By building comprehensive marketing campaigns that are as robust and data-driven as any ecommerce company’s, you’ll be able to go beyond pulling on heartstrings, and focus on the science of an effective fundraising strategy.
Ecommerce businesses know all about Black Friday and Cyber Monday — but for fundraising professionals, Giving Tuesday is their time to shine.
Giving Tuesday takes place on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving every year. For fundraising professionals at nonprofit organizations including colleges and churches, Giving Tuesday represents an opportunity to drive sky-high donations to their causes in a single day — often with fundraising drives and matching donations to encourage their donors to give more generously.
Last year’s Giving Tuesday event was a huge success, with a record-breaking $3.1 billion donated in the United States alone.
Donors are primed to open their wallets on Giving Tuesday, but they only have so much to give — and thousands of nonprofit organizations are competing for their dollars. So how can your outreach efforts win donors over — and encourage them to keep giving regularly, even after your big fundraising event has ended?
It’s important to go beyond simply soliciting donations, and focus on an effective nonprofit marketing strategy. By building comprehensive marketing campaigns that are as robust and data-driven as any ecommerce company’s, you’ll be able to go beyond pulling on heartstrings, and focus on the science of an effective fundraising strategy.
Over my years of running a marketing agency, I’ve worked with clients in the fundraising tech space; directly with nonprofit organizations; and with hundreds of B2B tech clients; giving me a unique vantage into what each type of marketing campaign can draw from other industries.
In order to win at fundraising, nonprofit fundraisers should think less like charities and more like successful brands — ones that their donors will flock to over and over again.
Here are some marketing strategies that nonprofits can use to ramp up their fundraising donations, both on the next Giving Tuesday and throughout 2024.
Before launching any fundraising campaign, it’s important to understand who you’re talking to.
Who are your donors? How old are they? Where do they live? What’s their connection to your cause? How much is each type of donor likely to give, and how often are they likely to make a donation?
Just like buyer personas in for-profit marketing, it’s important to build donor personas, which can help you visualize your target audience segments so that you can easily develop campaigns that meet their unique needs. It’s also important to remember that not all of your potential supporters have excess capital to spare, but that they can support your organization in different ways.
For instance, if you’re a climate change-focused nonprofit, a few of your potential supporter types may be:
Before mapping out your plan for 2024, it’s important to take a deep look back at your past efforts, including your successes and failures. What resonated most with donors, and what campaigns failed to strike a chord? Which types of donors were most likely to donate multiple times, and what channels did they prefer to engage on?
As with for-profit brands, it can be helpful to conduct a comprehensive marketing audit to help you analyze your path to success. Make sure you’re paying attention to all of the metrics that will indicate how well you’re connecting with your target audience, such as follower growth, email subscribers, campaign clicks, etc., rather than focusing on donations alone.
Whether you’re building your first documented strategy, or optimizing an existing one, it’s important to look at ways to build and engage your audience, including:
To keep your collaborations and fundraising initiatives running smoothly, it's crucial to develop a comprehensive marketing calendar. This calendar should spotlight all upcoming events, content requirements, preparation steps involved, and assign responsibilities to appropriate team members. Start by listing out the important dates for each scheduled event or campaign launch. Next, identify what content needs to be created for each of these milestones. This could include press releases, social media posts, email campaigns or website updates.
Once you've pinpointed these deliverables, break down every task into manageable steps. For example, if you're preparing an email campaign for a new collaboration with a business partner, the steps could include designing the email template, writing the copy, testing the email and scheduling it for delivery.
Assigning responsibility is another key component of your marketing calendar. Make sure each task has someone accountable for its completion. If multiple team members are involved, one person should be able to serve as key stakeholder, collecting all internal feedback and setting up an organized timeline for follow-up steps to ensure that the project is completed quickly.
Next comes resource assessment - ensure that you have everything necessary to support your plans. Make sure that you have the right technology and team members in place to support your marketing goals. Consider leaning on your volunteer network for additional support, knowing that you will need to appoint a staff member to train and manage the volunteer team. Alternatively, consider engaging an external agency who can provide professional assistance in executing your marketing plans efficiently while ensuring high-quality output.
Building any successful brand — whether for-profit or nonprofit — comes down to storytelling.
Create a powerful narrative that shows donors why they should care. Whether you’re sending emails, developing blog content, writing an annual report, making videos, or podcasting, your team should focus on telling the stories of where the money goes, and what impact it has. Whether you’re telling alumni how their donations are being used to build a new sports complex, or encouraging environmentalists to contribute to a campaign to save tree frogs, they should have a visceral sense of why their donation will make a difference.
By getting to the heart of why your cause matters, you’ll be able to build a deeper connection with your donors that goes beyond Giving Tuesday and helps you cultivate a passionate supporter base that’s primed to help with your mission all year long.
Want to build a best-in-class marketing strategy for your nonprofit or business? Get in touch for a free consultation with our founder.
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