By Meredith Gray, Fundraising Kit

The pandemic changed the way we do just about everything. From shopping to banking, the tasks that we used to venture out into the world to do are now all available to us without leaving our homes. This includes fundraising. While a strong digital fundraising component, such as donations pages, is critical to fundraising success, it’s important not to let your direct mail marketing strategy fall to the side. 

When we think about direct mail, we tend to think it’s only popular with older generations, but that way of thinking could be leaving money on the table. Yes, direct mail does see the highest return coming from donors over the age of 60, but when combined with other elements such as email marketing or social media, direct mail can resonate strongly with donors of all ages. 

So, how do you build your direct mail marketing strategy to raise as much as possible? This article is designed to help you do just that!

1. Nail Down Your Impact Messaging

Donors like to feel like they’re making a difference with their gift. Your job is to help them understand how they’re doing just that. Take a moment and put yourself in the mindset of your donor. Let’s say you received a piece of direct mail that told a brief storythen asked for a donation in the amount of your choosing. How much would you give? 

Now, imagine that piece of direct mail asked you to give just $10 more than what you had originally planned, BUT you knew exactly what that extra $10 would do for the cause you’re supporting. Would you hesitate in giving that extra $10?

Creating effective impact messaging is a team effort between your fundraising, marketing, and mission teams, but it starts with your fundraising metrics. Take a look at your last direct mail campaign and look for giving trends. If the majority of your donors gave $100 through your last campaign, consider creating an impact statement tied to a value of $110 or $120 to increase your average gift size.

2. Integrate Direct Mail with Other Channels

Remember when we mentioned that direct mail is most popular with older generations? The over-60 group may be most likely to respond directly to your appeal, but a multi-channel direct mail marketing strategy is the key to engaging donors of all ages.

Millennials and Gen Z are quickly becoming the monthly, major, and recurring donors of the future. So what if I told you that 84% of gen z’s that receive a piece of direct mail with a QR code will interact with it online? On top of that, 90% of millennials LOVE receiving mail and 57% of them act on direct mail offers from corporate brands.

The key to engaging younger donors is to make yourself known to them multiple times in several different ways. In fact, it can take 18-20 different touchpoints to reach a donor for the first time. Sending them a piece of direct mail is a great start, but it’s important to ensure that they are seeing your campaign in other places as well, such as through email and on social media.

3. Follow a digital-first approach

We’ve said it already, but we’ll say it again. Direct mail isn’t dead, but it is changing. With donors being 3x more likely to give online in response to a direct mail appeal over an email appeal, it’s clear that those little envelopes arriving in their mailboxes are making a difference.

By following a digital-first approach to your direct mail marketing strategy, not only are you offering donors multiple ways to give, but you may also save money. 

Now hold on, it’s not time to give up on those business reply envelopes just yet, but by diving a little deeper into your donor information, you can be a bit more strategic. 

Start by looking at your previous campaign and pulling out the people that mailed back the direct mail envelope, add in any other donors over the age of 60 and BOOM, there’s your shortlist for how many business reply envelopes you need! It’s still worth it to send mail to all donors, but adding in a QR code or link to donate online is likely a better fit for the majority of your prospects.

4. Segment, Segment, Segment

There isn’t a one-size fits all approach when it comes to asking for money. Donors want to feel like they are one of a kind, not one of many, and that all starts with segmentation.

But where to start? By geographic location? By donation history? The truth is, the answer to that will be different for every organization but we have a couple suggestions to help you out! 

1. By Past Donation Amount

Pull a list of all donors who have given to you through a campaign in the past and the amount they gave. This is a great way to create your segments and increase your overall campaign revenue. Tying this back to the impact statements, you can then segment donors by previous giving amount and develop a custom ask that is slightly higher than what they have given in the past!

2. By Giving Capacity

Sometimes giving history doesn’t give the full story on how much a donor is able to give. By using wealth screening tools, you can segment your donors by their giving capacity. Bundle this with a custom ask for that amount and you’re sure to increase your average gift size.

Pro tip: There are TONS of tools out there that can do this work for you at a reasonable investment, so make sure to research the best option is for your organization!

5. Think about Timing

Now, we don’t want to state the obvious, but with 30% of your donations arriving in December, year-end seems like a great choice to run your direct mail campaign.

Year-end is the perfect time to engage your donors and should definitely be part of your direct mail marketing strategy. Between bites of turkey and unwrapping gifts, the holiday spirit promotes generosity in your donors (plus the last chance to get a tax receipt isn’t a bad incentive either!).

