The title of the post, “Donor FAQs About Corporate Giving and How to Respond”

5 Donor FAQs About Corporate Giving and How to Respond

Corporate giving is an extremely valuable fundraising opportunity, but it often goes untapped by the organizations that need it most. This is largely because donors just aren’t aware that programs like donation matching and employee volunteer grants exist. Even if they are, your supporters may not know how to participate and whether it’s really worthwhile.

To access these vital corporate funds, your nonprofit must be prepared to provide helpful information to donors. In this quick guide, we’ll explore common questions about corporate giving and how you can answer them to encourage participation.

1. Why do companies offer corporate giving programs?

When donors first hear about corporate giving, they might not understand why businesses participate in it. Do companies really donate portions of their profits to nonprofits? What’s the catch?

Without knowing the rationale, donors may not trust workplace giving, thinking it’s just an empty promise or a marketing ploy. In reality, however, companies offer philanthropy programs for a variety of reasons, including to:

  • Give back to the community. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept that mandates that businesses give back to the communities they operate in, which can include donating to nonprofits.
  • Boost employee engagement. Companies know that their team members are interested in philanthropy (81% of employees say it’s important to work for a company that integrates CSR!). By offering corporate giving programs, businesses can let employees take the lead and drive employee engagement long-term.
  • Maintain a positive reputation. Customers want to support businesses that are socially responsible and align with their values. Often, companies offer and publicize corporate giving as a way to prove they’re true to their values.
  • Improve stakeholder relationships. By regularly giving to charitable organizations, companies improve relationships with employees, customers, investors, partners, and the general public.

In your initial communications about corporate giving, emphasize that these programs are a win-win for everyone: your organization, the donor, and their employer.

2. How do I find out if I’m eligible for corporate giving?

Once donors understand the value of corporate philanthropy programs, they’ll want to know how to get involved. The first step is to determine their eligibility for opportunities like matching gifts, volunteer grants, and paycheck giving—which can be a tricky process.

Every company has different guidelines and eligibility criteria that determine who can participate. One employer may match donations to any 501(c)(3) as long as the employee is full-time, while another might restrict eligibility to non-religious nonprofits and employees who’ve been with the company at least a year. To find out, donors must visit their employee portals or look for information in their company handbooks.

You can make finding guidelines easier for donors by:

  • Providing instructions on your website for discovering eligibility and requesting corporate matches or grants. Create a specific corporate giving page that answers donor FAQs and includes examples of what eligibility requirements might look like.
  • Adding a matching gift search tool to your donation page that donors can use to quickly search for their employer’s corporate giving information. These embedded search bars access a database of companies to instantly give donors details about their employers’ offerings and requirements.

When you market corporate giving opportunities like matching gifts and volunteer grants, include basic instructions for checking eligibility and making a request. Highlight your search tool if you have one, or create infographics that break down the process into easy steps.

3. Is requesting matching gifts or volunteer grants worth it?

Since donors have to jump through a few hoops to determine their eligibility and make requests, they’ll want to know if it’s really worth the effort. 

The short answer is yes—participating in workplace giving is extremely worthwhile! Requesting matching gifts, volunteer grants, and other forms of corporate funding for your nonprofit helps donors increase their impact (without necessarily increasing their donations) and provide much-needed funding for your work. 

To better communicate the value of corporate giving to your nonprofit, share fundraising and impact metrics that demonstrate the tangible results of corporate donations. For instance, you could share the total revenue earned from matching gifts last year and how those dollars funded the construction of 10 houses for unhoused locals.

4. Does my company offer more ways to support nonprofits?

Loyal donors might wonder if there’s more they can do to support your nonprofit through their employer. Companies often participate in several types of philanthropy besides employee-driven workplace giving, and your donors can share opportunities as they discover them.

Specifically, employers might offer:

  • Event sponsorships
  • Monetary grants
  • In-kind donations of items or services
  • Long-term partnerships
  • One-off matching campaigns

And these offerings are just the beginning! Companies create all kinds of programs to support nonprofits in ways that align with their employees’ interests. For example, Uncommon Giving suggests that businesses co-host volunteer events with nonprofits throughout the year to boost volunteerism.

Donors can discover these opportunities by visiting their employee portals or speaking to leadership about corporate giving. If a donor identifies a good opportunity for your nonprofit, encourage them to bring it up to their manager or connect your organization with them. Even if these decisions are made by leadership rather than driven by employees, they’ll likely appreciate employee input.

5. What can I do if my employer doesn’t offer corporate giving?

Some of your donors might be excited to participate in corporate giving, only to discover that their employer doesn’t offer any formalized program. What can they do in these situations?

Let donors know that they can advocate for one! Encourage them to reach out to the leaders at their business and explain why starting a workplace giving program would benefit the company, the community, and employees alike. Provide statistics and research they can share with their employer to prove it’s worthwhile, such as this data from Crowd101. Support interested donors through this process, and thank them for their dedication to your cause.

Corporate giving may feel confusing for your donors, so it’s up to your nonprofit to answer their questions and share additional resources as needed. By supporting them through the request process, you’ll drive more donations and improve donor relationships at the same time. 

The title of the article, “Beginner's Guide to Understanding a Nonprofit Balance Sheet.”

Beginner’s Guide to Understanding a Nonprofit Balance Sheet

While the process can be tedious, compiling nonprofit financial statements allows your organization to evaluate its financial standing and stay accountable to stakeholders. These documents help you use resources effectively to fulfill your nonprofit’s mission.

One of the main financial statements nonprofits develop is a nonprofit balance sheet. To get you up to speed, we’ll review the basics of this report, why it’s important, and how to interpret it so your organization can maximize this data.

What is a nonprofit balance sheet?

A nonprofit balance sheet provides details about your organization’s financial health as of a specific date. Also called a Statement of Financial Position, this report summarizes your nonprofit’s liquidity and financial flexibility through its assets and liabilities.

Why is it important for nonprofits to create balance sheets?

Besides helping your organization make better financial decisions and build trust with stakeholders like donors, board members, and funders, there are instances when your organization must present a balance sheet. For instance, you’ll need an updated nonprofit balance sheet when you:

  • File Form 990. All 501(c)(3) organizations must file Form 990 annually to uphold their tax-exempt status. The form requires you to provide a balance sheet to demonstrate your nonprofit’s current financial health.
  • Prepare for audits. If your nonprofit undergoes a financial statement audit, presenting an updated nonprofit balance sheet is crucial. Auditors will confirm that each report is accurate and aligned with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
  • Apply for grants. Grant funders want to know that your organization is financially stable and sustainable before agreeing to award funds. They may require a balance sheet to verify responsible resource allocation.

Consistently updating your organization’s balance sheet allows you to stay prepared for these situations and have an accurate picture of your nonprofit’s financial standing.

Nonprofit Balance Sheet Categories

A nonprofit balance sheet has three main categories:

An example nonprofit balance sheet

Assets

Assets are resources your nonprofit owns or controls. You’ll categorize these assets based on their liquidity:

  • Current assets. Any item you can convert to cash quickly is a current asset. This category includes cash and cash equivalents, accounts receivable, pledges receivable, prepaid expenses, and inventory.
  • Noncurrent assets. Items your nonprofit intends to keep for at least a year, such as land, buildings, and equipment, are considered noncurrent assets.
  • Intangible assets. Some assets may not be physical but intellectual property like patents and copyrights. Nonprofits typically include these under noncurrent assets.

Liabilities

Liabilities are financial debts or obligations your nonprofit owes. You’ll categorize them similarly to assets:

  • Current liabilities. Short-term obligations you’ll pay within the next year are current liabilities. This category includes accounts payable, accrued expenses, and deferred revenue, which you’ll record when your nonprofit has received payment but has not yet delivered the associated goods or services.
  • Noncurrent liabilities. Long-term obligations you’ll pay in over a year are noncurrent liabilities. Common noncurrent liabilities include mortgages and long-term lease obligations.

