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!
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Wild-Apricot_NXUnite_Incorporating-Events-into-Your-Member-Recruitment-Strategy_Feature.jpg7501600HannahThttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgHannahT2023-09-15 13:30:262023-09-15 13:30:28Incorporating Events into Your Member Recruitment Strategy
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.
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Donorly_NXUnite_Understanding-the-Fundraising-Consultant-Hiring-Process_Feature.jpg321700jenny.russhttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgjenny.russ2023-09-14 16:58:362023-09-14 16:58:39Understanding the Fundraising Consultant Hiring Process
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.
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Graham-Pelton_NXUnite_The-Damage-of-Nonprofit-Employee-Churn-How-to-Prevent-It_feature.png7401400HannahThttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgHannahT2023-09-12 15:17:422023-09-12 15:17:45The Damage of Nonprofit Employee Churn & How to Prevent It
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.
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/CharityEngine_NXUnite_5-Features-to-Look-for-in-a-Nonprofit-Payment-Processor.png7401400wpenginehttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgwpengine2023-08-21 16:57:362023-08-21 16:57:404 Features to Look for in a Nonprofit Payment Processor
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
Did you know that nonprofits raise $78 on average for every 1,000 fundraising messages sent out? That means that every marketing message counts, so your strategy needs to be digitally savvy to be effective. Additionally, you’ll need to use sustainable marketing tools to keep your efforts going. But, how does your nonprofit find the right digital marketing tools on a budget?
By using nonprofit-specialized marketing tools for free or at a discounted rate! This means you can promote your cause without overextending your resources. Compare it to shopping for discounts at your favorite store—a treasure hunt for the best finds at lowered prices. The key is knowing where to look.
In this guide, we’ve made your search easier by providing our top eighteen free or discounted nonprofit marketing tools in addition to some marketing budget guidelines. Here’s where we’re headed:
At NXUnite, we specialize in connecting nonprofits with resources to strengthen all of their operations. Marketing is a vital part of your nonprofit’s success because it’s how people find you, connect with you, and contribute to your organization’s impact. We understand that marketing can be difficult to manage on a small budget, that’s why we’re dedicated to providing you with useful resources like this guide to give your nonprofit an extra marketing edge.
Nonprofit Marketing Budget Considerations
Before we jump into our top marketing tools, let’s discuss some marketing budget considerations. After all, you need to know how much ad spending you should aim for to understand why discounted or free tools are worth researching.
Within the for-profit sector, it’s standard to determine your marketing budget by allocating 10-20% of projected gross revenues to marketing. As a nonprofit, you should plan to allocate 5-15% of your budget to marketing. The marketing channels you choose to invest in should be determined by your team to ensure they align with your organization’s goals and target audience.
Types of Nonprofit Marketing Tools
What are your options for nonprofit marketing tools? There’s a wide variety of platforms you can use. To simplify your search, we’ve narrowed them down to the following categories:
Search: Search tools aid in the promotion of your organization’s website through paid advertising or SEO optimization. They increase your online visibility and drive more traffic to your site.
Content: Content tools help you devise a strategic approach to creating valuable content that resonates with your target audience. There are several different forms of content marketing tools that can help you refine and schedule videos, photos, designs, articles, website pages, and blogs.
Social media: Social media tools leverage platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram to engage with your target audience and spread your organization’s mission.
Email: Email marketing tools help your organization establish a regular email cadence with supporters. Many platforms include mailing list targeting and customizable templates to find and target the right email addresses.
Analytics: Analytics tools measure your nonprofit campaign success and help you interpret supporter data. These platforms are essential for adapting your marketing strategy to supporter behaviors.
Each of these types of tools can produce impressive marketing results. To find one that’s right for you, take a look at the following free or discounted providers listed by category:
The Google Ad Grant program is a digital marketing tool that allows you to bid on keywords that strategically target your ideal audience. If nonprofits win, Google will place ads on Google’s search results pages (SERPs).
It allows nonprofits to leverage the Google Ads program for free by giving eligible organizations $10,000 in free advertising credits every month. As long as your organization meets Google’s eligibility standards and complies with its rules, the grant will renew each month.
You can use the Google Ad Grant to promote:
Donation pages
Service pages
Educational Content
These pages should match the search intent of each of your terms. For example, when you search “wildlife conservation” on Google, you’ll see ads at the top and bottom of the page for related nonprofit content. For example, this could include a donation page from the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Google enforces detailed requirements to apply for and maintain eligibility so nonprofits make the most of the program, which means the Google Ad Grants application and management is a full-time job. That’s why so many nonprofits turn to expert agencies for professional assistance. Check out our favorite Google Ad Grants agency: Getting Attention
Grammarly is an online writing assistance tool that can help your nonprofit create compelling, error-free copy. It helps improve your writing by making grammar, punctuation, and spelling suggestions. Grammarly’s advanced features include pro options that can make clarity suggestions to ensure your nonprofit’s mission comes across loud and clear.
Our favorite feature: Grammarly can be easily integrated into technology your nonprofit already uses like its website builder, Microsoft Office, and Google Docs.
Pricing:Grammarly for Nonprofits offers free access to all Premium-level writing suggestions, administrative dashboards, and website integrations.
Kwala is a graphic design agency built for mission-driven organizations. That means they know how to make your nonprofit vision come to life. These professionals are dedicated to providing stunning graphics that showcase nonprofit work. They have experience perfecting nonprofit logos, year-end appeals, website graphics, brochures, and more.
Our favorite feature: To make sure every design is just right, the Kwala graphic designers offer unlimited revisions and redesigns to capture your unique nonprofit flair.
Pricing: Kwala understands that hiring a full-time graphic designer may not be feasible on a nonprofit budget. That’s why they offer unlimited graphic design services for a fixed $439 price each month. Or, you can pay for an annual subscription of $3999 with the first two months free.
Canva is a graphic design tool that enables users to create eye-catching designs on their own. Specifically, your organization can use it to make visually appealing graphics, presentations, social media posts, and other design assets. Canva’s user-friendly interface provides a wide range of templates, icons, fonts, and stock photos. With simple drag-and-drop functionality, your team can create beautiful designs in no time.
Our favorite feature: Canva is built for teamwork, so anyone can contribute to your design before it’s finalized.
Pricing: Canva is free for nonprofits if they follow a few outlined steps: fill out the application form and wait to receive an email confirmation.
Pikto chart is an infographic and visual content creation tool that provides customizable infographics, charts, presentations, posters, and reports. With fifteen different visual tools and a library of top-notch templates to edit and make your own, Pikto Chart offers the right tools to create content that converts leads.
Our favorite feature: Pikto Chart has video editing tools like a social media video editor and a cropping tool that lets you make shareable content in a flash.
Pricing: Piktochart offers a discounted annual plan for nonprofits at a rate of $60 per member per year.
With Pexels, your organization can receive access to royalty-free stock photos to enhance your organization’s online visuals. These stock photos work as a great replacement when your organization does not have the perfect photos lined up. They work great for quick social media posts or website additions without any copyright restrictions.
Our favorite feature: You can search photos by color, background, or most popular collections to find the perfect image.
Pricing: All Pexel photos and videos are free for commercial use.
Hubspot’s all-in-one content creation tools can help your nonprofit manage several areas of content marketing and sales. Specifically, its campaign assistant, brand kit creator, and persona generator can be leveraged to refine your digital marketing strategy. Using these tools and more, you can brainstorm campaigns that perfectly suit your brand and resonate with your target audience.
Our favorite feature: Hubspot’s blog ideas generator can rescue you from writer’s block with AI-assisted blog titles for a week’s worth of content.
Pricing: Hubspot offers a 40% nonprofit discount that includes premium-level, nonprofit-friendly onboarding, and over 1,000 integrations.
WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that makes it easy for nonprofits to create and manage their websites and blogs. It offers a range of customizable themes and plugins to customize your site and scale it over time. Its known for its user-friendly interface that lets your team make new web pages, post new blogs, and edit content hassle-free.
Our favorite feature: WordPress’ Start-to-Finish Nonprofit Guide can take your team through the basics and get your website up and running quickly. And, if you run into any issues, they have a large online support community you can rely on.
Pricing: WordPress is free to download and customize.
HootSuite is a social media management platform that lets you save time with prescheduled posts using a centralized dashboard. Your nonprofit can engage with its followers using Hootsuite’s unified message box that never lets you miss a notification from any of your social media accounts. Additionally, Hootsuite’s analytics capture and report your key metrics so you can skip the guesswork and track your performance.
Our favorite feature: When prompted, Hootsuite’s OwlyWriter AI generates memorable captions and post ideas.
Pricing: HootSuite offers a nonprofit 75% discount on its Hootsuite Team or professional plans.
Buffer is an intuitive social media scheduling tool that can help your organization plan, schedule, and publish content across ten different platforms. With scheduled publishing, you can maintain cross-channel branding consistency and build your audience base. Buffer also provides post-customization and team collaboration tools so your team can get each post right every time.
Our favorite feature: Buffer’s video content creation tools are perfect for Shorts, Reels, and TikTok.
