According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, most first-time donors never come back to make a second gift.

Nonprofits as a whole are losing 57% of their donors every single year. And 71% of first-time donors never return!1

Any fundraising professional will tell you that retaining existing donors costs less than acquiring new donors. The quickest and surest way to a positive net revenue is to focus on retention.

What makes donors stick around for the long haul?

The factors that influence donor retention have been well researched and documented. In his amazing book on Retention Fundraising, Roger Craver shares 7 reasons donors keep giving after that first gift:

1. Donor perceives your organization to be effective in trying to achieve its mission.
2. Donor knows what to expect from your organization with each interaction.
3. The donor receives a timely thank you.
4. Donor has opportunities to make her views known.
5. The donor is given the feeling that she is part of an important cause.
6. Donor feels her involvement is appreciated.
7. Donor receives information showing who is being helped.

As you can see, the first experience a donor has with your nonprofit is key. Is their first impression glorious or lackluster?

The first donation is a test

First-time donors often want to see how you treat them before making a bigger gift. Will you merely send a tax receipt? Or will you surprise and delight them with a hand-written note?

Either way, the first experience is critical. Will they be part of the 71% and never come back? Or will they keep coming back for more?

Like this scene in Office Space, it’s up to you if you want to just to the bare minimum:

You can be like Joanna and do the bare minimum, or you can be like Brian and dazzle your donors.

3 Ways to Make a Lasting Impression with First-Time Donors

Here are three specific strategies to make a lasting impression with first-time donors:

1. Express heartfelt and sincere thanks

There’s a reason your mother pounded this into your head. Gratitude is the glue of all successful and happy relationships – including your relationship with donors.

Expressing gratitude makes your organization more relatable, and more human. And according to all the fundraising research, thanking donors also boosts retention.

A few key tips for thanking donors:

• Thank quickly (within 48 hours) – According to fundraising master, Tom Ahern, hand-written thank you cards that are sent within 48 hours increase the likelihood of a second gift by 400%!
• Say it better with video – Video conveys feelings more powerfully than pictures.
• On the thank you page – Say thanks immediately on the thank you page.
• In your welcome email series – Say thanks again in your donor welcome series. Make sure your welcome series includes:
  • A warm and friendly introduction
  • A summary of what to expect
  • A personalized message of thanks from the ED

2. Reinforce the impact THEY made

Donors don’t want to give money to nonprofits. They want to make an impact. They want to change the world.

Smart nonprofits embrace the humble role of agent:

• Remove your org from the narrative. Again, it’s not about your nonprofit is, it’s about the donor.
• Connect their gift to the outcome. Tell them how their donation will “give clean water”, “build a school”, “support local families”, etc. All of these call-to-actions put the donor in the role of protagonist.
• Make them the hero – Don’t say “help our nonprofit feed hungry children.” Say “you can feed hungry children”.

3. Differentiate your org by going old school

According to Roger Craver, thank-you phone calls will boost first-year retention by 30%! Check out Pamela Grow’s tips for effective thank you phone calls.

Sending hand-written thank you notes also has a huge impact on retention. Yes, they take more time – but it’s time well spent.

How are you dazzling first-time donors?

Leave a comment with your brilliant idea.

The post 3 Ways to Make a Lasting Impression with First-Time Donors appeared first on Socialbrite.

By Darian Rodriguez Heyman

More and more nonprofit donations take place in today’s digital landscape, but how can causes ensure their online storefront is not only open for business, but optimized?

As I explored this critical issue in my new book, Nonprofit Fundraising 101, I interviewed Roderick Campbell, the CEO of nonprofit fundraising platform CommitChange. He shared a few takeaways from their efforts to maximize digital donations for Mercy House, a $3.8M nonprofit that has provided housing and support to California’s homeless since 1989.