Net Assets

Your net assets are the resources currently available to your organization. Calculate net assets by subtracting your liabilities from your assets. You’ll categorize them based on whether they have donor-imposed restrictions:

  • Net assets without donor restrictions. Let’s say your nonprofit hosts a 5K fundraiser and collects donations at the event. These general donations would fall under net assets without donor restrictions, allowing your team to use them for any purpose that fuels your mission.
  • Net assets with donor restrictions. On the other hand, you must use net assets with donor restrictions according to the associated limitations. Donors may designate funds for a particular purpose or set a time limit on fund use. Additionally, these restrictions may be permanent or temporary, potentially allowing you to use these funds for a different purpose later on.

How to Interpret a Nonprofit Balance Sheet

While your nonprofit ultimately wants to maximize its net assets, other outcomes—like low assets and high liabilities—should not always be cause for concern. To keep your team realistic and glean useful insights from your balance sheet, YPTC recommends following these tips:

  • Consider each section. Reviewing balance sheet categories in isolation doesn’t tell the full story about your nonprofit’s financial health. Instead, you must consider each section equally to understand the relationship between your assets and liabilities. For example, if you only focus on your assets, you may neglect debts in the liabilities section that even your seemingly strong pool of assets can’t cover. Alternatively, suppose you only focus on your liabilities. You may worry that they’re higher than usual when, in reality, your assets may have also increased to keep up with these greater debts.
  • Look into context. Even if you have low assets and high liabilities, the context behind these numbers matters. Potential scenarios that would cause lower net assets but not indicate a treacherous financial situation include major projects, seasonality, and high deferred revenue. For instance, you may develop a new program that requires a high initial investment but will ultimately power your mission in the long run. Alternatively, you might simply hit a slow giving period or generate a significant amount of deferred revenue that will eventually become assets.
  • Evaluate trends. Determine your nonprofit’s baseline to assess how your organization’s current financial health differs from past performance. For instance, you may have lower net assets than other similar organizations, but if your records indicate they’ve grown over the past few years, you’re likely on the path to sustainability.

Interpreting a balance sheet requires your team to think critically about your nonprofit’s unique situation and how it contributes to financial health. After all, your organization is meant to leverage the resources at its disposal to power its mission, so a perceived dip in resources may have a large payoff down the line.

In addition to helping your team understand your organization’s financial health and make well-informed decisions, balance sheets also function as stewardship tools. Share your balance sheet with donors to demonstrate responsible fund use and assure them that you’ll continue to leverage resources appropriately to keep your mission alive.

The Flexible Career Paths of Grant Writing: 4 Options

Grant writing is a flexible, impactful career choice. It also meshes beautifully with the goals, skills, and desired lifestyles of many professionals from all backgrounds.

For example, nonprofit staff from diverse organizations of various sizes, marketers and communication professionals, stay-at-home parents, former teachers, and more regularly forge successful paths into the world of grant writing. Along the way, they unlock more freedom in their personal lives and bring more impact to their organizations.

If you’ve considered moving into grant writing, what can you expect? What options are available to you?

Let’s explore the four main career paths that we often see our members and friends in the Learn Grant Writing community build for themselves. We’ll also lay out our recommended career change approach, a straightforward process we call the Organic Networking Framework.

First, what will you need?

To start a grant writing career change, some level of training is essential. While grant writing is a field that allows you to learn as you go (to an extent), jumping in with no preparation is a recipe for disappointment and burnout.

A lot more goes into a successful and sustained approach to grant writing than just drafting a proposal. To really thrive, you’ll need to master additional research, analysis, communication, and project management skills, not to mention deepen your contextual knowledge about different types of grants and funders over time.

That said, grant writing training can take many forms depending on your needs and experience level.

Full training programs are best if you’re starting from scratch, especially programs that cover the complete grant writing process and, if needed, the business know-how you’ll need to secure paid freelancing clients. If you already have some experience with grant writing, additional training or a refresher course certainly can’t hurt. Online classes are generally your best bet, but you can opt for something less intensive as needed. We’ve rounded up a selection of the best grant writing resources, including a wide range of training courses, to help you compare options.

Whatever the case, we also recommend finding a community of other grant writers to join. Hearing from other grant writers, learning from their challenges, sharing your experiences, and celebrating wins together can be an invaluable way to sharpen your skills and build your own career momentum.

Career Paths as a Nonprofit Grant Writer

The most common career paths for nonprofit grant writers generally fall into two general categories—in-house grant writing for a nonprofit and freelance grant writing as an independent consultant.

1. Becoming a Better In-House Grant Writer

Let’s say you already help secure funding for your organization and have maybe even pitched in on (or led) previous grant projects. With this career path, you’ll make grant writing a real area of specialization through extra training and resource allocation.

For context, it pays off when nonprofits invest wisely in grant writing. Grants are a critically important revenue stream for organizations of all sizes, and they play a key role in building nonprofits’ capacities to drive impact.

Why? Because unlike fundraising, which is a continuous effort that requires ongoing (and often a lot of) time and resources, grant writing can be a more efficient path to growth. With an upfront investment of time and resources, you can work to win a large grant that helps your organization build a new program and fund it for a period of time (during which you can secure additional funding or build a sustainable plan for it). All you’ll need to do is run the newly funded program and spend a couple of hours each month or quarter reporting your progress back to the funder.

This kind of effective grant program requires careful strategy, upfront work, and attention to maintain compliance and sustainability. However, it ultimately takes less time than constantly chasing new donors or over-relying on exhausting, unpredictable annual fundraising.

You’ll need: Additional grant writing training scaled to your needs, as well as a plan to pitch the importance and benefits of grant seeking to your organization if everyone isn’t yet on the same page.

2. Becoming a New In-House Grant Writer

Maybe you work at a nonprofit but have never helped with grant writing before. Perhaps you don’t even directly help with fundraising, but you have the desire (or have been asked) to secure more funding for the organization.

Don’t get overwhelmed—training, preparation, and enough time will set you up to succeed.

If your organization is small or has never pursued grants before, the key difference you may encounter in this situation is that you’ll likely need to ensure leadership fully understands what grant writing entails, including:

  • Investments of time and resources
  • Reporting requirements
  • Attention to organization and relationship-building
  • Persistence and ongoing work (even just a few hours a week to start)

Many grant newcomers fail to understand the full scope of what’s needed for long-term success, instead assuming that a stressful application blitz will pay off with funds and then be done. If your proposals are denied, you could then lose organizational buy-in to keep trying—but remember that grant seeking is a long game that pays off. If you lose one grant, you could easily win another by adapting your plan and resubmitting next year.

Organizations need to understand that they stand the best chances at ongoing success when grant writing is a sustained activity, not a one-off longshot. This means that part of your job as the new in-house grant writer is to advocate for grant writing as a long-term strategy.

You’ll need: More in-depth training if you’re starting from scratch and a plan to fully align the organization on what’s required to support the full, ongoing grant lifecycle.

Career Paths as a Freelance Grant Writer

Going the independent route as a grant writer is a popular choice for a few reasons. Self-employment unlocks more freedom in your day-to-day life while allowing you to drive impact for nonprofits in your community. For many freelancers, it’s also quite lucrative.

There are two general paths you might take toward starting as a freelance grant writer, depending on your level of commitment:

3. Starting a Grant Writing Side Hustle

For freelance work on the side, consider launching a grant writing side hustle. This option can work well for part-time professionals, stay-at-home parents, and others who can’t or don’t want to build a new full-time career.

To get started, follow our recommended career change strategy (explained below), and build a small client roster. And make it your own—keep your work scaled to your personal goals and capacity.

You’ll need: Grant writing training appropriate for your needs and a plan and vision for your side hustle. It’s also important to find initial contacts to pitch your services (or an idea of who you’d like to connect with) and time—building any freelance endeavor takes time and patience.

4. Starting an Independent Grant Writing Consultancy

A small freelancing business is a step up from side-hustling and, for many grant writers, the eventual goal of their hard work. This route involves building your side hustle into full-time consulting work for multiple nonprofit clients.

By starting with a side hustle and growing your operations, you’ll benefit from all of the relationships you’ve built along the way with nonprofits, funders, corporate giving programs, government offices, and others.

You’ll need: All the same necessities as a grant writing side hustle but with an extra dash of patience—you can move as fast or as slow as you want, but it takes time to build a successful track record without burning yourself out.