Later provides social media management tools that can sharpen your strategy. You can create, edit, and schedule posts across every profile. Later’s on-the-go mobile app lets you save your drafts or post when inspiration strikes. Additionally, Later’s Caption writer uses AI captions that do all the heavy lifting.
Our favorite feature: Later’s Linkin.bio tool creates fully customizable link web pages, so you can drive traffic from your Instagram and TikTok to your blog, YouTube, or online merchandise store.
Mailchimp is a marketing, automation, and email platform that helps you manage and talk to your supporters. Their approach focuses on maintaining healthy contact management practices with well-designed campaigns and detailed data analysis tools that engage your entire mailing list.
Our favorite feature: Mailchimp provides detailed recipient list management capabilities to tailor your messaging to predefined audiences.
Pricing: Mailchimp offers a 15% discount to verified nonprofits and charities.
Active Campaign is an email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM (customer relationship management) platform that can help your organization deliver personalized communications to your audience at the right time. You can track your email engagement with tags, custom fields, analytics, and performance reporting. With Active Campaign, your team doesn’t waste any time resending delayed emails.
Our favorite feature: Active Campaign includes pre-built templates and layouts for common email campaigns so you can customize your email the way you want.
Brevo specializes in building relationships across email, SMS, and chat messaging. Their marketing, sales, conversions, and transactional email platforms offer helpful tools to expand your reach. Specifically, Brevo’s transactional email platform guarantees a 99% delivery rate and is quick to set up with developer guides, code recipes, and more.
Our favorite feature: Brevo’s campaign management tools let you trigger transactional emails, send marketing campaigns and track interactions.
MailerLite provides digital marketing tools to grow your audience with email marketing, automation, newsletters, and transactional email features. They offer three separate editors—drag and drop, rich-text, custom HTML–to create your customized email campaign. Additionally, their automation features allow you to set triggers to automatically deliver emails or update custom fields.
Our favorite feature: MailerLite provides landing pages and pop-ups to help you build your subscriber list as your organization grows.
Pricing: MailerLite offers a 30% discount on paid plans which can be stacked atop the discount automatically applied to annually billed subscriptions.
Google Analytics gives you free tools to analyze your organization’s key data points. Using Google Analytics, you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, check the relevancy of your landing pages, and find out where your top users are coming from. You can connect your Google Analytics account with your Google Ad Account to get these in-depth insights and more.
Our favorite feature: Google Analytics will show the success of each of your key landing pages including your volunteer and donate pages to get a detailed view of your web traffic.
Hotjar is an analytics tool that offers valuable insights about your website. Using Hotjar, you can visualize conversion flows with a full-funnel overview to see where users drop off and make adjustments to your website strategy. Their real-time feedback gives so users the chance to express frustration or delight about individual parts of your site, so you can keep them engaged.
Our favorite feature: Hotjar’s heatmap feature offers graphical representations of data that detect website page user activity for you to understand your site at a glance.
Pricing: Eligible nonprofits receive access to 50% off on higher data plans or a free Business account.
Jetpack is a WordPress plugin that contains over 30 different features and is designed to provide all the great parts of a WordPress.com site to use on a WordPress.org site. Including features like brute force attack protection that automatically block unwanted login attempts and keep your organization safe without having to worry about invaders.
Our favorite feature: Jetpack provides powerful stats to keep track of real-time data on visitors and analyze ongoing trends.
Finding the right marketing tool on a budget can be difficult. Fortunately, you’re now equipped with the top free and discounted platforms to engage with your existing audiences and reach new ones.
Keep in mind marketing tools are designed to make your life easier. So, look for the ones with user-friendly features and reliable support. Consider choosing platforms that have experience working with nonprofits and consult their websites for further information, especially if you’re new to the nonprofit marketing scene.
For more marketing tips, check out these articles:
By the end of the school year, students are ready to get outside for summer vacation. But for many student organizations and sports teams, work doesn’t end when classes do.
If you’re a football coach or player’s parent, for example, you know that summer is when the team buckles down to train for the next fall season. You’re likely relying on last season’s leftover funds to cover the expenses your team incurs during this time (e.g., paying for new uniforms and equipment). You may consider starting a campaign to raise additional funding, but it can be difficult to compete with the excitement of summer break.
This year, why not be prepared for these costs by choosing an engaging fundraising idea for the summer season? Let’s explore a few important best practices for holding fundraising outdoors, along with some fun ideas to try out.
What are some best practices for outdoor fundraisers?
There are some unique elements of outdoor fundraisers to consider before starting your campaign. Factors like weather can impact how you plan the event as well as the fundraising methods you choose. To ensure your event is a success no matter what happens outside, here are some things to consider when planning:
Keep the weather and venue in mind. Outdoor events force you to surrender control of certain elements (like the temperature). Obviously, your team should avoid scheduling the event on days that are likely to be extremely hot or prone to storms. However, weather is not always predictable, especially during warmer months. In the event that temperatures exceed safe limits or rain is expected, be prepared with an alternative plan like having tents, a secondary location, or a backup date ready.
Choose age-appropriate activities. Children of different ages will be interested in different kinds of activities. For example, an elementary school student might enjoy a short scavenger hunt while a high schooler would prefer a challenging sports tournament. Plan a variety of kid-friendly fundraising ideas and tailor activities to different age groups to ensure everyone can participate.
Use a fundraising platform. When your team uses a fundraising platform, supporters can donate online before the event so they don’t need to wait in registration lines at the fundraiser. Additionally, your team won’t need to worry about collecting cash or checks during the event. This adds a layer of financial security as there is no risk of a cash donation blowing away or getting rained on.
Prioritize safety. When events take place outdoors, there are more variable factors at play to impact safety–particularly heat. If you are holding a physically demanding event like a sports tournament or race, make sure to have plenty of water, snacks, and shade available. If food will be present, adhere to proper food safety procedures during preparation and storage.
In addition to these special considerations, be sure to follow traditional fundraising best practices. To generate excitement and attract attendees, market the fundraiser ahead of time. And as always, thank and recognize your donors and volunteers with thank-you cards or emails.
3 Outdoor Fundraisers for School Groups
There are a myriad of fundraising event ideas to choose from, but outdoor school fundraisers have the potential for greater creativity. Choose a fundraising idea that your team will love and that your community will want to engage with. Keep in mind that as a school-affiliated organization, parents will make up the largest portion of your volunteer base. So, avoid choosing fundraisers that will require unreasonable amounts of time and effort.
1. Charity Race
A charity race, 5K, or marathon is one of the most traditional, classic outdoor fundraisers. Don’t shy away from these tried-and-true fundraisers—just because something is traditional doesn’t mean it isn’t engaging and effective.
The best part about holding a charity race is that they can easily be adapted to various age groups and fitness levels. Here are three different types of races your team can organize to appeal to distinct audiences:
Walk-a-thon. A walk-a-thon is similar to a traditional 5K, but instead of running, participants are encouraged to walk. Because it is stroller-friendly, this idea is great for younger children and families. To get the whole family involved, encourage them to bring leashed pets along, too.
Fun run.Double the Donation defines a fun run fundraiser as “a type of peer-to-peer fundraiser in which participants sign up to run, collect pledges, and earn donations for each mile (or other specified unit of distance) they run.” Your team will need to choose a route, date, and time as well as a fun theme. For example, you might choose a superhero theme and encourage runners to dress up in athletic attire inspired by their favorite heroes.
10K or half marathon. A longer, more intense race is best for experienced runners and older students (i.e., those in high school). To get more community involvement in your race, advertise it using posters or flyers inside local businesses. Additionally, your team could partner with nonprofits in your area to pool your supporter bases.
There are no hard and fast rules around who can participate in which type of race. For example, your high school cheerleading squad might prefer a walk-a-thon to a 10K. The most important thing to consider is whether your team members and supporters would enjoy and engage with the fundraiser.
2. Picnic or Barbecue
When you imagine the perfect summer evening, what comes to mind? For many, it’s backyard barbecues, ice cream, and lemonade. Your team can take advantage of the nostalgia and comfort of a picnic or barbecue for its next fundraiser.
When planning one of these events, follow these steps:
Choose a date, time, and venue (e.g., a local park, picnic pavilion, or school playground).
Determine how you will fundraise, either by charging for entry or per food item.
Decide how you’ll serve the food—for example, will you host a potluck-style or catered event?
Start marketing your event using digital channels as well as printed promotional materials like flyers.
Purchase plenty of supplies, like plates, cutlery, cups, tablecloths, blankets, and, of course, food.
Set up blankets and tables for all of your guests.
Host the event and have fun!
If your team decides to prepare food onsite or in advance, be sure to strictly follow all food safety guidelines. Make sure to have coolers and ice available to keep food at the proper temperatures, and ensure all foods are cooked thoroughly to keep your guests safe.
3. Sports-Themed Fundraisers
If your group is a sports team, you already have a built-in, cohesive theme to follow for your fundraisers. Your supporter base will already be familiar with the sport, and they’ve shown that they’re interested in supporting your team financially by purchasing merchandise or tickets to games.
For example, 99Pledges’ guide to sports fundraising ideas recommends organizing a sports camp in which team members can learn from professional athletes and practice new skills. If you coach a high school soccer team, this could be a great opportunity for your team to prepare for the upcoming season and bond with each other.
