Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, educators, journalists, general public.

Guest post by Annie Lynsen
SmallAct

Icame across an article on Lifehacker about applying the 80/20 rule to networking.

The general premise is that you should spend 20 percent of your time cultivating new contacts and 80 percent of your time strengthening the relationships you already have.

Which metrics do you value?

Many of our metrics seem to weigh heavily on the side of acquiring new donors, new names for the list, new event attendees. As a result, I feel like there’s often not enough appreciation, and therefore not enough time devoted to, building relationships with those who are already on our lists. (This can vary, depending on the culture of your organization, of course.)

What happens when you add social data to the mix?

This is one of the reasons social data is so valuable. Trying to deepen relationships with people en masse is nearly impossible, but by adding data from people’s public social media accounts to your database, you can better segment and target your communications in a way that makes the person feel closer to your organization.

For instance, if you run an animal rescue-focused nonprofit, knowing that someone on your list is a “dog person” or a “cat person” is useful when determining which graphic should appear at the top of your e-newsletter for that person. (PETA does this, and it works well.) Little tweaks focused on personalizing your content can deepen a person’s investment in your organization over time.

And when it comes to major donors, having a better idea of who the person is before you pick up the phone or meet them for lunch will accelerate the process of strengthening that relationship. For example, if you knew from someone’s Twitter feed that they have a small child at home, you might tailor your conversation to focus on how your nonprofit will improve the lives of the next generation.

Finally, if you’re planning an event, knowing who on your list is both deeply invested in your cause and a rockstar on social media can help you build a small group of stakeholders, whom you can arm with specific messaging for getting the word out and encouraging others to participate.

How does your organization focus on relationship-building?

The post Should your nonprofit focus on donor retention or acquisition? appeared first on Socialbrite.

Why donor retention should be a priority

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, marketers, Web publishers.

Did you know that nonprofits as a whole have a donor retention rate of 49 percent? Retention rate refers to the percentage of donors who make another gift or have an ongoing relationship with a nonprofit.

That number is astonishingly low compared to business’s customer retention rate of 94 percent.

Why the huge gap? I mean, you’d typically expect that people who support issues like gay rights and global warming would be repeat donors. But nonprofits rarely make donor retention a priority.

To help shed some light on this, I called Marc Pitman, an expert on fundraising. “Instead of talking about annual donors, we should think about nonprofits’ relationships with donors,” he said.

In this 13-minute video, we talk about:

• How fundraising jargon and fiscal calendar thinking has hurt retention rates
• Why making a second ask in 90 days can increase retention
• How setting expectations creates better donor-centric relationships
• How you can leverage events to boost retention

The post Why nonprofits have low retention rates (and how to fix it) appeared first on Socialbrite.

Takeaways from Blackbaud’s Charitable Giving Report

Blackbaud’s just-published 2013 Charitable Giving Report shows that small nonprofits, with annual total fundraising of less than $1 million, grew their fundraising by 7.3 percent compared to 2011.

These small guys blew away the large nonprofits who only grew 0.3 percent!

Five key observations from the 2012 Charitable Giving Report:

1. Overall giving grew less than 2 percent. A down economy continues to challenge fundraising efforts for all size organizations.
2. Online giving grew 11 percent in 2012, particularly in the area of disaster recovery. Hurricane Sandy was one of the biggest.
3. Online fundraising accounted for 7 percent of all donations in 2012, which was up from 2011. Online fundraising is still a small slice of the pie for most nonprofits.
4. Small nonprofits grew the most for overall giving (7.3 percent), but medium organizations grew the most for online giving.
5. Giving was flat throughout 2012, but spiked around Hurricane Sandy.

Key observations by sector

• Giving to religious organizations grew by 6.1 percent and this helped to lift overall giving as this sector receives the largest share of charitable dollars in the United States.
• Education institutions also had a positive year with 1.9 percent growth in fundraising compared to 2011. These two sectors combine for 45 percent of charitable giving in the US.
• Arts and culture, as well as environment and animal welfare organizations, were the only other sectors to experience fundraising growth in 2012.

Best sectors in online fundraising

Education and public/society organizations grew their online fundraising the most in 2012 with an increase of more than 17 percent – the largest growth rate for the second consecutive year.

Three focus areas for 2013

If the trends over the past four years continue in 2013, charitable giving won’t grow significantly. This means focusing on donor retention and finding innovative ways to acquire new donors without wasting money is key.

Here’s a three-step action plan for success in 2013:

1. Share accountability for fundraising results throughout the organization. Come up with creative ideas that give everyone an opportunity to take ownership for retaining donors in a way that feels natural, empowered, and uses each person’s unique talents.
2. Leverage new fundraising technology. If your website sucks, start there. Then move on to developing smarter email marketing. Only then should you start thinking about that cool Facebook app.
3. Create colossal content. Never forget that your “competition” is engaging your donors every day with emotionally compelling messages. At the same time, your donors are getting better at tuning out messages that are boring. This means you have to get better at grabbing and keeping your donor’s attention in innovative and remarkable ways.

What will you do in 2013 to retain more donors?

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