The nonprofit marketing space isn’t as straightforward as it once was. It’s easier than ever for nonprofits to connect with their supporters, but that also means there’s a lot of competition for donors’ attention.
One effective way to make your organization stand out is to create an ambassador program. Ambassadors can take the reins during fundraising or marketing campaigns, promoting your organization to their personal networks. This form of peer-to-peer marketing is highly compelling because people are more likely to support a cause that’s recommended by someone they know and trust.
To ensure your ambassador program gets up and running quickly and yields a high return on investment, we’ll explore these top tips:
Identify the right recruits.
Brand your ambassador program.
Create clear roles and expectations for ambassadors.
Empower ambassadors with training and resources.
Promote recognition and a sense of community.
Evaluate and adapt your program as needed.
Supporters often want more than just to help promote your nonprofit’s cause — they want to feel like members of your community. An ambassador program gives them an outlet to express their passion for your mission and share their enthusiasm with others.
1. Identify the right recruits.
Effective nonprofit influencers can be found almost anywhere. The best recruits for your ambassador program will all share one trait in common: a deep sense of commitment to your cause.
Search for individuals who have a strong existing relationship with your organization and are particularly vocal about their love for your cause. Potential ambassadors could be:
Donors
Volunteers
Peer-to-peer fundraisers
Beneficiaries of your programs
Social media followers
Use software solutions like your donor management system and volunteer management platform to identify long-time, highly engaged supporters. Filter your database by length of involvement or number of interactions to find your top supporters.
Then, personally reach out to these individuals with an invitation to join your ambassador program. Reference their past involvement to explain why you’re reaching out. For example, you might say: “Eliza, we are so excited to invite you to join our new ambassador program. Your passionate volunteer involvement and past peer-to-peer fundraising experience make you a perfect fit for our new program.”
2. Brand your ambassador program.
You’ll have an easier time bringing recruits on board when your ambassador program looks official and professional. Create an eye-catching brand for your program by thinking through the program’s:
Name
Logo
Tagline
Colors
Incorporate these brand elements into your promotional materials, such as your social media posts and personal emails to potential participants.
For example, here’s a flyer for a fictional environmental nonprofit ambassador program with a cohesive brand:
This flyer features the organization’s brand name, logo, and a QR code that potential participants can scan for more information.
You can also boost the sense of community by creating branded merchandise for your program, such as hats, T-shirts, or name tags. Offering new ambassadors matching items will help them feel like members of an exclusive team.
3. Create clear roles and expectations for ambassadors.
Ultimately, your ambassador program shouldn’t just provide new engagement opportunities for supporters — it should also tangibly support your marketing and fundraising efforts.
Take the following steps to ensure your ambassador program bolsters your existing strategies:
Set goals for your ambassadors internally. Determine the metrics you will track to assess your ambassador program’s effectiveness. For instance, you may track key performance indicators like peer-to-peer fundraising participation rates, donations that can be attributed to ambassadors’ influence, or social media engagement rates.
Define clear roles and responsibilities. For example, will ambassadors promote your peer-to-peer fundraisers? Will they share social media content? Will they speak on your behalf at events? All of the above may be possible. Delineate clear roles so that potential participants understand what will be expected of them.
Establish guidelines for program membership. Create clear regulations that ambassadors should follow when acting on behalf of your cause. For example, you might establish rules regarding the type of content ambassadors can share on behalf of your organization, such as pre-approved images or messages.
When potential ambassadors understand what your program entails, you can narrow down your recruit list to just individuals who feel comfortable with the role expectations. And with clear metrics to guide your program, you can determine whether it’s a worthwhile use of your time and resources.
4. Empower ambassadors with training and resources.
Invite your new ambassadors to a training session to help them get up and running in their new roles. Depending on how spread out your ambassadors are, you might host a video or in-person meeting. Reiterate the role expectations and let ambassadors get to know one another with some icebreaker activities.
Also, craft a training manual for ambassadors to follow while promoting your organization. Your manual should include your brand guidelines and ambassador program regulations. You should also include marketing materials that ambassadors can use in their promotional efforts, such as:
Personalized donation page links. Give each ambassador a personalized donation page link with a custom URL. You can even let them personalize the page with information about their connection to your cause and photos of themselves participating in your events or volunteer opportunities.
Custom graphics. Create branded graphics that ambassadors can use in their promotional materials, such as fundraising thermometers or infographics. You can use a tool such as the Bloomerang fundraising thermometer generator to quickly create a graphic with your nonprofit’s brand colors.
Messaging guidelines. Provide ambassadors with a variety of messages they can use in social media posts or emails. Make sure they’re clear about your nonprofit’s tone and brand voice. For example, you might advise them to strike a friendly, approachable tone in their social media posts.
Let ambassadors know that they can come to you at any time with questions or concerns. You may even set up a mentorship or buddy program within your ambassador group to ensure each participant has at least one peer they can turn to for support.
5. Promote recognition and a sense of community.
Fostering a strong community among your ambassadors can encourage program retention. Plus, when ambassadors have fun supporting your mission and feel engaged in your cause, their promotional efforts will be much more genuine.
Pull from your donor recognition playbook to develop an appreciation approach for your ambassador program. Show your gratitude by:
Offering ambassadors-only communication avenues, such as a Facebook group or group chat
Publicly recognizing ambassadors on social media and within blog posts
Sending thank-you gifts and personalized gratitude messages
Sharing wins with ambassadors, such as donation increases, to highlight their impact
Celebrate your ambassadors’ accomplishments through meet-ups and events such as a happy hour or picnic. You can even host an award ceremony to honor your most successful ambassadors and thank them for their hard work.
6. Evaluate and adapt your program as needed.
As your ambassador program gets underway, you might find that certain strategies aren’t working out as expected. Remain flexible and adjust your program when necessary to continue offering a high-quality experience to participants and ensure that your program effectively supports your nonprofit.
Continuously evaluate your program by taking the following steps:
Survey ambassadors to ask for their feedback on your program. Ask questions about their level of satisfaction with the program, any suggestions they have for improving the program, and areas where they may need more support. Highlight any trends in their responses and incorporate their feedback as applicable.
Track metrics to assess progress made toward your goals. Keep an eye on the key performance indicators you identified during the planning process. Note any drastic increases or decreases in your metrics, investigate potential causes, and adjust your approach accordingly.
Supporting your ambassadors every step of the way is one of the most effective ways to ensure a high ROI for your program. Take ambassadors’ feedback seriously to ensure you’re continuing to meet their needs and providing a positive experience.
Once your ambassador program gets up and running, it can be a powerful addition to your marketing strategy. Your ambassadors can help you connect with new potential donors and spread awareness of your mission more effectively. With these tips, you’ll make sure they have everything they need to perform their roles at a high level.
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Bloomerang_NXUnite_6-Tips-to-Create-an-Ambassador-Program-for-Your-Nonprofit_Feature.png7401400Connie Zhanghttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgConnie Zhang2023-10-04 16:05:502023-10-04 16:18:156 Tips to Create an Ambassador Program for Your Nonprofit
These days, almost everything has gone digital—even fundraising. Hosting your fundraising campaign online is beneficial not only for the existing donors in your community, but also for reaching new donors. An online campaign can expand your reach beyond your community, acting as an innovative way to engage supporters from across the country and even the world.
To get started, you’ll need a compelling fundraising campaign idea that aligns with your nonprofit’s goals and meets your unique audience’s interests and motivations. Not sure where to begin? Explore our roundup of the top online fundraising ideas guaranteed to spur donations and help you achieve your fundraising goals:
Host a combination of these campaigns or use them as inspiration to plan a unique online fundraiser at any point of the year. Let’s dive in!
Peer-to-Peer Fundraiser
Peer-to-peer fundraising is a fun and engaging way to get your supporters directly involved in the fundraising process. During a peer-to-peer fundraiser, you’ll hand over the fundraising reins to your most loyal supporters, empowering them to create their own fundraising pages. By tapping their personal networks to help meet their fundraising goals, your supporters will effectively introduce you to brand new donors, boosting your donor acquisition rate.
Recruit supporters to help: Market your peer-to-peer campaign online using channels like your website, social media, and email to help promote this opportunity and pique your existing supporters’ interest. You can also reach out to well-connected supporters, like board members and major donors, to serve as ambassadors and lend a helping hand in fundraising.
Provide training and instructions: Consider hosting an online training session to go over peer-to-peer fundraising best practices and how to create a personal fundraising page. You can also consolidate these instructions in a digital guidebook that can be accessed at any time. Make sure you have a point-person to field any supporter questions and walk them through best practices if they need additional advice.
Pair your campaign with exciting events: Consider hosting your peer-to-peer fundraiser alongside an event to increase engagement, such as a walk-a-thon, an online silent auction, or a livestreamed panel with members of your team who can discuss your cause in detail.
Once your fundraiser concludes, remember to thank all of your peer-to-peer fundraisers who helped make it happen. A handwritten thank-you note or shout-out on social media can go a long way in helping your supporters feel appreciated and eager to champion your cause again in the future.
Matching Gift Campaign
According to 360MatchPro’s guide to corporate philanthropy, a matching gift campaign allows your nonprofit to double the impact of donors’ gifts with the help of corporate support. In a matching gift campaign, corporate donors will match gifts during a certain period of time. For example, if a donor gave $100 to your nonprofit, a corporate sponsor might match this at a 1:1 ratio, resulting in $200 for your nonprofit.
To get started with matching gifts, follow these steps:
Research companies with similar values and interests: Research local businesses and ask your board members and staff for references of companies who may be interested. Even if they say no to providing a matching gift, they may be a valuable resource to tap into for future fundraisers, such as sponsorship opportunities or silent auction item procurement.
Create a corporate sponsorship proposal: Create a letter that pitches a partnership, outlines what type of support you’re seeking (such as matching at a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio), and when you hope to host a matching gift campaign. You’ll also need to explain how the gift matching will help bring your nonprofit closer to reaching its goals and how your corporate partner will benefit from this arrangement. For instance, you might promote their company in your marketing materials to help expand their reach in exchange for financial support.
Follow up and express appreciation: At the end of your matching gift campaign, let your corporate partner know how much you raised and how the funds will be used to further your mission. Expressing gratitude can help you secure their support again in the future.
Make sure to promote your matching gift campaign widely and well in advance so supporters know when it’s happening and how they can get involved.
Text-to-Give Campaign
A text-to-give campaign is one of the easiest ways to raise money online. It enables donors to give donations at any time on their own devices. Supporters simply submit donations right from their phones, making the donation process inherently convenient, simple, and rewarding.
You can use text-to-give donation channels for everyday fundraising, not just during an event. Using it is easy—all your supporters need is a specific keyword and the short- or long-code that they’ll text (which should be provided by your text-to-give solution). This will automatically take mobile donors to your nonprofit’s donation page.
Be sure to find a good software solution that can support virtual transactions and customizations specific to your nonprofit. Specifically, look for a text-to-give solution that offers features like:
Gamification tools to inspire giving, including a scoreboard
Automated email receipts
Flexible payment options
Donor data collection and automated reports
On top of having the right fundraising technology, you also need to make sure you’re doing everything possible to build up your contact list. Promote your text-to-give campaign widely to encourage all your supporters to opt-in. A multichannel marketing plan can help you put your text-to-give campaign at the forefront of supporters’ minds, so consider generating content related to text-to-give on your social media, website, and email newsletters.
Crowdfunding Campaign
If you’re looking for a campaign that will make a big impact without asking your donors to empty their wallets, a crowdfunding campaign might be right for you. A crowdfunding campaign raises smaller amounts of revenue from a large pool of donors—think $5 per person. If you ask a group of 100 donors to give that much, you will walk away with a hefty donation, and your donors won’t feel fatigued.
Most crowdfunding campaigns happen online, so you’ll need to establish a strong digital presence for your fundraiser. Consider creating a fundraising microsite with the following elements:
Embedded donation form with a simple donation process and limited prompts
Your nonprofit’s branding
Storytelling that explains how the donations will be used, including emotionally compelling visuals
Social sharing features so supporters can promote your microsite among their personal networks
After your crowdfunding campaign wraps up, be sure to show your appreciation to all of your participating donors and share how the donations will be used. By cultivating relationships with these donors, you can increase the likelihood that they’ll continue to come back and donate to your organization again and again!
Wrapping Up
As you think through which fundraising idea makes the most sense for your organization, consider your audience and what will excite them the most to give. Then, channel that idea into a well-designed online campaign that will help you spread awareness and bring in more funds.
Before you dive into your new campaign, make sure you’re working with the best fundraising technology so you can run your online campaign seamlessly. An all-in-one fundraising platform will provide your nonprofit with everything you need to succeed, whether you’re hosting an in-person, online, or hybrid campaign. Happy fundraising!
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/OneCause-NXUnite-4-Online-Fundraising-Campaign-Ideas-to-Boost-Your-Reach-Feature.jpg7341600HannahThttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgHannahT2023-10-04 15:16:022023-10-04 15:16:024 Online Fundraising Campaign Ideas to Boost Your Reach
The Google Ad Grant is an invaluable tool for reaching potential donors and supporters online. While receiving the grant and setting up your account is a great first step, it takes more work to leverage the full potential of your free ad spend.
For the best results, you need to maintain and optimize your account. Here are seven steps to get started:
Whether you’re a seasoned digital marketer or a nonprofit professional new to Google Ad Grants, these insights will help you improve your online visibility, attract more donors and volunteers, and make a greater impact in the communities you serve.
Before diving into the seven strategies for optimizing a Google Grant account, let’s answer some frequently asked questions.
What is a Google Grant Account?
The Google Ad Grant provides eligible nonprofits with $10,000 worth of in-kind advertising on Google Search each month, helping them reach a wider audience and connect with more potential supporters online.
After applying for the grant and being accepted into the program, nonprofits receive an account through which they can create and display ads on Google without the need to make any payments.
The Importance of Optimizing a Google Grant Account
If you want to make the most of $10,000 in free ad spend per month, you need to be willing to adapt and make improvements on an ongoing basis. Here are a few reasons why optimizing a Google Grant account is important:
Improved ad performance: Optimization techniques, such as keyword research, ad copy testing, and audience targeting, will help your ads appear in relevant searches and attract clicks.
Maximum impact: By optimizing your Google Grant account, you can ensure that your ads reach the right audience and attract engaged users who are interested in your nonprofit’s mission and services. This, in turn, can lead to increased donations, volunteer sign-ups, and support for your cause.
Compliance with Google’s requirements: Google has specific requirements and guidelines for participating in the Google Ad Grant program. Failure to meet these requirements can result in account suspension, making optimization crucial to maintaining eligibility.
Remember, even with the Google Ad Grant, your nonprofit is competing with paid advertisers for ad space. Optimization helps level the playing field, allowing you to stand out and succeed in the highly competitive digital advertising landscape.
7 Steps to Optimize Your Google Grant Account
Now that you understand the importance of optimizing a Google Grant account, let’s explain how to actually do it!
1. Partner with a qualified Google Ad Grants agency.
Without prior experience, optimizing a Google Grant Account can be a daunting task. Thankfully, there are Google Ad Grants agencies that provide valuable expertise and insight into the process.
Here are just a few areas of our recommended agency, Getting Attention’s expertise:
Account setup: Getting Attention assists nonprofits in setting up their Google Ad Grants account correctly, ensuring compliance with all program policies and eligibility requirements.
Google Grant reactivation: If your account lapses or is disabled, Getting Attention will get your Google Ad Grant reactivated in no time, so you can continue doing the work that matters.
Keyword research: Getting Attention conducts thorough keyword research to identify relevant and high-impact keywords aligned with your mission and goals.
Campaign monitoring: The Getting Attention team will regularly monitor the performance of ad campaigns, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven optimizations to enhance results.
By working with an agency like Getting Attention, you can leverage the expertise of professionals who specialize in mission-driven marketing and digital advertising. This partnership will help your nonprofit create more impactful ad campaigns and attract support for your cause.
For more information on the benefits of working with a Google Ad Grant agency, watch this video:
2. Conduct regular keyword research.
Keyword research helps nonprofits understand which search terms and phrases are most frequently used by their target audience and allows them to optimize their ad campaigns accordingly. By regularly conducting keyword research, you ensure that your online content is optimized for the search terms and phrases that are most relevant to your cause.
Keep these tips in mind as you choose your keywords:
Understand your nonprofit’s goals. Start by clarifying your nonprofit’s advertising goals. Determine what specific actions you want users to take when they visit your website. For example, do you want them to donate, sign up for a newsletter, volunteer, or learn more about your programs? Understanding your goals will help you identify the most relevant keywords to target.
Brainstorm relevant keywords. Consider what potential supporters might search for when looking for organizations like yours and compile a list of relevant keywords. Include general keywords as well as specific terms that align with your goals. For instance, if you run an animal shelter, you might target the keywords “pet adoption” and “how to adopt a rescue dog.”