This simple formula helped Mercy House double online giving in just six months, and I believe it can do the same for your nonprofit, too:

1. Break it Down: CommitChange helped Mercy House break the donation process down into four steps: recurring versus one-time; amount; info; and payment. Instead of asking for the information all at once, they simplified the process, which is especially helpful for digital donors contributing on their mobile device. Another great example of what this looks like is charity: water, also profiled in the book.

Whatever your process, be sure to look closely at recurring giving, as this creates valuable ongoing funding for your cause, increases gifts since people are more likely to donate $10 a month versus $120 now, and simple tweaking here can yield tremendous results: by leading with the recurring gift option, Mercy House increased the number of donors signing up as sustaining members by 400%!

2. Stay Consistent: The data proves what we all know in our guts: nobody likes to feel like they’re leaving your website once they hit that donate button. So be sure to keep the look and feel of your donate page consistent with your website and other communication materials and ensure your logo remains visible throughout the giving experience. This simple change helped Mercy House convert more of the people who clicked “donate” to actual supporters, while simultaneously increasing average gift size.

3. Streamline Donations: Less is more, and once someone clicks “donate,” your job is to make the giving process as simple as possible. In fact, CommitChange discovered that every field eliminated from the donation experience increases conversion by 2%. They further optimized conversion rates by adding some simple programming, so when Mercy House website visitors click the donate button, a new tab opens up exclusively dedicated to the donation process, ensuring a closed environment free of distractions.

By making these three simple changes, Mercy House was able to improve online giving by 110% in just six months, and it didn’t stop there. They continued to enjoy the fruits of their labor and saw an additional 73% increase in the six months after that. The point is, if you take the time to build a solid foundation for the house that is your online giving experience, the sky is the limit to what becomes possible.

Bio

Darian Rodriguez Heyman is an accomplished fundraiser, social entrepreneur, and best-selling author. His work “helping people help” started during his five-year tenure as Executive Director of Craigslist Foundation, after which he edited the best-selling book, Nonprofit Management 101: A Complete and Practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals (Wiley & Sons) and co-founded the global conference series, Social Media for Nonprofits and Sparrow: Mobile for All. His new book, Nonprofit Fundraising 101, is the first truly comprehensive yet practical guide to all aspects of fundraising for your cause, and chapters 15 – 18 are dedicated to online giving. Heyman is also an in-demand fundraising consultant and a frequent keynote speaker at social impact events around the globe.

The post How to Double Online Giving in Six Months appeared first on Socialbrite.

Help your donors climb the ladder of engagement

First of two parts. Next:
• Tips & tools for effective online fundraising

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, cause advocates, fundraising professionals.

Why does it seem that raising money with social media is almost impossible?

We all know that retweets can travel faster than an earthquake and Facebook is basically word of mouth on steroids.

But why do so many social media fundraisers fall flat?

The answer lies in understanding exactly how people use social media, and why these tools even exist in the first place.

Four ways you use social media

If you think about your own behavior, you’ll realize that you use social media in at least four different ways:

• Connect – Facebook is a friend network. The reason you visit your Facebook news feed is to see what’s happening with your friends. Updates from brands, including nonprofits, are mostly interruptions.
• Discover – Twitter is where you discover interesting pictures, videos, and blog posts. You’ll also make new friends who might eventually become Facebook friends. YouTube is where you discover awesome videos, either by searching or browsing categories and trending videos.
• Sharing – Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, and in fact all social media, is about sharing. On Facebook, you’ll share with friends; on Twitter and Pinterest, you’ll share with the world; and on Linked In you’ll share with professional connections.
• Organizing – You use Facebook Groups and Google Hangouts to get things done. You share common goals – no matter how formal or informal – with the other members.

What these four uses have in common is that they’re all relational. You and your relationship with a person, or you and your relationship with content or a goal.

Facebook is not Amazon.com and Pinterest is not eBay

This isn’t to say that people don’t buy things as a result of using social media. If I find an awesome musical group on Google Plus, I’ll buy their music. When I saw a Facebook ad about the tsunami in Japan, I donated money by clicking on the ad.