There are many other ways to incorporate the sports theme into your fundraiser, even if you don’t want to center the entire event around your sport. For example, if you hold an outdoor bake sale in tandem with a summer carnival, you could sell soccer-themed cookies and other treats. Your team’s sport can play as big or small a role in the fundraiser as you like, but it can serve as a helpful reminder to show donors what they’re supporting.
While choosing to hold your fundraiser outside can introduce new challenges, it will make for an engaging, unique experience that your supporters will remember for years to come. No matter which event you choose, remember to always have a backup plan, whether that’s a secondary location or an alternative date. And finally, make sure that your participants, donors, and volunteers know you appreciate them and their hard work.
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/99Pledges_NXUnite_School-Fundraisers-That-Get-Your-Students-Outside_Feature.png7401400wpenginehttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgwpengine2023-06-26 16:36:012024-07-31 13:22:563 School Fundraisers That Get Your Students Outside
As a nonprofit professional, you understand the power of cultivating strong relationships with donors. Their passion and generosity make your mission come to life.
That being said, it takes significant effort to preserve these connections over time and secure consistent fundraising revenue. Having a robust donor retention strategy in place will help you deepen your donor relationships and achieve sustainable growth. In this guide, we’ll discuss these fundamental aspects of donor retention:
By following these tips and tricks, you’ll be equipped to retain more donors while expending less effort and money on your strategies. Let’s begin!
Donor Retention FAQs
Whether you’re a new nonprofit founder or a seasoned professional, you might have some questions about donor retention fundamentals. Let’s get on the same page by answering these frequently asked questions.
What is donor retention?
Donor retention is the process of encouraging donors to continue giving to your nonprofit over time. This involves deepening your personal connections with donors and demonstrating their gifts’ impacts on your beneficiaries and the greater community.
Why is donor retention important?
Compared to donor acquisition (the process of identifying new donor prospects and convincing them to donate for the first time), donor retention is more:
Cost-effective: It’s more affordable and efficient to keep existing donors than it is to attract new ones. After all, donor acquisition requires researching prospects, launching extensive marketing pushes, and building a case for support. Existing donors already know your nonprofit’s mission and have already provided you with their contact information, negating additional research and outreach.
Sustainable: Retained donors provide a reliable and predictable source of income, which is better for the long-term financial health of your nonprofit.
Personal: While donor acquisition requires building relationships from the ground up, effective retention relies on deepening existing donor relationships, which takes less time.
While both donor acquisition and retention are important to fundraising success, retention is a more feasible and efficient approach to maximize donations and increase supporter loyalty.
How is donor retention measured?
There are numerous significant donor retention metrics that your nonprofit should think about tracking as key performance indicators (KPIs), such as:
Donor retention rate measures the percentage of donors that give again after their initial contribution. Use this baseline metric to set donor retention goals.
Average gift size helps indicate whether retained donors are giving more or less over time. You could use your average gift size KPI to adjust your initial ask account to reflect your donors’ current ability to give.
Frequency of giving measures how often donors contribute to your organization. You might prioritize promoting your monthly giving program if your frequency of giving KPI is lacking.
Donor lifetime value measures the total value of a donor’s contributions following their initial contribution.
Donor retention cost measures how much you spend on outreach efforts to maintain existing donor relationships. By comparing this to your cost to acquire a new donor, your nonprofit can evaluate how effective and valuable your retention strategy is and adjust it accordingly.
All of these metrics provide data that you can use to optimize your donor engagement strategies from many angles.
What are the common reasons donors stop giving?
Understanding why some donors stop giving can help you proactively prevent churn and secure more repeat donations. While each donor is different, here are the most common reasons why they might stop contributing:
Lack of communication: If a donor hears radio silence after contributing, they might feel unappreciated or unsure that their gift had any real impact.
Too many fundraising appeals: While a lack of communication is problematic, you also don’t want to inundate donors with appeals or irrelevant, generic communications.
Poor donor journey: Donors may stop giving if they experience roadblocks in their donor journey, such as an unoptimized online donation form.
A shift in financial status: Your donor might cancel their gift if their budget has changed.
Loss of interest: If your nonprofit doesn’t keep your donors engaged, they might lose interest in your mission and stop contributing
Negative publicity: Controversy surrounding your nonprofit, its staff, or board members can yield a loss of trust from your donors.
Lack of financial transparency: If your donors don’t understand what their gift is being used for and your organization’s financial practices, it might lead them to distrust your use of their funds.
Competition: Donors may find another organization that better engages them or aligns with their values and decide to contribute to them instead.
Fortunately, your nonprofit can combat these reasons for churn and create a more connected and passionate donor community with the rest of the tips in this guide.
What are some important donor retention statistics?
The average donor retention rate for nonprofits is40-45%.(GiveSmart).
The cost of bringing in a new donor is often double or even triple the amount of their initial donation. (Instil).
A 10% reduction in donor attrition can yield up to a 200% increase in projected value. (Instil).
Donor Retention Best Practices
Now that you understand the importance of donor retention, it’s time to implement retention best practices into your organization’s daily operations. Consider adding the following practices to foster a donor-centric culture:
1. Segment donor communications.
To keep donors engaged enough to keep giving over time, your team must personalize your outreach efforts as much as possible. Donors respond better to communications crafted with their own interests and priorities in mind, but don’t worry—you don’t have to spend all of your time painstakingly personalizing messages. Using segmentation techniques allows you to send customized messages efficiently.
Using your donor database, separate your donors into groups based on certain criteria, such as:
Profession: Donors in stable careers are more likely to have money to donate. Plus, their workplaces might have corporate philanthropy programs that you can promote for retention and increased giving.
Giving history: If a loyal donor who used to make an annual donation has stopped, you could craft a targeted message inviting them to re-engage.
Interests or preferences: Donors are more likely to renew their support for campaigns that they’ve shown interest in before.
Engagement level: This can include factors such as event attendance, volunteer involvement, and other activities outside of simply donating. Suggesting they get involved in another aspect of your nonprofit’s work can lead to higher engagement and another donation down the line.
Communication preferences: Segment your message delivery based on your donors’ communication preferences, such as email, direct mail, SMS, or phone call.
Segmentation is only possible when your nonprofit keeps thorough information in your database and frequently cleans it out. NPOInfo’s guide to nonprofit data hygiene recommends establishing a regular cadence for deleting duplicate records, appending contact information, and amending inconsistencies in your database.
2. Demonstrate impact.
Your donors want to know that their investment in your organization has a real effect on your beneficiaries. Win future donations by showing each donor their impact on the pursuit of your mission. You can demonstrate impact and secure recurring gifts by:
Sending detailed impact reports to each donor. After your campaign has finished, send your donors segmented messages detailing exactly how their contribution made a difference.
Creating an annual report. This document provides a great opportunity to present your organization’s progress and how particular donors helped you achieve your goals. Consider adding a donor shoutout section where you list the top donors and the influence of their contributions.
Introducing them to beneficiaries. Organize a donor beneficiary meet and greet (with permission) where donors can learn about their gifts’ impacts straight from the beneficiaries. This allows your supporters to forge a personal bond with beneficiaries and better understand that their actions significantly change lives.
No matter which strategy you take, ensure you demonstrate more than monetary impact to donors. They’re aware of how much they gave, but they might not know what the gift provided.
For instance, a food bank might tell a donor that their gift provided 30 families with meals for the rest of the month. This gives your donors a unique perspective on their own philanthropic practices and can inspire them to increase their engagement going forward.
3. Prioritize transparency and accountability.
To sustain the satisfaction of your donors, your nonprofit needs to win and keep their trust. Emphasize your commitment to transparency by:
Publishing your Form 990. Your organization’s Form 990 is publicly available and provides all financial and personnel information to potential supporters. Post your Form 990 on your website for easy access.
Regularly auditing data. Your nonprofit has a responsibility to your beneficiaries and stakeholders to keep accurate records. Integrate data hygiene into your daily operations by periodically reviewing important data and being accountable for any discrepancies.
Encouraging feedback. Ask donors and other stakeholders for their feedback on your nonprofit’s direction, effectiveness, and other considerations.
Allow your donors to rest assured that they’re supporting a reputable nonprofit by maintaining transparency throughout the fundraising process.
Creative Activity Ideas to Boost Donor Retention
Now that you understand the overall best practices you should integrate into your daily operations, it’s time to put them into action and pursue donor retention. Consider the following activity ideas that can help improve donor retention:
1. Provide ongoing involvement opportunities.
There could be any number of factors impacting your donors’ giving habits. Keep supporters engaged no matter their financial situation by offering numerous ways to get involved with your nonprofit’s mission, like:
Unfortunately, once a donor’s pattern of giving is changed, it’s a slippery slope to them churning and losing their passion for your cause. Avoid this outcome by keeping their enthusiasm alive with other ways to contribute to your cause. They’ll be more likely to start giving again once they’re able to!
2. Offer exclusive benefits and experiences.
Simply put, without your donors, your work wouldn’t be possible. Express your genuine gratitude for their contributions by recognizing donors, both publicly and privately. Here are some unique ways to show your thanks:
Launch a donor loyalty program. Loyalty programs incentivize continued engagement with rewards. For instance, you might offer a small gift basket for donors who renew their annual donation for the fifth year in a row.