Use Google’s Keyword Planner. Google’s Keyword Planner is a free tool within Google Ads that helps you find relevant keywords and get insights into their search volume and competition. Enter your list of keywords into the Keyword Planner to see how frequently they are searched and get suggestions for other related keywords.
It’s also important to update the negative keywords that you want to exclude from triggering your ads. For example, if your nonprofit focuses on environmental conservation, you may want to add “hunting” or “pollution” as negative keywords to ensure your ads are shown only to the most relevant audiences.
3. Create well-structured ad groups.
Google Ad Groups are a way of organizing ads within your account. An ad group typically contains a set of ads that share similar targets, such as keywords, locations, or devices.
Well-defined ad groups allow for better targeting, ensuring that the right messaging is delivered to the right people.
Here’s an example of how a marine conservation nonprofit might organize ads according to the two different programs they offer:
Ad Group 1: “Marine Wildlife Conservation” Keywords: Marine wildlife conservation, ocean conservation, marine species protection Ad Copy: “Help Protect Marine Wildlife. Support Our Ocean Conservation Efforts Today!”
Ad Group 2: “Beach Cleanup Volunteers” Keywords: Beach cleanup, ocean cleanup volunteer, coastal cleanup Ad Copy: “Join Our Beach Cleanup Volunteers. Make a Difference for Our Oceans.”
Continuously review and refine your keyword list for each ad group. Add new relevant keywords and remove irrelevant or low-performing ones.
4. Write compelling ad copy.
Well-crafted ad copy encourages users to click on the ad to learn more about your organization. To maximize your click-through rate (CTR), take these steps:
Craft compelling headlines. Write attention-grabbing headlines that are concise, clear, and highlight the unique value proposition of your nonprofit.
Use relevant keywords. Incorporate relevant keywords into your ad copy, especially in the headline and description. When users see the keywords they searched for in your ad, it increases the ad’s relevance, making them more likely to click.
Include a strong call-to-action (CTA). Include a clear and persuasive CTA that encourages users to take the desired action. Use verbs to prompt action, such as “Donate Now,” “Volunteer Today,” or “Learn More.”
If you’re in need of inspiration, review other top-ranking ads to see what they’re doing right.
For instance, let’s say you’re trying to target keywords related to food insecurity. Do a quick Google search to see what’s ranking number #1 for these queries:
Then, craft your ad copy with these top-ranking ads in mind, possibly emulating those popular “How to” statements in the headline.
5. Establish a landing page strategy.
Landing pages that you link in your ads should be designed to convert visitors into donors, volunteers, or supporters. For the best results, ensure that your landing pages are:
Relevant: The content and messaging on the landing page should directly align with the ad copy and the user’s search intent. Make sure visitors receive the information they’re looking for after clicking on the ad.
Mobile-friendly: Given the prevalence of mobile users, it’s crucial to have a mobile-friendly landing page. Ensure that the page is responsive and displays correctly on various screen sizes.
Visually appealing: The landing page should feature design and branding elements that reinforce your nonprofit’s identity and create a cohesive user experience. This includes using your organization’s logo, typography, and color scheme to establish brand recognition.
Conduct A/B testing (also known as split testing) on your landing pages to identify which elements resonate best with your audience. Continuously re-test and optimize these elements over time to improve the page’s performance.
6. Use conversion tracking.
Google Ads conversion tracking allows advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns by tracking specific actions that users take after clicking on their ads. Not only is setting up conversion tracking beneficial to your ad performance, but it’s also a requirement of the Google Ad Grant. Here’s how it works:
Advertisers define the specific actions they want to track as conversions. This could be completing a donation, filling out a contact form, signing up for a newsletter, or any other valuable action that aligns with the campaign’s objectives.
Once the conversion actions are defined, Google Ads generates a unique snippet of code called a “conversion tag” or “tracking pixel” for each conversion action. This code needs to be placed on the relevant web page or confirmation page that users see after completing the desired action (i.e., the “thank you” page after a successful donation).
When a user clicks on an ad and performs the desired action on the website, such as donating, the conversion tag on the confirmation page is triggered.
The triggered conversion tag sends data back to Google Ads, indicating that the conversion action has been completed. Google Ads then associates this data with the specific ad click that led to the conversion.
In the Google Ads dashboard, your team can view conversion data, including the number of conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion. Armed with that data, evaluate the performance of your campaigns and identify which ads are driving the most valuable actions.
7. Stay up-to-date on Google Ad Grant policies.
The main policies of the Google Ad Grant program include maintaining a minimum 5% click-through rate (CTR) across the account, adhering to a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid limit of $2, and using only text-based ads without images or videos. Nonprofits must also comply with Google’s website policy, ensuring transparency and relevance in their ad campaigns and website content.
Since these policies are subject to change, it’s important to stay informed. To keep up with Google Ad Grant policies and maintain compliance, follow these steps:
Visit the Google Ad Grants website. Regularly check the official Google Ad Grants website for the most up-to-date information on program policies, eligibility requirements, and guidelines.
Subscribe to certified Google Ad Grant newsletters. Sign up for newsletters to receive updates, announcements, and insights directly from Google.
Follow Google Ads and Google for Nonprofits on social media. Follow Google Ads and Google for Nonprofits on social media platforms like LinkedIn. They often share important updates and news about the Ad Grant program.
Set regular calendar reminders to check for policy updates and review your Google Ad Grant account’s compliance.
A Final Note About Optimizing Your Google Grant Account
Although optimizing a Google Ad Grant account requires consistent time and effort, it will ultimately lead to increased visibility for your nonprofit.
If you’re still not sure where to start, remember there are Google Ad Grant agencies like Getting Attention that will work alongside your nonprofit to create a digital advertising strategy that aligns with your goals.
For more information on Google Ad Grants, check out these additional resources:
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Optimize-a-Google-Grant-Account_Feature-1.jpg7401400shannon.moranhttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgshannon.moran2023-09-29 10:51:132023-09-29 10:51:17How to Optimize a Google Grant Account in 7 Easy Steps
If you’re a nonprofit professional looking for an affordable way to expand your organization’s online presence and reach a wider audience, then you’re in the right place. The Google Ad Grant offers eligible nonprofits up to $10,000 a month in free advertising on Google.
But with so many organizations vying for the grant, how do you stand out from the competition and secure the funding you deserve? That’s where this guide comes in.
Whether you’re a tech-savvy marketer or a nonprofit newbie, we’ll teach you how to apply for the Google Ad Grant and ensure that you’re prepared to maximize the benefits of free ad spend. Let’s get started!
FAQs About the Google Ad Grant Application
Before we dive into the specifics of the Google Ad Grant application process, let’s answer some frequently asked questions.
1. What is the Google Ad Grant?
The Google Ad Grant is a powerful digital marketing tool that provides eligible nonprofits with up to $10,000 in free ad spend per month. The grant can be used to create search ads in order to drive more traffic to the nonprofit’s website or to attract more donations and volunteers.
Here’s how it works: With a Google Ad Grants account, you create ads to show on Google Search. When a user searches for terms relevant to your nonprofit’s cause, your ads will appear either independently or in positions below paid ads.
For more information on the Google Ad Grant, watch this video:
2. What are the benefits of applying for the Google Ad Grant?
The Google Ad Grant program empowers nonprofits to target specific keywords relevant to their cause and optimize their online presence. That way, when someone searches for a term related to your mission, your content is most likely to appear at the top of the search results and attract their attention (as well as their support).
Plus, the Google Ad Grant program provides access to free ad spend. Rather than having to allocate a significant portion of your budget to digital marketing, you can invest in other critical areas of your organization’s operations and programs.
3. How long does the Google Ad Grant application process take?
The timeline for the application process can vary based on several factors, including the responsiveness of your nonprofit, the completeness of your application, and the volume of applications being reviewed by Google.
How to Apply for the Google Ad Grant in 5 Steps
Now that you know what the grant is and how it can benefit your nonprofit, let’s explore how to effectively apply for the Google Ad Grant:
Be a verified nonprofit. Nonprofits need to be a verified nonprofit in their country of operation. In the United States, this means achieving 501(c)(3) status.
Enroll in Google for Nonprofits or TechSoup. If your organization is not already registered with TechSoup or Google for Nonprofits, sign up and complete the registration process. These platforms help validate your nonprofit status.
Have a functional and secure website. You must have a functioning website with substantial content related to its mission and programs. The website should also be HTTP-certified.
Comply with Ad Grants policies. Agree to comply with all Google Ad Grants policies and guidelines, including those related to acceptable content, quality standards, and website requirements.
Keep in mind that eligibility requirements may vary slightly depending on the country or region where the nonprofit operates. Review the specific guidelines provided by Google for Nonprofits in your respective country to ensure you’re compliant.
3. Complete the Google Ad Grants enrollment process
Visit the Google Ad Grants website and follow the instructions to enroll your organization. Provide the necessary information about your nonprofit, such as:
Basic information about your nonprofit organization, such as its name, address, and website.
Your organization’s registered charity number or equivalent legal status documentation.
The location and type of activities your nonprofit conducts.
Your organization’s mission statement and how Google Ads will help further that mission.
A brief summary of your current online advertising efforts, if any.
A description of the target audience for your ads.
Your marketing goals and what you hope to achieve with the Ad Grants program.
It’s important to fill out the eligibility form accurately and completely, as incomplete or inaccurate information may delay or prevent your nonprofit from being approved for the Google Ad Grants program.
3. Build a strong website
Ensure that your website has relevant and high-quality content that aligns with your organization’s mission and the keywords you plan to target in your ad campaigns.
Write clear calls to action (CTAs). Place clear and compelling calls to action throughout your website to encourage visitors to take desired actions, such as donating, signing up for newsletters, volunteering, or attending events. Make the CTAs prominent, easily clickable, and enticing, so visitors are more likely to engage with your organization.
Ensure a mobile-friendly design. Optimize your website for mobile devices as a significant portion of online traffic comes from mobile users. Ensure that your website is responsive and provides a seamless user experience across different screen sizes and devices. Mobile-friendly websites are preferred by Google and offer a better experience for your visitors.
Set up conversion tracking. Implement conversion tracking and use analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to measure the effectiveness of your Google Ad Grant campaigns and website performance. Track key metrics like click-through rates, conversions, and bounce rates to gain insights into the impact of your ads and identify areas for improvement.
By following these tips, you can enhance the user experience, increase engagement, and maximize the impact of your Google Ad Grant campaigns. Remember to regularly review and optimize your website based on user behavior and campaign performance data to continuously improve your results.
4. Craft compelling campaigns
Develop an effective advertising strategy to promote your organization and its initiatives. This involves:
Identifying target keywords. Conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant and targeted keywords for your ad campaigns. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner to discover keywords with high search volume and low competition. Focus on keywords that align with your nonprofit’s mission, services, or target audience.
Creating engaging ad copy. Craft compelling ad copy that grabs the attention of your audience. Highlight your nonprofit’s unique value proposition and include a clear call to action. Use language that resonates with your target audience and showcases the impact of their support.
Designing compelling landing pages. Ensure that your ad campaigns direct users to relevant landing pages on your website. For instance, if you’re asking users to donate, the CTA should link to the donation page on your website. These pages should have clear and concise information and easy navigation to encourage conversions.
Continuously test and optimize your ad campaigns to improve performance. Conduct A/B testing by creating variations of your ads and measuring their effectiveness. Test different headlines, ad copy, call to actions, and visuals to identify what resonates best with your audience and drives higher click-through rates and conversions.
5. Submit your application
Once you submit your application for the Google Ad Grant program, it will be reviewed by Google to ensure compliance with the program guidelines and policies. As previously mentioned, the approval process varies but typically takes a few weeks. During this time, Google may request additional information or clarifications.
Then, you’ll receive a notification from Google regarding the status of your application. If approved, you can begin using your Google Ad Grant to run ads and promote your nonprofit!
A Final Note About the Google Ad Grant Application
The Google Ad Grants program offers a valuable opportunity for nonprofit organizations to promote their missions online with free Google Ads. If you need assistance throughout the application process, consider working with our recommended Google Ad Grants agency: Getting Attention.
Their team of experts will ensure that your nonprofit meets the eligibility requirements, submits a successful application, and leverages the Google Ad Grant effectively.
For more information on the Google Ad Grant, check out these additional resources:
Search Engine Optimization for Nonprofits—Nonprofit Catalog. Once you’re nonprofit is approved for the Google Ad Grant, you will need to implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices to ensure your content ranks #1 in the search results.
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/How-to-apply-for-the-Google-Ad-Grant_Feature.jpg7401400shannon.moranhttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgshannon.moran2023-09-28 10:23:182023-09-28 10:23:22How to Apply for the Google Ad Grant: A Comprehensive Guide
Picture this: You’re running your most successful phone-a-thon fundraiser in years. Your marketing strategy really hit home, and your phones are ringing off the hook. There’s one problem, though. You simply don’t have enough employees to manage the incoming calls.
You have tons of donors ready to give, but you lack the operational capacity to manage their generosity. What’s the end result? Missed opportunities and a decline in donor retention.Maybe this example is a little extreme, but the principle is true. Nonprofits that avoid recruiting high-value employees tend to run some serious risks.
Great employees not only help you crush your to-dos, but they also bring a fresh level of passion and commitment to your organization. In fact, 88% of millennials consider their job more fulfilling when they have opportunities to have a positive impact on society.
Kickstarting the employee recruitment process can seem daunting at first, but it helps if you break the process down into manageable steps.
What is employee recruitment?
Employee recruitment is the process of connecting with potential new employees to assess whether they’d be a good fit for an organization’s open positions. This process can take a while to perfect and will look different as your organization evolves.
Ideally, recruiting employees is a win-win for your organization. Nonprofits fill positions with capable employees and individuals find a place to work that aligns with their values and schedule. Finding these employees can be trial and error, that’s why it’s important to implement a detailed employee recruitment and review process.
Why do organizations need recruitment strategies?
Filling positions can be time-consuming and challenging. By setting hiring and recruitment strategies, you can acquire the right talent, drive growth, and adapt to changing circumstances without spending as much time as you would otherwise.
Let’s break down some of the most important reasons to develop a recruitment plan:
Innovation and Growth: Fresh perspectives and diverse skill sets brought in through thoughtful recruitment can lead to new ideas and increased productivity.
Adaptation to Change: As your organization’s needs evolve, you may need to adapt your workforce to address those changes. Recruitment strategies enable you to respond to changing market conditions, technological advancements, and industry trends.
Better Matches for Positions: You want to hire the right people for the job, and creating recruitment strategies will help you find individuals who possess the right skills and are a good culture fit. In turn, that can also improve employee satisfaction and performance once they get up and running.
Reduced Costs: Carefully planned recruitment strategies can help control recruitment costs by optimizing the selection process and reducing turnover rates.
A solid employee recruitment and hiring plan can support your organization in a variety of ways, from staying on top of industry changes to generally finding good fits for your team. In turn, you’ll be able to fill immediate staffing needs and impact the long-term success of your organization.
What are the steps of the employee recruitment process?
An employee recruitment process can be tailored to each position and changed over time. However, it’s helpful to have a general guideline to refer back to. Let’s take a look at some defined steps:
Set a goal. Assess which areas of your organization could use some extra management or expertise. This might be a goal for how many employees you’d like to bring on board or what roles you’re looking to fill at your organization.
Write a comprehensive job description. Include your job requirements, preferred experience, and what a day in the life of this position would look like. Feel free to also detail what qualifications an ideal candidate would have to offer.
Update your benefits. Take a total rewards approach to compensation, especially if you’re recruiting for nonprofit positions. This approach views employee compensation holistically, taking into account not only salary but also indirect benefits like paid time off and retirement benefits. This, in turn, leads to higher performance levels and productivity.
Promote your open positions widely. When recruiting employees, LinkedIn is a go-to. Other online job boards and in-person recruitment fairs are great places to promote your new positions as well. To prepare for in-person networking events and fairs, carry printed promotional materials to explain your organization.
Conduct targeted recruitment. Reach out directly to prospective employees with the right qualifications. If you’ve done some digging on LinkedIn, message a qualified potential candidate directly. Let them know why you think they’d be a good fit and offer your contact information to facilitate future communication.
Throughout this process, keep your options open by casting a wide net. You may have your heart set on a couple of candidates, but keep in mind that plans change for a variety of reasons. Your main goal should be to recruit as many qualified candidates as possible. The next section will show you how to conduct interviews that effectively filter through these candidates.
8 tips for a successful interview process
After you’ve set up interviews with potential recruits, you must ensure that your interview process is well-thought-through to find the right candidate for the job. Make sure that each candidate understands and aligns with your organization’s values, whether they involve giving back to the community, strengthening your diversity and inclusion initiatives, or being responsive to customers.
Follow these tips to hold productive interviews:
Thank candidates for their time. Usually, high-value candidates are not on the job market for long. Thank them for devoting their time to the interview.
