Tips to Make Nonprofit’s Fundraising Campaign More Engaging

We are nearing the end of 2019 and the holiday season is fast approaching. This is the time when people think of donating to charities and becoming a part of philanthropic activities. Nonprofits can benefit by organizing fundraising campaigns at this time because there will be better participation in fundraisers. But it is important to make your fundraising campaign such that it engages a large donor base.

Philanthropy is on the rise as people are becoming more and more aware of the social causes and most people want to do their bit for society. The number of nonprofits has also increased globally. If you need your fundraising campaign to be effective you need to have a well-planned strategy.

10 Tips to Make your Nonprofits Fundraising Campaign More Engaging

1. Set your Objectives

When you start a fundraising campaign, establish your goals or what you expect to achieve from the campaign. These goals should be aligned with the mission of your nonprofit. Establishing goals for your campaign helps give direction to your activities and helps ensure that you do not go off-track.

You can define measurement metrics for your campaign and measure the end results against these metrics.

2. Understand Your Audience

When you plan a fundraising campaign, you need to identify who your target audience is and strategize accordingly. Certain common methods of engagement are suitable for a wide audience but if you are catering to the audience of a specific age group, for example, you will need to create a campaign that is relevant to them.

The audience of today expects a personalized approach. Therefore, you need to create a strategy that is tailored to the needs of your audience.

3. Share and Connect with your audience

Communication is the foundation for engagement. You need to communicate effectively and clearly to your audience. You need to be authentic, relevant, and present before your audience.

Share information about specific causes that resonate with your audience on your website. Provide easy ways for your audience to share this information.

Also, ensure that your website is optimized for mobile!

4. Go Social

It is a well-known fact that today’s audience looks for all information on social media. If your nonprofit has not yet leveraged social media, you could be missing some vital links to communicate with your audience. Social media has a great impact on today's donors.

Although the approach for effective social media marketing is finding out what channels your audience is active on and sharing content there, it has been found that cross-platform sharing is also effective for nonprofits. This is because when donors see content shared by the nonprofit on different platforms, they are likely to retain it and get influenced by it.

Create clear CTAs on your social media pages. If a CTA is surrounded by too many hashtags in a social media post, it might be missed.

5. Don’t Forget Email

Email campaigns may not be a very effective means for engaging the audience for various marketing strategies. But, emails have a profound impact when it comes to engaging donors for nonprofits.

Regular personalized messages that provide detailed information about the nonprofit to the subscribers are found to be effective in engaging the donors.

5. Content is the Key

The donors of today want information. They want to know about the nonprofit. The best way to keep your audience engaged is by publishing informative content on your website. It is beneficial to have a content strategy wherein you publish fresh content in a regular systematic manner. You can establish your authenticity by posting content on your website. Make sure that you publish relevant content. Content is the best way to establish a relationship with your audience and build trust.

You can share this content on social media platforms as well.

6. Equip Digital Donors with the Right Tools

Peer-to-peer campaigns and social fundraising have become increasingly popular in recent times. More and more donors are looking for avenues to donate to causes that they are passionate about. These donors can serve as powerful fundraising messengers. Ensure that you provide these messengers the right tools to enable them to share your message and volunteer opportunities with their networks.

7. Transparency

The donors of today will engage with nonprofits that offer complete transparency. Donors want to build relationships with nonprofits they can trust. A nonprofit should give its donors a clear idea about what is done with their donations, how they are making an impact on the society with their donations, etc.

8. Involve Your Donors

For better engagement in your fundraising campaigns look for more ways to involve the audience instead of just donating funds. You could encourage people to volunteer their time to a fundraiser, etc. This is because the donors of today are looking for more than just donating funds. They want to be collaborators with the nonprofit.

9. Sending Tax-compliant receipts

If you are looking to engage donors for a long-term, one simple method is sending them tax receipts for the donations made along with a thank-you note for the donations made. This helps in building the confidence of the donor in your nonprofit and they are likely to return to you.

10. Track your Campaign

Once you have planned a fundraising campaign, you will need to monitor its effectiveness. You can do this by comparing the results of the campaign against the set goals. This will provide you an insight into the areas where you need to improve your campaign for better results.

Recent years have witnessed a phenomenal increase in philanthropy. Today more people want to do something to make a difference in the world. People are not just looking to donate funds for various causes but are looking for more ways to get involved with nonprofits. The onus is now on nonprofits to devise engagement strategies that not only attract but also retain donors.