Our Recommended Career Change Framework

There’s no one-size-fits-all way to change your career, but there are some common steps you can follow and adapt that will help you approach the process more intentionally. We call it the Organic Networking Framework, and it allows you to step into a new career at your own pace through building freelance experience. Here’s how it works:

  1. Create an outreach list. Who would you like to work with? For grant writers, this will mean nonprofits that you know (personally or otherwise). Gather a list of these potential clients and begin reaching out with a request to simply chat and learn more about their grant writing efforts and goals.
  2. Host an informational interview. Once you’ve secured a meeting, approach it with the intent to simply listen and learn, not to pitch your services right away. Aim to uncover your contact’s current state and grant goals so you can find an easy way to offer them value.
  3. Determine a quick-win deliverable. Reach back out to offer a quick deliverable that the contact will find valuable. For grant writing, this often means a Funding Strategy, or a roadmap of the next grant opportunities a nonprofit should pursue over the next year or so. This is an easy way to get your foot in the door without committing to or pitching a larger service that the client might not yet be ready for.
  4. Create the deliverable. Once the client agrees and you sign a quick contract, create the deliverable that you’ve offered. Deliver it on time—or earlier!
  5. Amend the contract. Provide your deliverable to the client, and then offer your services to take it a step further. Again, Funding Strategies work particularly well for this because you can easily lay out your plan to put its grant roadmap into action. Explain how you can write the proposals for the opportunities in the Strategy. Once you have determined the details with the client, amend the contract to extend your work.
  6. Repeat and keep improving. Repeat steps 2 through 5 to complete more paid work, building your knowledge and contacts along the way.
  7. Earn $15K through freelancing work and decide next steps. After reaching a revenue goal (whatever makes sense for you, although we recommend $15K for freelancers), think about what you’d like to do next with your new skills and track record. If your goal is to freelance, keep the momentum going. If it’s to find a new full-time job, begin applying and showing off your skills.

This framework offers a customizable, easily-repeatable way to build not just your know-how but your confidence. What it doesn’t mention, however, is training. Again, grant writing training is essential. Programs like the Global Grant Writers Collective are built with freelancers in mind, with specific training coaching on the business skills you’ll need.

However you approach your career change, setting yourself up to succeed through training and freelance work can give you the skills and confidence you need to wow your first clients (or employer) and create a powerful snowball effect. Happy grant writing!

Meredith Noble is the co-founder of Learn Grant Writing and author of the book, How to Write a Grant: Become a Grant Writing Unicorn. She has secured over $45 million in grant funding, and her students have secured over $627 million – a number that grows daily. Meredith can be found adventuring in Alaska or reading.

The title of the article, Multi-Channel Marketing: The Key to Reaching Supporters

Multi-Channel Marketing: The Key to Reaching Supporters

Marketing research indicates that it can take up to 50 touchpoints to make a sale. A few factors influence the exact number of interactions needed, such as industry and where the individual is in their journey. Regardless, this fact points to one major takeaway: multi-channel marketing is essential for driving action.

This holds true in both the for- and nonprofit sectors, meaning your nonprofit needs to connect with supporters repeatedly to inspire support. Multi-channel marketing, the act of contacting supporters across multiple platforms, is often the key to acquiring new donors, volunteers, and advocates. It also spreads awareness of your services and programs to beneficiaries.

To strengthen and diversify your nonprofit’s outreach strategy, we’ll explore why multi-channel marketing works and how your team can use it.

What is multi-channel marketing?

Multi-channel marketing is a strategy that involves communicating with supporters across multiple platforms, such as email, direct mail, and social media. This approach ensures messages reach supporters where they are active and increases the number of times they see your communications.

For example, perhaps your nonprofit is promoting matching gifts. You start by creating a dedicated webpage explaining the program and its impact. To maximize reach, you repurpose that content into a compelling Facebook post, include a mention in a fundraising letter, and send a brief but impactful text message reminder.

For nonprofits, multi-channel marketing builds donor trust and cultivates stronger relationships by providing consistent messaging across various touchpoints. It leverages the strengths of different channels—such as the personal touch of direct mail, the immediacy of social media, and the storytelling power of email—to create a unified donor outreach strategy.

Omni-Channel vs. Multi-Channel Nonprofit Marketing

Multi-channel marketing is related to omni-channel marketing. With multi-channel marketing, you reformat the same message for multiple platforms. With nonprofit omni-channel marketing, each message builds on the one that came before it, integrating multiple channels to create consistent experiences for supporters.

Omni-channel marketing is a more personalized strategy designed to guide supporters through their giving journey. For example, your nonprofit might send a direct mail donation request, thank the donor with an emailed eCard, and then text the donor an invitation to follow you on social media.

Both strategies are valuable and should build upon one another to maximize impact. Start with multi-channel marketing to attract new supporters, learn the basics of communicating via multiple channels, and discover which tactics work best. Then, transition to an omni-channel approach to nurture relationships and encourage long-term giving.

Why does multi-channel marketing matter?

Your supporters don’t all engage with content the same way. Some prefer email, others scroll through social media, and some respond best to direct mail or phone calls. Multi-channel marketing helps you meet supporters on the platforms they actively use.

Instead of relying on a single outreach method, use multi-channel marketing to:

  • Expand your reach. The more platforms your nonprofit markets on, the more prospective supporters will see your content.
  • Build brand recognition. Repeated exposure builds familiarity. When supporters consider which nonprofits to give to, they’ll likely gravitate toward organizations they’ve already heard of. By getting your nonprofit’s name and mission in front of the same supporters repeatedly, they’ll come to know and trust your organization.
  • Improve conversion rates. Each touchpoint pushes supporters toward giving. A donor might ignore your first email, but a follow-up text or social media post can prompt them to give. Providing multiple touchpoints ensures supporters can respond in the most convenient way.

Whether you’re soliciting donations or looking for extra volunteers, diversifying your outreach will keep your cause top of mind for current and potential supporters. Consistency will ensure your message reaches the right people at the right time.

Essential Platforms for A Nonprofit Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy

Your nonprofit will need to find a unique combination of platforms that drives results. Select your outreach methods based on what channels your audience uses and how confident your nonprofit is in its ability to maintain an active presence.

Let’s explore a few popular channels.

Email

Email is a powerful channel for driving donations, sharing project updates, and educating supporters about your mission. In 2023, nonprofits experienced a 7% growth in their email subscriber lists. This growth positions email as a reliable channel to deepen your nonprofit’s connection with its audience.

You can enhance your email strategy by:

  • Improving subject lines. Subject lines determine whether an email gets opened. Aim for 50 characters or fewer to avoid getting cut off. Use urgency, curiosity, or personalization to elicit an emotional response and boost your open rates (e.g., “You Can Change a Life Today”).
  • Issuing just one call to action (CTA). Emails that ask donors to take multiple actions, like donating, volunteering, and subscribing to your newsletter, may confuse recipients.
  • Varying the content you send. eCardWidget’s donor retention guide recommends sending donation appeals, personalized thank-yous, impact stories, and mission updates to keep donors engaged. Switch up the format by using letters, monthly newsletters, and digital greeting cards.

Even with these strategies, your emails will only be effective if delivered successfully. If your emails have a high bounce rate, your subscriber list is likely outdated. Use an email append service provider to fill in missing emails and correct defunct ones. In turn, supporters will receive your focused, inspiring emails.

Social Media

Many supporters likely use social media. Focus on the platforms where they’re most active. For inspiration, here’s how to incorporate social media into your nonprofit’s multi-channel marketing strategy:

  • Facebook. Facebook commands a massive audience. While advertising isn’t discounted for nonprofits, Facebook’s audience targeting tools allow you to direct ads to high-value prospects. For organic posts, focus on compelling storytelling, high-quality visuals, and mission-related news stories.
  • Instagram. An Instagram account can be impactful if your nonprofit’s mission lends itself to eye-catching photographs. For example, the animal shelter Perry’s Place went viral for its “Naughty & Nice Cat of the Week” marketing campaign.
  • X (Formerly Twitter). Share timely updates, post about relevant trending topics, and engage via replies and shares. Additionally, keep an eye out for upcoming competitors like Threads and Bluesky.
  • TikTok. Nonprofits have flocked to TikTok in the past few years. However, the future of TikTok in the United States is unclear due to recent legislation. If your nonprofit decides to pursue a TikTok strategy, consider signing up for TikTok for Good, which provides nonprofits with free marketing tools like donation stickers and fundraising livestreams.