Make candidates feel comfortable. Provide a brief overview of the topics you’ll cover in the interview ahead of time. This helps candidates settle in and mentally prepare.
Ask insightful questions. Open-ended questions can give a full picture of the candidate’s professional background and personality. Consider questions like:
Why are you interested in this position?
What strengths would you bring to this position?
What kind of working environment do you perform best in?
What are you passionate about?
What are some professional accomplishments that you are proud of?
Give your candidates enough time to answer your questions. Pace your questions so that a candidate can answer them fully. Otherwise, your interview can feel more like a rapid-fire interrogation. If a candidate is confused by a question, rephrase it in a way they can understand.
Leave time for your candidates to ask you questions. Candidates are interviewing you too. If a candidate has done their research about your organization, they most likely will have some questions. Leave enough time to answer their inquiries and provide your contact information if more questions come up.
Provide an expected timeline. End your interview by providing an expectation for when you are going to reach back out to the candidate. The usual response period is between one to two weeks.
Check references. Ask your candidates to provide a reference sheet with two to three references and their contact information. Check these references and their credentials before hiring any new candidates.
Follow up when candidates don’t get the job. It’s helpful to provide closure for applicants and explain why you’re going in a different direction. This ensures you don’t burn any bridges.
In-depth interview processes proactively assess a candidate’s qualifications. Once you have decided on your candidates, be sure to extend them a warm welcome to your team. Keep in mind that regular employee performance reviews are also necessary to keep your team in tip-top shape. Once hired, employees expect consistent and honest feedback for their work.
How do we keep recruited team members engaged?
Recruitment takes a lot of energy and funds, so you want to ensure that the candidates you pick stay for the long term. Here are some tactics you can use to boost your recruitment’s ROI and keep team members engaged:
Open communication between management and directs
Make your organization feel like a close-knit team by encouraging open communication in the workplace. Schedule consistent one-on-one meetings between new employees and managers to help them surmount challenges, boost confidence, and progress in their roles. Doing so allows them to have more frequent conversations about their work approach and feel supported at your company.
At the same time, encourage managers to share regular feedback with their directs, recognizing outstanding performance and sharing areas where they can improve moving forward. This approach removes any uncertainty or guesswork among employees regarding their performance.
Offer upward mobility
A stagnant work structure may lead to employee burnout and disengagement from your organization. Studies show that employees experiencing burnout are 3.4 times more likely to leave the company and nearly 2 times more likely to feel disconnected from company culture. Fortunately, you can minimize the risk of burnout and disengagement by giving employees the opportunity to grow and take on more significant responsibilities over time.
One easy way to accomplish this is to offer professional development opportunities. These may range from a mentorship program to online courses. As a result, you’ll not only keep employees invested in their roles, but you’ll also help them improve their performance in those roles.
Embrace employee recognition
Employee recognition is a vital component of a thriving workplace, enhancing overall job satisfaction and fostering a sense of belonging. While feedback from upper management is important, it’s equally crucial to empower employees to recognize each other’s contributions, too. Consider the following strategies:
Peer-to-Peer Recognition Systems: Implement systems where employees can nominate their peers for awards like Team Member of the Month or use public shout-out boards to highlight outstanding work.
Milestone Celebrations: Plan events for birthdays, work anniversaries, Employee Appreciation Day, and other significant milestones to build a sense of community within teams.
Digital Gratitude Cards: Encourage managers to recognize employees’ hard work immediately and personally with digital greeting cards. To power this strategy, invest in employee recognition eCard software. Here’s an example of a custom recognition eCard that highlights an organizational value:
Whichever recognition approach you take, strive to make employees feel valued not only by their colleagues but also by the organization as a whole. Acknowledging employees’ efforts and achievements on multiple levels leads to higher engagement, stronger teamwork, and improved morale.
Involve employees in decision-making
Employees want to know that management values their ideas. With this in mind, open the floor for them to provide suggestions about your organization’s culture or strategies by sending out regular surveys soliciting their feedback.
Even if you don’t accept all suggestions, it’s important to acknowledge and express gratitude to employees for taking the time to provide their input.
Respect work-life balance
While your employees work for you to make a living, work should not be their entire lives. Respect work-life boundaries by clearly delineating your expectations for work hours and limiting work-related communication on the weekends.
Furthermore, encourage employees to take breaks and consider offering flexible work hours so they can adjust their schedules to maximize productivity. Promote their overall well-being by initiating wellness activities and providing mental health support resources to employees.
Empower employees to be independent
You chose your job candidates because you see potential in them to make an impact on your organization. Enable them to explore projects they’re interested in, take ownership of their assignments, and make independent decisions. They’ll feel much more confident and fulfilled in their roles, and you may even cultivate future leaders within your company.
There are many types of workplace giving you can pursue, such as matching gifts and volunteer grants. Through these programs, your company will contribute a certain amount of funds to nonprofits that employees donate their money or time to.
To facilitate these philanthropic initiatives, consider investing in workplace giving software. These technology solutions make it easy to organize your program, engage employees, and report on impact.
As your employee base changes over time, so should your engagement strategies. Gauge the effectiveness of your strategies as time passes by sending surveys, researching new trends, and staying open to suggestions from your employees.
Additional Resources
Nonprofit Catalog – Read up on more nonprofit essentials by exploring our Nonprofit Catalog.
Event planning is one of many important parts of effective association management. A well-planned association event not only boosts your revenue and engages existing members, but it can recruit new ones as well.
Members make an association. And recruiting new members is just as important as retaining current members! Recruiting helps association growth and keeps numbers up when old members leave.
In this guide, we’ll discuss five essential ways your organization can incorporate events into your member recruitment strategy to enhance your results.
1. Determine your target audience
Before you begin planning an upcoming event to increase member recruitment, it’s important to understand your association’s target audience. There are different reasons for someone to attend an association event. Here are some common motivations:
Education: For attendees who want to learn more about a specific subject, consider having a speaker or a workshop on a specific topic relevant to your association.
Professional networking: For those who want to build connections for their professional social network, hold roundtable discussions, lectures, and workshops. Just make sure attendees have ample downtime between activities to socialize.
Socializing: Many people attend events to meet new people. Almost any kind of event will work for this! Try holding trivia or other fun activities that get people involved and talking.
Community involvement: Many attendees are interested in giving back to their community, so consider holding charity events that help them make a positive difference.
By understanding how to appeal to potential members’ values and interests, you can choose the right type of event to attract them.
2. Plan how you’ll engage potential members
Plan your association event with potential members in mind. You should always be thinking about the specific individuals you’re trying to draw in. It’s always a good idea to plan as much of your event in advance as possible. This way, everyone helping at the event knows exactly what they’re meant to be doing and how they can connect to potential members.
Consider hosting an event that both members and non-members are free to attend. Or consider inviting potential members to attend a members-only event as guests. No matter the event, you can prepare welcome packets containing important membership details to pass out to these non-members at the event.
To provide added convenience to potential members, consider making your event hybrid or virtual so that even those who may be unable to attend in person can participate.
At this point in time, most people are very familiar with attending virtual events, which makes it easy and convenient. This also broadens your audience and lets you reach more people. You can reach people who may live further away but are still excited to join.
Having this option is a great way to attract people who are interested in your association but haven’t been able to make it to in-person events previously. They’ll be even more excited for this one!
3. Enlist your current members to help at your event
Make the most of your existing members’ connections by enlisting them to help with member recruitment at your next association event.
Having current members there is a great way to introduce potential members to your association. It’s also a great way for potential members to form connections within the association through current members. A personal connection goes a long way.
Ask for volunteers from your members to become ambassadors at the event. They can encourage potential members to join your association by:
Welcoming guests
Sharing their experience as a member
Answering membership-related questions
Introducing them to other members at the event
Furthermore, encourage existing members to invite a non-member acquaintance, work colleague, or friend who might be interested in becoming a member.
Using existing networks is a great way to find new members. A person coming to an event through someone they know is more likely to join up if they have a personal connection to your organization already.
4. Emphasize member benefits
Make it easy for event attendees to embark on their membership journey to your association by highlighting specific member benefits at the event. Show them why they should join!
At the event, you can include benefits in your welcome packet. You can also consider passing out one-page sheets listing the benefits. Having the benefits highlighted in their own handout can be helpful to make them more clear.
You can also go into more detail if they’re separate, rather than trying to fit it all into the welcome packet, which should be concise. Provide a link to your website on anything you hand out, or another place where they can learn more.
Member benefits will be different for every association. Again, think about your audience. Who are they? What do you think would benefit them? What do you think they’d be most interested in?
5. Follow up with event attendees
In addition to your usual thank-you emails to everyone who attended your event, follow up specifically with your non-member event attendees about joining your association.
Give them a clear path, both during and after the event, for how to join your organization. Make the process as easy and clear as possible. Nothing stops a potential member more than a lengthy and difficult-to-understand application process. Having a straightforward application process should always be an important part of your member recruitment strategy.
There are many things you can fit into a thank you email. Here are some suggestions:
First of all, thank them for coming!
Tell them about the next event they can attend.
Link them to further information about your organization. This could be your website, which should have benefits laid out again, and a clear way to join your association.
Invite them to subscribe to a regular newsletter so they can hear about what’s happening next. These little updates and reminders help keep your organization in their mind and make them more likely to join.
Show them that you care about their experience with your organization by sending out post-event surveys to gather their feedback and make improvements for future events.
Events can give potential members a clearer picture of what membership in your association looks like. Therefore, it’s critical to plan an enjoyable and memorable event experience for all attendees. In this article, we’ve given five ways to help you improve your member recruitment strategy. Following these five tips will help turn your next recruitment event into a success!
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Working with the right consultant can change the trajectory of your organization’s fundraising. No matter what kind of support you need, whether it’s planning a capital campaign or conducting a fundraising assessment, a fundraising consultant can help.
But how do you find the perfect consultant for your organization, and how exactly do you hire one? To help you understand what the fundraising consultant hiring process looks like, we’ll cover the most important elements:
Assessing Your Organization’s Needs
Requests for Proposals (RFPs)
Consultant Research
Making Your Decision
Once you go through the hiring process, your nonprofit will end up with a valuable resource who can help you make lasting changes to your organization’s fundraising approach. Let’s dive in so you can start reaping those benefits!
Assessing Your Organization’s Needs
Similar to the process you go through when choosing new fundraising software to invest in, you’ll first need to determine exactly what you need from the consultant. Assess your resources, goals, and recent campaign performance to determine which areas of fundraising you need help with.
Some common focus areas that fundraising consultants can assist you with include:
Major donor research and cultivation: If you’re not meeting your fundraising goals because you don’t have enough major donors, a consultant can help you find the most likely prospects and strategically build relationships with them.
Capital campaigns: Need to fund a major building or project? Your fundraising consultant can conduct a feasibility study to make sure you’re ready, work with you to develop an effective case for support, and see you through the entire planning stage. Plus, they can provide you with ongoing guidance throughout the campaign.
Strategic planning: No matter what size campaign you’re planning, a qualified consultant will get familiar with your nonprofit’s needs and goals to develop a thorough campaign strategy designed to drive success.
General approach to fundraising: Maybe your team is new to hosting fundraisers or your traditional tactics just seem to be falling flat. Consultants can train your team on today’s fundraising best practices or even hire new staff members to support your organization’s long-term development.
After determining the type of fundraising support you’ll need from your consultant, be sure to define specific goals for their involvement. What outcomes do you want to achieve with their help? Set concrete goals, such as securing 10 major gifts within the next year or increasing the total value of individual donations by 20%.
Request for Proposals (RFPs)
Next, you’ll use the goals you set to create an RFP, or Request for Proposals. RFPs are documents your organization creates to outline why you’re searching for a consultant, explain what you’re looking for, and ask prospects to send in proposals for consideration.
RFPs keep your search on track and give prospective consultants a clear idea of the services you require. To write one effectively, Donorly’s fundraising consultant hiring guide breaks down everything your RFP should include:
Purpose: Explain why you’re hiring a consultant, what your specific needs are, and what you ultimately hope to achieve. If you need them to work on a specific campaign, explain the basic purpose of the campaign here.
Organizational information: Give a quick overview of what your nonprofit does and the causes you support. Include information on how long you’ve been operating and the fundraising strategies and tools you already use, as well.
Details about the project: Outline the scope, timeline, work expectations, and budget for the project the consultant will work on, including as much detail as possible.
Goals for the relationship: Define specific success measurements for the project and the consultant’s work. Include how and when you’ll evaluate progress.
Submission guidelines: Let prospective consultants know everything their proposals need to include, and set a due date.
Once you’ve created a draft, run the RFP by your board for final approval. After researching options and selecting consultants you’re interested in learning more about, you’ll send your RFP to each one. Each consultant will then use these guidelines to create their own proposals, which you’ll use to determine the best fit.
Consultant Research
Now that you’ve outlined your needs and goals in your RFP, you can begin searching for potential consultants!
There are multiple avenues for consultant research. Start by reaching out to your colleagues and connections at other nonprofits to ask for recommendations. You might attend nonprofit panels that fundraising consultants participate in to hear about their services. Or, conduct research online using general Google searches or by visiting reputable websites like The Giving Institute or AFP’s fundraising consultant directory.
As you research consultants, pay attention to each one’s:
Services and specialties
Case studies and examples of their work
Type of organizations they typically work with
Fundraising philosophies
Location or ability to work with you remotely
Take notes on every consultant that stands out throughout your research, then bring your team together to discuss your findings. Based on these factors, narrow down your options to a list of 5-10 consultants you think could be the best fit.
Making Your Decision
As soon as you have your list of prospective consultants, you can jump into the process of sending RFPs and evaluating the candidates. To make a decision, follow these steps:
Reach out to consultants and send RFPs: Email or call everyone on your list before sending your RFP to state your interest. Introducing yourself upfront will help you get to know candidates and start relationships off on the right foot. After this initial outreach, send RFPs and give the consultants at least two weeks to send their proposals in.
Review proposals: Compile a team of staff members to review the submitted proposals together and discuss each one’s merits. Then, select a few consultants you feel confident about and want to interview.
Conduct interviews and check references: Sit down with each of your top contenders and ask them anything more you need to know. For example, if they’ll be training your team, ask them detailed questions about their fundraising training process. Ask for a few references at the interview, then use them to verify the quality of their work.
Create and send a contract: Once you’ve made your final decision, you can draft a contract! Include information about compensation, key performance indicators, and the scope of their responsibilities.
To make your final choice, consider factors like the quality of the consultant’s previous work, how their proposal aligns with your needs, and their personal fit with your nonprofit’s culture. According to eCardWidget, your company culture is made up of your organizational values, attitudes, and practices. It’s important that everyone working with your nonprofit aligns with its culture to ensure satisfaction.
The consultant hiring process can feel like a big time commitment, but think of it as an investment. The more careful thought and dedication you put into the process, the better results you’ll see when you find the right fit. Fundraising consultants can give your organization the tools to thrive for years to come and ultimately do more of what matters, so they’re worth taking the time to find.
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We’re living in an unusual labor environment—historically low but rising unemployment rates, high inflation, conflicting signs that may or may not point to an impending recession. We’re also seeing highly active labor movements and changing norms following the significant changes brought about by the pandemic and Great Resignation.
Economic anxieties are at a high, so nonprofits naturally have a lot on their minds. When instability is on the radar, most organizations know to strengthen their donor and partner relationships while seeking new ways to diversify their revenue—but look inward, too.
The internal health of an organization is essential for its overall health. Employee retention plays a critically important role.
Let’s take a closer look at the state of employee turnover for nonprofits. Why is it so harmful, and how can you prevent it?
What’s the average nonprofit turnover rate?
The voluntary turnover rate for the nonprofit sector averaged 19% in 2022. It also sits consistently higher than turnover at for-profit businesses.
Historically, 19% turnover is typical, but looking at recent years, we can see some interesting trends. The turnover rate rose to a high of 21% in 2019 but dropped to a low of 14% in 2020 (NonprofitHR). One possible explanation is that the disruptions of the pandemic and the drastically increased need for nonprofit services during that time kept many nonprofit professionals in their jobs.
Since then, the turnover rate has steadily increased to pre-pandemic norms as part of the Great Resignation, with many employees across sectors finding new opportunities. Perhaps your own organization saw the same trends play out at a reduced scale since 2019—a good reminder that while there are many causes of turnover that you can control, there are also external forces that you can’t.
But just because you can’t directly control the forces that drive turnover doesn’t mean you can’t adapt to them! After the disruptions of recent years, nonprofits are already making positive changes.
Specifically, NonprofitHR’s 2022 retention survey found that more nonprofits are now actively tracking employee retention metrics (+4%) and developing formal retention strategies (+13%) than in 2021.
This is great news—it’s impossible to reduce turnover and mitigate its damage without a concrete plan or data to inform it. It would seem that many nonprofits have learned from the lessons of the pandemic years to improve their employee management approach.