Align the messaging and creative elements between your email marketing strategy, social media channels, direct mail efforts and telemarketing campaigns to ensure that your donors are seeing your campaign front and center on every platform they interact with! 

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Optimizing your direct mail marketing strategy can do more than just raise money for your cause. It can also help improve the quality of your relationships with your  donors. Donors will always appreciate a personal, thoughtful approach to a solicitation. With direct mail, you can tick that box. There’s no better time than now to be thinking about your next direct mail campaign. Send out your campaign and watch the money start rolling in!

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.

By Bryna Dilman, Fundraising Kit

As a fundraiser, have you ever felt there just aren’t enough hours in the day? Between prospect research, stewardship, marketing, and everything in between, you likely have a growing to-do list staring back at you leaving you wondering if there’s an easier way to raise funds for your organization. Good news - there is! 

As more nonprofits look to maximize their impact with fewer resources, automation is becoming a growing trend in fundraising. A powerful way to streamline your marketing efforts, automation saves valuable time and makes better use of your data. 

Using automation software is the easiest way to save time and money while reducing errors. And it’s starting to catch on: 48% of nonprofit organizations boosted their tech spending in 2019, and as new tools become available, that number is only increasing. If you’re looking for creative ways to automate your tasks to increase efficiency, you’ve come to the right place.

5 Ways that Automation Will Lead to Greater Fundraising Success

#1: Fundraising

When it comes to automating your fundraising strategies, thinking outside the box is the key to surpassing your revenue goals. With the right tools, identifying and segmenting the strongest prospects for your next campaign is easy and will certainly lead to the growth of your monthly and major giving revenue streams. 

With the help of data-driven tech options, you can build your fundraising strategy in a matter of minutes and quickly identify the areas in which automation will help your team save time and resources. Knowing how and when to make the ask, you can easily automate your donor outreach, meaning that you’re never leaving any high-value prospects on the back burner and your team has more time to make strong face-to-face connections.

#2: Stewardship

Frequent and impactful touchpoints with stakeholders is the key to retaining your donors. With it being 5x more cost effective to retain donors than recruit new ones, understanding the best ways to steward them and prevent donor lapse is critical to your organization’s growth.

Donors like to be thanked and to understand the impact of their gift, and there’s a good chance that the platform you are using has the ability to automate that work for you. Setting up your system to auto-send a thank you email each time a donor makes a gift, allows you to thank your donors quickly and effectively. You may even be able to set up the email with the tax receipt attached to it, meaning that your donor gets one email with everything they need to feel good about giving to your cause. 

In addition, never underestimate the power of your newsletter! Ensuring that your donors are represented in your newsletter mailing list provides automated, regular communications to them sharing the latest news on how your organization is investing their donor dollars.

#3: Reporting

Tracking and analyzing metrics allows you to make educated decisions and monitor your performance. It should come at no surprise that automation tools are ideal for pulling data from your records and building reports that will inform and direct your activities.

Setting up automated reports allows you to set key performance indicators (KPI) that are automatically updated as you send communications, receive donations, and acquire new donors. The ability to quickly and easily generate and view reports is a gamechanger, allowing you to see just how well your campaigns are doing at any time and adjust your strategy as needed.

#4: Marketing & Communications

A strong marketing and communication strategy directly ties back to how much money you are able to raise. More than 60% of nonprofits use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to orchestrate communications with their supporters.

Having these tools is the first step, but the real magic happens when you optimize them to automate your marketing and communications as much as possible. 

Pre-scheduling emails is the most common use of these tools, and can save fundraisers a lot of time and energy at the busiest time in their fundraising season. By building and scheduling emails that will recruit, engage, and thank donors and fundraisers, your team will have more time to invest in building the relationships that will lead to your fundraising success.

#5: Social Media

Automation allows you to more strategically craft your approach to social media. By planning out your content calendar in advance, you can build and schedule posts using tools such as Hootsuite to ensure that you maintain an engaged follower base on your social channels. 

When social media automation is bundled with your email marketing strategy, you can expand your reach across all of your different communications platforms, making it a great tool to use for your next campaign. By scheduling posts that contain a consistent call to action as your campaign, it’s easy to go live on social at the same time that you schedule your email, meaning that your audience will see the same message in multiple places and are more likely to take the action you’re asking them to.

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By looking for automation opportunities within your work, your nonprofit can evaluate your goals and ensure you have the right tools and technology for the job. Automation is just the beginning when it comes to all of the ways that Fundraising KIT can help you raise more money for your cause. Ready to unlock the full potential of your donors? Contact us to talk to a fundraising expert!

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.

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.