That being said, I never use social media with the goal of buying something or donating to a nonprofit.

The ladder of engagement

If you look at the ladder of engagement that Beth Kanter and Katie Paine discuss in their book, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, you’ll learn that you need to take someone’s hand on Facebook or Twitter and walk them down a specific path where they will eventually pull out their credit card.

In terms of garnering donations, this means inviting those who naturally have a passion for your cause to join your e-mail list, where they are much more likely to donate to your cause.

What do you guys think about using social media for your organization’s fundraising efforts? Leave us a comment and let us know what’s worked best for you!

Related

• 3 top tips for nonprofits’ online fundraising (Socialbrite)

• 4 Facebook apps to raise funds for your cause (Socialbrite)

• Fundraising tips and tools (Socialbrite)

The post Why can’t I raise any money with social media? appeared first on Socialbrite.

Techniques to lay the groundwork before approaching prospects

Guest post by Geri Stengel
Ventureneer

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs.

Many nonprofits already use social media, including mobile, to raise money among individual donors. Small donations add up, as Mark Hanis found. His first Facebook campaign raised $250,000 in 2005 for Genocide Intervention Network, now known as Endgenocide.org.

But few nonprofits use social media to build relationships with potential big fish donors. Yup, you can target and build these important relationships by engaging with them through LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. The relationship starts online, but the “ask” happens offline, perhaps on the phone, but most likely face to face.

Building these relationships is hard work, but the benefits are enormous. Effective social media outreach takes at least 25 hours of staff time per week, according to the Ditch Digital Dabbling research report. Hanis has tips for those willing to undertake the task, based on his experience as head of the Genocide Intervention Network:

1Identify prospects using annual reports and gala invites from nonprofits working in that sector, which are among Hanis’ favorite methods. The Foundation Center also recommends reading press releases from nonprofits announcing donors as well as newspapers, magazines, etc. They also recommend using database such as WealthEngine or DonorSearch. The Foundation Center subscribes to DonorSearch so you can use this for free from their library.

2Research which social media these major donors are using. Hanis found that millennials are more likely to use Facebook while baby boomers like LinkedIn. Engage with a prospect using the social medium they use.

3Learn their areas of interest and how engaged they are in your cause. The more you know about an individual, the better able you’ll be  to engage them. Both free and fee-based resources to find out more about them are plentiful online. Check out Going Beyond Google to Find and Research Donor Prospects for a list of websites that Maria Semple,  The Prospect Finder, suggests for getting started.

4Engage on an ongoing basis. Cultivating a prospect is not a one-time event. Use social media to engage in a dialog. Get to know the prospect and build a long-term relationship, just as you would in person.

5Coordinate all internal efforts. All departments of the organization need to know what the other departments are doing.

An organization dedicated to “never again” standing by while a genocide occurs — such as those in Europe, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur — must raise awareness and advocate with as much energy as it raises money. Each department needs to know when the others are contacting a prospect and what they are saying. Too many contracts become irritating. Conflicting statements become confusing. Work together to build a solid, consistent message.

Genocide Intervention Network used  Salesforce, which has a robust contact management system, to keep everyone in the loop about interactions with major prospects.

6Reach out. It’s always best to get an introduction even if you have a relationship through social media. Who do you know who knows the prospect and are they willing to make an introduction? The introduction can take place online. LinkedIn makes this particularly easy to do. However, you can always go old school and coordinate through email or phone.

Don’t know anyone to make the introduction? No problem. Cold calling or emailing isn’t as hard as you think when you share a common interest and your name is already recognized from online interaction.

Hanis will take his experience cultivating big fish donors to the new organization that he is forming, Organ Alliance. Keep an eye on it. When you want to know how to do something, follow the lead of someone who does it well.

The post How to use social media to reel in big fish donors appeared first on Socialbrite.