So what were those lessons exactly? What are the extended negative impacts of churn?
Why is employee churn so harmful?
There are many reasons why a high turnover rate is harmful to organizations, and they can amplify each other over time if left unchecked, making it increasingly difficult to retain talent. The key risks to consider include:
Financial cost. First, losing employees is costly. The hiring process to find replacements takes time and resources.
Opportunity cost. Time spent rehiring is time that could otherwise go towards revenue-generating activities. Not to mention, it takes time for new hires to begin reaching the same productivity as more senior team members who departed. For example, The Chronicle of Philanthropy estimates that it takes four years for fundraisers to reach full productivity in their roles.
Cultural and brand damage. Poor retention harms morale, especially if employees feel overworked when empty roles aren’t filled, creating an environment prone to further turnover. These impacts can then spread to harm your organizational brand as a whole, with employees feeling burnt out or disengaged from the mission.
For nonprofits specifically, these risks are heightened. Nonprofits usually operate on tight budgets, making the felt effects of turnover-related financial and opportunity costs especially pronounced. Nonprofits also rely heavily on relationships with donors, sponsors, and funders to sustain their work—relationships built by individual fundraisers or development officers. If these relationships are too siloed, that fundraiser’s departure can make it very difficult to maintain their valuable relationships.
Not to mention, nonprofits need positive public perceptions to continue fundraising and operating their programs effectively. Inconsistent staffing and a reputation as a place where people don’t want to work can cause your community to become disengaged or even lose trust in your nonprofit.
How can you reduce or eliminate these risks?
Enough of the gloomy stuff—what are the steps you can take to prevent these negative impacts from taking root in your organization?
1. Combat turnover.
It seems self-evident, but to avoid the damage of employee turnover, you should actively combat it by prioritizing retention.
Although more nonprofits now actively develop retention strategies, many still don’t. And those that do often haven’t been able to devote much attention to management in the past, so their retention approaches may not be rooted in best practices. What do you need to know about employee retention?
Within these categories fall a wide variety of tactics you can use to engage and retain employees. There’s no one specific arrangement that will work for every nonprofit. Rather, each organization should seek to find the right ratio of tactics that mesh with their cultures, values, and communities. Ensuring that each category is represented will make your overall strategy more effective and well-rounded.
But there are a few big-picture best practices that successful retention strategies share. As you develop your unique configuration of retention tactics, keep these in mind:
Foster an engaging environment that prioritizes communication and transparency. Explain whyyour organization makes the decisions it does and how employees play roles in its success.
Create meaningful opportunities for development and progression. Offer actual new skills, responsibilities, and certifications, not just empty new titles or busywork, to help grow new leaders internally.
Strengthen your recruiting practices. Hiring the right individual for a role will boost the odds of long-term retention. If you feel that your current hiring process is often rushed or not very thorough, give it an update.
Offer the benefits that you can and that employees want. Nonprofits often aren’t in positions to offer highly competitive salaries and financial benefits, and employees drawn to nonprofit work understand this. But you must still make an effort to stay competitive in whatever ways you can—modest raises, workplace perks, hybrid work flexibility, etc.
Recognize employee achievements. Make recognition a cornerstone of your culture. Acknowledge valuable employee contributions, express gratitude, and explain to that individual or the whole team why their actions were impactful. A variety of recognition tools and platforms make it easy to build out a sustainable approach.
Building out a retention strategy to reduce turnover in the first place is the single best step you can take to mitigate its damage to your nonprofit.
The best part is that your strategy doesn’t have to be perfect. It should instead be dynamic and adaptive—you won’t know what works best for your unique organization until you try it out, so approach your strategy as a continual learning experience.
2. Reduce knowledge and relationship silos.
With a solid preventative framework in place, we’ll now look at the infrastructural steps you can take to reduce the negative impacts of turnover when it does happen.
The siloing of knowledge and relationships creates undue risks—a departing employee takes their skills and contacts with them. And even if you’re still in touch with a donor after the departure of the gift officer who built that relationship, the relationship may now need to start from square one. To reduce silos, try these best practices:
Document your internal processes. All kinds of processes and workarounds develop organically over time, but they shouldn’t just live in one employee’s memory—record them in handbooks, manuals, flowcharts, or notes to simplify the work of other (and future) employees.
Develop concrete reporting protocols, specifically for donations and donor interactions. Clear records of who’s given, when, how much, and all other touchpoints that have occurred are essential for proper stewardship, and they’ll allow your team to seamlessly maintain relationships with donors even if a donor’s primary contact leaves your organization.
Keep your data clean. Data hygiene ensures your records are actually useful. Meticulously recording donor touchpoints will only be helpful if any gift officer on your team can successfully interpret them, so notes should be recorded in clear, straightforward language. Quantitative data points should also all be entered into your system in a consistent way.
Standardize your moves management process. Similarly, your gift cultivation and stewardship process should follow a few standardized steps or phases. You likely already have a clear sense of these phases, but is your team referring to them with the same language? Are they designated in your record system? Systematizing this process will ensure that donor relationships can be quickly understood and continued by anyone on your team when needed.
Consider your regulatory context when looking for ways to reduce knowledge and contact silos. For example, grateful patient fundraising programs are subject to more restrictive patient privacy laws that will impact the specific fundraising and data flows that you can use as an organization.
3. Give employees the tools and frameworks to succeed.
Equipping and empowering your employees to drive the greatest impact will go a long way to improve retention. When team members don’t need to waste time and energy with clunky systems and processes, they’ll feel more engaged and able to focus on their real tasks—engaging with donors and constituents, facilitating programs, and keeping your organization running.
And if turnover does occur, you’ll have more efficient, resilient, and intuitive processes in place that reduce its negative impacts.
First, upgrade tech or invest in tech as needed. A modern CRM is a must, as is intuitive fundraising or donation software that truly meets your needs. If you’re feeling locked into a legacy platform that either isn’t offering a great donor experience or creates more problems than it solves for your team, an upgrade is likely a smart move.
And keep in mind that investing in your own ability to drive impact sustainably is an important part of stewarding your mission. Consider whether it’s possible to budget for needed upgrades and new purchases, remembering that sometimes overhead is essential. Or consider conducting a special capacity campaign to fund new investments—always an option if a jolt of capital will take your growth to the next level and you can make a compelling, specific case for support.
Aside from technology, you should also equip your team with the processes, frameworks, and strategies they need to thrive in their roles, especially if your small organization is growing. Ad hoc solutions and approaches may work for a while, but they’re often not scalable. Not only do they become more disorganized over time, but they also lead to worse employee experiences.
Increased organization and efficiency will be key. Moves management and prospect portfolio management systems are great examples of more advanced practices that organizations pick up and adapt as they mature.
Of course, employee churn isn’t 100% avoidable—some employees will always choose to leave for personal reasons or because they’ve found new opportunities.
What your nonprofit can control are the internal forces that drive churn and its potential negative impacts, and it’s not hard to take the first steps. Outline a concrete retention strategy if you haven’t yet. Consider if you’re unnecessarily siloing important knowledge or contacts and whether you’re offering tools and processes that make work easier rather than harder.
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From planning a fundraiser to promoting and executing it, your nonprofit likely spends most of its time thinking of ways to boost its revenue. From text campaigns to festive fun runs, your goal is to collect donations that will power your nonprofit’s mission. But communicating the importance of your mission and finding enthusiastic donors is only half the job!
Consider what happens after you swipe that credit card. Between the swipe and the funds landing in your account, a lot has to happen on the backend to ensure payments are processed securely and quickly—and preferably at a low cost to your nonprofit.
Your choice of a payment processor significantly impacts your ability to gain donors’ trust and collect donations with ease. That’s why we’ve compiled four of the most important features to look for when researching payment processors for your nonprofit.
The choices, it can seem, are endless. There are nonprofit CRMs with built-in payment processors. There’s Stripe and iATS, Paypal, Fundly, and the list goes on. Think about your nonprofit to decide whether a CRM with a payment processor is the best choice, or if it’s easier for you to use a third-party system.
Regardless of which you choose, here are the four features you’ll want to be sure you pay close attention to as you shop around.
Security Certifications
Perhaps the most critical measurement you can take is how secure payments will be with any given provider. Fortunately for consumers and organizations, the Payment Card Industry has standardized security certification so you can tell, at a glance, how secure a payment processor is.
Payment processors should, at the very least, be PCI-compliant. If they have this designation, the payment processor adheres to PCI guidelines and will internally check their processes with a self-assessment. This compliance, achieved in about a month, means the payment processor has:
Taken a self-assessment to ensure it’s following the guidelines
Installed a firewall between their wireless network and the cardholder data
Implemented a strong vulnerability management program
The next step up from PCI compliance is PCI certification. This is a much more stringent certification and one that involves more steps to remain compliant. There’s a rigorous process that includes regular audits by a third party to ensure the software and security measures are safe. This certification isn’t common among payment processors as it takes about six months to complete—and the processor remains under careful watch to ensure compliance is maintained.
If your payment processor is PCI-certified, it means that:
A qualified security assessor (QSA) has inspected and approved the software and security measures in place.
The QSA has researched how the software solution was developed.
The QSA checked the training the software developers have received.
Moving on from PCI compliance, some payment processors are SOC 2 compliant. A platform that is SOC 2-certified or compliant adheres to security standards that protect all the donor data you collect. Everything from network firewalls to encryption is evaluated to ensure that information about your nonprofit’s donors can’t be compromised.
SOC-2 certification and compliance are voluntary and are based on Trust Services Criteria determined by the American Institute of CPAs. Compliant processors are adhering to strict regulations about how they manage donor data. If you can find a payment processor that is both PCI-certified and SOC 2-certified, you’re looking at a processor that is much more focused on the security and safety of your donor data.
A final piece of the security puzzle is fraud prevention. It’s a fear of many nonprofits because when donor data or dollars are compromised, the reputation of your nonprofit can take a hit.
To give your donors peace of mind and protect their data, look for a platform that is regularly audited and held to the highest security standards. Many nonprofit CRM payment processors will offer some sort of fraud protection to their clients, and it’s advisable to seek out any level of fraud protection to keep your donors safe.
User-Friendliness
Can a payment processor be user-friendly? Yes, if you find the right one!
Think about it like this: If a supporter donated just once at the end of each year, would they be familiar with the donation submission process? Or would they forget how to use the software after such a long time had lapsed and become frustrated with it?
Your payment processor should make it easy for donors to give, no matter how they choose to submit their donation. What makes it easy to give?
One-click giving, in which a donor enters a name and the system automatically populates the other fields, is a great way to offer donors a user-friendly experience. And having multiple options for donation types can help as well.
At a minimum, allow your donors to give via:
Credit card
ACH, or check/bank transfer
PayPal
Google Pay
Apple Pay
Other considerations include the ability to accept in-kind donations or donated stock/securities. And for donors worldwide, choose a payment processor that accepts multi-currency transactions.
Availability of Support
When something in your payment processing software is confusing or just not working the way you expect it to, you’ll want to be able to pick up the phone or click a link and chat with someone.
How a payment processor views support tells you a lot about how the relationship is going to look, long-term. If they just want your signature on a contract, they might not be the best option. But if they offer a lot of support options: email, online chat, ticket system, and even the old-fashioned phone that actually gets answered, you might want to explore that relationship
Think of your payment platform as an investment in a partner who will support your fundraising ventures. This is especially true if you invest in an all-in-one solution that handles multiple fundraising tasks.
For example, if you are running a peer-to-peer campaign, you might appreciate a chat with someone who has seen dozens of nonprofit P2P events. If your nonprofit CRM is also a payment processor, they likely support their clients and offer a multitude of fundraising tools.
A tip is to look for a platform with a professional customer service team. Not only will you want the help to answer any questions you may have, but the right support team will:
Offer training: The support team should do more than crisis control—look for a provider who will help you learn the platform.
Answer at any time: Support should always be available and easy to reach.
Provide thorough information: More than simply answering your questions, the right help team will give you all the context you need to make the most out of the software.
Be sure that you can depend on the provider’s customer service team whenever you need help!
Leveraging a Subscription Billing Model
If you look at gyms or streaming services or the little front-door boxes with all the ingredients for a delicious dinner, you will see evidence of our (increasingly expected) subscription economy.
And what does that mean for your nonprofit? Donors are used to this idea of monthly giving. When your billing software supports automatic monthly donations or sustainers, or even pledges, you’re ahead of the game.
Don’t start your search for a payment processor by thinking about the donation process—observe your fundraising goals in their entirety. Your nonprofit will want to grow donations and retain donors. How can your payment processor support that goal?
According to CharityEngine’s guide to sustained giving programs, “Your nonprofit needs billing software created to maximize the dollars donated to your nonprofit.” To encourage recurring donations, your payment processor should offer a subscription billing model that allows for automated payments or online bill payments.
Choosing the Right Payment Processor
Is there one payment processor that’s the best choice for every single nonprofit? No, but there is the best choice for your nonprofit. So once you’ve settled on the features that matter most, research your options and request demos from the providers that most impress you.
More than anything, look for a partner. Check off these four features, of course, because you can leverage them to maximize fundraising. But listen to your gut when you’re asking about support. Having a partner that cares about your success is a sure way to win at the fundraising game.
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Fundraising comprises a large portion of your nonprofit’s funding. Collecting donations empowers your organization to expand its reach and accomplish its mission.
However, it can be intimidating to start a fundraiser from scratch, especially for newer organizations and less experienced fundraising coordinators. Fundraisers require a certain level of organization, a clear strategy, and a lot of hard work to be successful. From creating your initial goals to developing your marketing materials, there are so many considerations that go into starting a fundraiser.
To help you stay on track, we’ll teach you how to start a fundraiser by walking you through the fundraising process step by step. Along the way, we’ll offer advice on how to pull off the fundraiser of your dreams.
Take a look at the steps we’ll discuss to make sure your fundraising plan is complete:
It’s our goal at NXUnite to equip nonprofits with the tools and knowledge they need to be successful. Fundraising is such a huge element of nonprofit operations, so it’s important to know how to start a fundraiser properly. That’s why we’ve created this ultimate guide to help your nonprofit reach its fundraising goals.
With that, let’s jump right into it and learn how to start a fundraiser!
1. Determine Your Goals For Your Nonprofit Fundraiser
To start a fundraiser off on the right foot, it’s important to set a focus for your campaign by creating clear goals. That way, you’ll build a strong foundation for the rest of the planning process.
The SMART Goal Method
Instead of creating generic objectives, there are some guidelines your organization should follow to make sure your goals are meaningful. The SMART goal model ensures that your goals are action-oriented and targeted to exactly what you want to achieve. Check out the elements of SMART goals:
Specific. Make sure your goals have a clear purpose. It’s not enough to say you want to raise money for your cause. Indicate exactly what the money will go towards.
Measurable. In this case, measurable typically refers to a clear monetary value you’d like to achieve. For example, your goal could be to raise $10,000 during the fundraiser. However, it could also be a certain amount of new donors you want to recruit or the number of returning donors you’d like to see.
Achievable. While it’s good to be optimistic, you’ll also want to be realistic about what your organization can achieve. Don’t set your fundraising amount too high or give your nonprofit too short of a time to reach its goals.
Relevant. Keep your organization’s current overall goals in mind when determining your fundraising goals. That way, your goals will align and make sense for your nonprofit.
Time-bound. Set a deadline for your goals to motivate your organization to achieve them. Otherwise, you might put them off or not achieve them as quickly as you could.
To sum up SMART goals, we’ll give you an example to refer to. If you coordinate school fundraisers, your goal might be to raise $100,000 over the course of the school year to help build a new playground. This goal is specific because it indicates exactly what the money will go towards. It’s measurable because you’ve assigned a monetary value to your goal.
Your team must determine whether your goals are achievable by evaluating your resources, but we know this one is relevant because it will add value to the school. Lastly, this goal is time-bound because it must be accomplished by the end of the school year.
Other Considerations For Your Fundraiser’s Goals
Now that you know how to create SMART goals, there are two other considerations you’ll want to keep in mind:
Your definition of success. This consideration ties into the achievable aspect of SMART goals. Do you want to raise a certain amount of money? Maybe you want to secure new donors or retain a certain amount of donors from your last fundraiser. Whatever the metrics you’re using to determine your fundraiser’s success, they will help you determine how much you need to raise and how much you could raise realistically based on your organization’s size and scope.
The intended impact of your goals. You might know what the money you raise will physically go towards, but why is that project or initiative important? Returning to our school example, maybe your school wants to build a new playground because it will teach kids the importance of being active. Illustrating this intended impact of the playground when you’re marketing your fundraiser will create a more compelling call to action for potential donors.
Putting thought behind your goals will set your campaign up for success before it even starts by giving participants something to work toward. Once your fundraising goals are solidified, it’s time to choose what your campaign will look like.
