We’ve just completed the third in our series of surveys to fundraisers who joined our Vital Signs Panel.

The most important question we asked was: "As you adjust your fundraising plans for 2009, what are the three most important strategic changes or emphases you’re likely to make?"

It was an opened-ended question. Rather than try to interpret for you, here in some broad categories is what your fundraising colleagues said … straight from the horse’s mouth. (We did delete direct duplications, but mostly included cases where respondents said the same thing with diferent words, to give you a better feel for responses.)

General Strategy

• Mail to best audiences only
• Increase events
• Increase integrated marketing efforts
• Focus on high netting programs
• Call funding sources to see if they are likely to give money to our nonprofit this year
• Enhancing benefits to members
• Looking at ways to cut costs-i.e. more e-solicitations, lower cost mail packages
• Bare bones budget and re-evaluating what our options are
• Spend more time cultivating personal relationships
• Sell assets
• Unable to bring on needed staff
• Reduce overhead/extraneous expenses wherever possible
• Work with program staff on potential new program initiatives
• Cut back on fundraising that does not contribute to net income
• Using PURL mailings

Existing Donors

• More contact with existing donors
• Increase retention strategies
• Increased stewardship, enhancing the number and messaging of non-solicitation communications with donors
• Keep your donors closer
• Improved donor relations
• Mailing to our best segments and launching a monthly giving program
• Very dedicated to the donors we have, especially any first-timers
• Greater emphasis on monthly giving recruitment
• Restrict telemarketing to top audiences only
• First quarter match challenge
• Less general appeals, more focus, more direct special appeals
• Membership and chapter development
• Improving renewal efforts
• Step up efforts to retain monthly donors
• Greater testing of downgrade and upgrade asks
• Cut out appeals that cost money to folks who never gave in the past
• Modify gift requests — don’t expect big increases
• Additional donor updates and personalization

Acquisition

• Spend a little less in DM acquisition; transfer to major giving
• Modify volume and targeting of acquisition mailings
• Focus on reactivation of lapsed donors
• Mailing deeper into the lapsed file, where we’ve been seeing success
• Manage acquisition subsidy VERY closely until we know what the economy is doing
• Less aggressive testing in acquisitions
• Running a more aggressive acquisition campaign
• Increase acquisition efforts
• Paring down acquisition somewhat

Messaging

• Provide lots of info about how the needs have increased
• More targeted messages based on giving interest

Online Fundraising

• Increase in the use of social marketing tools
• Social Network Fundraising: using committed donors to find potential donors in their own social network. For a health organisation such as ours, this close network is invaluable
• Targeted online giving
• More online fundraising
• More internet fundraising
• More Web 2.0
• Increase use of email–this was planned but will be further emphasized
• Social network marketing (Facebook, etc)

Plus a couple of suggestions for your overall well-being:

• Hope for change
• Go to bed earlier

Not a bad checklist. And only two bullish "outliers" talking about increasing their acquisition efforts! Wish I knew their circumstances!

Tom

P.S. Here’s our previous Vital Signs posting.