Guest Post for fitRaise: You’ve Got Lots of Donors – Now What?!
by Brian Saber
This post originally appeared on fitRaise.com. The fitRaise platform enables individuals, groups, and organizations of all sizes to host worldwide events to raise money to support important causes. Start your own campaign today with zero up-front costs.
Crowdfunding is creating legions of excited new donors. It’s never been easier to reach out to a host of people at minimal cost and solicit gifts for your organization.
Now the challenge begins.
Just as with direct mail, phonathons, and other broad-based fundraising appeals, the key is figuring out which of these donors might become your long-term, major gift donors. How do you get them to continue giving and how do you get them to increase their giving over time?
In a word, cultivation is the key. Cultivation means treating each of your donors as an individual. It’s figuring out what motivated a donor’s initial gift, what type of communication and involvement would engage that donor further, and how your donor makes charitable decisions.
That’s not so easy when you have lots of new donors and don’t know much about them. Now you need to find out which donors are the best prospects for the future. You’ve got to winnow down the list, because if you try to cultivate everyone, you’ll end up cultivating no one.
Here are five ways to identify and cultivate your best long-term prospects:
- Start communicating with your new donors immediately and see which ones open your emails regularly.
- Ask for input and feedback, engaging in a dialog with donors who offer their thoughts.
- Personalize communication with donors as much as possible. Everyone wants to be recognized as an individual.
- Offer opportunities to be directly involved in helping your organization. Those who give their time are more likely to also give their money.
- Ask them to give again for another project or on the anniversary of their last gift and track who responds. It’s much easier to renew a gift than find a new one, and those who give consistently are hand raisers.
As you learn about your donors and interact with them, begin to develop a major gift tracker. How many donors can you manage? Remember, you can’t cultivate everyone. Perhaps it’s 25 or 50?
Don’t overthink the tracker. What’s most important is the “next step” – what will you do next to engage a particular donor…and who is responsible for it? If you have a simple chart with that information alone it will take you far.
Need an example? Click here to download the Asking Matters Prospect Tracker. It works off an Excel spreadsheet similar to those I’ve used my entire career.
Are you ready to get started? Just take it one step at a time and keep it manageable.
The rest will flow from there.