Offer tokens of appreciation. Besides a loyalty program, you can give donors tokens of your thanks for individual donations. For example, you could offer a t-shirt with your nonprofit’s branding for gifts above $200.
Organize VIP experiences. Show your donors a good time by extending an exclusive invitation to your events. You could curate a VIP experience for donors above a certain threshold complete with free food, a backstage tour of your facility, and one-on-one conversations with officers or board members.
Your supporters will be impressed with your nonprofit’s outstanding commitment to donor appreciation and might renew their support to access more exclusive offerings like these!
3. Promote corporate social responsibility programs.
Leveraging corporate social responsibility (CSR) offerings, such as matching gifts and volunteer grants, are a powerful way to renew and increase support for your organization.
According to Double the Donation’s list of matching gift statistics, 84% of survey participants said they were more likely to donate to a nonprofit if a match is offered by their employer. However, only a fraction of CSR money is claimed each year due to employee unawareness of their company’s matching gift policy. To access the benefits of CSR, it’s up to your nonprofit to spread awareness of CSR offerings by:
Using a matching gift tool with auto-submission capabilities. Make it effortless for donors to secure a matched gift from their company by integrating a matching gift tool with auto-submission into your giving page. This software allows supporters to request a matching gift from their employers without the tedious work of submitting forms to the company. Instead, they simply input their work email address into the system and the software submits a request on the donor’s behalf.
Hosting a matching gift Giving Day. By hosting a Giving Day specifically geared towards generating matching gifts, you can activate urgency for your cause and inspire donors to check their employer’s matching gift programs.
Creating calls-to-action leading to your CSR information page. First, write an informational page on your website explaining everything a donor needs to know about CSR. Then, include clickable call-to-action banners in your email messages that promote the page.
Empowering your donors to leverage CSR supercharges your fundraising potential and inspires supporters to continue impacting your mission, with the help of their employer.
Send personalized milestone greetings.
Keeping in touch with donors about personal milestones is important for establishing rapport and showing that you care about them as people. Some milestones you could reach out on include:
Birthdays
Work anniversaries
Anniversaries of supporting your organization
Holidays
Wedding anniversaries
Using your CRM, keep track of any personal information you gather about your donors through casual conversations with them. Then, set reminders so you can send your custom messages on time. Don’t forget to make your messages pop by using your nonprofit’s branding or by sending an eCard.
Wrapping Up
Maintaining strong connections with donors over time can be difficult, especially when aiding your beneficiaries is your top priority. But, by incorporating donor retention best practices and activities, you can spark interest in your cause while cultivating long-term relationships and support.
Plus, your nonprofit has many options for structuring your retention efforts, from sending eCards to offering exclusive branded merchandise. Ultimately, as long as your team shows your authentic appreciation for your donor’s support and demonstrates their significant impact, you’ll have a sustainable donor retention rate for years to come.
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Donor-retention_feature.jpg8601880Adam Weingerhttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgAdam Weinger2023-06-22 14:56:352023-06-27 15:02:50Donor Retention Ideas and Best Practices for Nonprofits
With 4.76 billion social media users across the globe, each spending over 2.5 hours on the platforms every day, it’s clear that nonprofits must incorporate social media into their fundraising and donor communication strategies.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can empower your organization to spread the word about its cause, cultivate enduring relationships around the world, and raise significant funds to further its mission.
For nonprofits interested in leveling up their social media fundraising strategy, we’ll walk through five impactful tips to generate more revenue from social platforms:
Leverage social media fundraising tools.
Share impact frequently.
Cultivate one-on-one relationships with supporters.
Evaluate your fundraising results.
Express gratitude to donors.
It’s no secret that the key to successful fundraising and donor engagement lies in meeting your supporters where they are. Today, you’ll find many of them eager to interact with and contribute to your nonprofit on social media. Let’s jump right into the best ways to inspire their support.
1. Leverage social media fundraising tools.
Social media is a powerful tool for uniting people around the world under common interests, values, or causes. With this in mind, many platforms have developed features that make it easy for nonprofits to gather support and raise funds. For instance, since Meta’s fundraising tools first became available, organizations and their supporters have raised over $7 billion on Facebook and Instagram.
Therefore, making use of the social media fundraising tools at your nonprofit’s disposal can boost your results. For example, according to GoodUnited, Facebook offers a wide array of useful fundraising tools, including:
Birthday fundraisers. Around their birthdays or other occasions, Facebook allows users to take the lead in fundraising for your nonprofit. About two weeks in advance, users will typically receive a notification prompting them to create a birthday fundraiser to celebrate their special day. When they select your nonprofit, their fundraiser will auto-populate with your Facebook cover photo and mission statement, ready to be shared with their personal networks to collect contributions on your behalf.
Facebook Challenges. Your nonprofit can engage existing supporters and attract new ones by hosting a Facebook Challenge. To start one, you’ll need to choose a Challenge activity, preferably related to your cause, such as completing 50 jumping jacks each day for a whole month. Then, gather participants in a Facebook group to build a supportive community throughout the Challenge and raise funds in this peer-to-peer event.
Donate buttons. Make it convenient for donors to give directly on the platform by adding Facebook’s Donate button to your nonprofit’s page and posts. Since this button appears on reshared posts as well, this is an excellent way to reach a wider audience and secure additional support.
While it’s important to establish a social media presence on several different platforms to reach supporters of varying demographics and preferences, be sure to identify the most relevant ones to your organization’s goals and target audience. This allows you to better focus your efforts and maximize your results.
2. Share impact frequently on social media.
To achieve optimal results with social media fundraising tools, however, your nonprofit will have to inspire supporters to get and stay involved. It’s essential to share impact on a regular basis so existing and prospective donors understand exactly how you’re effecting positive change with your work.
Compelling visuals and impact videos tend to be particularly successful in catching a user’s eye, so lean into the power of graphic design as you communicate your organization’s impact. Ensure that the images, colors, and symbols in your posts all cohesively convey your mission and branding.
One of eCardWidget’s donor retention strategies centers on sharing detailed and specific impact stories to keep supporters motivated. For example, after a Facebook Challenge, a health-related nonprofit can share that the funds raised enabled it to launch and run a new prevention program in the community. This helps donors feel proud of their contributions and enthusiastic to continue giving.
3. Cultivate one-on-one relationships with social media supporters.
Social media users can generate massive support for your nonprofit organization if you engage with them effectively. Facebook fundraisers, for instance, leverage the power of your supporters’ individual networks to boost awareness and raise funds for your nonprofit.
However, the end of a Facebook fundraiser doesn’t have to be the end of your relationship with the supporter who created it or with those who donated. By properly stewarding them, you can create social media connections that stand the test of time.
To accomplish this, engage in conversational messaging with supporters. Facebook Messenger makes the process easy. Let’s say a user creates a birthday fundraiser on Facebook and encourages their friends and family to donate to your nonprofit in lieu of birthday gifts. Your nonprofit can use conversational messaging to provide them with a personalized experience by sending them encouragement, sharing tips for success, and expressing gratitude.
4. Evaluate your social media fundraising results.
Collecting data is crucial for any nonprofit fundraising initiative because it can generate productive insights that you can apply to future efforts. When it comes to social media fundraising, your nonprofit should keep track of:
Fundraisers created by supporters on your behalf
Transaction reports
Average size of gifts made to fundraisers
Average number of donations made to each fundraiser
Number of new donors who gave
Peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns can travel far on social media, spreading from network to network and boosting awareness for your nonprofit. Make the most of this fundraising method by constantly seeking ways to optimize your strategy for greater results.
5. Express gratitude to social media donors.
No fundraising strategy is complete without having a plan in place to recognize donors and express appreciation for their support. When it comes to social media fundraising, the first step is identifying everyone who has made a gift to your organization. Facebook’s donation reports list basic donor information, such as the individual’s first and last name, and potentially an email address.
When reaching out to these donors, be sure to:
Personalize your thank-you. Rather than sending a generic, blanket thank-you message to your donors on social media, strive to incorporate each individual’s preferred name and specific gift amount to show that your nonprofit values them personally.
Suggest additional opportunities to contribute. Based on how each donor interacts with your organization, provide other ways they may be interested in supporting your mission, from volunteering to attending a fundraising event.
Encourage continued connection, such as through conversational messaging. Apart from thanking supporters, you can ask questions or send surveys to gather information on what compels them to give to your nonprofit.
Thanking donors on Facebook and other social media platforms will not only boost your nonprofit’s donor retention rate, but will also build a reputation of gratitude and sincerity around your organization online. Furthermore, by spotlighting individual contributions, you can inspire others to join in through social proof.
Social media platforms have become popular hubs for nonprofits to acquire, engage, and steward supporters around the world. This means that there is plenty for your organization to do to maximize your social media fundraising results.
