8 Bases to Cover for a Successful Fundraising December

CauseMatch.com

Don’t blink. Your charity’s end-of-year fundraising push is just around the corner. Cover these eight bases to make sure your year-end fundraising is a success.

1. Identify your charity’s financial need

There are two questions you need to be able to answer.

A) How are you going to use the money donated to your organization?

This is an internal question. For most organizations, the answer is general operating support. If that is the case, try to drill down another level so you can fully articulate your year-end fundraiser’s purpose. Is it to pay staff? To spend on advertising? To organize programming?

For other organizations, the end-of-year campaign may directly contribute to a specific project. Like a new, specialized program. Or building upgrades. Or to begin serving a new demographic.

You should have some clear examples of how this money is going to be used because that will help you answer Question #2.

B) How are you going to frame your year-end ‘ask’?

This is a marketing question. If you are raising money for your operating budget, you’re going to need to concentrate on framing the impact that your organization enables. If you are raising money for a specific program, you are going to need to frame why this new program is important.

You want to find that sweet spot where Organizational Need and Donor Interest overlap.

Remember that you’re not in this alone! The CauseMatch team is here to help. Visit us at www.causematch.com for more tips on fundraising best practices. Or, drop us a line at hello@causematch.com to schedule a 15-minute call with one of the CauseMatch fundraising coaches so they can learn about the opportunities for your organization to reach new heights!

2. Create the story of your campaign

Every effective fundraising campaign has a story.

Who is the hero in this story? The donor.

Who is the villain? The problem you are trying to solve.

What is your fundraising campaign? The magical tool the hero uses to solve the problem.

Donors give to solve a problem. If you tell the story of the problem. And then tell the story of how a donor’s gift to this campaign will SOLVE that problem, you are primed for fundraising success.

Here are several strategies to help you make your donors feel like heroes for contributing to your mission.

A. Start collecting “before” stories

Unlike weight loss advertisements, good fundraising marketing doesn’t spend too much time on the “after” part of the story. Collect “before” stories about service recipients BEFORE your organization intervened.

The more stories you have, the more you will be able to thread them into email blasts, social media posts, and other content to prove to your donors how their giving changes lives and makes the world a better place.

B. Know the special opportunity that your campaign is offering

Why should donors care about your campaign? Is there a matching incentive involved? Is there a clear and specific mission for example — ‘all donations go towards rescuing victims of Hurricane Katrina’? Are they part of a select, small group that cares about something unique?

C. Make your CTA (call-to-action) inspiring

What is a short CTA (ideally three to four words) that will capture your donors’ imagination and make them part of the story? Nikes “Just do it,” recruits people to athletic victory. The U.S. Army’s “Be All That You Can Be” enrolls people in self actualization. “Save the whales” inspires people to exercise compassion for some of nature’s most amazing creatures. What is your campaign’s CTA? How does it capture the impact your are making?

D. Turn your story into awesome content.
The problem, the solution, the fundraising goal, the testimonials… all of this information needs to be turned into to compelling content. Content means videos, photos, memes, email blasts, infographics, and blogs that are going to live and travel on the internet and tell your story to the world. By strategically deploying your content, you will be stacking the deck for success.

Choosing the right arc can make or break your fundraising campaign. Let CauseMatch help! Contact us at hello@causematch.com to schedule a FREE call with one of our Fundraising Coaches to help you navigate the wonderful world of messaging.

3. Segment you donor list

Not all donors are equal. It’s important to make sure that they are strategically segmented in order optimize each individual’s donation potential. No matter what type of database system you use, you should be able to sort each person into one of these categories:

A. Major donors

B. Smaller-and-mid-tier donors

C. Lapsed donors

D. Prospective donors

That way, you can customize your messaging and mediums for each of these segments. This means how you contact them and what you tell them.

For major donors — Make personal phone calls or write personal emails to thank them for their past support. Tell them about the lives that have been changed because of their donations. Make sure they feel appreciated and know that their gifts to your cause had real impact on real people.

