Helping you to fundraise properly
How to attract donors
More free stuff and this time we focus on email templates. Emails are a key method for non-profits to communicate with your supporters and getting the design right is key in getting your message read.
Really Good Emails is an amazing resource with over 4000 real email campaigns to inspire you PLUS if you sign up for free, the code behind the email for you to tailor to your needs.
Every week, Mary Cahalane provides expert fundraising advice in her blog – I could easily reshare her blog here every week (hint – sign up to the Hands on Fundraising blog).
Anyway, Mary’s post at the beginning of the month really stood out for offering links to loads of free content to help fundraisers get creative. There are sites listed which offer free photos, photo editing, graphic design, office tools but what really stands out is the list of writing tools!
Miss it, miss out!
An exploration of the intersection of compliance and ethics programmes and behavioural science may not immediately strike you as a top candidate for your summer reading list – especially a fundraising reading list – but it would be a mistake to miss out on this review of a research paper by Meredith Niles. She considers how the learnings could be applied to fundraising to provide us with some well considered new perspectives.
Hundreds of development professionals shared their views in the sector’s first professional study into what it takes to deliver an outstanding donor experience.
Holly Palmer, Lee Durbin and their team on volunteers crunched and analysed the results to produce a pretty unique report, chock-a-block full of insight. This is an essential read for everyone involved in HE fundraising.
https://hedonorexperience.com/research-report-fundraising-in-higher-education-the-donor-experience/
At the end of 2016, when the ICO fined several charities for breaching the Data Protection Act 1998, Ian MacQuillin, wrote a fascinating philosophical piece on how charities are perceived by different types of people.
Even though this feels like a long time ago, it’s still as relevant today as it was back then. Whenever you feel that GDPR and data protection are not your friend, have a read of this.
This long read by John Baguley from International Fundraising Consultancy is split into several parts and what the team has learnt as they gear up to the firms 20th anniversary. focus on their top 20 tips to help us fundraise more effectively.
These 20 key facts every fundraiser should know: some are basic and some are outside any box we have ever found. None should be forgotten as we seek to grow our income and influence.
Part 1: https://groupifc.com/blog/2020-vision-in-fundraising/
Part 2: https://groupifc.com/blog/2020-vision-in-fundraising-part-ii/
Part 3: https://groupifc.com/blog/2020-vision-in-fundraising-part-iii/
Part 4: https://groupifc.com/blog/2020-vision-in-fundraising-part-iv/
The Guidance prepared by the Data Protection Network is a practical tool aimed at helping commercial and not-for-profit organisations to assess whether or not they can rely on Legitimate Interests as a lawful basis for processing personal data under the GDPR.
The Guidance covers:
https://www.dpnetwork.org.uk/dpn-legitimate-interests-guidance/
The Institute of Fundraising (IoF) recently launched Good Asking – a report on why charities research and process supporter information. They worked with leading academic Dr Beth Breeze from the University of Kent, to survey over 300 fundraisers to understand why they process and research information about their supporters, and what the benefits are for donors, charities and the wider public.
The purpose of this report is to shed light on the importance of fundraisers and their work. If they are to be successful, fundraisers need to conduct research to facilitate the efficient and accurate matching of donors and the causes they might wish to support, and to do so in a way that makes the experience as pleasurable as possible for the generous donor.
THE REPORT FINDINGS INCLUDE:
The report also highlights that:
https://www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk/library/good-asking-report-2017/
While organizations focus on their development goal and raising money through major gifts, events, direct mail, grants and online, it is often stewardship and retention that fall by the wayside.
According to Adrian Sargeant and Elaine Jay, a 10% increase in donor retention can enhance the lifetime value of your donor base by up to 200%.
Those are sobering statistics and make it pretty clear what we should be focusing on. Here, Danielle J Vermenton provides 10 tips on how to embrace donor retention.
https://npengage.com/nonprofit-fundraising/retention-is-the-new-acquisition/
Retention is one of the Big 5 KPIs to measure, but why is it so important?
A 10 percent improvement in attrition can yield up to a 200 percent increase in projected value, as with lower attrition significantly more donors upgrade their giving, give in multiple ways, recommend others, and, ultimately, perhaps, pledge a planned gift to the organization.
In this sense the behavior of “customers” and the value they generate appear to mirror that reported in the for-profit consumer sector, where similar patterns of value and behavior emerge. Indeed, the marketing literature is replete with references to the benefits that a focus on customer retention can bring.
Adrian Sargeant explains more in this article.
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/donor-retention-nonprofit-donors/