To reduce the time and effort it takes to nurture strong connections and raise revenue on social media, consider working with a company that can manage the process for you. After all, your nonprofit’s ultimate focus is on making a lasting difference in the community while continuing to generate the funds to do so.
https://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/GoodUnited_NXUnite_Inspiring-Social-Support-5-Social-Media-Fundraising-Tips_Feature.jpg365690jenny.russhttps://nxunite.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NXUnite-by-nexus-marketing-White-3.svgjenny.russ2023-06-12 16:51:552023-06-12 16:51:58Inspiring Social Support: 5 Social Media Fundraising Tips
Did you know that every patient generates millions of detailed records in real-time? That’s a lot of data to collect, store, and make comprehensible. Not to mention, healthcare organizations must take special care to adhere to regulatory requirements across several different data types.
That’s where healthcare data cleansing comes in. This necessary process keeps healthcare data sets from becoming unusable which can have severe consequences. In this guide, we’ll explore data cleansing in depth by answering the following questions:
What is healthcare data cleansing?
What causes dirty data?
What are the benefits of healthcare data cleansing?
How can healthcare organizations maintain proper data hygiene?
Keep in mind that healthcare data cleansing requires a robust data platform that can either be built in-house by a team of analysts and data scientists or bought through a vendor. Whichever solution your team chooses, it will need to be scalable to keep up with an increase in data over time. With this in mind, let’s explore data cleansing in greater detail.
What is healthcare data cleansing?
Healthcare data cleansing, also called healthcare data scrubbing or cleaning, is an essential part of data hygiene and refers to the process of identifying and rectifying errors within a healthcare data set. This data set is integrated from a variety of sources such as EHRs, claims systems, lab systems, and administrative databases stored within a centralized healthcare data warehouse.
How often your organization cleans its data set is dependent on several factors, including:
The size of your organization
The volume of data collected
The speed at which data is collected
The associated regulatory and compliance requirements
The desired outcomes of your collected data
Healthcare organizations must regularly clean their data to maintain quality standards. The frequency of data cleansing will be determined by the data quality controls put in place within your existing workflows.
What causes dirty healthcare data?
Dirty healthcare data is caused by a variety of factors that can quickly add up and cause severe system roadblocks. These factors include:
Duplicate data: Because data is inputted from several sources, it can be easy to incur data duplications. This slows down your data reporting and analysis processes and makes it difficult to draw meaningful insights.
Inaccurate data: Data reporting errors from patients or providers can invalidate your data set and cause lasting issues that may take significant time to resolve.
Incomplete data: Omissions, forgotten updates, and missing data all prevent a full patient picture which could lead to workplace inefficiencies at best and inaccurate patient diagnoses and treatments at worst.
In a system as large as healthcare, data collection errors are bound to happen. To prevent them ahead of time, create standardized rules for accurate data entry and task team members to audit your database on a regular basis to locate errors.
What are the benefits of healthcare data cleansing?
A clean data set can work wonders for your organization. In fact, the benefits of healthcare data cleansing can be tracked across several key measures:
Operational and cost efficiency: A clean data set saves both operational time and money. This means that your team will spend less time sifting through incomplete data while maximizing your resources.
Data storage efficiency: Most data is stored within a healthcare data warehouse and must undergo substantial cleaning efforts to transform from raw data to usable data. Quality measures ensure that your organization has access to a structured, organized healthcare data warehouse.
Data analytics accuracy: Analytics tools help your organization visualize health outcomes which include risk adjustment analysis, population health management, and patient engagement among others. Clean data keeps these analytic reports accurate and up to date.
Improved patient outcomes: Because each data point represents an individual patient, a clean data set provides the chance to improve patient outcomes at a quicker rate. Which means providers can access the right information and the right time.
Enhanced billing processes: Correct data streamlines the payor and patient billing process and prevents unnecessary costs. In turn, your organization can better approach financial reporting.
The bottom line: A clean healthcare data set is essential for data-backed decision-making. With comprehensive data quality measures in place, your organization can see measurable growth across major stakeholders.
How can healthcare organizations maintain proper data hygiene?
On the ground level, healthcare data cleansing can be understood as a series of steps or ordered processes. These steps include:
Validation: Your data must be validated for accuracy, completeness, and consistency during this initial data cleansing phase. Data analysts identify and remove discrepancies and duplications to ensure data accuracy.
Standardization: Once data discrepancies are eliminated or appropriately evaluated, data analysts must standardize data formats so that they match. For instance, an analyst must ensure that a patient with a recently changed last name is accurately represented.
Error Correction: Data professionals must detect and correct any remaining inconsistencies. This process may include outlier detection, data profiling, and other methods to resolve inaccuracies.
Completeness verification: Incomplete data is assessed and missing values are accounted for and properly documented using appropriate methods.
Integration: Data is thenconsolidated or integrated from several sources into one data set (while adhering to privacy laws) also known as a healthcare data warehouse. Then, the usable data can be extracted for meaningful analysis.
Review and monitoring: Data is reviewed and monitored on a regular basis to ensure quality and accuracy measures are sufficiently met. Data audits, quality assurance checks, and external data validation are all a part of this process.
Because this process can be involved, many organizations turn to healthcare data professionals to outsource their data collection, cleaning, and analysis. Often, data scientists and analysts are forced to write elaborate queries for unstable and untrustworthy databases, but data platforms like Arcadia Foundry can simplify several data collection and analysis processes.
These platforms are built for analysts by analysts and are consistently enriched with clean, quality data, so organizations don’t have to rely on their own cleansing and standardization processes to extract meaningful insights.
Maintaining an accurate, usable healthcare data set requires consistent data cleansing. If your organization decides to perform its own data cleansing be sure to follow the outlined best practices for quality assurance. If your organization decides to outsource its data cleansing to a vendor, make sure they offer comprehensive and reliable services.
About the Author: Nick Stepro
Nick Stepro is the Chief Product Officer at Arcadia, where he leads the design of the next wave of advanced healthcare analytics applications — including Arcadia Analytics, which has been praised as having one of the best user interfaces in the industry. He has worked with large health systems and payers to design and execute on innovative clinical integration and business intelligence strategies to drive improved health outcomes and reduced system costs. Nick believes in good design and data visualization. When combined with focused expertise in analytics, healthcare and business process, the results are intuitive data-driven applications that empower users to dramatically improve the way they run their businesses. His data visualization work has been covered on NPR, U.S. News and World Report, Medical Ethics Advisor, and elsewhere. Becker’s Health IT and CIO Review recently named him one of “31 Health IT and Revenue Cycle Whiz Kids” to watch. He has spoken at Medcity CONVERGE, AMIA, and HIMSS and has been a guest lecturer on data visualization at Georgia Tech. In December 2016, he was the closing speaker at the CCO Oregon Cost of Care conference.
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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:
18 Free & Discounted Nonprofit Marketing Tools to Use Today
Did you know that nonprofits raise $78 on average for every 1,000 fundraising messages sent out? That means that every marketing message counts, so your strategy needs to be digitally savvy to be effective. Additionally, you’ll need to use sustainable marketing tools to keep your efforts going. But, how does your nonprofit find the right digital marketing tools on a budget?
By using nonprofit-specialized marketing tools for free or at a discounted rate! This means you can promote your cause without overextending your resources. Compare it to shopping for discounts at your favorite store—a treasure hunt for the best finds at lowered prices. The key is knowing where to look.
In this guide, we’ve made your search easier by providing our top eighteen free or discounted nonprofit marketing tools in addition to some marketing budget guidelines. Here’s where we’re headed:
At NXUnite, we specialize in connecting nonprofits with resources to strengthen all of their operations. Marketing is a vital part of your nonprofit’s success because it’s how people find you, connect with you, and contribute to your organization’s impact. We understand that marketing can be difficult to manage on a small budget, that’s why we’re dedicated to providing you with useful resources like this guide to give your nonprofit an extra marketing edge.
Nonprofit Marketing Budget Considerations
Before we jump into our top marketing tools, let’s discuss some marketing budget considerations. After all, you need to know how much ad spending you should aim for to understand why discounted or free tools are worth researching.
Within the for-profit sector, it’s standard to determine your marketing budget by allocating 10-20% of projected gross revenues to marketing. As a nonprofit, you should plan to allocate 5-15% of your budget to marketing. The marketing channels you choose to invest in should be determined by your team to ensure they align with your organization’s goals and target audience.
Types of Nonprofit Marketing Tools
What are your options for nonprofit marketing tools? There’s a wide variety of platforms you can use. To simplify your search, we’ve narrowed them down to the following categories:
Each of these types of tools can produce impressive marketing results. To find one that’s right for you, take a look at the following free or discounted providers listed by category:
Search Marketing Tool
1. The Google Ad Grant
The Google Ad Grant program is a digital marketing tool that allows you to bid on keywords that strategically target your ideal audience. If nonprofits win, Google will place ads on Google’s search results pages (SERPs).
It allows nonprofits to leverage the Google Ads program for free by giving eligible organizations $10,000 in free advertising credits every month. As long as your organization meets Google’s eligibility standards and complies with its rules, the grant will renew each month.