Pro tip: follow the Ask, Thank, Report cycle to prime your donors to give over and over and over again!

Considering these are your major donors, all communication should be personalized to them. Don’t group them in mass email or phone bank lists. Make them feel special!!

For smaller-and-mid-tier donors, make sure the messaging you craft for inspires them. Provide the with compelling reasons why they should give. Fill them with feelings of elation and pride for being a part of your important mission. Make sure they receive email blasts. And, if you have a phone bank, that your outreach staff contacts them. Also follow up with a thank-you email that makes them feel like absolute heroes when they donate.

For lapsed donors, your end-of-year communications will include messaging about how you miss their support. About how your organization just can’t reach its full potential without them. Let them know that there is a problem in the world, and without their support, you simply don’t have the resources to fix it.

And for prospective donors, you know they expressed SOME interest because they ended up on your mailing list. So now, you can begin searching for hooks that will grab their attention and pull on their heart strings. Which brings us to your next task:

4. Create psychological profiles of your target donors

How old is your target donor? Are they male or female? Where do they live? What do they like? What are they passionate about? What turns them off?

The more you know about your donors, the more you can speak directly to them and their interests. Your ultimate goal is to form deep relationships with your donor base. Creating psychological profiles of your target donors allows you to speak to them in a voice they recognize and connect with. Some profiles need a voice that is more relaxed a casual, other profiles need a voice that is more formal and professional.

Take Betsy, for example. Betsy is a totally made-up person. But she is going to represent the 42% of your donor base that is made up of female senior citizens.

Betsy is retired and spends lots of time with her grandchildren. She finishes nearly a book-a-week. She loves Facebook and has never been on Instagram. She rides the bus to volunteer in a library once a week. She doesn’t own a car but she does have an iPhone. She has given your organization $100 every year for the past seven years.

If you can craft two or three psychological profiles of your target donors and write a paragraph to describe them, then your communications strategy is going to be much more effective when it it’s time to implement it.

Where do you get the data to craft these profiles? Much of this information can come from your database itself. Donor prospecting tools can provide valuable background as well. If all else fails, simple Google searches will reveal a scary amount about individuals in your database.

Here are some key ways we like to break down your target donors:

A. Age

B.Biographical: age, gender, marital status, education, employment industry, job title, children, city, state, zip code, nationality, hobbies, interests, and volunteer positions

C. Specific organizational event attendance

D. Financial — Yearly Income

Once you have this information, you can begin to look for patterns. Find common denominators among your constituents. Then, create composite profiles.

The more focused your messaging is for your target donors, the easier it will be for you to cut through the countless organizations vying for your donors’ attention.

Good, money-raising, donor-focused messaging is one of the many areas of expertise we employ here at CauseMatch. Visit us at www.causematch.com for more tips or, better yet, drop us a line at hello@causematch.com to schedule a 15-minute call with one of the CauseMatch fundraising coaches so they can learn about the opportunities for your organization to reach new heights!

5. Identify and engage influencers in your community

“Influencers” are those who have a respected and compelling voice in your community. Generally the term ‘influencer’ refers to someone social media with authority and reach but that is not always the case. Generally speaking these are people whom others listen to.

A good set of influencers will increase your audience. It will raise awareness for your cause. And it will inspire action.

For your end-of-year campaign to gain momentum, you need influencers.

But they don’t recruit themselves. You have to be proactive.

There are two types of target influencers

A. People already in your networks: Thinking about the people who LOVE your organization and are happy to tell others about you. These folks are your first targets. You won’t need to sell them on your mission because they are already bought in. But you really want to focus on the people who have large networks. Look at their number of Facebook friends. Know their personalities. Choose people who embody true brand advocates.

They will be your proudest champions. Your loyal ambassadors.

These influencers are often natural community organizers. They are the types who organize blood drives and clothes drives. And if you invite them into your fundraising process, you will be amazed at how much they are willing to help.

