How To Get More Donations

January 24, 2013      Admin

We’ve been talking ‘basics’ in the past couple of posts.

Given that, I hope you found today’s headline/subject line as irresistible as I did, when I first read it in my feed from Future Fundraising Now.

How straighforward, I thought. What fundraiser wouldn’t want to at least peek at THE ANSWER?

FFN’s Jeff Brooks was citing another blogger, John Haydon, who recommended:

  1. Say Thanks
  2. Give Your Supporters Better Tools
  3. Plug up the Holes in Your Website
  4. Make Your Supporters’ Agendas Your Agenda
  5. Constantly Report Outcomes
  6. Develop One Cause Marketing Partnership
  7. Don’t Shoot for Perfect

OK, not a bad list, especially #1, 3, 4, 5.

Without getting deeply into tactics, I thought I’d give the question a try.

My list would be:

  1. Get noticed — duh … it makes your fundraising job much easier if your organization is already a ‘familiar face’!
  2. Differentiate.
  3. Show them you know them — especially, but not only, in the thanking process.
  4. Engage them emotionally — from initial appeal through to earning their trust.
  5. Address their problem; fix their ache.
  6. Tell stories, especially stories that illustrate results.
  7. Make it really easy — especially online and via mobile — for people to indicate interest in what your organization is doing (as a first step toward giving).
  8. Optimize your online conversion process.
  9. Strike while the iron is hot.
  10. Do all of the above with stand-out creative.

What would you add, subtract, change?

Tom

2 responses to “How To Get More Donations”

  1. Gayle L. Gifford, ACFRE says:
    January 24, 2013 at 1:44 pm

    I’d add:
    Connect to people, lots of people. And ask, ask, ask. Most organizations simply aren’t getting out there, meeting their donors, making a case and asking for money.
    Do the analysis — It saddens me how often I ask development directors simple questions about their donors and they can’t tell me — like how many donors made a gift last year? What was your retention rate last year? How many new donors did you recruit? Upgrades? Where do they live? Etc. It’s hard to talk about more complex analysis like long-term value when they don’t even know the basics.

  2. Roger Craver says:
    January 25, 2013 at 6:03 pm

    Thanks Gayle. I agree that there’s a real problem with metrics. In fact, I’m gonna do a series of posts on this. So, thanks for raising the bloodpressure.

    Roger

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