While their gifts are certainly vital to your organization, donors are more than just financial contributors. Your donors are champions of your cause and individuals with unique reasons for supporting your nonprofit. They contribute their hard-earned funds because they believe in your mission, which should always be at the forefront of your team’s minds.
By recognizing donors as individuals and forming relationships with them, you’ll not only ensure you have consistent funding for your cause, but you’ll also build a thriving community surrounding your mission that’s just as rewarding. Let’s explore how to cultivate long-lasting partnerships with donors.
1. Get to know your donors.
Just as you would when meeting someone for the first time, ask questions and get to know your donors as people. While there’s a time and place for details like giving capacity and average donation amount, go beyond the financials by learning about their:
- Giving motivations. Knowing why donors support your organization can help you communicate more effectively and match them with relevant opportunities. For instance, during a conversation with a donor, you may learn that their brother suffered from the disease your foundation researches. After learning this information, you may ask if they’d be comfortable with your nonprofit dedicating its upcoming candle fundraiser in his honor and sharing his story.
- Preferred donation methods. You should also explore how donors want to give. Do they prefer to donate via your website, text-to-give, social media, or in person? Are there any donation opportunities you don’t currently offer that they would like to leverage, such as donor-advised funds (DAFs), cryptocurrency, or planned giving?
- Communication preferences. Lastly, ask donors how they’d like to hear from you. Note whether they prefer communicating via email, text messages, direct mail, or social media, and contact them using these methods in the future. You may also ask how often donors want to receive messages, providing weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual options.
Once you learn more about your donors, segment them into relevant groups in your constituent relationship management system (CRM). That way, you can easily personalize your future communications at scale.
2. Personalize your communications.
Use what you learn about your donors to personalize outreach. When donors receive messages that resonate with them as individuals, they’ll feel more connected to your organization and cause.
For instance, you may send tailored:
- Thank-you messages. Start your thank-you messages by addressing donors by name. Then, customize them further by including donors’ specific gift amounts and what these funds will allow your organization to achieve. Send these messages via donors’ preferred communication channels.
- Impact updates. Once you’ve put donors’ funds to use, communicate the impact they’ve had on your cause. For instance, you may email donors who contributed to your animal shelter’s latest fundraising campaign a short impact update. Detail how many animals your organization rehomed with the help of fundraising revenue and include photos of pets with their new families.
- Acknowledgments. Not every communication has to relate directly to fundraising. Build deeper relationships with donors by recognizing their birthdays, anniversaries of joining your community, and other personal milestones.
- Newsletters. In addition to your regular newsletter, you may send specialized email newsletters based on donors’ interests or demographics. For example, a library may send different newsletters for kids, adults, parents, college students, and educators that speak to each segment’s motivations for visiting the library.
Organize these communications with a dedicated calendar. Schedule messages strategically to avoid overwhelming donors with too many at once or leaving them hanging with too much space between communications.
3. Be transparent with donors.
Build a foundation of trust by remaining transparent about your operations and taking accountability for your organization’s decisions. You may start by:
Sharing financial data.
Give donors insight into how you allocate resources by sharing relevant financial data. As YPTC’s nonprofit financial statements guide explains, “Financial statements provide external stakeholders—such as donors, members, creditors, and the general public—with information that allows them to assess your organization’s ability to continue providing its core services. Additionally, this data helps them determine whether your nonprofit has stewarded their contributions responsibly.”
Letting donors know how you’re using their funds.
Break down how you’re using funds from different campaigns donors have contributed to. Consider creating a dedicated page on your website that explains your campaigns and their importance. For instance, you may reveal that by selling cookie dough each year, your soup kitchen can provide more local families with meals and fight food insecurity.
Being honest about challenges.
Being forthcoming about setbacks shows your nonprofit’s integrity and commitment to building an honest, close-knit community. Inform donors about the challenges your nonprofit currently faces, your plan for tackling them, and anything donors can do to help.
For example, you may explain that the heating system in your organization’s homeless shelter recently broke and call upon donors to contribute coats, hats, gloves, scarves, and blankets while you wait for your provider to fix it.
While it’s important to be transparent, you also don’t want to reveal your organization’s sensitive information. Train your team on which data must stay confidential and what information they can share with donors.
4. Provide additional engagement opportunities.
Give donors other ways to get involved in your organization beyond making donations. That way, they can form a deeper connection to your cause and discover how they enjoy supporting your mission. These engagement opportunities may include:
- Fundraising. Have donors take hands-on roles in the fundraising process. Let’s say you’re running a discount card fundraiser, which ABC Fundraising describes as the sale of cards that provide discounts to local merchants, restaurants, and stores in exchange for donations. You may involve donors by having them seek out businesses to include on the cards, promote the fundraiser, and sell cards to their families and friends.
- Volunteering. Volunteering allows donors to meet with beneficiaries face-to-face and see your work in action. Provide various volunteer opportunities catered to different ages, locations, abilities, time commitments, and skills.
- Events. Organize events that allow donors to meet and bond over their shared passion for your cause. These may include fundraising events like runs and walks or recognition events like dinners and award ceremonies.
- Advocacy. Donors especially invested in your mission may enjoy advocating by gathering petition signatures, canvassing your community, or sharing cause information on social media. Equip them with the necessary resources to complete these activities, such as relevant templates and messaging guidelines.
- Leadership positions. If you have any open board or committee positions, share these opportunities with donors. Their experiences as supporters of your organization will help acquaint them and fuel their success with leadership roles.
Include upcoming engagement opportunities in your newsletter and website to ensure donors stay informed. Provide direct links to sign-up forms so they can easily get involved.
As you strengthen your donor relationships, further improve your approach by soliciting feedback. Send donors regular surveys asking them to note what they like, express any dislikes or concerns, and give suggestions. Then, implement relevant feedback and let donors know how you’ve used their responses to improve the donor experience.