When it comes to social media, only create accounts if you know your organization will be able to maintain them. Abandoned accounts can make supporters question your organization’s health.

Nonprofit Website

Your nonprofit’s website is an essential marketing tool. It serves as the central hub for information, tells your organization’s story, and enables supporters to donate or sign up for opportunities.

To create an inspiring website, follow these best practices:

  • Communicate your work. Feature an ‘About’ page, create individual program pages, post case studies, and write blog posts about your mission. Show the difference your nonprofit is making.
  • Feature compelling visuals. Use high-quality images and videos that showcase your nonprofit’s impact. Photos of beneficiaries and volunteers create emotional connections, infographics simplify data, and videos tell inspiring stories.
  • Include trust signals. Showcase impact metrics, testimonials, and reports to build credibility and reinforce donor confidence.
  • Make it easy to navigate. Feature important pages in your website’s navigation menu. Include strong CTAs across key pages to guide visitors toward donating, volunteering, and getting involved.

To improve your website’s discoverability, optimize its content for search engines. That means using relevant keywords in each page’s copy, meta description, and headings. An effective SEO strategy also involves ensuring your site loads quickly and is mobile-friendly. In turn, your site should show up to supporters and beneficiaries looking for nonprofits like yours.

Search Ads

Google processes more than 8.5 billion searches every day. This means the search engine has a massive audience that nonprofits can tap into with search ads. These ads appear at the top of search results for websites related to the user’s query.

For example, here’s a search ad for a nonprofit that explains the organization’s mission to combat adolescent depression. The ad promotes multiple landing pages for learning more and getting involved:

A screenshot of a search ad for the nonprofit Erika’s Lighthouse.

Paid advertisements can get expensive quickly, but fortunately, Google provides nonprofits with credits to spend on search ads. The Google Ad Grants program provides up to $10,000 in ad credits per month to approved charitable organizations. Participants can use their grant money to bid on mission-related keywords and promote specific pages on their websites through text-based ads.

Your nonprofit might promote its:

  • Donation page to encourage financial contributions to your mission
  • Volunteer opportunities to recruit people to help out
  • Fundraising events to encourage registrations
  • Educational content that shares valuable insights and mission updates
  • Program pages to inform people about your services

Essentially, your nonprofit can promote any content that will push its mission forward. If your organization complies with the program’s rules, the grant will renew each month.

Text Message

Text messages connect you with your audience almost immediately, making them effective for quick updates and urgent messages. While text messaging can be a powerful part of your multi-channel marketing strategy, it’s also easy to overuse.

Many people keep their phones within arm’s reach, meaning they will likely see your nonprofit’s messages quickly. While this is convenient for getting your message seen, it also means supporters will be aware of how often you message them. During busy times of the year for marketing, like the end of the year or during election season, it’s easy for supporters to get overwhelmed with text messages.

To retain donors, use text messages sparingly and only when an immediate alert to your audience is appropriate. You might use it to announce an upcoming event, send urgent appeals, remind volunteers about upcoming shifts, encourage donations throughout a campaign, or send donation receipts.

Key times to text supporters, which are written above.

Direct Mail

While much of modern nonprofit communication is digital, there’s still a place for direct mail. Receiving a letter in the mail can make recipients feel special and help your nonprofit stand out.

To build brand recognition, ensure your direct mail communication has the same branding as your online marketing materials. This creates a consistent experience across platforms and presents your nonprofit as a capable, professional organization.

Allegiance Group + Pursuant’s direct mail fundraising guide provides an excellent example of a direct mail insert donors can use to send donations to the Georgia Mountain Food Bank:

An insert donors can fill out and mail in to donate to a nonprofit.

Notice how it features the organization’s colors and an eye-catching image of a child, representing the families the food bank serves. The nonprofit makes it easy to select an amount and provide payment information with clearly labeled boxes. Alternatively, the nonprofit’s website URL is featured in a box, providing the option to give online.

To emulate their approach, start by creating a nonprofit style guide that includes guidelines for direct mail. This might include directions for font sizes, letterheads, and signatures.

Launch Your Nonprofit’s Multi-Channel Marketing Strategy.

By sharing your nonprofit’s messages on multiple channels, your organization can reach new supporters and reinforce your brand identity among current ones. Choose which channels you’ll expand to by assessing your audience’s interests, your nonprofit’s resources, and each platform’s outreach potential. In no time, you’ll strengthen your presence across both online and offline channels.

“Tips for Hosting a Successful Event for Small Businesses”

4 Tips for Hosting a Successful Event for Small Businesses

Picture this: Your small business has been operating online only, but now you’re ready to open a physical storefront. To generate excitement and attract new customers, you host a grand opening event with drinks, snacks, and a 10% discount on every purchase. At the end of the day, you’ve had your most successful day of sales yet and positive feedback from community members who are excited to come back.

Whether you want to boost sales or improve employee retention, events present a valuable opportunity for small businesses that want a concentrated burst to their results. After all, nothing beats the energy and excitement of an event when it comes to fulfilling your goals!

In this guide, we’ll explore four tips for ensuring your small business’s events succeed and bring you great results. Let’s begin!

1. Identify goals for the event.

Many small businesses see events as large investments and are determined to get a great return. However, this can lead them to try to do too much with a single event, resulting in lackluster outcomes.

Don’t expect your event to be a jack of all trades—instead, identify one or two goals it should meet. These might fall into the following categories:

  • Generate leads and sales
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Strengthen customer relationships and loyalty
  • Give back to the community
  • Network with other local organizations
  • Recruit new employees
  • Boost employee satisfaction

For example, let’s say your small business is a gym. You might host an event that helps you increase gym memberships and give back to the community. Your event may also offer tangential benefits, such as increased brand awareness and more connections with local nonprofits, but keep in mind that these are not the main focuses of your event.

Keep your event focused by setting a SMART goal—specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. With SMART goals, you’ll always know how far away you are from your desired outcome, allowing you to know when to pivot or adjust your strategies.

2. Choose the right type of event.

If you want to celebrate your ten-year-old’s birthday, would you host a bowling party for them and their friends or take them on a brewery tour? Certain types of events are better suited for specific goals than others. Let’s take a look at the main types of events you may want to host to meet your small business’s goals:

  • Sales events. If you want to generate more sales or leads, choose an event like a business grand opening, product launch party, flash sale, exclusive shopping event, or pop-up store event.
  • Educational events. To increase brand awareness and authority or network with other local organizations, consider hosting workshops, webinars, expert panel discussions, and other educational events.
  • Community events. If you want to help build the community, you can host one of two genres of events. The first consists of entertaining and social events, such as community potlucks and bar mixers. The second is social good events, such as volunteer days or social good fundraising events, where you raise funds for a charitable cause.
  • Employee events. To boost employee retention and satisfaction, host employee events like team retreats and team bonding dinners. For employee appreciation, eCardWidget recommends hosting movie nights, group outings, and holiday parties.
  • Recruiting and networking events. If you want to recruit new employees or connect with other organizations, host local business networking mixers and recruitment fairs to get the partnerships and applicants you desire.

Feel free to get creative and customize these events to your business’s unique needs and industry. For example, if you’re a massage therapist trying to help the community, you might take a vendor booth at the annual community fair and offer free five-minute massages to attendees. On the other hand, if you run a sports goods store, you might host a 5K run instead and donate the proceeds to the local youth center.

3. Add extra value to boost event engagement.

You’re probably already familiar with the event planning process, from establishing a budget to choosing an event venue to purchasing decorations and hiring vendors. Those tasks are essential parts of creating a successful event. However, to take your event to the next level, look beyond them and consider how you can add extra value.

“Extra value” might seem vague, but it refers to any additional perk, benefit, experience, or activity you can offer event attendees. With this added value, not only will invitees be more likely to attend your event, but they’ll also be more engaged during it.

