By Bryna Dilman, Fundraising Kit

The last two and a half years have motivated us all to think about the structure of our organizations and the need to develop resilient and sustainable fundraising strategies.

While change can be daunting, it can also be exciting! Staying on top of the latest fundraising trends helps your organization stay current and support your overall revenue growth. In this article, we share the top 5 fundraising trends of 2022, and why your nonprofit should consider adopting them to become a more dynamic, flexible and sustainable organization.

Trend #1: Flexible Giving and Participation Options

Over the past 2 years, our lives have become increasingly more digital. We communicate online, shop online, and donate online. Donors expect to be able to support your organization in various ways and from the comfort of their own homes.

Because of this digital movement, online giving grew by over 9% in 2021 on top of significant growth between 2020 and 2021. Now, there are less donors giving at in-person fundraising events, more nonprofits are putting an end to accepting offline cash and cheques for security reasons, and we are seeing more people embrace emerging online giving tools. Establishing online giving options provides donors with giving methods tailored to their needs and creates a more comfortable donor experience.

In addition, 92% of companies continued hosting virtual events even after physical events had resumed. This shows the comfortability we’ve gained around engaging with our favorite organizations from home. Whether it’s a donation campaign or a peer-to-peer event, providing supporters with flexible participation options lets them support your cause in the way that works best for them, making them more likely to engage with you again.

Trend #2: Focus on Donor Retention Strategies

Donor acquisition is an increasingly expensive endeavor, with the cost of bringing in a new donor often being double or even triple the amount of their initial donation. Donor retention is now necessary to simply break even on acquisition costs, much less generate sustainable revenue for your organization.

Many nonprofits report that more than half of donors only give once, leaving many with a loss on their initial investment in first-time donors. It’s much easier and more cost-effective to motivate individuals to give if they have already done so in the past. These donors know who you are, understand your mission and want to support you.

Fundraising technology makes it easier than ever to optimize stewardship techniques and improve the donor experience. Ensuring donors have easy access to stewardship materials, such as impact reports, allows them to understand how their donation was invested, provides credibility to your organization and makes them feel good about the impact they have made.

Additionally, it’s important to calculate your donor retention rate to understand the effectiveness of your retention strategies. Donor retention starts with building strong relationships with stakeholders so they feel appreciated and excited by the work your organization is doing. By nurturing authentic, long-term donor relationships, you can increase your donor retention and guarantee sustained fundraising success.

Trend #3: Strengthen Recurring Programs

Monthly giving programs provide nonprofits with predictable revenue while reducing the need for fundraisers to keep making individual appeals. Even better, monthly giving is becoming increasingly popular as 42% more revenue comes from monthly donors than one-time donors.

Because recurring giving is more financially impactful, easier to manage, and increasingly popular, fundraisers need to make it a priority. Additionally, monthly giving is a great way to connect with the next generation of donors. For example, a study found that 60% of millennials are interested in monthly giving. Even better, 49% of Gen X donors are already enrolled in a monthly giving program. Millennials and Gen X are the tech generation and typically already pay monthly rent and bills online, making them comfortable with a monthly giving program.

Fundraisers need the right tools for the job to identify and make appeals to their best monthly giving candidates. When you look at technology that provides likelihood to recur, your tech and tools can do your prospect research for you. Ensure you are analyzing donor giving histories and past interactions to determine which contacts in your database are most likely to become monthly recurring donors.

Recurring giving is an important revenue stream for organizations of any size. Just like the trends we see in FinTech to bring high-grade tools to smaller organizations, recurring donor management through fundraising technology allows any nonprofit to get more donations online. The technology is simple, and the impact of just a handful of recurring donations can mean sustainable income for years ahead without requiring additional resources.

Trend #4: Invest in Personalized Giving Experiences

Personalization is critical to long-lasting donor relationships. Donors are increasingly expecting personalized giving experiences. Through the use of the right segmentation tools, nonprofits have the opportunity to enhance the donor experience and increase donor retention and generosity. Interactions with supporters will need to be tailored according to their lifestyles, passions, and communication preferences.

Understanding that 59% of donors would give up to 10% more for a personalized experience means your nonprofit has the opportunity to raise more by getting personal with your stakeholders, which can easily be accomplished using the right tools.

Digital communication and engagement are crucial to providing a personalized donor experience. Targeted emails, social posts, and texts help keep supporters up-to-speed on important events, registration dates and the ongoing impact of your nonprofit.

When planning your communications strategy, be thoughtful of how often you reach out and the quality of your content. With the right tools, you can segment your contacts by their interests, giving histories, and more, creating unique and targeted donor experiences.