2. Select a Fundraising Campaign Type
Once your fundraising goals are solidified, it’s time to choose what your campaign will look like. There are a wide variety of available options for nonprofit fundraisers. Depending on your goals, budget, and resources, you can select the type of campaign that best suits your organization’s audience and needs.
To make it easier to plan your campaign, we’ve divided some of the top nonprofit fundraising ideas into the general categories of online and offline initiatives. Of course, some of these ideas are flexible and can be hosted in either sphere. Additionally, you might choose to combine multiple campaigns to expand your fundraising capabilities—it all depends on what you hope to accomplish!
Online Fundraising Campaigns
A major advantage of online fundraising is that it breaks down geographical barriers, making it possible to connect with more supporters no matter where they live. These campaigns are also convenient for your supporters since they can participate from anywhere.
Crowdfunding. Leverage the power of social media and gain support from a wide range of people using a crowdfunding campaign. You can request small donations that add up to your goal and ask that followers share your campaign page with their friends and family to engage even more supporters.
Text-to-give. Make donating online even easier by meeting supporters where they probably are—on their phones. When a donor texts a keyword to your organization’s five- or six-digit shortcode, they’ll receive a link to your online donation page, where they can quickly fill out the form and make their contribution on the go. To make the most of your text-to-give campaign, ensure your donation page is optimized for mobile use.
Matching gifts. Matching gifts are a popular form of corporate philanthropy that allow you to double many of the donations you already receive. When a supporter who works for a company with a matching gift program contributes and submits a match request, their employer will donate the same amount. Embed your matching gift tool directly into your online donation page to prompt donors to check their eligibility and submit match requests.
Online shopping. Online shopping fundraisers allow supporters to contribute to your nonprofit by doing something they were probably going to do anyway: purchase everyday items from their favorite e-commerce sites. You likely heard of (or even participated in) AmazonSmile before its 2023 discontinuation, but there are alternative platforms your organization can still leverage to run a similar type of campaign.
The one downside of online fundraising is that it’s often more difficult to form lasting connections with campaign participants. That’s why it’s especially important to follow up with supporters and say thank you after they contribute online.
Offline Fundraising Campaigns
Many people prefer the personal touch of offline interactions, which is where more traditional fundraising methods excel. Plus, offline campaigns can often be combined with online ones or converted to a hybrid format if some supporters would still like to participate online.
Some popular offline fundraising campaigns include:
Direct mail. Requesting donations through mail often feels like a more personal outreach method than a digital ask on the supporter’s end. Segment your donors based on how frequently they donate and how much they have donated in the past, then tailor your messages to each segment. Include a prepaid return envelope with each letter, and consider adding a QR code to your online donation page to offer another giving option.
Fundraising events. There are many different ways to gather your community in support of your cause, so choose a fundraising event that resonates with your supporters. Popular examples include galas, auctions, 5K races, and a-thon style events like walk-a-thons or bike-a-thons.
Major gift solicitation. It’s estimated that 80% of nonprofit donations come from the top 20% of donors, meaning major gifts are essential to your nonprofit’s ability to further its mission. While you’ll use prospect research tools to identify potential major donors online, you’ll need to build relationships with each prospect offline so they’ll be receptive to your ask.
Volunteer grants. Similar to matching gifts, volunteer grants are a form of corporate philanthropy that involves your nonprofit’s supporters submitting requests to their employers based on their involvement with your organization. The submission again takes place online, but this time the contribution is based on an in-person activity: the number of hours they volunteer.
No matter which combination of online and offline fundraising campaigns you try, take steps to get your supporters excited about their involvement with your organization.
3. Develop a Fundraising Plan
An effective fundraising plan will keep you organized and on track. It will serve as your roadmap and ensure you have everything you need to make your campaign successful.
To make sure your fundraising plan is comprehensive, here are the elements yours should include:
Goals. Start off your fundraising plan by adding the SMART goals you developed earlier. These goals will guide the rest of your fundraising plan.
Case for support. You’ll want to craft a compelling reason for why donors should support your cause. It’s best to make this specific to the initiative or project you’re raising money for.
Campaign type. Once you figure out which fundraising campaign you’re moving forward with, indicate that in your fundraising plan. Again, you can use any combination of the ones we’ve listed previously or others you come up with.
Marketing channels. Choose which marketing channels are best for your campaign. Examples of marketing channels include social media, email, and your organization’s website.
Timeline. Before starting a fundraiser, set a definitive timeline for your campaign. It might help to develop a campaign calendar to plan out the work that must get done each week.
Budget. Figure out how much you need to spend to make your fundraiser a reality. Think about the costs of fundraising events and initiatives ahead of time so you only spend what you need to.
Corporate sponsors. There are many philanthropic companies willing to assist nonprofits by sponsoring their events, offering matching gifts, and providing in-kind services. Identify how you’ll narrow down potential sponsors for your fundraiser and craft compelling proposals for support.
Team members. Determine which members of your team will be part of this fundraising project and how much external support you’ll need from volunteers. You’ll want to delegate responsibilities to them so everyone knows what to do.
Incorporating all of these items into your fundraising plan will set clear intentions for your fundraiser, making it easier to move along with the planning process.
4. Invest in the Right Software Before Starting a Fundraiser
Fundraising software is necessary for most nonprofit campaigns to run smoothly. From accepting online donations and processing payments to managing donors and volunteers, there are so many aspects of fundraisers where software can make a major difference.
Some popular types of software your nonprofit might leverage for its campaigns include:
Event management software. From checking in attendees to livestreaming during virtual events, there are many elements of the fundraising event process that can be streamlined using software. Keep in mind that some events may require additional specialized software features, such as mobile bidding tools for online auctions.
Peer-to-peer fundraising platforms. These solutions enable your supporters to securely create individual fundraising pages to share with their friends and family. This is especially useful for a-thon style events like walkathons and bikeathons where participants collect pledged donations based on their performance.
Matching gift tools. As mentioned previously, embedding a matching gift tool directly into your donation form allows donors to quickly discover whether their employers will match their contributions to your organization. Make sure your chosen software integrates with a variety of corporate giving solutions and has auto-submission capabilities to streamline the process for your nonprofit, your supporters, and their employers.
If your organization already uses donor management software, look for fundraising software that integrates with the platform you use. That way, you can automatically transfer information about your new donors between the two solutions, saving your team time and energy. Later on, you can use that data to reach out to donors and improve your future fundraising campaigns.
5. Create Marketing Materials To Promote Your Fundraiser
Nonprofits need to come up with cohesive marketing strategies in order to promote their fundraisers effectively. Think about your campaign as a single story you want to tell. Every promotional material should work together in pursuit of your goals.
It can be difficult to create effective marketing materials on a budget, that’s why it’s essential to use the free or discounted marketing tools to empower your mission. This way, you’ll create stunning designs that are also cost-effective. With this in mind, here are some additional tips that will help you elevate your materials:
Focus your marketing on the impact your fundraiser will have. Of course, you’ll want to tell potential donors exactly what their money will go towards, but you’ll also want to highlight the underlying benefits of the project you’re funding. Make it clear why this project or initiative is important and what will happen if you don’t achieve your fundraising goals.
Using multiple different marketing channels will allow you to reach a broader audience. While you’ll want to tell the same cohesive story to all of your supporters, remember to adapt your message and content to each channel. For example, your social media campaign might feature short videos explaining the fundraiser while your website might contain an entire page dedicated to the fundraiser.
No matter which marketing channels you leverage, having well-designed images can help your marketing materials stand out. People are more drawn to images than words, and eye-catching designs can convey more information than you might think. Plus, images can break up large chunks of text to make it easier to read.
Feature your corporate sponsors.Corporate sponsorships can provide immense value to your nonprofit, but remember that they’re mutually beneficial relationships. Therefore, include the companies’ logos and details in your marketing materials to recognize them for their support and pave the way for long-lasting partnerships.
If your team has trouble creating its marketing materials, consider outsourcing the design work to a third-party graphic designer. We highly recommend Kwala, a nonprofit-focused graphic design company. By exclusively working with nonprofits throughout the years, they’ve become well-versed in what it takes to design materials that inspire support.
From social media graphics to fundraising flyers, Kwala can help bring your visions to life and spread awareness for your fundraisers in no time. Take this event invitation they created for the Wildlife Rescue Group for example:
Whether you want artistic drawings or more realistic designs with stock photos, they’ll work with you to create the perfect promotional materials for your next fundraiser.
Once your marketing materials are ready to go, it’s time to share them with your supporters!
6. Promote Your Nonprofit’s Fundraiser
Your fundraiser could be for an outstanding cause with an organized fundraising plan behind it, but if no one knows about it, you won’t reach your fundraising goals. Promoting your fundraiser will attract new and previous donors to contribute to your cause.
As we alluded to before, your organization can use many different marketing channels to spread the word about your fundraiser. Use any combination of the ones we’ve listed below:
Email
You can’t go wrong with email marketing. It allows you to reach new and previous supporters and send a variety of different communications related to your fundraiser. Whether you’re informing subscribers about your fundraiser in your newsletter, inviting supporters to a fundraising event, or thanking donors for their contributions, email is an effective way to communicate about your fundraising efforts.
Website
Your organization’s website is the home base for anything and everything about your nonprofit, so it’s a great place to include details about your fundraiser. Potential supporters will get the opportunity to look through other pages on your site to learn more about your organization before they lend their support.
Peer-to-Peer Outreach
One underutilized marketing tool is your supporters. Your existing donors and volunteers are some of your nonprofit’s biggest ambassadors. A genuine referral from one of them can go a long way in amplifying your fundraiser. Have them post about your campaign online and text their friends, encouraging them to donate to your fundraiser. You can even design event invitations or fundraising eCards they can use to challenge others to give to your campaign.
If your nonprofit has a blog on its website, consider posting an article about the fundraiser. You could introduce or recap a fundraising event or provide an update about how much money you’ve raised so far.
Social Media
Social media is a great place to promote your fundraiser because your supporters can repost your content and share it with their own networks. You can also use social media as a chance to have some fun with your fundraiser’s promotion by playing into current trends and making short videos about the fundraiser with your team.
Press Release
See if any local media outlets will share a press release about your fundraising events. That way, you can reach members of your community who may know nothing about your organization.
Related Organizations
Ask your corporate partners, local businesses, or other related nonprofit organizations to help you spread the word about your fundraiser.
Google Ad Grants
The Google Ad Grants program provides nonprofits with $10,000 per month in Google Ad spend. As long as your organization is eligible, you can apply to the program and leverage Google Ads for free to promote your fundraisers and cause.
For help with applying for the program and managing your account, reach out to a Google Grant agency. A professional can take charge of your campaigns, so you can focus on other aspects of your fundraisers instead of writing ad copy.
Takeaway: The best marketing campaigns use multiple marketing methods. As long as you make the effort to interconnect each channel and communicate a cohesive message, leveraging multiple marketing channels will help you reach a larger audience.
7. Thank Donors For Contributing To Your Fundraiser
It’s always important to thank your donors, especially directly after they’ve made a donation. New donors can become life-long members of your community if you put in the effort to form relationships with them. Additionally, you can keep previous donors coming back by showing them you appreciate them.
The way you create a positive experience for donors is through effective donor stewardship. While 55% of US donors prefer to be thanked for their contributions via email, there are several ways to practice proper donor stewardship and leave a lasting impression:
Thanking donors by emailing them or calling them directly after they donate
Maintaining frequent communication with donors across marketing channels
Inviting donors to stewardship events
Sending donors reports that illustrate the impact they’ve made on your organization
Donor stewardship ensures that your organization creates and maintains strong relationships with your supporters. That way, your nonprofit can expand its network and build a community of supporters to work with and rely on when you start future fundraisers, projects, and initiatives.
Don’t overlook other supporters at this stage either! Recognize volunteers for any time and skills they used to make your fundraiser successful too. Sending a personalized eCard or quickly calling them can leave a positive impression. Additionally, take the time to publicly acknowledge your corporate sponsors for their contributions. You can do this with a sincere thank-you post on social media.
8. Assess the Results of Your Nonprofit’s Fundraiser
After your fundraiser, it’s essential to go back and look over your goals to see if you’ve accomplished them. This final step is important because it allows you to take the lessons you’ve learned from this campaign and apply them to your next fundraiser.
A great way to assess the results of your fundraiser is to ask your donors or event attendees for their feedback by sending them a survey. That way, you can get another perspective on what worked and what didn’t from fundraiser participants rather than leadership.
Additionally, there are some questions you’ll want to review with your fundraising team to evaluate your success. These questions may include:
Did you meet your initial goals?
Which marketing methods were most successful in achieving your goals?
Which marketing methods were unsuccessful?
Did you set an appropriate budget?
What were some successes that you should replicate when starting your next fundraiser?
What were some failures or shortcomings that you should avoid for your next fundraiser?
Are there any ways you could have used your resources more efficiently?
Taking the time to reflect upon your fundraiser will make your next one even more successful. Even though your team is likely busy with other projects, putting in a little time now means you’ll save time later in the planning process for future fundraisers.
Conclusion & Additional Resources
Now that you know the steps for how to start a fundraiser, it will be easier to stay organized and get the job done. Each time you host a fundraiser, you’ll get more familiar with the planning process, leading to more successful fundraisers.
In this guide to how to start a fundraiser, we touched upon many different considerations that go into fundraiser planning. We know you might have some further questions about how to host an effective fundraiser, especially if you’re a first-timer.
To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of resources that go beyond the basics of starting a fundraiser. These articles tackle more specific fundraiser tips and tricks that will help you along your fundraising journey. Check them out below:
15 Best Fundraiser Websites: The Complete List. If you’re looking to create a website for your fundraiser or create a fundraiser page on your own website, take a look at this article. It will walk you through several fundraiser website options.
How to Create a Nonprofit Fundraising Strategy: 10 Steps. It can be difficult to develop your own comprehensive fundraising strategy when you’re just learning how to start a fundraiser. This article breaks down the process into steps to help you out.
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/How-to-Start-a-Fundraiser_Feature-1.jpg370700developerhttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgdeveloper2023-08-05 10:45:002024-07-12 16:12:04How to Start a Fundraiser: The Nonprofit’s Ultimate Guide
6 Tips to Create an Ambassador Program for Your Nonprofit
The nonprofit marketing space isn’t as straightforward as it once was. It’s easier than ever for nonprofits to connect with their supporters, but that also means there’s a lot of competition for donors’ attention.
One effective way to make your organization stand out is to create an ambassador program. Ambassadors can take the reins during fundraising or marketing campaigns, promoting your organization to their personal networks. This form of peer-to-peer marketing is highly compelling because people are more likely to support a cause that’s recommended by someone they know and trust.
To ensure your ambassador program gets up and running quickly and yields a high return on investment, we’ll explore these top tips:
Supporters often want more than just to help promote your nonprofit’s cause — they want to feel like members of your community. An ambassador program gives them an outlet to express their passion for your mission and share their enthusiasm with others.
1. Identify the right recruits.
Effective nonprofit influencers can be found almost anywhere. The best recruits for your ambassador program will all share one trait in common: a deep sense of commitment to your cause.
Search for individuals who have a strong existing relationship with your organization and are particularly vocal about their love for your cause. Potential ambassadors could be:
Use software solutions like your donor management system and volunteer management platform to identify long-time, highly engaged supporters. Filter your database by length of involvement or number of interactions to find your top supporters.
Then, personally reach out to these individuals with an invitation to join your ambassador program. Reference their past involvement to explain why you’re reaching out. For example, you might say: “Eliza, we are so excited to invite you to join our new ambassador program. Your passionate volunteer involvement and past peer-to-peer fundraising experience make you a perfect fit for our new program.”
2. Brand your ambassador program.
You’ll have an easier time bringing recruits on board when your ambassador program looks official and professional. Create an eye-catching brand for your program by thinking through the program’s:
Incorporate these brand elements into your promotional materials, such as your social media posts and personal emails to potential participants.
For example, here’s a flyer for a fictional environmental nonprofit ambassador program with a cohesive brand:
This flyer features the organization’s brand name, logo, and a QR code that potential participants can scan for more information.
You can also boost the sense of community by creating branded merchandise for your program, such as hats, T-shirts, or name tags. Offering new ambassadors matching items will help them feel like members of an exclusive team.
3. Create clear roles and expectations for ambassadors.
Ultimately, your ambassador program shouldn’t just provide new engagement opportunities for supporters — it should also tangibly support your marketing and fundraising efforts.
Take the following steps to ensure your ambassador program bolsters your existing strategies:
When potential ambassadors understand what your program entails, you can narrow down your recruit list to just individuals who feel comfortable with the role expectations. And with clear metrics to guide your program, you can determine whether it’s a worthwhile use of your time and resources.
4. Empower ambassadors with training and resources.
Invite your new ambassadors to a training session to help them get up and running in their new roles. Depending on how spread out your ambassadors are, you might host a video or in-person meeting. Reiterate the role expectations and let ambassadors get to know one another with some icebreaker activities.
