Direct mail campaigns, silent auctions, and annual galas are still relevant strategies for fundraising. But the costs and planning behind these initiatives can be prohibitive. Increasingly, forward-thinking nonprofits are recognizing that digital fundraising offers some major advantages over in-person events or direct mail.
This post dives into how nonprofits can explore the benefits of digital fundraising, including how to structure campaigns and best practices for online fundraising. Read on to learn about technology that allows organizations to quickly implement digital fundraising initiatives.
Digital fundraising for nonprofits: key benefits
Nonprofits can benefit from digital fundraising in several ways. Most notably, digital fundraising improves scalability and supports these “wish list” items for nonprofits:
Greater reach
Digital fundraising helps organizations reach a lot more people — without the need for a massive marketing team. Most digital fundraising platforms offer user-friendly automation that makes it easy to create digital ads that drive people to campaign pages, connect with new followers on social media, and build out email lists to strengthen ongoing engagement.
With a greater reach, and software that enables global currency support, nonprofits could connect with digital donors in other parts of the world.
Lower costs
The cost of an in-person fundraising event can be up to 75 cents of every dollar raised, and direct-mail campaigns are costly, too. With digital fundraising, there are no banquet facility rentals, no caterers to pay, and no printing costs.
Better engagement
Using digital channels for fundraising gives organizations an opportunity for real-time engagement. For example, nonprofits can share content on their social channels, immediately respond to comments and mentions, and publicly acknowledge donors.
Personalized donation requests
Digital fundraising that incorporates AI and machine learning can take the guesswork out of knowing whom to ask for donations and when. Using personalized requests can boost first-time donations, recurring donations, and average donation amount.
An example of how machine learning personalizes donation requests based on location, wireless provider, device, and a large dataset on the backend.
The 4 steps in a digital fundraising campaign
Digital fundraising for nonprofits generally follows four steps:
- Attract
This first step is all about creating, publishing, and promoting content, whether that’s digital ads, social posts, or case studies. Content doesn’t need to be unique for every channel. For example, an excerpt from a case study could be a social post, or a photo from a case study could be the basis of a paid ad.
- Nurture
At the nurture stage, nonprofits focus on growing new relationships with the goal of driving conversions. This is where data is critical — organizations need to track how people are interacting with content and what seems to capture their attention. For some people, emails might be the medium that spurs them to donate, whereas other donors may be more moved by social posts.
- Convert
Nonprofits can’t afford to wait for people to organically convert, and that’s why this third step is so important. At this point, organizations should actively ask for donations. With AI, nonprofits can customize ask amounts and even turn one-time contributions into recurring donations.
- Retain
The “retain” stage is a lot easier when donors are on a recurring donation plan. With one-time donors, retention is a matter of knowing when to ask for a subsequent donation, and when. (This is again another great use case for AI). Retention also relies heavily on a nonprofit continuing to share its stories with donors and thanking them promptly for donations.
How do nonprofits master digital fundraising?
Nonprofits that succeed at connecting with donors and digitally boosting conversions tend to prioritize the following initiatives.
Leveraging audience segmentation
Treating all donors as a single entity isn’t the best way to get donations. Segmenting donors by specific characteristics is a better strategy for succeeding at digital fundraising.
Segmentation can start with a review of existing and potential donors and digging into their similarities, and there are a number of ways organizations might want to sort donors and donations, such as:
- average annual donation amount
- private or corporate donors
- demographics
- location
- donation methods (debit card, cryptocurrency, etc.)
- preferred digital channels
- length of engagement (long-time donors vs. new donors)
- number of touchpoints in the donor nurturing phase
By segmenting donors, nonprofits can develop highly targeted and relevant content that appeals to each audience.
Harnessing the power of peer-to-peer fundraising
Peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising is a powerful digital tool that lets donors create, share, and manage their own fundraisers. This initiative requires almost no admin time other than the initial copying and pasting of code to set up a P2P integration.
Ensuring seamless multi-channel communication
Donors may interact with a nonprofit across several channels: email, SMS, and social, for example. Managing all of these channels separately is time-consuming and fails to provide a cohesive experience for donors. With digital fundraising software, nonprofits can offer a frictionless giving experience and ensure continuity of communication across channels.
Displaying social proof
Social proof is a great way to nudge potential donors toward conversion, and it’s another feature that’s easy to implement with copy-and-paste code.
Animal Haven incorporated a social proof popup that shows recent donations and lets users click a “donate” button to quickly reach the donation form.
Enabling global donations
Nonprofits can expand their donor base by offering responsive, multilingual website experiences and enabling global currencies.
Ethar Relief updated its website to accept donations in more than 135 currencies and offer donor experiences in 20 languages.
The fastest path to digital fundraising
Digital fundraising may seem like a complex initiative, but with the right software platform, nonprofits can put their digital campaigns into motion with minimal resources.
Fundraise Up is the user-friendly, all-in-one online fundraising solution for nonprofits. Organizations can count on Fundraise Up for scalability, security, and transparent contract-free pricing. Explore the new standard for online giving.