For instance, let’s say you’re organizing a team dinner for your employees where you’ll announce the winner of your Employee of the Month program. Instead of just making the reservation, you might pay for transportation from your office to the event and cover the price of everyone’s drinks. Additionally, you can have a small trophy or plaque made for the winner. These value-adds will ensure team members show up to celebrate your top-performing employees, resulting in greater workplace satisfaction.

Or, perhaps you run a gym and are hosting a marathon. Through this marathon, you’ll raise money on behalf of a local sustainability nonprofit and invest in the well-being of your community. For an extra value-add, you might take Sneakers4Good’s advice and partner with an athletic shoe reuse provider to collect gently worn, new and used sneakers that you’ll trade for more funds to donate. Additionally, offer runners free swag like t-shirts and water bottles to entice more community members to sign up.

4. Measure your event’s results.

Every event you host is a learning opportunity, as long as you take the time to evaluate your results and determine what you can do to improve in the future. After your event, start by looking at key metrics in your event management software:

  • Total registrations
  • Number of actual attendees
  • Number of new attendees
  • Number of returning attendees
  • Total revenue generated during the event
  • Attendee satisfaction levels
  • Engagement rates for specific activities or experiences

Additionally, evaluate metrics even after your event is over. For example, your grand opening may motivate individuals to make purchases even after the event. Or, you might experience elevated hiring metrics for a few weeks after hosting a recruitment event. These give you the big picture of your event’s impact.

Hosting any event is challenging. With these tips, you’re poised to host successful small business events that help you meet your goals, whatever they are!

The title of the article: Nonprofits that Sell Products or Services: 4 Considerations

Nonprofits that Sell Products or Services: 4 Considerations

Sustainable nonprofits have diverse revenue streams, from donations to grants to sales. However, while nonprofits that sell products and services can make more than enough revenue to sustain themselves, undertaking commercial affairs comes with several considerations. 

Nonprofits that rely heavily on product or service sales, like thrift stores, museums, and educational institutions, can experience the benefits of running a business and maintaining nonprofit status. To explain how, this guide will cover four considerations these types of nonprofits should keep in mind.

1. Audience Demand

A successful business sells the products and services its customers want. For many businesses, this involves assessing market needs and designing products or services they feel there is a demand for. However, many nonprofits already have a possible product or service and must find your audience. 

To assess and capture an audience, be sure to:

  • Conduct market research. Before pushing a product to market, you need to understand who is most likely to buy it, how many people are likely to buy it, and at what price point they will buy it. Look for nonprofits with similar sales offerings and assess their business models. Research audience demographics, delivery methods, and value propositions. 
  • Establish your value proposition. Getting Attention’s guide to nonprofit communications outlines three key aspects of a value proposition: audience needs, benefits received, and brand differentiators. In other words, to promote your nonprofit’s products or services, you must explain how they meet your audience’s needs, what the audience gets from a purchase, and how your offerings stand out from your competitors.  
  • Craft relevant marketing materials. Marketing is the art of presenting the right message to the right audience in the right location. For a nonprofit with a brick-and-mortar location, like a thrift store, this might be a radio spot, posters, or mailed flyers. In contrast, a nonprofit specializing in online sales might focus on its web presence and social media outreach. 

Expect to continually reconsider and reassess audience preferences. After launching your product or service offerings, gather data by surveying customers and requesting reviews. This will allow you to glean insights about your business model and audience.

2. Inventory Management

Once you know what products your audience wants, you must order, stock, and manage them. Many nonprofit stores follow the reuse model, where inventory comes from various sources, including donations. This means the exact items you have at any time may be unpredictable, if not outright chaotic. 

You can counter this by employing robust inventory management tools. ThriftCart recommends looking for the following features in inventory management software:

  • Real-time inventory tracking. Ensure you always know what’s in stock and what’s out of stock with real-time inventory updates. That way, you’ll always know what items need to be restocked to meet customer needs. 
  • Automated pickup and dropoff scheduling. If your nonprofit accepts donations to stock products, your inventory management tool can help supporters schedule delivery windows. This makes gathering stock simple for everyone. 
  • Customer reward options. Along with managing your inventory, many point of sale (POS) platforms also provide features that incentivize growth, such as customer reward and loyalty tools. Track customer purchases to offer them perks, send personalized marketing messages, and create custom discounts for upcoming marketing campaigns. 

Inventory and point of sale systems are often highly specialized, so they work with a platform that fits your nonprofit’s sales model. For instance, a thrift store would likely use a different inventory management tool than a museum gift shop.

3. Marketing

To earn sales, your nonprofit needs to inform prospective customers of your offerings. Previously, we touched on the main components of marketing: creating a message for a target audience and displaying it in locations they are likely to see. Let’s break down each of these aspects a bit further:

  • Audience. Who is your nonprofit targeting? The research you did when assessing audience demand for your offerings should be used here. Use your data to get as specific as possible regarding your ideal audience’s demographic information, location, values, buying habits, and communication preferences. For example, a used book store might have several audiences, including lower-income individuals looking for deals and book lovers looking for unique or vintage tomes.
  • Message. Based on the audiences you identify, what messages are likely to resonate with them? Consider your audience’s goals and values. Do they want convenience, a good deal, or unique offerings? Based on your prior analysis, create messages that align with your audience’s preferences.
  • Distribution. Ensure your marketing messages are in locations where your audience is likely to look. This is essential for certain marketing strategies, like search engine optimization (SEO) for nonprofits. SEO relies on understanding what types of keywords your audience is likely to search for and creating content that targets those keywords. Conversely, to court a local audience, you instead invest heavily in distributing your message through traditional channels, like newspaper and radio.

After any marketing push, track the results to assess whether it had the desired impact. You may even discover new insights about your audience, such as by attracting a demographic you weren’t specifically targeting or learning that one communication channel has a higher conversion rate than expected. 

4. Financial Reporting 

To sell products and maintain nonprofit status, charitable organizations must be extra conscious of their finances and reporting requirements. For U.S.-based nonprofits, you must follow a few guidelines:

  • Products must be related to your mission. All commercial ventures must be related to your nonprofit’s mission. For instance, an environmental nonprofit selling t-shirts that promote awareness of endangered species would be considered mission-related. If it’s determined your commercial offerings are not mission-related, your nonprofit will need to track Unrelated Business Income Tax (UBIT), and if you make over $1,000 in non-mission-related sales, file Form 990-T. 
  • Donations are reported. Nonprofits that accept in-kind donations to fuel their inventory (like thrift or reuse stores) will need to report these contributions. This also applies to other types of in-kind donations, such as prizes you might solicit for a charity auction. And be sure to provide supporters with donation receipts for items that are valued at $250 or more to comply with IRS guidelines.
  • Revenue is invested back into the nonprofit. Nonprofits can and often do make a profit through sales of products or services. The key is that the extra revenue must be spent on mission-related activities. For instance, a thrift store might use its profits to buy items in bulk from wholesalers or restore vintage items.

If you need assistance properly managing your organization’s finances, consider working with an external accounting firm that specializes in nonprofits. These consultants will understand the unique challenges charitable organizations face and be able to help your nonprofit navigate potentially confusing reporting requirements.

Products and services bring in vital revenue for your nonprofit. Ensure you conduct your commercial ventures transparently, in an organized manner, and with an eye to your audience’s needs. To get started, consider your software needs and employ the right tools for managing the commerce side of your nonprofit.

The article’s title, “Top Ways Nonprofits Can Use a Learning Management System”

4 Ways Nonprofits Can Use a Learning Management System

No matter how straightforward your nonprofit’s mission is, the work behind it is complex. To power your operations, you need to recruit and retain a strong team of staff and volunteers. To ensure your long-term success, you need to maintain a confident and informed board of directors. To raise enough funds to sustain your programs and services, you need to convince your community that your cause is worthy of support.

By implementing a learning management system (LMS), you can facilitate all of these efforts and centralize training and education into one platform. Let’s explore the top ways your nonprofit can use an LMS to advance its mission.

1. Train Staff and Volunteers

Every day, your staff and volunteers work hard to keep your organization’s doors open—whether they’re crafting marketing materials, planning events, or compiling financial reports. By providing these dedicated individuals with continuous learning opportunities, you allow them to develop the skills and competencies they need to excel in their roles.