Also, craft a training manual for ambassadors to follow while promoting your organization. Your manual should include your brand guidelines and ambassador program regulations. You should also include marketing materials that ambassadors can use in their promotional efforts, such as:
Let ambassadors know that they can come to you at any time with questions or concerns. You may even set up a mentorship or buddy program within your ambassador group to ensure each participant has at least one peer they can turn to for support.
5. Promote recognition and a sense of community.
Fostering a strong community among your ambassadors can encourage program retention. Plus, when ambassadors have fun supporting your mission and feel engaged in your cause, their promotional efforts will be much more genuine.
Pull from your donor recognition playbook to develop an appreciation approach for your ambassador program. Show your gratitude by:
Celebrate your ambassadors’ accomplishments through meet-ups and events such as a happy hour or picnic. You can even host an award ceremony to honor your most successful ambassadors and thank them for their hard work.
6. Evaluate and adapt your program as needed.
As your ambassador program gets underway, you might find that certain strategies aren’t working out as expected. Remain flexible and adjust your program when necessary to continue offering a high-quality experience to participants and ensure that your program effectively supports your nonprofit.
Continuously evaluate your program by taking the following steps:
Supporting your ambassadors every step of the way is one of the most effective ways to ensure a high ROI for your program. Take ambassadors’ feedback seriously to ensure you’re continuing to meet their needs and providing a positive experience.
Once your ambassador program gets up and running, it can be a powerful addition to your marketing strategy. Your ambassadors can help you connect with new potential donors and spread awareness of your mission more effectively. With these tips, you’ll make sure they have everything they need to perform their roles at a high level.
4 Online Fundraising Campaign Ideas to Boost Your Reach
These days, almost everything has gone digital—even fundraising. Hosting your fundraising campaign online is beneficial not only for the existing donors in your community, but also for reaching new donors. An online campaign can expand your reach beyond your community, acting as an innovative way to engage supporters from across the country and even the world.
To get started, you’ll need a compelling fundraising campaign idea that aligns with your nonprofit’s goals and meets your unique audience’s interests and motivations. Not sure where to begin? Explore our roundup of the top online fundraising ideas guaranteed to spur donations and help you achieve your fundraising goals:
Host a combination of these campaigns or use them as inspiration to plan a unique online fundraiser at any point of the year. Let’s dive in!
Peer-to-Peer Fundraiser
Peer-to-peer fundraising is a fun and engaging way to get your supporters directly involved in the fundraising process. During a peer-to-peer fundraiser, you’ll hand over the fundraising reins to your most loyal supporters, empowering them to create their own fundraising pages. By tapping their personal networks to help meet their fundraising goals, your supporters will effectively introduce you to brand new donors, boosting your donor acquisition rate.
To maximize the success of your online fundraising campaign, the OneCause guide to peer-to-peer fundraising best practices recommends leveraging these best practices:
Once your fundraiser concludes, remember to thank all of your peer-to-peer fundraisers who helped make it happen. A handwritten thank-you note or shout-out on social media can go a long way in helping your supporters feel appreciated and eager to champion your cause again in the future.
Matching Gift Campaign
According to 360MatchPro’s guide to corporate philanthropy, a matching gift campaign allows your nonprofit to double the impact of donors’ gifts with the help of corporate support. In a matching gift campaign, corporate donors will match gifts during a certain period of time. For example, if a donor gave $100 to your nonprofit, a corporate sponsor might match this at a 1:1 ratio, resulting in $200 for your nonprofit.
To get started with matching gifts, follow these steps:
Make sure to promote your matching gift campaign widely and well in advance so supporters know when it’s happening and how they can get involved.
Text-to-Give Campaign
A text-to-give campaign is one of the easiest ways to raise money online. It enables donors to give donations at any time on their own devices. Supporters simply submit donations right from their phones, making the donation process inherently convenient, simple, and rewarding.
You can use text-to-give donation channels for everyday fundraising, not just during an event. Using it is easy—all your supporters need is a specific keyword and the short- or long-code that they’ll text (which should be provided by your text-to-give solution). This will automatically take mobile donors to your nonprofit’s donation page.
Be sure to find a good software solution that can support virtual transactions and customizations specific to your nonprofit. Specifically, look for a text-to-give solution that offers features like:
On top of having the right fundraising technology, you also need to make sure you’re doing everything possible to build up your contact list. Promote your text-to-give campaign widely to encourage all your supporters to opt-in. A multichannel marketing plan can help you put your text-to-give campaign at the forefront of supporters’ minds, so consider generating content related to text-to-give on your social media, website, and email newsletters.
Crowdfunding Campaign
If you’re looking for a campaign that will make a big impact without asking your donors to empty their wallets, a crowdfunding campaign might be right for you. A crowdfunding campaign raises smaller amounts of revenue from a large pool of donors—think $5 per person. If you ask a group of 100 donors to give that much, you will walk away with a hefty donation, and your donors won’t feel fatigued.
Most crowdfunding campaigns happen online, so you’ll need to establish a strong digital presence for your fundraiser. Consider creating a fundraising microsite with the following elements:
After your crowdfunding campaign wraps up, be sure to show your appreciation to all of your participating donors and share how the donations will be used. By cultivating relationships with these donors, you can increase the likelihood that they’ll continue to come back and donate to your organization again and again!
Wrapping Up
As you think through which fundraising idea makes the most sense for your organization, consider your audience and what will excite them the most to give. Then, channel that idea into a well-designed online campaign that will help you spread awareness and bring in more funds.
Before you dive into your new campaign, make sure you’re working with the best fundraising technology so you can run your online campaign seamlessly. An all-in-one fundraising platform will provide your nonprofit with everything you need to succeed, whether you’re hosting an in-person, online, or hybrid campaign. Happy fundraising!
How to Optimize a Google Grant Account in 7 Easy Steps
The Google Ad Grant is an invaluable tool for reaching potential donors and supporters online. While receiving the grant and setting up your account is a great first step, it takes more work to leverage the full potential of your free ad spend.
For the best results, you need to maintain and optimize your account. Here are seven steps to get started:
Whether you’re a seasoned digital marketer or a nonprofit professional new to Google Ad Grants, these insights will help you improve your online visibility, attract more donors and volunteers, and make a greater impact in the communities you serve.
Before diving into the seven strategies for optimizing a Google Grant account, let’s answer some frequently asked questions.
What is a Google Grant Account?
The Google Ad Grant provides eligible nonprofits with $10,000 worth of in-kind advertising on Google Search each month, helping them reach a wider audience and connect with more potential supporters online.
After applying for the grant and being accepted into the program, nonprofits receive an account through which they can create and display ads on Google without the need to make any payments.
The Importance of Optimizing a Google Grant Account
If you want to make the most of $10,000 in free ad spend per month, you need to be willing to adapt and make improvements on an ongoing basis. Here are a few reasons why optimizing a Google Grant account is important:
Remember, even with the Google Ad Grant, your nonprofit is competing with paid advertisers for ad space. Optimization helps level the playing field, allowing you to stand out and succeed in the highly competitive digital advertising landscape.
7 Steps to Optimize Your Google Grant Account
Now that you understand the importance of optimizing a Google Grant account, let’s explain how to actually do it!
1. Partner with a qualified Google Ad Grants agency.
Without prior experience, optimizing a Google Grant Account can be a daunting task. Thankfully, there are Google Ad Grants agencies that provide valuable expertise and insight into the process.
Here are just a few areas of our recommended agency, Getting Attention’s expertise:
By working with an agency like Getting Attention, you can leverage the expertise of professionals who specialize in mission-driven marketing and digital advertising. This partnership will help your nonprofit create more impactful ad campaigns and attract support for your cause.
For more information on the benefits of working with a Google Ad Grant agency, watch this video:
2. Conduct regular keyword research.
Keyword research helps nonprofits understand which search terms and phrases are most frequently used by their target audience and allows them to optimize their ad campaigns accordingly. By regularly conducting keyword research, you ensure that your online content is optimized for the search terms and phrases that are most relevant to your cause.
Keep these tips in mind as you choose your keywords:
It’s also important to update the negative keywords that you want to exclude from triggering your ads. For example, if your nonprofit focuses on environmental conservation, you may want to add “hunting” or “pollution” as negative keywords to ensure your ads are shown only to the most relevant audiences.
3. Create well-structured ad groups.
Google Ad Groups are a way of organizing ads within your account. An ad group typically contains a set of ads that share similar targets, such as keywords, locations, or devices.
Well-defined ad groups allow for better targeting, ensuring that the right messaging is delivered to the right people.
Here’s an example of how a marine conservation nonprofit might organize ads according to the two different programs they offer:
Ad Group 1: “Marine Wildlife Conservation”
Keywords: Marine wildlife conservation, ocean conservation, marine species protection
Ad Copy: “Help Protect Marine Wildlife. Support Our Ocean Conservation Efforts Today!”
Ad Group 2: “Beach Cleanup Volunteers”
Keywords: Beach cleanup, ocean cleanup volunteer, coastal cleanup
Ad Copy: “Join Our Beach Cleanup Volunteers. Make a Difference for Our Oceans.”
Continuously review and refine your keyword list for each ad group. Add new relevant keywords and remove irrelevant or low-performing ones.
4. Write compelling ad copy.
Well-crafted ad copy encourages users to click on the ad to learn more about your organization. To maximize your click-through rate (CTR), take these steps:
If you’re in need of inspiration, review other top-ranking ads to see what they’re doing right.
For instance, let’s say you’re trying to target keywords related to food insecurity. Do a quick Google search to see what’s ranking number #1 for these queries:
Then, craft your ad copy with these top-ranking ads in mind, possibly emulating those popular “How to” statements in the headline.
5. Establish a landing page strategy.
Landing pages that you link in your ads should be designed to convert visitors into donors, volunteers, or supporters. For the best results, ensure that your landing pages are:
Conduct A/B testing (also known as split testing) on your landing pages to identify which elements resonate best with your audience. Continuously re-test and optimize these elements over time to improve the page’s performance.
6. Use conversion tracking.
Google Ads conversion tracking allows advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns by tracking specific actions that users take after clicking on their ads. Not only is setting up conversion tracking beneficial to your ad performance, but it’s also a requirement of the Google Ad Grant. Here’s how it works:
In the Google Ads dashboard, your team can view conversion data, including the number of conversions, conversion rate, and cost per conversion. Armed with that data, evaluate the performance of your campaigns and identify which ads are driving the most valuable actions.
7. Stay up-to-date on Google Ad Grant policies.
The main policies of the Google Ad Grant program include maintaining a minimum 5% click-through rate (CTR) across the account, adhering to a maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid limit of $2, and using only text-based ads without images or videos. Nonprofits must also comply with Google’s website policy, ensuring transparency and relevance in their ad campaigns and website content.
Since these policies are subject to change, it’s important to stay informed. To keep up with Google Ad Grant policies and maintain compliance, follow these steps:
Set regular calendar reminders to check for policy updates and review your Google Ad Grant account’s compliance.
A Final Note About Optimizing Your Google Grant Account
Although optimizing a Google Ad Grant account requires consistent time and effort, it will ultimately lead to increased visibility for your nonprofit.
If you’re still not sure where to start, remember there are Google Ad Grant agencies like Getting Attention that will work alongside your nonprofit to create a digital advertising strategy that aligns with your goals.
For more information on Google Ad Grants, check out these additional resources:
How to Apply for the Google Ad Grant: A Comprehensive Guide
If you’re a nonprofit professional looking for an affordable way to expand your organization’s online presence and reach a wider audience, then you’re in the right place. The Google Ad Grant offers eligible nonprofits up to $10,000 a month in free advertising on Google.
But with so many organizations vying for the grant, how do you stand out from the competition and secure the funding you deserve? That’s where this guide comes in.
Whether you’re a tech-savvy marketer or a nonprofit newbie, we’ll teach you how to apply for the Google Ad Grant and ensure that you’re prepared to maximize the benefits of free ad spend. Let’s get started!
FAQs About the Google Ad Grant Application
Before we dive into the specifics of the Google Ad Grant application process, let’s answer some frequently asked questions.
1. What is the Google Ad Grant?
The Google Ad Grant is a powerful digital marketing tool that provides eligible nonprofits with up to $10,000 in free ad spend per month. The grant can be used to create search ads in order to drive more traffic to the nonprofit’s website or to attract more donations and volunteers.
Here’s how it works: With a Google Ad Grants account, you create ads to show on Google Search. When a user searches for terms relevant to your nonprofit’s cause, your ads will appear either independently or in positions below paid ads.
For more information on the Google Ad Grant, watch this video:
2. What are the benefits of applying for the Google Ad Grant?
The Google Ad Grant program empowers nonprofits to target specific keywords relevant to their cause and optimize their online presence. That way, when someone searches for a term related to your mission, your content is most likely to appear at the top of the search results and attract their attention (as well as their support).
Plus, the Google Ad Grant program provides access to free ad spend. Rather than having to allocate a significant portion of your budget to digital marketing, you can invest in other critical areas of your organization’s operations and programs.
3. How long does the Google Ad Grant application process take?
The timeline for the application process can vary based on several factors, including the responsiveness of your nonprofit, the completeness of your application, and the volume of applications being reviewed by Google.
How to Apply for the Google Ad Grant in 5 Steps
Now that you know what the grant is and how it can benefit your nonprofit, let’s explore how to effectively apply for the Google Ad Grant:
1. Verify your organization’s eligibility
To be eligible to apply for the Google Ad Grant, your organization must:
Keep in mind that eligibility requirements may vary slightly depending on the country or region where the nonprofit operates. Review the specific guidelines provided by Google for Nonprofits in your respective country to ensure you’re compliant.
3. Complete the Google Ad Grants enrollment process
Visit the Google Ad Grants website and follow the instructions to enroll your organization. Provide the necessary information about your nonprofit, such as:
It’s important to fill out the eligibility form accurately and completely, as incomplete or inaccurate information may delay or prevent your nonprofit from being approved for the Google Ad Grants program.
3. Build a strong website
Ensure that your website has relevant and high-quality content that aligns with your organization’s mission and the keywords you plan to target in your ad campaigns.
In addition to designing informative and engaging pages that provide value to visitors, you should:
By following these tips, you can enhance the user experience, increase engagement, and maximize the impact of your Google Ad Grant campaigns. Remember to regularly review and optimize your website based on user behavior and campaign performance data to continuously improve your results.
4. Craft compelling campaigns
Develop an effective advertising strategy to promote your organization and its initiatives. This involves:
Continuously test and optimize your ad campaigns to improve performance. Conduct A/B testing by creating variations of your ads and measuring their effectiveness. Test different headlines, ad copy, call to actions, and visuals to identify what resonates best with your audience and drives higher click-through rates and conversions.
5. Submit your application
Once you submit your application for the Google Ad Grant program, it will be reviewed by Google to ensure compliance with the program guidelines and policies. As previously mentioned, the approval process varies but typically takes a few weeks. During this time, Google may request additional information or clarifications.
Then, you’ll receive a notification from Google regarding the status of your application. If approved, you can begin using your Google Ad Grant to run ads and promote your nonprofit!
A Final Note About the Google Ad Grant Application
The Google Ad Grants program offers a valuable opportunity for nonprofit organizations to promote their missions online with free Google Ads. If you need assistance throughout the application process, consider working with our recommended Google Ad Grants agency: Getting Attention.
Their team of experts will ensure that your nonprofit meets the eligibility requirements, submits a successful application, and leverages the Google Ad Grant effectively.
For more information on the Google Ad Grant, check out these additional resources:
Defining Employee Recruitment — Nonprofit Catalog
Picture this: You’re running your most successful phone-a-thon fundraiser in years. Your marketing strategy really hit home, and your phones are ringing off the hook. There’s one problem, though. You simply don’t have enough employees to manage the incoming calls.
You have tons of donors ready to give, but you lack the operational capacity to manage their generosity. What’s the end result? Missed opportunities and a decline in donor retention. Maybe this example is a little extreme, but the principle is true. Nonprofits that avoid recruiting high-value employees tend to run some serious risks.
Great employees not only help you crush your to-dos, but they also bring a fresh level of passion and commitment to your organization. In fact, 88% of millennials consider their job more fulfilling when they have opportunities to have a positive impact on society.
Kickstarting the employee recruitment process can seem daunting at first, but it helps if you break the process down into manageable steps.
What is employee recruitment?
Employee recruitment is the process of connecting with potential new employees to assess whether they’d be a good fit for an organization’s open positions. This process can take a while to perfect and will look different as your organization evolves.
Ideally, recruiting employees is a win-win for your organization. Nonprofits fill positions with capable employees and individuals find a place to work that aligns with their values and schedule. Finding these employees can be trial and error, that’s why it’s important to implement a detailed employee recruitment and review process.
