Want To Acquire Donors?
What’s the best way to get a new donor or member?
At first blush, you might think of the answer in terms of which medium to use — direct mail, email, web conversion, face-to-face, social media.
But think again in terms of how to capture interest most effectively from ‘birds of a feather’?
This time your answer might be getting referrals — referrals from current donors and members.
Certainly that’s the prevailing view in commercial marketing circles — nothing beats word-of-mouth, especially from a known source. From an article titled How to better engage advocates, here’s a typical comment …
“Brand advocates are the sales channel of the future. Every company has brand advocates, but the smart companies are leveraging those customers and soliciting their help in various ways to acquire customers and generate brand awareness. Brand advocates can do this more quickly, more transparently and more effectively than any other sales channel out there.”
Obviously, tools like email and social media make it easier than ever for your existing supporters to interest and lead you to new ones … to serve as your ‘brand advocates’.
But obviously it takes a committed donor to become an evangelist. And nonprofits these days are finding it hard to build the commitment needed simply to hang on to donors, let alone inspire and energize them to become evangelists.
That said, you don’t know what asset you might have unless you try.
I’d begin with major donors and sustainers. Both groups have at least signaled above-average commitment in financial terms. How else might you tap that commitment? Asking for referrals — and providing easy tools to enable that to happen — makes sense to me.
Any Agitator readers with donor referral success stories?
Tom
Behavioral Science Q & A
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