With an LMS, your nonprofit can:

  • Design a structured onboarding process. Produce welcome videos and introductory courses that acquaint new employees and volunteers with your organization’s mission, values, history, and programs. These courses can be self-paced so that team members can complete them at their preferred learning speed.
  • Provide role-specific training. By creating learning paths tailored to specific roles, you can set employees and volunteers up for success in managing their individual responsibilities. For example, you might enroll managers in training courses that cover topics such as delegation and change management.
  • Construct a collaborative learning environment. Help new employees and volunteers build connections within your nonprofit from day one. Use discussion boards and forums on your LMS to encourage team members to interact and reflect on what they’re learning.

Bonus tip: Since your staff and volunteers have differing learning preferences, offer a variety of content types and formats to engage them. For example, one employee might appreciate podcasts since they enjoy auditory, self-paced learning. Another employee might be more excited to attend a virtual nonprofit conference because they love networking.

2. Educate Board Members

A strong nonprofit board steers your organization toward success and champions your mission across everything you do. However, nonprofit leaders have previously rated their board’s performance in understanding their responsibilities, the context in which the organization is working, and legislative issues as a C or C+.

To better equip your board members to fulfill their fiduciary, legal, and ethical duties, your nonprofit can use an LMS to:

  • Set up a consistent orientation process. Create educational modules that cover the basics of your organization in a logical sequence. Go over areas such as your mission, board expectations, current programs, and impact.
  • Improve board financial literacy. Brief board members on basic topics, including budgeting, audit preparation, and financial reporting. Incorporate your nonprofit’s real financial data into the training to allow your board to practice analyzing it.
  • Clarify compliance requirements. Maintaining compliance with IRS regulations, reporting requirements, and grant conditions can seem complicated to less experienced board members. Provide courses with relevant guidelines and real case studies for learners to reference anytime.
  • Engage board members in fundraising. According to Double the Donation’s rundown on recent nonprofit trends, major donor fundraising is more important than ever before. Make it easy for board members to participate in fundraising by offering courses on identifying prospects within their network, building donor relationships, and communicating compelling stories.

Bonus tip: Some financial and legal topics may seem dull or daunting to board members. Make the learning process more appealing by adding interactive quizzes that reinforce their knowledge and badges that reward their hard work.

3. Spread Community Awareness

An LMS can enhance your nonprofit’s marketing strategy by providing more opportunities for people to interact with your cause. Education is the first step to long-term engagement with your mission. The more people understand how important your work is, the more likely they are to donate and spread the word to others.

With an LMS, your nonprofit can:

  • Raise more. Boost your fundraising results by encouraging more people to engage with your cause. Produce courses relevant to your mission and make them available to your community for free. For example, a health nonprofit could teach its audience about preventative care and stress management. A disaster relief organization might host classes on how families can create emergency kits and evacuation plans.
  • Boost advocacy. Empower supporters to make their voices heard on relevant issues. Create training modules that prepare advocates for contacting legislators and equip them with strong storytelling skills. Launch webinars that explore how local policy changes affect your community.
  • Form local partnerships. Look for opportunities to partner with local schools, businesses, and other organizations to design co-branded education programs for the community. For example, a literacy-focused nonprofit could work with local libraries to develop courses that families and their children can enroll in to promote early childhood reading.

Bonus tip: Focus on accessibility so anyone can engage with your learning content. For example, provide text transcripts alongside videos, ensure your PDFs are compatible with screen readers, and make it easy for users to navigate your courses using only a keyboard. Look for an LMS that supports multiple languages to reach a more diverse audience.

4. Fulfill Your Mission

For many nonprofits, creating meaningful change within their community starts with education. Whether you’re helping beneficiaries lead better lives or address urgent needs in your area, an LMS can facilitate how you run your programs and services.

For example:

  • A nonprofit dedicated to bridging the digital divide can offer accessible courses to low-income communities that cover basic computer skills and online safety practices.
  • A nonprofit that helps people who were formerly incarcerated find employment can host virtual mock interviews, resume workshops, and mentorship sessions.
  • A nonprofit working to end homelessness can offer courses on personal finance, housing applications, and job searching to people experiencing homelessness.
  • A nonprofit that champions art and culture in the community can organize online workshops led by artists and video tutorials that people can follow.

Bonus tip: When researching LMS options, check whether the platform integrates with your existing software. For example, a Salesforce LMS integration makes it easy for your team to manage and adjust your learning program based on the data stored in your Salesforce system. The more connected your tools are, the better visibility you have into how your educational offerings are moving your mission forward.

As you create learning opportunities for your nonprofit’s community, look for ways to improve engagement over time. TopClass recommends using your LMS’s reporting tools to track learner progress, course hours, and test results to gain more insights into your learning program. Use this data, combined with learner feedback, to guide your strategy and build a better experience going forward.

An illustration of two people shaking hands with the title of the article overlaid, “So, You're Not Ready for a Capital Campaign: What to Do Next”

So, You’re Not Ready for a Capital Campaign: What to Do Next

The scale of capital campaigns means that they shouldn’t be undertaken casually. They are major investments of an organization’s time and resources. You must be prepared for a capital campaign before formally launching one.

Otherwise, your fundraising ultimately won’t be sustainable. You’ll open your organization to risks—wasted time and money, damaged relationships, strategic drift, loss of energy and motivation among donors and staff, and more.

This is why evaluating campaign readiness is the most critical pre-planning step you can take.

During this process, you’ll closely evaluate your organization’s current state and plans. You’ll define concrete objectives and a preliminary fundraising goal for the campaign. The goal is to gain a complete view of whether your nonprofit is currently equipped to accomplish the campaign plans.

And in many cases, the answer may be that your organization is not ready for a capital campaign, or at least not the one that you’ve planned so far.

So what do you do? How do you move forward productively? Can your vision for a campaign be salvaged?

Pre-Campaign Planning to Assess Campaign Readiness

It’s a common misconception that a feasibility study is the primary driver of whether an organization is ready for a capital campaign or not. After all, it does have “feasible” in the name.

The truth is that properly preparing for a feasibility study should alert you to reasons why your organization isn’t ready for a campaign.

You absolutely do not want to get in front of your strongest supporters and stakeholders without all of your ducks in a row.

While a feasibility study ostensibly is about testing your goal and case for support, pre-campaign planning is where the rubber hits the road in terms of campaign readiness.

These are bad and good reasons to hold off on a capital campaign:

  • Bad reasons to delay a campaign. These issues usually come down to nervousness or misconceptions about what makes a campaign successful.
    • Your board isn’t wealthy
    • You’re uneasy about external headwinds (economy, politics, etc.).
    • You’ve never done a campaign before.
    • You think the annual fund will suffer.
    • You think you’re too small.
  • Good reasons to delay a campaign. These issues are more fundamental, and, in many cases, moving forward in spite of them will sap your campaign of its direction and effectiveness.
    • You have little-to-no philanthropic annual support.
    • You can’t identify a lead donor and/or at least 20 leadership-level givers
    • You don’t have enough staff for the campaign.
    • You don’t have a clear plan or vision for the campaign.
    • Your team is in deep disagreement about the plan.
    • You have no buy-in from organizational leadership.

Remember, every campaign has its issues to overcome. Conducting a readiness assessment and getting serious about pre-campaign planning will help you identify them as early as possible, giving you a chance to pause and evaluate. Realistically consider the depth of the problems you find and whether addressing them would be feasible.

Capital Campaign Pro offers a free readiness assessment that you and your team can take to see if you’re ready for a capital campaign.

Choosing to hold off on your campaign is not a bad thing—it just means you’re not quite ready. Take it as a sign that the best investments you can make in your organization right now are more structural. Moving forward in this direction is still forward movement!

1. Strengthen your organization internally.

So you’ve decided to hold off on a campaign. What next?