For some organizations, personalization may take the form of ramping up a text message campaign that updates donors on key projects and even offers text-to-donate opportunities. For others, it may mean that major donors receive more regular program updates. To find out what works for your organization, send out a donor survey to learn more about how your supporters want to be communicated with, what they want to hear about, and how they prefer to give. This information will help you develop your personalization strategy and help you surpass your revenue goals.

Trend #5: Explore Workplace Giving

When we think about engaging corporate businesses in fundraising, sponsorship is usually one of the first things that comes to mind. However, there is another way organizations can benefit from corporate philanthropy: employee giving.

As the great resignation and hybrid or remote working models continue to become a reality, many companies are looking for new ways to make their employees feel happy, supported and engaged. Many companies find that workplace giving programs are a great way to connect their teams with their colleagues and their community. Approximately $5 billion is raised through workplace giving annually, presenting a huge opportunity for nonprofits.

As you think about finding your perfect corporate partner, start by focusing on businesses in your local community. Companies are much more likely to support nonprofits that operate within the same area where their employees live and work. Next, visit their website to understand more about their corporate social responsibility practices. If you find that your organization aligns with their impact work, they might just promote you within their employee giving program or make a donation themselves.

In conclusion, nonprofits will continue to play a vital role in delivering services, strengthening communities, and supporting those in need. The nonprofit sector is diverse in size, type, donor base, and more. However, one thing brings this sector together, the need for sustainable and successful fundraising strategies.

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By adopting these trends, your nonprofit can evaluate your goals and ensure you have the right tools and technology for the job, which is why Fundraising KIT thinks you should get up to speed on the top fundraising trends in 2022 and get ahead in 2023 so you can start raising more!

This blog is brought to you by Fundraising KIT.

Fundraising KIT was built by a nonprofit leader to support the nonprofit community. Fundraising KIT’s data-driven toolkit helps nonprofits raise more for their cause. Integrating with leading nonprofit databases, KIT identifies supporters ready to give, segments donors for targeted communications, and tracks fundraising progress, all while saving time and resources in the quest to increase revenue. Learn more. 

By Jenessa Ellis and Samantha Kannegieter, The Vantage Point

We are pleased to announce the Vantage Point Youth Network is back with new events and resources thanks to RBC Future Launch!  

We are grateful to everyone who took the time to complete our Youth Network consultation survey to inform our upcoming programming and Vantage Point’s work at large. We were blown away by the responses and by the thought, care, and depth of experiences that respondents generously shared.  

We heard that wages, working conditions, discrimination, and burn-out are huge challenges; that young professionals are looking for opportunities to transform systems and contribute to meaningful change. 

We heard not-for-profit employees face barriers when labeled as a ‘youth’, feeling that assumptions and biases around youth discount the value of younger people in the sector.   

Respondents also reinforced that young professionals are deeply interested in networking and connecting to others, finding mentorship, and gaining useful skills to develop their careers.   

A New Bursary for Young Not-for-Profit Professionals

First, we are excited to announce the Vantage Point Youth Network Bursary which offers full (100%) bursaries to Vantage Point workshops and three-day labs for successful applicants. This bursary is available to individuals aged 18-35 working or interested in a career in the not-for-profit sector in BC. Visit our website for more information or to apply.

A Not-for-Profit Career Development & Networking Guide

We are launching our Young Professional’s Guide to all things Not-For-Profit. This guide provides links and resources to support finding and building a career, networking, and more. Do you have a resource we should include? Reach out to Jenessa Ellis at jellis@thevantagepoint.ca to let us know!

Our First Interactive Career Planning & Self-Assessment Session!

On Thursday, June 23, we will be hosting our first event of 2022, Growing Your Management Skills: A guided self-assessment and development planning session.  Join Vantage Point's Youth Network team in this two-hour session where we'll learn about essential skills for managers and provide you with an opportunity to assess your current skill level and create a professional development plan to grow these skills. Learn more and register here.  

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Stay Connected for More to Come

And this is just the start! We invite you to stay connected via our newsletter by selecting “Youth Network (18-35)” in Communications You Would Like to Receive. 

By Bryna Dilman, Fundraising Kit

Want to increase donations and raise awareness for your nonprofit’s mission more effectively? 

If your answer to this question is “yes”, you may want to consider ways to optimize your nonprofit marketing strategy.  

By adopting some nonprofit marketing best practices, your organization can amplify its efforts, reach its target audience, and increase donations to support your nonprofit’s mission. Follow the three proven marketing best practices below. 