B. Subject-matter experts. Next, create a list of credible people in your impact area.

If you’re an outreach organization, think about your teachers and educators who may be willing to promote your good work. If you’re a part of an umbrella organization, think about people connected to the national brand who may be willing to lend a tweet or Facebook post.

If you’re an advocacy organization, think about other key people fighting the same fight.

Pro tip: Relevance is more important size of network. It’s much better to get someone who “owns” your impact area with a smaller reach than someone who has a large following but isn’t a subject-matter expert.

There are lots of apps that help you identify influencers in your impact areas. But the chances are that you already admire a bunch of people in your field. Your mentors are a great place to start.

Now, it’s time to ENGAGE your influencers

Make sure you are following your target influencers on your social media channels. Start tagging them in posts. And provide them with value by sharing their posts. Remember to give them social media love!

Just as is the case with your donors, you want to develop relationships with your influencers. Reach out to them personally. Make them feel valued. And remember that these relationships take time to blossom.

Know what to ask and when to ask

You don’t want to ask anything of your influencers quite yet. You want to wait until there is a definitive Call To Action, i.e. until your campaign is up and running.

Still, now is a great time to think about the SPECIFIC ask you are going to make of your influencers.

Are you going to ask them to share a Facebook post? Send an email to their contacts? You want to make it EASY for them to say yes to your question, so think about how they can best assist you and your cause.

6. Choose the right platforms

Just like different types of people ‘hang out’ in different types of places (I’m thinking of my grandmother and her time in the hair salon), different types of people hang out on different social media platforms. Where do your target donors hang out on social media?

Political activists use Twitter. Stay-at-home moms often use Pinterest. Almost everyone uses Facebook and younger people are very often on Instagram and Snapchat.

Make sure your posts will be on social media platforms where they will be seen by the right people. Knowing this information can also help you optimize where you spend money on ads and increase your ROI.

Remember that different platforms call for different types of content. Facebook is much more conducive to longer posts than Twitter. Instagram is great if you have good, visual content. Channel your inner teenager before you post. You can’t use content totally interchangeably, but you can re-purpose the same content for different mediums.

7. Utilize Social Proof

Who says that what you’re saying is true? Why should people believe you? This is where social proof comes in. When shopping on Amazon, what do people check to see if their item is a good buy? Reviews. Reviews are a great form of social proof.

To be successful, your fundraising campaign also needs social proof. The first type of social proof to gather is testimonials. Reach out to the people whom you have helped and see if they can put down in writing a quote about how your organization has made a difference. Even better can be a quote with a selfie or a video of themselves telling their story.

In your social media posts, emails blasts and in the text of your campaign page, pepper your messaging with social proof so that donors know that they’re making a wise choice by giving to your organization.

During your campaign ask people to share the link to your campaign page on their social media and to encourage their friends to donate as well. This is a very powerful form of social proof.

Confused about where to spend your energy regarding social proof? Contact us at hello@causematch.com to schedule a free 15-minute consultation with a CauseMatch Fundraising Coach.

8. Leverage the power of Facebook ads

Assuming you have already have social media presence on Facebook and a Facebook pixel on your website, there are some great things you can do to push your campaign.

• You can create a psychological profile of your ideal donors and use Facebook’s targeting system to reach that type of person.
• You can target people who have already visited your website.
• You can target people who have engaged with your Facebook page and its content.
• You can create ‘lookalike’ audiences, which Facebook categorizes as similar to people who have already interacted with your brand.
• You can also upload your email list to Facebook and retarget them with Facebook ads for your campaign.
• You can even re-target people who have visited your campaign page during the campaign.

Don’t forget the power of multiple touchpoints in getting a donor to take action. A potential donor may ignore your email but then click on a link they see on Facebook. Make sure you have an expert to help you implement these strategies.

The world of online advertising can feel complex. But luckily, CauseMatch is there each step of the way. Contact us at hello@causematch.com to schedule a free 15-minute consultation with a CauseMatch Fundraising Coach.