You can use the Google Ad Grant to promote:
These pages should match the search intent of each of your terms. For example, when you search “wildlife conservation” on Google, you’ll see ads at the top and bottom of the page for related nonprofit content. For example, this could include a donation page from the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Google enforces detailed requirements to apply for and maintain eligibility so nonprofits make the most of the program, which means the Google Ad Grants application and management is a full-time job. That’s why so many nonprofits turn to expert agencies for professional assistance. Check out our favorite Google Ad Grants agency: Getting Attention
Content Marketing Tools
2. Grammarly
Grammarly is an online writing assistance tool that can help your nonprofit create compelling, error-free copy. It helps improve your writing by making grammar, punctuation, and spelling suggestions. Grammarly’s advanced features include pro options that can make clarity suggestions to ensure your nonprofit’s mission comes across loud and clear.
Our favorite feature: Grammarly can be easily integrated into technology your nonprofit already uses like its website builder, Microsoft Office, and Google Docs.
Pricing: Grammarly for Nonprofits offers free access to all Premium-level writing suggestions, administrative dashboards, and website integrations.
3. Kwala
Kwala is a graphic design agency built for mission-driven organizations. That means they know how to make your nonprofit vision come to life. These professionals are dedicated to providing stunning graphics that showcase nonprofit work. They have experience perfecting nonprofit logos, year-end appeals, website graphics, brochures, and more.
Our favorite feature: To make sure every design is just right, the Kwala graphic designers offer unlimited revisions and redesigns to capture your unique nonprofit flair.
Pricing: Kwala understands that hiring a full-time graphic designer may not be feasible on a nonprofit budget. That’s why they offer unlimited graphic design services for a fixed $439 price each month. Or, you can pay for an annual subscription of $3999 with the first two months free.
4. Canva
Canva is a graphic design tool that enables users to create eye-catching designs on their own. Specifically, your organization can use it to make visually appealing graphics, presentations, social media posts, and other design assets. Canva’s user-friendly interface provides a wide range of templates, icons, fonts, and stock photos. With simple drag-and-drop functionality, your team can create beautiful designs in no time.
Our favorite feature: Canva is built for teamwork, so anyone can contribute to your design before it’s finalized.
Pricing: Canva is free for nonprofits if they follow a few outlined steps: fill out the application form and wait to receive an email confirmation.
5. Piktochart
Pikto chart is an infographic and visual content creation tool that provides customizable infographics, charts, presentations, posters, and reports. With fifteen different visual tools and a library of top-notch templates to edit and make your own, Pikto Chart offers the right tools to create content that converts leads.
Our favorite feature: Pikto Chart has video editing tools like a social media video editor and a cropping tool that lets you make shareable content in a flash.
Pricing: Piktochart offers a discounted annual plan for nonprofits at a rate of $60 per member per year.
6. Pexels
With Pexels, your organization can receive access to royalty-free stock photos to enhance your organization’s online visuals. These stock photos work as a great replacement when your organization does not have the perfect photos lined up. They work great for quick social media posts or website additions without any copyright restrictions.
Our favorite feature: You can search photos by color, background, or most popular collections to find the perfect image.
Pricing: All Pexel photos and videos are free for commercial use.
7. Hubspot
Hubspot’s all-in-one content creation tools can help your nonprofit manage several areas of content marketing and sales. Specifically, its campaign assistant, brand kit creator, and persona generator can be leveraged to refine your digital marketing strategy. Using these tools and more, you can brainstorm campaigns that perfectly suit your brand and resonate with your target audience.
Our favorite feature: Hubspot’s blog ideas generator can rescue you from writer’s block with AI-assisted blog titles for a week’s worth of content.
Pricing: Hubspot offers a 40% nonprofit discount that includes premium-level, nonprofit-friendly onboarding, and over 1,000 integrations.
8. WordPress
WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that makes it easy for nonprofits to create and manage their websites and blogs. It offers a range of customizable themes and plugins to customize your site and scale it over time. Its known for its user-friendly interface that lets your team make new web pages, post new blogs, and edit content hassle-free.
Our favorite feature: WordPress’ Start-to-Finish Nonprofit Guide can take your team through the basics and get your website up and running quickly. And, if you run into any issues, they have a large online support community you can rely on.
Pricing: WordPress is free to download and customize.
Social Media Marketing Tools
9. Hootsuite
HootSuite is a social media management platform that lets you save time with prescheduled posts using a centralized dashboard. Your nonprofit can engage with its followers using Hootsuite’s unified message box that never lets you miss a notification from any of your social media accounts. Additionally, Hootsuite’s analytics capture and report your key metrics so you can skip the guesswork and track your performance.
Our favorite feature: When prompted, Hootsuite’s OwlyWriter AI generates memorable captions and post ideas.
Pricing: HootSuite offers a nonprofit 75% discount on its Hootsuite Team or professional plans.
10. Buffer
Buffer is an intuitive social media scheduling tool that can help your organization plan, schedule, and publish content across ten different platforms. With scheduled publishing, you can maintain cross-channel branding consistency and build your audience base. Buffer also provides post-customization and team collaboration tools so your team can get each post right every time.
Our favorite feature: Buffer’s video content creation tools are perfect for Shorts, Reels, and TikTok.
Pricing: Buffer offers a 50% nonprofit discount that applies to all products and plans.
11. Later
Later provides social media management tools that can sharpen your strategy. You can create, edit, and schedule posts across every profile. Later’s on-the-go mobile app lets you save your drafts or post when inspiration strikes. Additionally, Later’s Caption writer uses AI captions that do all the heavy lifting.
Our favorite feature: Later’s Linkin.bio tool creates fully customizable link web pages, so you can drive traffic from your Instagram and TikTok to your blog, YouTube, or online merchandise store.
Pricing: Later offers a 50% nonprofit discount for eligible organizations.
Email Marketing Tools
12. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a marketing, automation, and email platform that helps you manage and talk to your supporters. Their approach focuses on maintaining healthy contact management practices with well-designed campaigns and detailed data analysis tools that engage your entire mailing list.
Our favorite feature: Mailchimp provides detailed recipient list management capabilities to tailor your messaging to predefined audiences.
Pricing: Mailchimp offers a 15% discount to verified nonprofits and charities.
13. Active Campaign
Active Campaign is an email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM (customer relationship management) platform that can help your organization deliver personalized communications to your audience at the right time. You can track your email engagement with tags, custom fields, analytics, and performance reporting. With Active Campaign, your team doesn’t waste any time resending delayed emails.
Our favorite feature: Active Campaign includes pre-built templates and layouts for common email campaigns so you can customize your email the way you want.
Pricing: Active Campaign offers a 20% nonprofit discount for eligible organizations.
14. Brevo
Brevo specializes in building relationships across email, SMS, and chat messaging. Their marketing, sales, conversions, and transactional email platforms offer helpful tools to expand your reach. Specifically, Brevo’s transactional email platform guarantees a 99% delivery rate and is quick to set up with developer guides, code recipes, and more.
Our favorite feature: Brevo’s campaign management tools let you trigger transactional emails, send marketing campaigns and track interactions.
Pricing: Brevo offers a 15% nonprofit discount on their Enterprise license fee.
15. Mailerlite
MailerLite provides digital marketing tools to grow your audience with email marketing, automation, newsletters, and transactional email features. They offer three separate editors—drag and drop, rich-text, custom HTML–to create your customized email campaign. Additionally, their automation features allow you to set triggers to automatically deliver emails or update custom fields.
Our favorite feature: MailerLite provides landing pages and pop-ups to help you build your subscriber list as your organization grows.
Pricing: MailerLite offers a 30% discount on paid plans which can be stacked atop the discount automatically applied to annually billed subscriptions.
Analytics Marketing Tools
16. Google Analytics
Google Analytics gives you free tools to analyze your organization’s key data points. Using Google Analytics, you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, check the relevancy of your landing pages, and find out where your top users are coming from. You can connect your Google Analytics account with your Google Ad Account to get these in-depth insights and more.
Our favorite feature: Google Analytics will show the success of each of your key landing pages including your volunteer and donate pages to get a detailed view of your web traffic.
Pricing: Google Analytics is free.
17. Hotjar
Hotjar is an analytics tool that offers valuable insights about your website. Using Hotjar, you can visualize conversion flows with a full-funnel overview to see where users drop off and make adjustments to your website strategy. Their real-time feedback gives so users the chance to express frustration or delight about individual parts of your site, so you can keep them engaged.
Our favorite feature: Hotjar’s heatmap feature offers graphical representations of data that detect website page user activity for you to understand your site at a glance.
Pricing: Eligible nonprofits receive access to 50% off on higher data plans or a free Business account.
18. Jetpack
Jetpack is a WordPress plugin that contains over 30 different features and is designed to provide all the great parts of a WordPress.com site to use on a WordPress.org site. Including features like brute force attack protection that automatically block unwanted login attempts and keep your organization safe without having to worry about invaders.
Our favorite feature: Jetpack provides powerful stats to keep track of real-time data on visitors and analyze ongoing trends.
Pricing: Jetpack contains several free features designed for nonprofit use.
Conclusion
Finding the right marketing tool on a budget can be difficult. Fortunately, you’re now equipped with the top free and discounted platforms to engage with your existing audiences and reach new ones.