You should now take steps to bolster your organization internally, focusing on its capacity, productivity, fundraising abilities, and more. Action items to consider include:

  • Audit and evaluate your resources. How deeply do you understand the current state of your operations and capacity? A comprehensive audit of your finances, technology, and human resources will give you a much clearer picture of where you can and should improve to strengthen your organization. This is a worthwhile exercise regardless of whether a campaign is near the horizon.
  • Address and fill strategic gaps. Does your organization have a formal strategic plan that defines its long-term goals and outlines how you’ll pursue them? Are you continually constrained by the size of your staff? Growth takes people power, and while you shouldn’t hire in an unsustainable way, expanding your nonprofit’s team may give you the extra hands and work hours you need to focus on improvements rather than just day-to-day necessities.
  • Invest in training. What kind of learning curve would your organization have faced if you had moved ahead with a campaign? Are you already aware of big gaps in your shared know-how that you’ve been neglecting in order to get on with business as normal? Address them! Nonprofit teams need effective management, financial, prospect research, and relationship-building skills to grow sustainably (regardless of whether a campaign is coming in the near future or not).
  • Boost your board and governance practices. How well does your nonprofit run on a logistical level? Do you have all the necessary policies and internal practices in place for smooth operations? Capital campaigns and the growth they fuel bring complexity—a lot of it. Address governance and logistical hindrances now. Also, consider the makeup and culture of your board. Unfortunately, disengaged or ineffective boards are common stumbling blocks for growing nonprofits. Refreshing your board and building a more engaged culture will pay dividends later.

2. Build and engage your donor base.

Aside from internal capacity, the size and depth of your nonprofit’s donor base are the other major limiting factors for growth and campaign readiness. Both building and engaging your community of supporters should be a top priority.

Practices to implement or improve include:

  • Create dedicated development workflows. Many smaller organizations might treat fundraising haphazardly, starting from scratch with each campaign. Understanding the complete donor lifecycle, from identification to cultivation, solicitation, and long-term stewardship, gives you a more intentional structure for growth.
  • Double down on prospect research. Researching donors’ abilities and inclinations to give larger gifts keeps your insights fresh and ensures you’ll have an accurate picture of your fundraising capacity at any given time. Research prospecting best practices and invest in a new tool if needed.
  • Prioritize engagement and retention. Donor retention is the key to sustained growth. How well do you currently retain donors from one campaign or year to the next? Learn more about why your repeat donors choose to give. Create more engagement opportunities, such as simple membership programs, events, volunteer opportunities, and surveys. Actively track engagement touchpoints as they occur and study the trends.
  • Diversify your fundraising methods and outreach. Do you host the same types of campaigns and events over and over? Has your outreach grown stale? Try something new by identifying a segment of high-impact donors and carefully considering what kinds of campaigns and messages would interest them. Consider the fundraising methods you offer as well. High-impact donors are increasingly interested in non-cash and planned giving options that can unlock growth once you learn how to suggest them.

3. Develop a strategic fundraising plan.

How intentionally does your organization fundraise? Sure, you likely set goals and lay out plans for each individual campaign or project, but how do these efforts all add up to a bigger picture? Many nonprofits struggle to kickstart growth because they lack a unified vision for what all that work will accomplish as a whole.

If you know that a key goal will be to reach a state of readiness for a capital campaign, try developing a strategic fundraising plan around it.

Based on what you learned during pre-campaign planning, define what will constitute “readiness” for you. Set a timeframe to reach it. Then, delve into specific areas where you need to improve to reach those readiness thresholds. These might include:

  • Building your overall base of active donors
  • Increasing the size and volume of your donor development pipeline for larger gifts
  • Implementing upgraded technology to support fundraising
  • Expanding your fundraising staff and modernizing your practices
  • Improving your nonprofit’s finances to build a more resilient foundation for growth

Remember, capital campaign plans are long. The preparation process can be winding and messy.

But by blocking out your journey into discrete, addressable chunks, each structured with clear goals, strategies, and timeframes, you’ll make progress. Gradually grow your nonprofit’s fundraising capacity through internal improvements and by expanding your donor base. Prioritize your most urgent needs, communicate the big-picture plan to your team, and get started.

4. Seek outside support.

Finally, remember that you’re not alone before, during, and after a capital campaign. Tons of resources exist that can help you better prepare your organization and team for this kind of undertaking.

You might take these steps:

  • Invest in specialized consulting as needed. You’ve identified specific issues or limiting factors holding you back from a campaign; consider whether professional consulting and expert-led training would be a wise investment for any or multiple of them. Third-party consultants can help you lay a stronger foundation in terms of fundraising, communications, logistics, finances, internal culture, and more.
  • Keep learning about capital campaigns. Chances are you want to reach readiness for your very first capital campaign. Don’t lose sight of the fact that these are the biggest fundraising and logistical undertakings that most nonprofits ever tackle. Even if you’re not quite ready to launch, you can and should keep learning about how these campaigns work, the strategies that drive success, and more.
  • Find a capital campaign mentor. Depending on how close you are to campaign readiness, you might find a coach or mentor who can help you navigate the process and better prepare your organization. Professional campaign coaching services or even trusted peer organizations with successful campaign track records can be helpful resources at this stage to keep you accountable and your preparations on track.
  • Find modern campaign resources. Traditional capital campaign consulting services typically have relatively high barriers to entry and involve paying an expert a lot of money to come in, help plan, and then execute a campaign plan once you’ve already reached readiness. Other approaches might be more helpful for your organization, especially in the earliest pre-stages of your campaign. Providers like Capital Campaign Pro offer training, practice, and community to help nonprofits take a more hands-on route, building the skills and experience they’ll need once it’s time to campaign in earnest.

Deciding to postpone a capital campaign isn’t the end of the world—it’s an opportunity to regroup and generally strengthen your organization. As the steward of your nonprofit’s resources, delaying a campaign is also often the most responsible choice you can make. Remember, this outcome is infinitely better than the alternative—rushing into an overwhelming campaign plan before you’re ready.

If you hold off on a campaign, seize your chance to push your organization in other ways. Understand what’s holding you back, grow your community, develop a roadmap to readiness, and get the help you need. Soon you’ll be closer than ever to launching your nonprofit’s most transformative project yet.

The title of the article, “Tips for Getting to Know Your Major Donor Prospects”

4 Tips for Getting to Know Your Major Donor Prospects

Major gifts continue to sustain nonprofits, representing almost 75% of total fundraising dollars in the latest Fundraising Effectiveness Project report. 

To maintain this momentum and secure more major gifts for your organization, it’s critical to target the right prospects and get to know them personally. After all, prospects need to trust your organization before they’ll consider giving, and this trust goes both ways. In this quick guide, we’ll explore a few tips you can use to cultivate relationships with major donors that inspire giving and loyal support.

1. Analyze your prospect research findings.

If you’re ready to cultivate a major donor prospect, then presumably you’ve already conducted thorough prospect research to verify their capacity (wealth), affinity (warmth), and propensity (habits) to contribute a major gift. Whether you outsourced this process to a consultant or researched internally, you should have a variety of data points for each prospect. 

Analyzing these findings will help you get to know major giving prospects before you even reach out to them, providing you with a solid foundation for your cultivation efforts.

In particular, pay attention to the following information you glean from prospect research:

  • Giving and involvement history: A prospect’s past donations and engagement with your own nonprofit tell you which cause areas, types of campaigns, and involvement activities they prefer.
  • Affinity for certain causes: If you discovered that your prospect contributes to other organizations and/or political campaigns related to a certain aspect of your cause, you can zero in on this part of your work to solicit their support.
  • Philanthropic habits: Note not only which nonprofits prospects donate to, but also how they give. Do they typically give large one-time gifts? Annual donations? Gradually increasing gift sizes?
  • Affiliations with local businesses and community leaders: Analyzing prospects’ connections can provide insight into their priorities and point out mutual connections your nonprofit can leverage in the cultivation process.

Of course, you should consider all of this analysis alongside the capacity data you gleaned from your initial wealth screen to get an accurate picture of the prospect’s giving potential. Focus on those who you know have the means to donate at the level your organization needs.

2. Meet with prospects regularly.

Face-to-face interactions are the best way to build relationships. As you create major donor cultivation plans and schedule outreach cadences, prioritize in-person meetings as much as possible to better connect with prospects. Plan several types of meetings, such as lunches, meetings for coffee, conversations at events, phone calls, etc. 