Why do organizations need recruitment strategies?
Filling positions can be time-consuming and challenging. By setting hiring and recruitment strategies, you can acquire the right talent, drive growth, and adapt to changing circumstances without spending as much time as you would otherwise.
Let’s break down some of the most important reasons to develop a recruitment plan:
A solid employee recruitment and hiring plan can support your organization in a variety of ways, from staying on top of industry changes to generally finding good fits for your team. In turn, you’ll be able to fill immediate staffing needs and impact the long-term success of your organization.
What are the steps of the employee recruitment process?
An employee recruitment process can be tailored to each position and changed over time. However, it’s helpful to have a general guideline to refer back to. Let’s take a look at some defined steps:
Throughout this process, keep your options open by casting a wide net. You may have your heart set on a couple of candidates, but keep in mind that plans change for a variety of reasons. Your main goal should be to recruit as many qualified candidates as possible. The next section will show you how to conduct interviews that effectively filter through these candidates.
8 tips for a successful interview process
After you’ve set up interviews with potential recruits, you must ensure that your interview process is well-thought-through to find the right candidate for the job. Make sure that each candidate understands and aligns with your organization’s values, whether they involve giving back to the community, strengthening your diversity and inclusion initiatives, or being responsive to customers.
Follow these tips to hold productive interviews:
In-depth interview processes proactively assess a candidate’s qualifications. Once you have decided on your candidates, be sure to extend them a warm welcome to your team. Keep in mind that regular employee performance reviews are also necessary to keep your team in tip-top shape. Once hired, employees expect consistent and honest feedback for their work.
How do we keep recruited team members engaged?
Recruitment takes a lot of energy and funds, so you want to ensure that the candidates you pick stay for the long term. Here are some tactics you can use to boost your recruitment’s ROI and keep team members engaged:
Open communication between management and directs
Make your organization feel like a close-knit team by encouraging open communication in the workplace. Schedule consistent one-on-one meetings between new employees and managers to help them surmount challenges, boost confidence, and progress in their roles. Doing so allows them to have more frequent conversations about their work approach and feel supported at your company.
At the same time, encourage managers to share regular feedback with their directs, recognizing outstanding performance and sharing areas where they can improve moving forward. This approach removes any uncertainty or guesswork among employees regarding their performance.
Offer upward mobility
A stagnant work structure may lead to employee burnout and disengagement from your organization. Studies show that employees experiencing burnout are 3.4 times more likely to leave the company and nearly 2 times more likely to feel disconnected from company culture. Fortunately, you can minimize the risk of burnout and disengagement by giving employees the opportunity to grow and take on more significant responsibilities over time.
One easy way to accomplish this is to offer professional development opportunities. These may range from a mentorship program to online courses. As a result, you’ll not only keep employees invested in their roles, but you’ll also help them improve their performance in those roles.
Embrace employee recognition
Employee recognition is a vital component of a thriving workplace, enhancing overall job satisfaction and fostering a sense of belonging. While feedback from upper management is important, it’s equally crucial to empower employees to recognize each other’s contributions, too. Consider the following strategies:
Whichever recognition approach you take, strive to make employees feel valued not only by their colleagues but also by the organization as a whole. Acknowledging employees’ efforts and achievements on multiple levels leads to higher engagement, stronger teamwork, and improved morale.
Involve employees in decision-making
Employees want to know that management values their ideas. With this in mind, open the floor for them to provide suggestions about your organization’s culture or strategies by sending out regular surveys soliciting their feedback.
Consider asking questions in these key areas:
Even if you don’t accept all suggestions, it’s important to acknowledge and express gratitude to employees for taking the time to provide their input.
Respect work-life balance
While your employees work for you to make a living, work should not be their entire lives. Respect work-life boundaries by clearly delineating your expectations for work hours and limiting work-related communication on the weekends.
Furthermore, encourage employees to take breaks and consider offering flexible work hours so they can adjust their schedules to maximize productivity. Promote their overall well-being by initiating wellness activities and providing mental health support resources to employees.
Empower employees to be independent
You chose your job candidates because you see potential in them to make an impact on your organization. Enable them to explore projects they’re interested in, take ownership of their assignments, and make independent decisions. They’ll feel much more confident and fulfilled in their roles, and you may even cultivate future leaders within your company.
Create a workplace giving program
Three out of four U.S. employees want to work for a company that makes a positive impact on the world. By launching a workplace giving program, you’ll be able to retain the employees you recruit and attract even more top talent to your company.
There are many types of workplace giving you can pursue, such as matching gifts and volunteer grants. Through these programs, your company will contribute a certain amount of funds to nonprofits that employees donate their money or time to.
To facilitate these philanthropic initiatives, consider investing in workplace giving software. These technology solutions make it easy to organize your program, engage employees, and report on impact.
As your employee base changes over time, so should your engagement strategies. Gauge the effectiveness of your strategies as time passes by sending surveys, researching new trends, and staying open to suggestions from your employees.
Additional Resources
Incorporating Events into Your Member Recruitment Strategy
Event planning is one of many important parts of effective association management. A well-planned association event not only boosts your revenue and engages existing members, but it can recruit new ones as well.
Members make an association. And recruiting new members is just as important as retaining current members! Recruiting helps association growth and keeps numbers up when old members leave.
In this guide, we’ll discuss five essential ways your organization can incorporate events into your member recruitment strategy to enhance your results.
1. Determine your target audience
Before you begin planning an upcoming event to increase member recruitment, it’s important to understand your association’s target audience. There are different reasons for someone to attend an association event. Here are some common motivations:
By understanding how to appeal to potential members’ values and interests, you can choose the right type of event to attract them.
2. Plan how you’ll engage potential members
Plan your association event with potential members in mind. You should always be thinking about the specific individuals you’re trying to draw in. It’s always a good idea to plan as much of your event in advance as possible. This way, everyone helping at the event knows exactly what they’re meant to be doing and how they can connect to potential members.
Consider hosting an event that both members and non-members are free to attend. Or consider inviting potential members to attend a members-only event as guests. No matter the event, you can prepare welcome packets containing important membership details to pass out to these non-members at the event.
To provide added convenience to potential members, consider making your event hybrid or virtual so that even those who may be unable to attend in person can participate.
At this point in time, most people are very familiar with attending virtual events, which makes it easy and convenient. This also broadens your audience and lets you reach more people. You can reach people who may live further away but are still excited to join.
Having this option is a great way to attract people who are interested in your association but haven’t been able to make it to in-person events previously. They’ll be even more excited for this one!
3. Enlist your current members to help at your event
Make the most of your existing members’ connections by enlisting them to help with member recruitment at your next association event.
Having current members there is a great way to introduce potential members to your association. It’s also a great way for potential members to form connections within the association through current members. A personal connection goes a long way.
Ask for volunteers from your members to become ambassadors at the event. They can encourage potential members to join your association by:
Furthermore, encourage existing members to invite a non-member acquaintance, work colleague, or friend who might be interested in becoming a member.
Using existing networks is a great way to find new members. A person coming to an event through someone they know is more likely to join up if they have a personal connection to your organization already.
4. Emphasize member benefits
Make it easy for event attendees to embark on their membership journey to your association by highlighting specific member benefits at the event. Show them why they should join!
At the event, you can include benefits in your welcome packet. You can also consider passing out one-page sheets listing the benefits. Having the benefits highlighted in their own handout can be helpful to make them more clear.
You can also go into more detail if they’re separate, rather than trying to fit it all into the welcome packet, which should be concise. Provide a link to your website on anything you hand out, or another place where they can learn more.
Just a few member benefit ideas you can highlight include:
Member benefits will be different for every association. Again, think about your audience. Who are they? What do you think would benefit them? What do you think they’d be most interested in?
5. Follow up with event attendees
In addition to your usual thank-you emails to everyone who attended your event, follow up specifically with your non-member event attendees about joining your association.
Give them a clear path, both during and after the event, for how to join your organization. Make the process as easy and clear as possible. Nothing stops a potential member more than a lengthy and difficult-to-understand application process. Having a straightforward application process should always be an important part of your member recruitment strategy.
There are many things you can fit into a thank you email. Here are some suggestions:
Show them that you care about their experience with your organization by sending out post-event surveys to gather their feedback and make improvements for future events.
Events can give potential members a clearer picture of what membership in your association looks like. Therefore, it’s critical to plan an enjoyable and memorable event experience for all attendees. In this article, we’ve given five ways to help you improve your member recruitment strategy. Following these five tips will help turn your next recruitment event into a success!
Understanding the Fundraising Consultant Hiring Process
Working with the right consultant can change the trajectory of your organization’s fundraising. No matter what kind of support you need, whether it’s planning a capital campaign or conducting a fundraising assessment, a fundraising consultant can help.
But how do you find the perfect consultant for your organization, and how exactly do you hire one? To help you understand what the fundraising consultant hiring process looks like, we’ll cover the most important elements:
Once you go through the hiring process, your nonprofit will end up with a valuable resource who can help you make lasting changes to your organization’s fundraising approach. Let’s dive in so you can start reaping those benefits!
Assessing Your Organization’s Needs
Similar to the process you go through when choosing new fundraising software to invest in, you’ll first need to determine exactly what you need from the consultant. Assess your resources, goals, and recent campaign performance to determine which areas of fundraising you need help with.
Some common focus areas that fundraising consultants can assist you with include:
After determining the type of fundraising support you’ll need from your consultant, be sure to define specific goals for their involvement. What outcomes do you want to achieve with their help? Set concrete goals, such as securing 10 major gifts within the next year or increasing the total value of individual donations by 20%.
Request for Proposals (RFPs)
Next, you’ll use the goals you set to create an RFP, or Request for Proposals. RFPs are documents your organization creates to outline why you’re searching for a consultant, explain what you’re looking for, and ask prospects to send in proposals for consideration.
RFPs keep your search on track and give prospective consultants a clear idea of the services you require. To write one effectively, Donorly’s fundraising consultant hiring guide breaks down everything your RFP should include:
Once you’ve created a draft, run the RFP by your board for final approval. After researching options and selecting consultants you’re interested in learning more about, you’ll send your RFP to each one. Each consultant will then use these guidelines to create their own proposals, which you’ll use to determine the best fit.
Consultant Research
Now that you’ve outlined your needs and goals in your RFP, you can begin searching for potential consultants!
There are multiple avenues for consultant research. Start by reaching out to your colleagues and connections at other nonprofits to ask for recommendations. You might attend nonprofit panels that fundraising consultants participate in to hear about their services. Or, conduct research online using general Google searches or by visiting reputable websites like The Giving Institute or AFP’s fundraising consultant directory.
As you research consultants, pay attention to each one’s:
Take notes on every consultant that stands out throughout your research, then bring your team together to discuss your findings. Based on these factors, narrow down your options to a list of 5-10 consultants you think could be the best fit.
Making Your Decision
As soon as you have your list of prospective consultants, you can jump into the process of sending RFPs and evaluating the candidates. To make a decision, follow these steps:
To make your final choice, consider factors like the quality of the consultant’s previous work, how their proposal aligns with your needs, and their personal fit with your nonprofit’s culture. According to eCardWidget, your company culture is made up of your organizational values, attitudes, and practices. It’s important that everyone working with your nonprofit aligns with its culture to ensure satisfaction.
The consultant hiring process can feel like a big time commitment, but think of it as an investment. The more careful thought and dedication you put into the process, the better results you’ll see when you find the right fit. Fundraising consultants can give your organization the tools to thrive for years to come and ultimately do more of what matters, so they’re worth taking the time to find.
The Damage of Nonprofit Employee Churn & How to Prevent It
We’re living in an unusual labor environment—historically low but rising unemployment rates, high inflation, conflicting signs that may or may not point to an impending recession. We’re also seeing highly active labor movements and changing norms following the significant changes brought about by the pandemic and Great Resignation.
Economic anxieties are at a high, so nonprofits naturally have a lot on their minds. When instability is on the radar, most organizations know to strengthen their donor and partner relationships while seeking new ways to diversify their revenue—but look inward, too.
The internal health of an organization is essential for its overall health. Employee retention plays a critically important role.
Let’s take a closer look at the state of employee turnover for nonprofits. Why is it so harmful, and how can you prevent it?
What’s the average nonprofit turnover rate?
The voluntary turnover rate for the nonprofit sector averaged 19% in 2022. It also sits consistently higher than turnover at for-profit businesses.
Historically, 19% turnover is typical, but looking at recent years, we can see some interesting trends. The turnover rate rose to a high of 21% in 2019 but dropped to a low of 14% in 2020 (NonprofitHR). One possible explanation is that the disruptions of the pandemic and the drastically increased need for nonprofit services during that time kept many nonprofit professionals in their jobs.
Since then, the turnover rate has steadily increased to pre-pandemic norms as part of the Great Resignation, with many employees across sectors finding new opportunities. Perhaps your own organization saw the same trends play out at a reduced scale since 2019—a good reminder that while there are many causes of turnover that you can control, there are also external forces that you can’t.
But just because you can’t directly control the forces that drive turnover doesn’t mean you can’t adapt to them! After the disruptions of recent years, nonprofits are already making positive changes.
Specifically, NonprofitHR’s 2022 retention survey found that more nonprofits are now actively tracking employee retention metrics (+4%) and developing formal retention strategies (+13%) than in 2021.
This is great news—it’s impossible to reduce turnover and mitigate its damage without a concrete plan or data to inform it. It would seem that many nonprofits have learned from the lessons of the pandemic years to improve their employee management approach.
So what were those lessons exactly? What are the extended negative impacts of churn?
Why is employee churn so harmful?
There are many reasons why a high turnover rate is harmful to organizations, and they can amplify each other over time if left unchecked, making it increasingly difficult to retain talent. The key risks to consider include:
For nonprofits specifically, these risks are heightened. Nonprofits usually operate on tight budgets, making the felt effects of turnover-related financial and opportunity costs especially pronounced. Nonprofits also rely heavily on relationships with donors, sponsors, and funders to sustain their work—relationships built by individual fundraisers or development officers. If these relationships are too siloed, that fundraiser’s departure can make it very difficult to maintain their valuable relationships.
Not to mention, nonprofits need positive public perceptions to continue fundraising and operating their programs effectively. Inconsistent staffing and a reputation as a place where people don’t want to work can cause your community to become disengaged or even lose trust in your nonprofit.
How can you reduce or eliminate these risks?
Enough of the gloomy stuff—what are the steps you can take to prevent these negative impacts from taking root in your organization?
1. Combat turnover.
It seems self-evident, but to avoid the damage of employee turnover, you should actively combat it by prioritizing retention.
Although more nonprofits now actively develop retention strategies, many still don’t. And those that do often haven’t been able to devote much attention to management in the past, so their retention approaches may not be rooted in best practices. What do you need to know about employee retention?
Start by understanding the key elements of an effective strategy. According to Graham-Pelton’s retention guide for nonprofits, these include:
Within these categories fall a wide variety of tactics you can use to engage and retain employees. There’s no one specific arrangement that will work for every nonprofit. Rather, each organization should seek to find the right ratio of tactics that mesh with their cultures, values, and communities. Ensuring that each category is represented will make your overall strategy more effective and well-rounded.
But there are a few big-picture best practices that successful retention strategies share. As you develop your unique configuration of retention tactics, keep these in mind:
Building out a retention strategy to reduce turnover in the first place is the single best step you can take to mitigate its damage to your nonprofit.
The best part is that your strategy doesn’t have to be perfect. It should instead be dynamic and adaptive—you won’t know what works best for your unique organization until you try it out, so approach your strategy as a continual learning experience.
2. Reduce knowledge and relationship silos.
With a solid preventative framework in place, we’ll now look at the infrastructural steps you can take to reduce the negative impacts of turnover when it does happen.
The siloing of knowledge and relationships creates undue risks—a departing employee takes their skills and contacts with them. And even if you’re still in touch with a donor after the departure of the gift officer who built that relationship, the relationship may now need to start from square one. To reduce silos, try these best practices:
Consider your regulatory context when looking for ways to reduce knowledge and contact silos. For example, grateful patient fundraising programs are subject to more restrictive patient privacy laws that will impact the specific fundraising and data flows that you can use as an organization.
3. Give employees the tools and frameworks to succeed.
Equipping and empowering your employees to drive the greatest impact will go a long way to improve retention. When team members don’t need to waste time and energy with clunky systems and processes, they’ll feel more engaged and able to focus on their real tasks—engaging with donors and constituents, facilitating programs, and keeping your organization running.
And if turnover does occur, you’ll have more efficient, resilient, and intuitive processes in place that reduce its negative impacts.
First, upgrade tech or invest in tech as needed. A modern CRM is a must, as is intuitive fundraising or donation software that truly meets your needs. If you’re feeling locked into a legacy platform that either isn’t offering a great donor experience or creates more problems than it solves for your team, an upgrade is likely a smart move.