Keep in mind marketing tools are designed to make your life easier. So, look for the ones with user-friendly features and reliable support. Consider choosing platforms that have experience working with nonprofits and consult their websites for further information, especially if you’re new to the nonprofit marketing scene.
For more marketing tips, check out these articles:
3 School Fundraisers That Get Your Students Outside
By the end of the school year, students are ready to get outside for summer vacation. But for many student organizations and sports teams, work doesn’t end when classes do.
If you’re a football coach or player’s parent, for example, you know that summer is when the team buckles down to train for the next fall season. You’re likely relying on last season’s leftover funds to cover the expenses your team incurs during this time (e.g., paying for new uniforms and equipment). You may consider starting a campaign to raise additional funding, but it can be difficult to compete with the excitement of summer break.
This year, why not be prepared for these costs by choosing an engaging fundraising idea for the summer season? Let’s explore a few important best practices for holding fundraising outdoors, along with some fun ideas to try out.
What are some best practices for outdoor fundraisers?
There are some unique elements of outdoor fundraisers to consider before starting your campaign. Factors like weather can impact how you plan the event as well as the fundraising methods you choose. To ensure your event is a success no matter what happens outside, here are some things to consider when planning:
In addition to these special considerations, be sure to follow traditional fundraising best practices. To generate excitement and attract attendees, market the fundraiser ahead of time. And as always, thank and recognize your donors and volunteers with thank-you cards or emails.
3 Outdoor Fundraisers for School Groups
There are a myriad of fundraising event ideas to choose from, but outdoor school fundraisers have the potential for greater creativity. Choose a fundraising idea that your team will love and that your community will want to engage with. Keep in mind that as a school-affiliated organization, parents will make up the largest portion of your volunteer base. So, avoid choosing fundraisers that will require unreasonable amounts of time and effort.
1. Charity Race
A charity race, 5K, or marathon is one of the most traditional, classic outdoor fundraisers. Don’t shy away from these tried-and-true fundraisers—just because something is traditional doesn’t mean it isn’t engaging and effective.
The best part about holding a charity race is that they can easily be adapted to various age groups and fitness levels. Here are three different types of races your team can organize to appeal to distinct audiences:
There are no hard and fast rules around who can participate in which type of race. For example, your high school cheerleading squad might prefer a walk-a-thon to a 10K. The most important thing to consider is whether your team members and supporters would enjoy and engage with the fundraiser.
2. Picnic or Barbecue
When you imagine the perfect summer evening, what comes to mind? For many, it’s backyard barbecues, ice cream, and lemonade. Your team can take advantage of the nostalgia and comfort of a picnic or barbecue for its next fundraiser.
When planning one of these events, follow these steps:
If your team decides to prepare food onsite or in advance, be sure to strictly follow all food safety guidelines. Make sure to have coolers and ice available to keep food at the proper temperatures, and ensure all foods are cooked thoroughly to keep your guests safe.
3. Sports-Themed Fundraisers
If your group is a sports team, you already have a built-in, cohesive theme to follow for your fundraisers. Your supporter base will already be familiar with the sport, and they’ve shown that they’re interested in supporting your team financially by purchasing merchandise or tickets to games.
For example, 99Pledges’ guide to sports fundraising ideas recommends organizing a sports camp in which team members can learn from professional athletes and practice new skills. If you coach a high school soccer team, this could be a great opportunity for your team to prepare for the upcoming season and bond with each other.
There are many other ways to incorporate the sports theme into your fundraiser, even if you don’t want to center the entire event around your sport. For example, if you hold an outdoor bake sale in tandem with a summer carnival, you could sell soccer-themed cookies and other treats. Your team’s sport can play as big or small a role in the fundraiser as you like, but it can serve as a helpful reminder to show donors what they’re supporting.
While choosing to hold your fundraiser outside can introduce new challenges, it will make for an engaging, unique experience that your supporters will remember for years to come. No matter which event you choose, remember to always have a backup plan, whether that’s a secondary location or an alternative date. And finally, make sure that your participants, donors, and volunteers know you appreciate them and their hard work.
Donor Retention Ideas and Best Practices for Nonprofits
As a nonprofit professional, you understand the power of cultivating strong relationships with donors. Their passion and generosity make your mission come to life.
That being said, it takes significant effort to preserve these connections over time and secure consistent fundraising revenue. Having a robust donor retention strategy in place will help you deepen your donor relationships and achieve sustainable growth. In this guide, we’ll discuss these fundamental aspects of donor retention:
By following these tips and tricks, you’ll be equipped to retain more donors while expending less effort and money on your strategies. Let’s begin!
Donor Retention FAQs
Whether you’re a new nonprofit founder or a seasoned professional, you might have some questions about donor retention fundamentals. Let’s get on the same page by answering these frequently asked questions.
What is donor retention?
Donor retention is the process of encouraging donors to continue giving to your nonprofit over time. This involves deepening your personal connections with donors and demonstrating their gifts’ impacts on your beneficiaries and the greater community.
Why is donor retention important?
Compared to donor acquisition (the process of identifying new donor prospects and convincing them to donate for the first time), donor retention is more:
While both donor acquisition and retention are important to fundraising success, retention is a more feasible and efficient approach to maximize donations and increase supporter loyalty.
How is donor retention measured?
There are numerous significant donor retention metrics that your nonprofit should think about tracking as key performance indicators (KPIs), such as:
All of these metrics provide data that you can use to optimize your donor engagement strategies from many angles.
What are the common reasons donors stop giving?
Understanding why some donors stop giving can help you proactively prevent churn and secure more repeat donations. While each donor is different, here are the most common reasons why they might stop contributing:
Fortunately, your nonprofit can combat these reasons for churn and create a more connected and passionate donor community with the rest of the tips in this guide.
What are some important donor retention statistics?
Donor Retention Best Practices
Now that you understand the importance of donor retention, it’s time to implement retention best practices into your organization’s daily operations. Consider adding the following practices to foster a donor-centric culture:
1. Segment donor communications.
To keep donors engaged enough to keep giving over time, your team must personalize your outreach efforts as much as possible. Donors respond better to communications crafted with their own interests and priorities in mind, but don’t worry—you don’t have to spend all of your time painstakingly personalizing messages. Using segmentation techniques allows you to send customized messages efficiently.
Using your donor database, separate your donors into groups based on certain criteria, such as:
Segmentation is only possible when your nonprofit keeps thorough information in your database and frequently cleans it out. NPOInfo’s guide to nonprofit data hygiene recommends establishing a regular cadence for deleting duplicate records, appending contact information, and amending inconsistencies in your database.
2. Demonstrate impact.
Your donors want to know that their investment in your organization has a real effect on your beneficiaries. Win future donations by showing each donor their impact on the pursuit of your mission. You can demonstrate impact and secure recurring gifts by:
No matter which strategy you take, ensure you demonstrate more than monetary impact to donors. They’re aware of how much they gave, but they might not know what the gift provided.
For instance, a food bank might tell a donor that their gift provided 30 families with meals for the rest of the month. This gives your donors a unique perspective on their own philanthropic practices and can inspire them to increase their engagement going forward.
3. Prioritize transparency and accountability.
To sustain the satisfaction of your donors, your nonprofit needs to win and keep their trust. Emphasize your commitment to transparency by:
Allow your donors to rest assured that they’re supporting a reputable nonprofit by maintaining transparency throughout the fundraising process.
Creative Activity Ideas to Boost Donor Retention
Now that you understand the overall best practices you should integrate into your daily operations, it’s time to put them into action and pursue donor retention. Consider the following activity ideas that can help improve donor retention:
1. Provide ongoing involvement opportunities.
There could be any number of factors impacting your donors’ giving habits. Keep supporters engaged no matter their financial situation by offering numerous ways to get involved with your nonprofit’s mission, like:
Unfortunately, once a donor’s pattern of giving is changed, it’s a slippery slope to them churning and losing their passion for your cause. Avoid this outcome by keeping their enthusiasm alive with other ways to contribute to your cause. They’ll be more likely to start giving again once they’re able to!
2. Offer exclusive benefits and experiences.
Simply put, without your donors, your work wouldn’t be possible. Express your genuine gratitude for their contributions by recognizing donors, both publicly and privately. Here are some unique ways to show your thanks:
Your supporters will be impressed with your nonprofit’s outstanding commitment to donor appreciation and might renew their support to access more exclusive offerings like these!
3. Promote corporate social responsibility programs.
Leveraging corporate social responsibility (CSR) offerings, such as matching gifts and volunteer grants, are a powerful way to renew and increase support for your organization.
According to Double the Donation’s list of matching gift statistics, 84% of survey participants said they were more likely to donate to a nonprofit if a match is offered by their employer. However, only a fraction of CSR money is claimed each year due to employee unawareness of their company’s matching gift policy. To access the benefits of CSR, it’s up to your nonprofit to spread awareness of CSR offerings by:
Empowering your donors to leverage CSR supercharges your fundraising potential and inspires supporters to continue impacting your mission, with the help of their employer.
Send personalized milestone greetings.
Keeping in touch with donors about personal milestones is important for establishing rapport and showing that you care about them as people. Some milestones you could reach out on include:
Using your CRM, keep track of any personal information you gather about your donors through casual conversations with them. Then, set reminders so you can send your custom messages on time. Don’t forget to make your messages pop by using your nonprofit’s branding or by sending an eCard.