Every time you meet with a prospect, take detailed notes in your nonprofit’s CRM. Record both large and small tidbits of information, such as:

  • Personal details: This includes anything from the names of important family members to details about their career and philanthropic history.
  • Opportunities they seem interested in: Observe their reactions to different projects, programs, and campaigns you discuss to discover which they might want to support in the future.
  • Stated preferences: Your prospect might casually mention that they like receiving direct mail or dislike auctions, and adhering to these preferences in the future will show you were paying attention.
  • Topics to bring up again: Note anything you want to check back up on, from their upcoming vacations to any concerns they mentioned about one of your projects.

These details will help you understand the prospect better and deepen your relationship with them. You might also pick up on their preferences for donor recognition, which will be important for the stewardship stage of the major gift fundraising cycle. According to Fundraising Letters, recognition should be as personal and relevant to the donor as possible for maximum impact on donor retention. 

3. Discuss their philanthropic priorities.

Getting to know personal details about your prospect helps you build rapport and find common ground, but don’t forget to explore their charitable interests, too. After all, you’re ultimately trying to acquire a major donation, and you need to know exactly what initiatives or programs the prospect would like to support.

In your face-to-face meetings, check-in calls, and discussions with prospects, focus on discovering each prospect’s giving priorities. Gradually collect information to answer questions like:

  • What aspects of your organization’s mission mean the most to them? 
  • How did they become interested in certain causes? 
  • What organizations and causes have they supported in the past, and why?
  • Which upcoming projects, campaigns, and programs are they most excited about?
  • Are they interested in non-traditional forms of giving, like cryptocurrency?

These answers will help you tailor the giving and involvement opportunities you share with prospects down the line. For example, if you find out that a prospect named Shelly thinks the scholarships your organization gives to underprivileged high school students are life-changing, you might dive deeper into this topic and ultimately ask for a major gift to your scholarship program.

4. Send personalized invitations to other involvement opportunities.

Remember that keeping major donors involved in activities beyond giving is also a crucial part of donor stewardship and retention. The more you learn about prospects’ involvement preferences now, the better you’ll be able to steward them after they give.

Use the information you’ve gleaned so far to send tailored invitations to prospects. Donorly’s major gift fundraising guide suggests inviting prospects to fundraising events, volunteering opportunities, personal tours of program sites, or dinners with board members, depending on their individual interests. Each of these opportunities will help prospects connect more deeply with your organization and learn more about why they should support your work.

Plus, any in-person involvement activity gives you a valuable opportunity to get to know the prospect better by seeing them interact with your mission up close. Pay attention to how they engage with others, what questions they ask, and when their eyes light up to learn more about their interests and giving motivations.

Getting to know major donor prospects is only a small part of the full fundraising process. If your organization wants expert advice or support identifying, cultivating, soliciting, or stewarding major donors, don’t be afraid to reach out to a fundraising consultant. These professionals can help you improve your major giving strategy in both the short and long term to boost fundraising revenue.

The title of the article, “How to Streamline Your Nonprofit's Payroll Process.”

How to Streamline Your Nonprofit’s Payroll Process: 3 Tips

Administrative tasks are the foundation upon which your nonprofit’s accomplishments are built. When your organization t operates efficiently, you can spend less time worrying about internal tasks and more time fulfilling your mission.

Administrative tasks aren’t strictly limited to organizing donor data or handling cash and non-cash donations. Recording financial transactions so that you can produce a financial scorecard monthly is just as important to long-term sustainability.

Payroll is one of the largest expenses a nonprofit incurs. Therefore, preparing it is an essential administrative process that often can be streamlined while still ensuring that your organization complies with legal obligations and compensates its hard-working employees. In this guide, we’ll explore three ways to streamline payroll.

1. Partner With a Professional Employer Organization (PEO)

When it comes to managing your nonprofit’s finances, you’ve likely considered outsourcing accounting to an experienced professional. But have you considered outsourcing your employment practices as well?

Professional employer organizations (PEOs) provide expert resources in payroll, human resources, tax compliance, and more. This enables your nonprofit to:

  • Lower the cost of benefits through economies of scale: Chazin & Company explains that PEOs leverage the collective bargaining power of multiple organizations to negotiate lower rates for health insurance and other employee benefits. As a result, your nonprofit can offer competitive benefits packages without financial strain and can even reallocate its savings toward your organization’s mission.
  • Reduce the risk of legal complications and financial penalties: PEOs are familiar with federal and state compliance requirements related to hiring and employment practices. Partnering with a PEO provides access to their expertise, often backed by years of experience and specialized knowledge.
  • Eliminate the need for an in-house HR department: Instead of developing an in-house HR department to hire candidates with adequate qualifications and conduct staff training, partnering with a PEO allows your nonprofit to access personnel support without needing to fund an entirely new department.

If your organization decides to work with a PEO, look for experienced and knowledgeable professionals with certifications in HR and payroll management. Certifications such as Certified Professional in Human Resources (PHR), Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), and Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) indicate that the PEO’s staff bring reliable expertise to the table.

2. Simplify Your Payroll Process

There are a lot of moving parts in a nonprofit’s payroll process. For example, you’ll withhold money from employees’ paychecks to pay certain taxes, but not from contractors’ paychecks since they pay their own taxes. Volunteers, on the other hand, shouldn’t be compensated at all, aside from non-monetary thank-you gifts.

Be sure to properly classify everyone who works for you to keep your records accurate. Also, track essential employee information, such as:

  • Social Security numbers
  • Withholdings
  • Benefits
  • Overtime
  • Bonuses

Along with keeping your records organized, compensation practices impact your nonprofit’s overall cash flow. As Double the Donation explains, a healthy nonprofit operating reserve should be sufficient to cover one full payroll cycle, including taxes. This means you’ll need data on each employee’s overtime pay and bonuses to accurately calculate your payroll obligations.

To make tracking compensation easier, establish a standard pay schedule for every employee. Standardizing pay periods reduces the amount of time spent tracking each employee’s pay. Plus, your team will know exactly when to expect their paychecks, fostering trust in your organization.

3. Maintain Compliance

As a nonprofit leader, you’re likely no stranger to the compliance requirements necessary for maintaining tax-exempt status. These regulations extend to payroll processes, as well, and can lead to significant financial penalties if not followed.

Specific regulations include:

  • Tax exemption: Just because your nonprofit has tax-exempt status doesn’t mean it’s exempt from paying all taxes. Organizations must withhold and file Federal Income Taxes (FITW) and Social Security and Medicare Taxes (FICA) on behalf of their employees. Additionally, most employers must match and remit FICA taxes withheld.
  • Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA): According to the Department of Labor, The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and youth employment standards affecting employees in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments. Non-profit charitable organizations are not covered enterprises under the FLSA unless they engage in ordinary commercial activities that result in sales made or business done, such as operating a merchandise shop or providing veterinary services for a fee. If your nonprofit is engaged in activities subject to the FLSA, you’ll likely need to familiarize yourself with this act’s provisions.
  • Wage requirements: Nonprofits must follow federal and state wage laws that require employers to pay minimum wage. When paying more than minimum wage, compensation must be reasonable but not excessive. To familiarize yourself with appropriate compensation amounts and potential overtime requirements, review your state’s laws and industry standards.
  • Unemployment compensation: While 501(c)(3) nonprofits are exempt from filing Federal Unemployment Taxes (FUTA), they must still adhere to their state’s unemployment program requirements. This means either contributing to the state’s unemployment program or annually reimbursing the state for paid unemployment benefits.

Compensation laws and regulations may change, meaning your nonprofit must check in regularly to determine whether there have been any updates. To check for changes, the IRS website is a great resource. Additionally, local and state government websites also lay out tax laws that vary by municipality.

You can also brush up on nonprofit accounting basics to learn more about compliance standards your payroll (and other financial) processes must follow. Also, consulting a CPA can help you access the professional insight needed to ensure your finances are in order.

Along with the benefits your nonprofit can realize from a streamlined payroll process, your employees will also appreciate their employer maintaining an organized approach to compensation. With the right practices in place, your nonprofit won’t just retain employees and boost team morale—you’ll do the right thing by taking care of the team that makes your mission possible.