1. Know Your Donors

Regardless of whether you’re in the for-profit or nonprofit sector, you need to get to know your organization’s audience in order to get the most out of your marketing efforts.  

But how do you get to know your audience? Start by creating a donor profile template that outlines who your ideal donors are, based on information from your current donor base. 

Here is some information you might want to collect for your template:  

• Age 
• Location 
• Occupation 
• Marital status 
• Parental status 
• Philanthropic interests 
• Hobbies 
• Lifestyle 
• Communication preferences 
• Interactions with your nonprofit  
• Donation history 
• Donor type (first-time donor, lapsed donor, recurring donors, volunteers, long-time donors) 

In addition to individual donors, you can collect information to understand philanthropic organizations that contribute to your cause. Here is some organizational information you can collect:  

• Organization’s Name 
• Charitable registration number 
• Location  
• Philanthropic focuses  
• Contact person  
• Donation history 
• Grant application information 
• Grant application deadlines 
• Restricted or unrestricted funds 

By identifying your organization’s most impactful contributors and understanding their shared characteristics, you’ll become more familiar with your donor base.   

So what else do you need to do to get to know your supporters? Well, according to HubSpot’s State of Marketing report, 89% of companies collect feedback through surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Try sending out some donor surveys to better understand the demographics, interests, and satisfaction levels of your supporters.  

Check out Fundraising KIT’s post-event survey guide for one quick way to gain critical feedback and information from your donors. Once you gain additional information about your donors, you’re ready to apply your findings to other aspects of your marketing strategy. 

2. Segment Your Communications

By understanding who your donors are, you can build a unique relationship with each one through segmenting your donor communications. A study found that email marketing campaigns that segment prospects and personalize messaging have seen a 760% increase in revenue. That’s no joke!   

For example, if you’re completing renovations on your house, you need to communicate differently with the team working on your garage than the team updating your curtains. Of course, each team is a part of your home renos, but how you communicate with both groups should be different and will help you build better relationships. 

This principle also applies to nonprofit marketing and communications; you’ll need to deliver messages that are relevant to each of your nonprofit’s donor groups. This takes us to segmentation and how it plays a large part in nonprofit marketing.  

Donor segmentation is the process of categorizing your donor base into grouped segments based on their shared characteristics. Once segmented, you can send each group targeted communications that they’ll be particularly interested in. For example, you can send all of your monthly donors a monthly impact report to outline their impact.  

With Fundraising KIT’s donor segmentation template, you can categorize donors into segments based on their donations histories and levels of engagement to strategically build relationships and raise more with every message sent.

When you segment and communicate with your donors regularly, and on a deeper level, you build a relationship with them, even if it's through your computer! Once donors feel connected to your organization, they are more likely to give, give more, and give more often. 

3. Personalize Your Outreach

Did you know that more than 70% of consumers expect personalized communications? It’s true! Additionally, Philanthropy News Digest revealed that personal connections drive the decision to donate. 

So when you can effectively communicate to donors with personalized messages, you create a winning marketing formula.  

Here are some tips to help personalize your donor communications:  

• Customize your thank you messages: Use Fundraising KIT’s thank you letter templates to create personalized thank you messages for various donor types. Also, when you include information that shows how your donors' contributions made a tangible impact, they feel like they are part of the solution and will be motivated to give again. 
• Use snail mail: Using letter mail to thank your most impactful and loyal supporters can go a long way. We have seen that communicating online is part of our everyday experiences, the idea of a mailed letter or physical thank you can surprise and delight donors.  
• Develop personalized event invitations: Segment your donors by the impact areas they’re most interested in and invite them to events that align with those areas. You can also personalize your welcome and thank you emails for first-time donors by inviting them to upcoming events.  

• Create an ambassador program: Identify the donors who’ve supported you for more than a year and invite them to join an ambassador program where they can gain special access to your organization by inviting new donors and spreading the word about your nonprofit.  

By personalizing your messages, you can build unique, meaningful relationships with each donor and raise more for your cause with every email, letter, and social media message you send.  

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To improve your nonprofit marketing, get to know your supporters, create segments for donor communications, and personalize your outreach. By incorporating these best practices into your marketing strategy, you can create more meaningful donor relationships and raise more for your cause.  

This blog is brought to you by Fundraising KIT. 

Fundraising KIT was built by a nonprofit leader to support the nonprofit community. Fundraising KIT’s data-driven toolkit helps nonprofits raise more for their cause. Integrating with leading nonprofit databases, KIT identifies supporters ready to give, segments donors for targeted communications, and tracks fundraising progress, all while saving time and resources in the quest to increase revenue. Learn more.