Wrapping Up
Maintaining strong connections with donors over time can be difficult, especially when aiding your beneficiaries is your top priority. But, by incorporating donor retention best practices and activities, you can spark interest in your cause while cultivating long-term relationships and support.
Plus, your nonprofit has many options for structuring your retention efforts, from sending eCards to offering exclusive branded merchandise. Ultimately, as long as your team shows your authentic appreciation for your donor’s support and demonstrates their significant impact, you’ll have a sustainable donor retention rate for years to come.
Additional Resources
The Beginner’s Ultimate Guide to Nonprofit Marketing. Want to learn how to level up your marketing efforts to acquire and retain more donors? Learn from the experts at NXUnite in this guide.
Upcoming Webinars, Panels, and Discussions with Industry Experts. NXUnite gathers all of the nonprofit professionals in one place for insightful discussions via panels and webinars. Join the conversation by signing up today!
Donor Recognition: A Strategic Guide to Showing Appreciation. Once you’ve acquired or retained your donors, thanking them for their support is crucial. Secure long-lasting relationships with donors by following the unique tips in this guide.
Inspiring Social Support: 5 Social Media Fundraising Tips
With 4.76 billion social media users across the globe, each spending over 2.5 hours on the platforms every day, it’s clear that nonprofits must incorporate social media into their fundraising and donor communication strategies.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can empower your organization to spread the word about its cause, cultivate enduring relationships around the world, and raise significant funds to further its mission.
For nonprofits interested in leveling up their social media fundraising strategy, we’ll walk through five impactful tips to generate more revenue from social platforms:
It’s no secret that the key to successful fundraising and donor engagement lies in meeting your supporters where they are. Today, you’ll find many of them eager to interact with and contribute to your nonprofit on social media. Let’s jump right into the best ways to inspire their support.
1. Leverage social media fundraising tools.
Social media is a powerful tool for uniting people around the world under common interests, values, or causes. With this in mind, many platforms have developed features that make it easy for nonprofits to gather support and raise funds. For instance, since Meta’s fundraising tools first became available, organizations and their supporters have raised over $7 billion on Facebook and Instagram.
Therefore, making use of the social media fundraising tools at your nonprofit’s disposal can boost your results. For example, according to GoodUnited, Facebook offers a wide array of useful fundraising tools, including:
While it’s important to establish a social media presence on several different platforms to reach supporters of varying demographics and preferences, be sure to identify the most relevant ones to your organization’s goals and target audience. This allows you to better focus your efforts and maximize your results.
2. Share impact frequently on social media.
To achieve optimal results with social media fundraising tools, however, your nonprofit will have to inspire supporters to get and stay involved. It’s essential to share impact on a regular basis so existing and prospective donors understand exactly how you’re effecting positive change with your work.
Compelling visuals and impact videos tend to be particularly successful in catching a user’s eye, so lean into the power of graphic design as you communicate your organization’s impact. Ensure that the images, colors, and symbols in your posts all cohesively convey your mission and branding.
One of eCardWidget’s donor retention strategies centers on sharing detailed and specific impact stories to keep supporters motivated. For example, after a Facebook Challenge, a health-related nonprofit can share that the funds raised enabled it to launch and run a new prevention program in the community. This helps donors feel proud of their contributions and enthusiastic to continue giving.
3. Cultivate one-on-one relationships with social media supporters.
Social media users can generate massive support for your nonprofit organization if you engage with them effectively. Facebook fundraisers, for instance, leverage the power of your supporters’ individual networks to boost awareness and raise funds for your nonprofit.
However, the end of a Facebook fundraiser doesn’t have to be the end of your relationship with the supporter who created it or with those who donated. By properly stewarding them, you can create social media connections that stand the test of time.
To accomplish this, engage in conversational messaging with supporters. Facebook Messenger makes the process easy. Let’s say a user creates a birthday fundraiser on Facebook and encourages their friends and family to donate to your nonprofit in lieu of birthday gifts. Your nonprofit can use conversational messaging to provide them with a personalized experience by sending them encouragement, sharing tips for success, and expressing gratitude.
4. Evaluate your social media fundraising results.
Collecting data is crucial for any nonprofit fundraising initiative because it can generate productive insights that you can apply to future efforts. When it comes to social media fundraising, your nonprofit should keep track of:
Peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns can travel far on social media, spreading from network to network and boosting awareness for your nonprofit. Make the most of this fundraising method by constantly seeking ways to optimize your strategy for greater results.
5. Express gratitude to social media donors.
No fundraising strategy is complete without having a plan in place to recognize donors and express appreciation for their support. When it comes to social media fundraising, the first step is identifying everyone who has made a gift to your organization. Facebook’s donation reports list basic donor information, such as the individual’s first and last name, and potentially an email address.
When reaching out to these donors, be sure to:
Thanking donors on Facebook and other social media platforms will not only boost your nonprofit’s donor retention rate, but will also build a reputation of gratitude and sincerity around your organization online. Furthermore, by spotlighting individual contributions, you can inspire others to join in through social proof.
Social media platforms have become popular hubs for nonprofits to acquire, engage, and steward supporters around the world. This means that there is plenty for your organization to do to maximize your social media fundraising results.
To reduce the time and effort it takes to nurture strong connections and raise revenue on social media, consider working with a company that can manage the process for you. After all, your nonprofit’s ultimate focus is on making a lasting difference in the community while continuing to generate the funds to do so.
Healthcare Data Cleansing: Frequently Asked Questions
Did you know that every patient generates millions of detailed records in real-time? That’s a lot of data to collect, store, and make comprehensible. Not to mention, healthcare organizations must take special care to adhere to regulatory requirements across several different data types.
That’s where healthcare data cleansing comes in. This necessary process keeps healthcare data sets from becoming unusable which can have severe consequences. In this guide, we’ll explore data cleansing in depth by answering the following questions:
Keep in mind that healthcare data cleansing requires a robust data platform that can either be built in-house by a team of analysts and data scientists or bought through a vendor. Whichever solution your team chooses, it will need to be scalable to keep up with an increase in data over time. With this in mind, let’s explore data cleansing in greater detail.
What is healthcare data cleansing?
Healthcare data cleansing, also called healthcare data scrubbing or cleaning, is an essential part of data hygiene and refers to the process of identifying and rectifying errors within a healthcare data set. This data set is integrated from a variety of sources such as EHRs, claims systems, lab systems, and administrative databases stored within a centralized healthcare data warehouse.
How often your organization cleans its data set is dependent on several factors, including:
Healthcare organizations must regularly clean their data to maintain quality standards. The frequency of data cleansing will be determined by the data quality controls put in place within your existing workflows.
What causes dirty healthcare data?
Dirty healthcare data is caused by a variety of factors that can quickly add up and cause severe system roadblocks. These factors include:
In a system as large as healthcare, data collection errors are bound to happen. To prevent them ahead of time, create standardized rules for accurate data entry and task team members to audit your database on a regular basis to locate errors.
What are the benefits of healthcare data cleansing?
A clean data set can work wonders for your organization. In fact, the benefits of healthcare data cleansing can be tracked across several key measures:
The bottom line: A clean healthcare data set is essential for data-backed decision-making. With comprehensive data quality measures in place, your organization can see measurable growth across major stakeholders.
How can healthcare organizations maintain proper data hygiene?
On the ground level, healthcare data cleansing can be understood as a series of steps or ordered processes. These steps include:
Because this process can be involved, many organizations turn to healthcare data professionals to outsource their data collection, cleaning, and analysis. Often, data scientists and analysts are forced to write elaborate queries for unstable and untrustworthy databases, but data platforms like Arcadia Foundry can simplify several data collection and analysis processes.
These platforms are built for analysts by analysts and are consistently enriched with clean, quality data, so organizations don’t have to rely on their own cleansing and standardization processes to extract meaningful insights.
Maintaining an accurate, usable healthcare data set requires consistent data cleansing. If your organization decides to perform its own data cleansing be sure to follow the outlined best practices for quality assurance. If your organization decides to outsource its data cleansing to a vendor, make sure they offer comprehensive and reliable services.
About the Author: Nick Stepro
Nick Stepro is the Chief Product Officer at Arcadia, where he leads the design of the next wave of advanced healthcare analytics applications — including Arcadia Analytics, which has been praised as having one of the best user interfaces in the industry. He has worked with large health systems and payers to design and execute on innovative clinical integration and business intelligence strategies to drive improved health outcomes and reduced system costs.
Nick believes in good design and data visualization. When combined with focused expertise in analytics, healthcare and business process, the results are intuitive data-driven applications that empower users to dramatically improve the way they run their businesses. His data visualization work has been covered on NPR, U.S. News and World Report, Medical Ethics Advisor, and elsewhere. Becker’s Health IT and CIO Review recently named him one of “31 Health IT and Revenue Cycle Whiz Kids” to watch. He has spoken at Medcity CONVERGE, AMIA, and HIMSS and has been a guest lecturer on data visualization at Georgia Tech. In December 2016, he was the closing speaker at the CCO Oregon Cost of Care conference.