Annual funds are essential to the success of a nonprofit. They’re an unbelievable pool of unrestricted funds that may assist your mission, preserve the lights on, and pay your workers. However how will we as nonprofit fundraisers go about getting these coveted unrestricted {dollars}? Right here’s how focused appeals are working for us:
- Selling matching items
- Specializing in a theme
- Experimenting with AI
I’m the Improvement Supervisor for After Faculty Issues (ASM), a medium-large nonprofit that gives after-school packages for highschool youngsters in Chicago. One in all my major objectives over the previous three years has been making a donor attraction course of to generate income for our annual fund, utilizing Blackbaud fundraising software program to assist us accomplish our objectives. ASM is blessed to have nice relationships with companies all through the town, however we’re nonetheless getting our particular person donor program off the bottom. Extra particularly, we’re more and more excited by attracting informal donors: an individual on the road who hears about our work and decides to donate $10 each from time to time.
Ours is a standard problem for social-good organizations. Attracting and retaining new donors is a purpose of each nonprofit since unrestricted funds are important to our operations. At After Faculty Issues, we interact new particular person donors by way of a collection of 4 donor appeals all year long: one in spring, fall, summer time, and one on the finish of the 12 months. Every attraction, mailed to a segmented checklist of potential new and previous donors, contains an inspiring story about ASM’s impression in addition to a straightforward donation hyperlink.
Learn on to see how we’ve got been capable of develop our annual fund with focused appeals, rising our greenbacks raised per attraction, boosting engagement with our social media content material, and multiplying click-through charges on our attraction emails.
Matching Presents Are Key
For every attraction, ask a significant donor to comply with sponsor an identical present. It appears self-evident, nevertheless it actually does go a good distance! For instance, the ASM fundraising group is aware of that our greatest attraction is across the vacation season; in preparation every fall, we method just a few noteworthy donors and ask them to contemplate an identical present as much as a certain quantity.
As soon as the match is confirmed, we promote it in all places: on each social media submit, each attraction e mail, each mailed attraction—we ensure that informal donors can’t miss it! Folks love seeing their cash go twice as far and usually tend to give in the event that they know their $100 donation can impression $200 value of packages.
Preserve Appeals Targeted on a Theme
Each After Faculty Issues attraction is a multiweek engagement push, with every week spotlighting a unique facet of our mission. Each week is related by way of a standard theme to make the complete mission really feel cohesive to our donors. For instance, the interior theme of our summer time attraction was “How ASM Prepares Teenagers for Life After Excessive Faculty.” Over three weeks, we highlighted our school readiness program, then our profession exploration program, and eventually wrapped the attraction with an e mail about how our summer time packages put together teenagers for all times’s subsequent steps.
Since you’re interesting to each present and new donors, be certain that your web site’s homepage and donation web page seize not solely your broader mission, but additionally echo the theme of your attraction. An on-brand, on-theme concise elevator pitch on all factors of entry will assist on-line donors join at a look along with your trigger.
And it by no means hurts to repeat the impression of your mission. For example, our appeals remind donors that ASM teenagers are two instances extra prone to graduate highschool than their friends, and that 96% of teenagers in this system have plans after commencement.
Keep in mind, a theme retains your appeal-creation course of targeted and on observe!
AI Is Your Buddy, Particularly with Donor Outreach
We ship our annual fund attraction emails to hundreds of individuals, so it’s straightforward for them to finish up in a donor’s spam folder. To fight this downside, I make it a behavior to observe up with donors who’ve given to previous campaigns. Even one thing so simple as a pleasant greeting and private invitation to learn the attraction or go to a program website can go a good distance! Typically they don’t donate instantly, however the customized gesture will assist the donor bear in mind our group once they do resolve to present.
I counsel attempting out AI for this. It may appear counterintuitive to depend on know-how to personalize and humanize your attraction outreach, however AI is a superb software to assist simplify the follow-up course of! Utilizing a generative AI software like ChatGPT, merely immediate the software program to “write a follow-up e mail to a donor.” Then, all that you must do is edit till you’re proud of the ultimate product.
You’ll be able to immediate generative AI to jot down e mail topic strains, textual content messages, and junk mail letters focused to your segmented lists. I additionally advocate utilizing AI to rephrase a sentence you’ve written that doesn’t sound fairly proper. Embracing new applied sciences might be nerve-wracking however creatively utilizing AI can prevent quite a lot of time and spark new concepts.
Have Some Enjoyable with It!
As you construct your annual fund by interesting to particular person donors, don’t be afraid to get inventive! All year long, the ASM fundraising group makes use of our spring, summer time, and fall appeals as alternatives to experiment and fine-tune our method, in order that our closing year-end attraction is the very best showcase of our creativity and technique. Our inventive evaluation of earlier appeals can take many kinds and we check the efficiency of a number of variables. For example, we would change the placement of the donation button, swap up the place a workers member indicators the e-mail, or check out video-based appeals. Any alteration to our appeals offers invaluable perception into what our donors most reply to, serving to us increase our click-through and open charges.
If you use the A/B type of research, it’s greatest to check only one factor at a time. Additionally, earlier than launching any new attraction or alteration to your earlier marketing campaign, check your donation hyperlinks and buttons with workers members to ensure they’re straightforward to make use of and functioning correctly.
Lastly, bear in mind to maintain it easy! The trick is to steadiness creativity with brevity. Daily, persons are inundated with lots of of emails. A sure-fire means to ensure yours stands proud is to incorporate loads of photos and quick, snappy textual content.
Good luck and comfortable attraction writing!