And keep in mind that investing in your own ability to drive impact sustainably is an important part of stewarding your mission. Consider whether it’s possible to budget for needed upgrades and new purchases, remembering that sometimes overhead is essential. Or consider conducting a special capacity campaign to fund new investments—always an option if a jolt of capital will take your growth to the next level and you can make a compelling, specific case for support.
Aside from technology, you should also equip your team with the processes, frameworks, and strategies they need to thrive in their roles, especially if your small organization is growing. Ad hoc solutions and approaches may work for a while, but they’re often not scalable. Not only do they become more disorganized over time, but they also lead to worse employee experiences.
Increased organization and efficiency will be key. Moves management and prospect portfolio management systems are great examples of more advanced practices that organizations pick up and adapt as they mature.
Of course, employee churn isn’t 100% avoidable—some employees will always choose to leave for personal reasons or because they’ve found new opportunities.
What your nonprofit can control are the internal forces that drive churn and its potential negative impacts, and it’s not hard to take the first steps. Outline a concrete retention strategy if you haven’t yet. Consider if you’re unnecessarily siloing important knowledge or contacts and whether you’re offering tools and processes that make work easier rather than harder.
4 Features to Look for in a Nonprofit Payment Processor
From planning a fundraiser to promoting and executing it, your nonprofit likely spends most of its time thinking of ways to boost its revenue. From text campaigns to festive fun runs, your goal is to collect donations that will power your nonprofit’s mission. But communicating the importance of your mission and finding enthusiastic donors is only half the job!
Consider what happens after you swipe that credit card. Between the swipe and the funds landing in your account, a lot has to happen on the backend to ensure payments are processed securely and quickly—and preferably at a low cost to your nonprofit.
Your choice of a payment processor significantly impacts your ability to gain donors’ trust and collect donations with ease. That’s why we’ve compiled four of the most important features to look for when researching payment processors for your nonprofit.
The choices, it can seem, are endless. There are nonprofit CRMs with built-in payment processors. There’s Stripe and iATS, Paypal, Fundly, and the list goes on. Think about your nonprofit to decide whether a CRM with a payment processor is the best choice, or if it’s easier for you to use a third-party system.
Regardless of which you choose, here are the four features you’ll want to be sure you pay close attention to as you shop around.
Security Certifications
Perhaps the most critical measurement you can take is how secure payments will be with any given provider. Fortunately for consumers and organizations, the Payment Card Industry has standardized security certification so you can tell, at a glance, how secure a payment processor is.
Payment processors should, at the very least, be PCI-compliant. If they have this designation, the payment processor adheres to PCI guidelines and will internally check their processes with a self-assessment. This compliance, achieved in about a month, means the payment processor has:
The next step up from PCI compliance is PCI certification. This is a much more stringent certification and one that involves more steps to remain compliant. There’s a rigorous process that includes regular audits by a third party to ensure the software and security measures are safe. This certification isn’t common among payment processors as it takes about six months to complete—and the processor remains under careful watch to ensure compliance is maintained.
If your payment processor is PCI-certified, it means that:
Moving on from PCI compliance, some payment processors are SOC 2 compliant. A platform that is SOC 2-certified or compliant adheres to security standards that protect all the donor data you collect. Everything from network firewalls to encryption is evaluated to ensure that information about your nonprofit’s donors can’t be compromised.
SOC-2 certification and compliance are voluntary and are based on Trust Services Criteria determined by the American Institute of CPAs. Compliant processors are adhering to strict regulations about how they manage donor data. If you can find a payment processor that is both PCI-certified and SOC 2-certified, you’re looking at a processor that is much more focused on the security and safety of your donor data.
A final piece of the security puzzle is fraud prevention. It’s a fear of many nonprofits because when donor data or dollars are compromised, the reputation of your nonprofit can take a hit.
To give your donors peace of mind and protect their data, look for a platform that is regularly audited and held to the highest security standards. Many nonprofit CRM payment processors will offer some sort of fraud protection to their clients, and it’s advisable to seek out any level of fraud protection to keep your donors safe.
User-Friendliness
Can a payment processor be user-friendly? Yes, if you find the right one!
Think about it like this: If a supporter donated just once at the end of each year, would they be familiar with the donation submission process? Or would they forget how to use the software after such a long time had lapsed and become frustrated with it?
Your payment processor should make it easy for donors to give, no matter how they choose to submit their donation. What makes it easy to give?
One-click giving, in which a donor enters a name and the system automatically populates the other fields, is a great way to offer donors a user-friendly experience. And having multiple options for donation types can help as well.
At a minimum, allow your donors to give via:
Other considerations include the ability to accept in-kind donations or donated stock/securities. And for donors worldwide, choose a payment processor that accepts multi-currency transactions.
Availability of Support
When something in your payment processing software is confusing or just not working the way you expect it to, you’ll want to be able to pick up the phone or click a link and chat with someone.
How a payment processor views support tells you a lot about how the relationship is going to look, long-term. If they just want your signature on a contract, they might not be the best option. But if they offer a lot of support options: email, online chat, ticket system, and even the old-fashioned phone that actually gets answered, you might want to explore that relationship
Think of your payment platform as an investment in a partner who will support your fundraising ventures. This is especially true if you invest in an all-in-one solution that handles multiple fundraising tasks.
For example, if you are running a peer-to-peer campaign, you might appreciate a chat with someone who has seen dozens of nonprofit P2P events. If your nonprofit CRM is also a payment processor, they likely support their clients and offer a multitude of fundraising tools.
A tip is to look for a platform with a professional customer service team. Not only will you want the help to answer any questions you may have, but the right support team will:
Be sure that you can depend on the provider’s customer service team whenever you need help!
Leveraging a Subscription Billing Model
If you look at gyms or streaming services or the little front-door boxes with all the ingredients for a delicious dinner, you will see evidence of our (increasingly expected) subscription economy.
And what does that mean for your nonprofit? Donors are used to this idea of monthly giving. When your billing software supports automatic monthly donations or sustainers, or even pledges, you’re ahead of the game.
Don’t start your search for a payment processor by thinking about the donation process—observe your fundraising goals in their entirety. Your nonprofit will want to grow donations and retain donors. How can your payment processor support that goal?
According to CharityEngine’s guide to sustained giving programs, “Your nonprofit needs billing software created to maximize the dollars donated to your nonprofit.” To encourage recurring donations, your payment processor should offer a subscription billing model that allows for automated payments or online bill payments.
Choosing the Right Payment Processor
Is there one payment processor that’s the best choice for every single nonprofit? No, but there is the best choice for your nonprofit. So once you’ve settled on the features that matter most, research your options and request demos from the providers that most impress you.
More than anything, look for a partner. Check off these four features, of course, because you can leverage them to maximize fundraising. But listen to your gut when you’re asking about support. Having a partner that cares about your success is a sure way to win at the fundraising game.
How to Start a Fundraiser: The Nonprofit’s Ultimate Guide
Fundraising comprises a large portion of your nonprofit’s funding. Collecting donations empowers your organization to expand its reach and accomplish its mission.
However, it can be intimidating to start a fundraiser from scratch, especially for newer organizations and less experienced fundraising coordinators. Fundraisers require a certain level of organization, a clear strategy, and a lot of hard work to be successful. From creating your initial goals to developing your marketing materials, there are so many considerations that go into starting a fundraiser.
To help you stay on track, we’ll teach you how to start a fundraiser by walking you through the fundraising process step by step. Along the way, we’ll offer advice on how to pull off the fundraiser of your dreams.
Take a look at the steps we’ll discuss to make sure your fundraising plan is complete:
It’s our goal at NXUnite to equip nonprofits with the tools and knowledge they need to be successful. Fundraising is such a huge element of nonprofit operations, so it’s important to know how to start a fundraiser properly. That’s why we’ve created this ultimate guide to help your nonprofit reach its fundraising goals.
With that, let’s jump right into it and learn how to start a fundraiser!
1. Determine Your Goals For Your Nonprofit Fundraiser
To start a fundraiser off on the right foot, it’s important to set a focus for your campaign by creating clear goals. That way, you’ll build a strong foundation for the rest of the planning process.
The SMART Goal Method
Instead of creating generic objectives, there are some guidelines your organization should follow to make sure your goals are meaningful. The SMART goal model ensures that your goals are action-oriented and targeted to exactly what you want to achieve. Check out the elements of SMART goals:
To sum up SMART goals, we’ll give you an example to refer to. If you coordinate school fundraisers, your goal might be to raise $100,000 over the course of the school year to help build a new playground. This goal is specific because it indicates exactly what the money will go towards. It’s measurable because you’ve assigned a monetary value to your goal.
Your team must determine whether your goals are achievable by evaluating your resources, but we know this one is relevant because it will add value to the school. Lastly, this goal is time-bound because it must be accomplished by the end of the school year.
Other Considerations For Your Fundraiser’s Goals
Now that you know how to create SMART goals, there are two other considerations you’ll want to keep in mind:
Putting thought behind your goals will set your campaign up for success before it even starts by giving participants something to work toward. Once your fundraising goals are solidified, it’s time to choose what your campaign will look like.
2. Select a Fundraising Campaign Type
Once your fundraising goals are solidified, it’s time to choose what your campaign will look like. There are a wide variety of available options for nonprofit fundraisers. Depending on your goals, budget, and resources, you can select the type of campaign that best suits your organization’s audience and needs.
To make it easier to plan your campaign, we’ve divided some of the top nonprofit fundraising ideas into the general categories of online and offline initiatives. Of course, some of these ideas are flexible and can be hosted in either sphere. Additionally, you might choose to combine multiple campaigns to expand your fundraising capabilities—it all depends on what you hope to accomplish!
Online Fundraising Campaigns
A major advantage of online fundraising is that it breaks down geographical barriers, making it possible to connect with more supporters no matter where they live. These campaigns are also convenient for your supporters since they can participate from anywhere.
Here are a few online fundraising campaign types to get you started:
The one downside of online fundraising is that it’s often more difficult to form lasting connections with campaign participants. That’s why it’s especially important to follow up with supporters and say thank you after they contribute online.
Offline Fundraising Campaigns
Many people prefer the personal touch of offline interactions, which is where more traditional fundraising methods excel. Plus, offline campaigns can often be combined with online ones or converted to a hybrid format if some supporters would still like to participate online.
Some popular offline fundraising campaigns include:
No matter which combination of online and offline fundraising campaigns you try, take steps to get your supporters excited about their involvement with your organization.
3. Develop a Fundraising Plan
An effective fundraising plan will keep you organized and on track. It will serve as your roadmap and ensure you have everything you need to make your campaign successful.
To make sure your fundraising plan is comprehensive, here are the elements yours should include:
Incorporating all of these items into your fundraising plan will set clear intentions for your fundraiser, making it easier to move along with the planning process.
4. Invest in the Right Software Before Starting a Fundraiser
Fundraising software is necessary for most nonprofit campaigns to run smoothly. From accepting online donations and processing payments to managing donors and volunteers, there are so many aspects of fundraisers where software can make a major difference.
Some popular types of software your nonprofit might leverage for its campaigns include:
If your organization already uses donor management software, look for fundraising software that integrates with the platform you use. That way, you can automatically transfer information about your new donors between the two solutions, saving your team time and energy. Later on, you can use that data to reach out to donors and improve your future fundraising campaigns.
5. Create Marketing Materials To Promote Your Fundraiser
Nonprofits need to come up with cohesive marketing strategies in order to promote their fundraisers effectively. Think about your campaign as a single story you want to tell. Every promotional material should work together in pursuit of your goals.
It can be difficult to create effective marketing materials on a budget, that’s why it’s essential to use the free or discounted marketing tools to empower your mission. This way, you’ll create stunning designs that are also cost-effective. With this in mind, here are some additional tips that will help you elevate your materials:
If your team has trouble creating its marketing materials, consider outsourcing the design work to a third-party graphic designer. We highly recommend Kwala, a nonprofit-focused graphic design company. By exclusively working with nonprofits throughout the years, they’ve become well-versed in what it takes to design materials that inspire support.
From social media graphics to fundraising flyers, Kwala can help bring your visions to life and spread awareness for your fundraisers in no time. Take this event invitation they created for the Wildlife Rescue Group for example:
Whether you want artistic drawings or more realistic designs with stock photos, they’ll work with you to create the perfect promotional materials for your next fundraiser.
Once your marketing materials are ready to go, it’s time to share them with your supporters!
6. Promote Your Nonprofit’s Fundraiser
Your fundraiser could be for an outstanding cause with an organized fundraising plan behind it, but if no one knows about it, you won’t reach your fundraising goals. Promoting your fundraiser will attract new and previous donors to contribute to your cause.
As we alluded to before, your organization can use many different marketing channels to spread the word about your fundraiser. Use any combination of the ones we’ve listed below:
Email
You can’t go wrong with email marketing. It allows you to reach new and previous supporters and send a variety of different communications related to your fundraiser. Whether you’re informing subscribers about your fundraiser in your newsletter, inviting supporters to a fundraising event, or thanking donors for their contributions, email is an effective way to communicate about your fundraising efforts.
Website
Your organization’s website is the home base for anything and everything about your nonprofit, so it’s a great place to include details about your fundraiser. Potential supporters will get the opportunity to look through other pages on your site to learn more about your organization before they lend their support.
Peer-to-Peer Outreach
One underutilized marketing tool is your supporters. Your existing donors and volunteers are some of your nonprofit’s biggest ambassadors. A genuine referral from one of them can go a long way in amplifying your fundraiser. Have them post about your campaign online and text their friends, encouraging them to donate to your fundraiser. You can even design event invitations or fundraising eCards they can use to challenge others to give to your campaign.
Learn more about designing donation and cause awareness greeting cards for your cause by exploring eCardWidget’s charity eCards guide.
Blog
If your nonprofit has a blog on its website, consider posting an article about the fundraiser. You could introduce or recap a fundraising event or provide an update about how much money you’ve raised so far.
Social Media
Social media is a great place to promote your fundraiser because your supporters can repost your content and share it with their own networks. You can also use social media as a chance to have some fun with your fundraiser’s promotion by playing into current trends and making short videos about the fundraiser with your team.
Press Release
See if any local media outlets will share a press release about your fundraising events. That way, you can reach members of your community who may know nothing about your organization.
Related Organizations
Ask your corporate partners, local businesses, or other related nonprofit organizations to help you spread the word about your fundraiser.
Google Ad Grants
The Google Ad Grants program provides nonprofits with $10,000 per month in Google Ad spend. As long as your organization is eligible, you can apply to the program and leverage Google Ads for free to promote your fundraisers and cause.
For help with applying for the program and managing your account, reach out to a Google Grant agency. A professional can take charge of your campaigns, so you can focus on other aspects of your fundraisers instead of writing ad copy.
7. Thank Donors For Contributing To Your Fundraiser
It’s always important to thank your donors, especially directly after they’ve made a donation. New donors can become life-long members of your community if you put in the effort to form relationships with them. Additionally, you can keep previous donors coming back by showing them you appreciate them.
The way you create a positive experience for donors is through effective donor stewardship. While 55% of US donors prefer to be thanked for their contributions via email, there are several ways to practice proper donor stewardship and leave a lasting impression:
Donor stewardship ensures that your organization creates and maintains strong relationships with your supporters. That way, your nonprofit can expand its network and build a community of supporters to work with and rely on when you start future fundraisers, projects, and initiatives.
Don’t overlook other supporters at this stage either! Recognize volunteers for any time and skills they used to make your fundraiser successful too. Sending a personalized eCard or quickly calling them can leave a positive impression. Additionally, take the time to publicly acknowledge your corporate sponsors for their contributions. You can do this with a sincere thank-you post on social media.
8. Assess the Results of Your Nonprofit’s Fundraiser
After your fundraiser, it’s essential to go back and look over your goals to see if you’ve accomplished them. This final step is important because it allows you to take the lessons you’ve learned from this campaign and apply them to your next fundraiser.
A great way to assess the results of your fundraiser is to ask your donors or event attendees for their feedback by sending them a survey. That way, you can get another perspective on what worked and what didn’t from fundraiser participants rather than leadership.
Additionally, there are some questions you’ll want to review with your fundraising team to evaluate your success. These questions may include:
Taking the time to reflect upon your fundraiser will make your next one even more successful. Even though your team is likely busy with other projects, putting in a little time now means you’ll save time later in the planning process for future fundraisers.
Conclusion & Additional Resources
Now that you know the steps for how to start a fundraiser, it will be easier to stay organized and get the job done. Each time you host a fundraiser, you’ll get more familiar with the planning process, leading to more successful fundraisers.
In this guide to how to start a fundraiser, we touched upon many different considerations that go into fundraiser planning. We know you might have some further questions about how to host an effective fundraiser, especially if you’re a first-timer.
To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of resources that go beyond the basics of starting a fundraiser. These articles tackle more specific fundraiser tips and tricks that will help you along your fundraising journey. Check them out below: