective and, ultimately, reach more supporters. As you get more comfortable with the program, consider experimenting with more innovative or advanced strategies to see what resonates with your donors.
Additional Resources
Nonprofit Catalog – Read up on more nonprofit essentials by exploring our Nonprofit Catalog.
Demystifying the Google Ad Grant Requirements for Websites – Learn more about how to improve your website’s quality to satisfy Google’s Ad Grant requirements.
The Complete Guide to Google Ad Grant Agencies: 5 Options – The Google Ad Grant can be a lot to manage, especially when you’re limited on time. Learn how an agency can step in and optimize your nonprofit’s account.
The Top 3 Fundraising Metrics You Should Be Tracking
Fundraising is an increasingly data-driven activity, just like most other forms of business and marketing today.
For nonprofits, this makes sense. Effectively stewarding your limited resources with quantitative insights derived from data is a responsibility that simply comes with running a nonprofit. It’s essential for growing your reach and pursuing your mission over time.
Looking towards the new frontiers of nonprofit technology, artificial intelligence can take much of the guesswork out of campaign planning. However, you still need a solid understanding of the data that drives more technically complex processes that you might adopt, like AI.
But where do you start? What are the most important fundraising metrics that a nonprofit should prioritize tracking?
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and different metrics will be important in different circumstances, but here are what we consider to be three critical top-line metrics that nonprofits should track, study, and seek to improve for healthier fundraising and donor stewardship over time.
Fundraising ROI
Fundraising return on investment (ROI) is a fundamental metric that compares how much money you raise against how much you spent to raise it.
ROI essentially tells you about the effectiveness of your fundraising campaigns—do they generate revenue through donations, or do they cost more money to run than they make? Both outcomes can be valuable learning experiences, but a negative ROI typically means you’ve encountered issues that need immediate attention to keep your program healthy.
How to Calculate It
To calculate fundraising ROI for a campaign:
A positive ROI indicates that you raised more than you spent and generated revenue. The greater the ROI, the more effective the fundraising appeal was at securing donations. A negative ROI indicates that you spent more than you raised and lost revenue.
How to Improve It
There’s a practically infinite number of tactical ways to improve ROI depending on the unique context, audience, and goals of your campaigns. This open-endedness is the reason why digging even deeper with data is so useful but can also feel overwhelming.
There’s one core concept to understand: You need to raise more while spending less. The most fundamental way to do this is by better targeting your campaigns to specific donors in order to improve returns.
For example, rather than sending a direct mail appeal to an extremely broad segment of your donors, try tailoring your message to a smaller but more targeted list of donors who are actually likely to give right now. When you send the appeal, you’ll secure more and larger donations on average than you would have otherwise, and you’ll have spent less on printing and postage. The result is a stronger, positive ROI for the appeal.
Whether you’re seeking unrestricted annual gifts in a mail appeal, asking for support for a specific program via email, or inviting donors to your next big-ticket event, this underlying concept will improve your ROI. Machine learning technology offers the most direct way to get started targeting your donors, offering a quicker and more accurate approach than traditional data analysis techniques.
Donor Retention
Your nonprofit’s donor retention rate is the rate at which you retain active donors from one campaign (or other period of time) to another. How many donors who gave to one appeal gave again to the next one? What does churn look like in your regular giving program? How does your retention of those donors track over time?
Donor retention is critically important to your nonprofit’s bottom line. Retaining the support of existing donors is much more cost-effective than focusing solely on acquiring new ones. Tracking and continually seeking to improve your donor retention rate is a must.
After all, reaching new audiences, catching their attention, and inspiring them to give is a costly and time-consuming process. However, keeping existing donors excited about giving is an easier lift, and it allows your team to focus more on growing those relationships and gifts over time—meaning a larger base of support for more efficient fundraising in the future. This is especially true in your regular giving programs, where the cost of acquisition can be high.
How to Calculate It
To calculate your donor retention rate:
This will give you a top-line idea of how well your campaigns have retained the support of your existing donors.
But remember that this formula does not account for donor acquisition, meaning you could see strong retention metrics that are in fact inflated with new donors who joined halfway through the time period. Donor acquisition is great news, but don’t lose track of how well you’re encouraging them to actually stick around over time.
Effective data management software should make it easy to exclude specific types of donors, like those newly acquired, to keep your numbers accurate. The granularity to aim for will depend on exactly what you’re trying to accomplish, but it’s never a bad idea to dig deeper into the data when possible.
How to Improve It
Failing to retain donors, also called donor churn, can be caused by an extremely wide range of factors. Whatever the specific reasons that individuals choose not to engage with your campaigns, the overarching issue is that you’re losing their commitment.
This is especially critical when it comes to your recurring donation program since these donors generate such high value for your organization over the long run and can be costly to acquire. The program only succeeds when the churn rate is low.
The best way we know how to address churn at its source is to proactively identify churn risks in advance. Artificial intelligence technology can be used to screen your nonprofit’s CRM, find patterns that lead to churn, and flag these individuals for extra attention. Engage them with phone calls, other forms of personal outreach, or event invites—just don’t ask for another donation right away.
Donor Lifetime Value
Donor lifetime value (LTV) is a measure of how much a donor gives to your organization from their first donation up until the time they stop giving. LTV is often averaged across particular segments of your donor base.
Understanding your donor LTV is important because it allows you to make all kinds of informed cost-benefit decisions relating to acquisition, retention, and stewardship.
For example, acquiring new donors can be costly, but if you know that your campaign will attract a segment of donors with a high average LTV, the cost of carefully acquiring them will be worth it. Additionally, tracking your donor LTV over time can reveal deeper retention issues—if the average lifetime value of a core segment of your donor base is falling, you’re losing them to churn and should address it.
How to Calculate It
To calculate donor lifetime value, use the following formula:
Donor Lifetime Value = Average Donor Lifespan x Average Donation x Donor Frequency
To generate the metrics necessary for the formula, you’ll need to make some initial calculations:
Here’s an example: If 100 donors have given 1,000 gifts (totalling $100,000) in the past 5 years, and your average donor gives for 10 years, your LTV is:
Average lifespan = 10 years
Average donation = ($100,000 / 1,000 gifts) = $100
Donor frequency = (1,000 gifts / 100 donors / 5 years) = 2 gifts per donor per year
10 Years x $100 x 2 gifts = $2,000 LTV
In other words, these donors give 2 gifts of $100 every year for 10 years. The retained support of one of these donors represents a total of $2,000 for your mission over time.
How to Improve It
Many factors and unique contextual elements impact donor LTV, so it can be difficult to lay out a one-size-fits-all improvement strategy. However, the underlying issue is that donors aren’t sticking around long enough to give more and larger gifts over time.
Churn and disengagement are often at the root of dropping LTV metrics—anything you can do to retain donors and keep them excited about your mission should help. Identify at-risk donors in advance so you can personally reach out, invite them to more events, diversify your campaign offerings, and send a wider range of messages than just the same appeals each year.
To proactively improve LTV, pursue new stewardship opportunities, like by using AI to identify potential mid-level donors and singling them out for individual outreach. You can also explore corporate giving connections to help donors generate more value for your mission without needing to make more donations themselves.
The exact strategies you roll out to improve any of these metrics will vary based on the unique context and goals. But most importantly, be sure to actively track them over time and use tools like AI and a robust CRM platform to simplify the process of organizing and studying them.
By taking a strategic approach backed up with data, you can begin to develop concrete acquisition, engagement, and retention strategies for each bracket of your donor base as your organization grows.
Cause-Related Marketing: A Brief Guide for Nonprofits
In today’s world, consumers want to support corporations that emphasize ethical practices and work to make society a better place. For many businesses, that means taking part in corporate social responsibility and contributing to charitable organizations in their communities. From a nonprofit standpoint, this can lead to an increase in support from businesses and additional revenue for worthwhile causes.
Enter cause-related marketing. When charitable organizations and for-profit businesses work together, this impactful strategy has the power to elevate nonprofit/business partnerships and make a real difference in the world around us. However, many nonprofits fail to recognize the potential that cause marketing holds.
In this quick guide, we’ll provide you with some key insights and answer the following critical questions on the topic:
For businesses investing in cause-related marketing strategies, running a successful campaign can mean improved awareness, sales, and reputation. For nonprofits like yours, however, corporate cause marketing efforts can result in increased funding and long-term community partnerships.
Ready to learn more about this win-win situation and see how you can maximize its impact for your own cause? Let’s get started!
What is cause-related marketing?
Cause-related marketing is a specific type of corporate philanthropy in which companies partner with nonprofit organizations to spread the word about their brands while doing social good. By sponsoring a co-branded marketing campaign, the corporation often makes significant financial contributions to the nonprofit as well. This type of campaign creates a mutually beneficial relationship between for-profit and not-for-profit organizations with substantial advantages available to both parties.
How does cause-related marketing benefit nonprofits?
While cause-related marketing is typically seen as a corporate strategy, it simultaneously functions as effective marketing for nonprofit organizations that participate as well. Often, big corporations have larger marketing spends than charities that are typically on tighter budgets. As such, organizations can benefit from these partnerships (and free publicity!) in significant ways.
For example, cause-related marketing can result in the following advantages for nonprofits:
With these benefits and more, nonprofits are better able to secure much-needed revenue and drive their missions forward.
What are some examples of cause-related marketing efforts?
The first known example of a cause-related marketing campaign was spearheaded in 1983 by American Express. This company vowed to donate one cent to the Statue of Liberty restoration for every time a charge card was swiped, which resulted in increased card usage and new cardholders for the business as well as more than $1.7 million for the foundation rebuilding the statue.
Since then, these nonprofit/business partnerships have flourished. In recent times, a popular way that businesses support nonprofit organizations is by acting as a corporate sponsor on Giving Tuesday. For example, on Giving Tuesday 2020, DoorDash partnered with the leading network of nonprofit food pantries, Feeding America, to provide a meal to someone in need for every meal that was purchased through the food delivery app.
Alternatively, some companies choose to work with and support nonprofit efforts by sponsoring their events. This might happen on a smaller scale, with a local restaurant partnering with the neighborhood community center to host a walk-a-thon or similar fundraising event. When the business provides donations of funding or goods, the organization can, in turn, include them on promotional materials as a key sponsor for the event.
What are some best practices for cause-related marketing?
We’ve walked through some examples of successful campaigns and explored various reasons why nonprofits should invest in cause-related marketing. But how can you make sure your team gets the most out of your partnership efforts? Consider the following best practices.
1. Choose your corporate partners carefully.
Just like recruiting the right ambassadors for a fundraising campaign is critical for ensuring your organization is being represented well, so is choosing your corporate partners thoughtfully on an even larger scale. When you join forces with a for-profit business, their actions and practices reflect on your team, too. Therefore, it’s critical that you don’t go forging partnerships with just anyone!
To get started, consider seeking businesses with similar missions to your own. For example, if you run an animal welfare organization, you might reach out to companies selling pet food or other products. If you work for a food bank, you might consider local grocery stores or restaurants.
Corporations that have been philanthropically minded in the past might offer a good jumping-off point here. Just be sure to do thorough research before getting deeply involved. After all, the funding you might receive is not going to be worth tanking your organization’s hard-earned reputation by way of a poorly constructed partnership.
2. Avoid coming across as insincere.
A big concern with cause-related marketing strategies is that, when not done well, the organizations involved can be seen as hosting a cheap marketing ploy or scam. This often occurs when communications surrounding the partnership focus on emotional manipulation or guilting the audience into giving.
To avoid this negative light on your organization and its mission, be sure to communicate the impact of your partnership so that your audience understands its purpose. For example, you can incorporate real success stories about people who have benefited from your services. In doing so, you remind potential supporters and customers of the philanthropic need behind your organization rather than functioning as just another request for money.
3. Spread the word about your partnership.
While a lot of awareness about your cause-related marketing will likely come from your corporate partner, don’t forget to communicate the relationship and campaign specifics to your supporters as well.
Here are a few ideas to get the word out about your cause marketing efforts:
By taking the time and effort to market your cause marketing partnership, you can increase the impact that your campaign has on your organization’s bottom line. The more people who hear about it, the more you’ll raise for your mission and the more your business partner will benefit as well!
If you’re considering taking part in a cause-related marketing campaign, following these best practices is a great way to set your team (and the corporation’s!) up for continued success.
All in all, cause-related marketing strategies have the potential to drive dedicated organizations forward—both nonprofit and for-profit businesses alike. To get started as a nonprofit, be sure to keep an eye out for philanthropic-minded corporations and see where these partnerships can take you. Best of luck!