New Fundraising Email Benchmarks Reveal Exciting Insights for Small Nonprofits

Where do you get your nonprofit marketing best practices, statistics, and metrics? If you’re like many fundraisers, you pull from several different sources. And, since for-profit organizations spend a lot of time and money researching buying behavior and consumer trends, their research probably impacts how you structure your own programs.

This is especially true if you find yourself looking for email marketing best practices: Most of the available information about nonprofit email performance comes from a small handful of very large organizations. If you work for a smaller organization, that can make it difficult to tell if you’re performing well.

That’s why the release of The Nonprofit Email Report: Data-Backed Insights for Better Engagement was so exciting. It’s full of nonprofit-specific data about email marketing and fundraising. And, as it spotlights unique data for small and large nonprofits alike, it reveals that small nonprofits are doing a remarkable job of communicating with their audiences—and they’re outperforming those large organizations in some significant ways.

 

New Data, New Email Fundraising Benchmarks

If you send email appeals, keeping an eye on those campaign results can give you really valuable insight into the types of stories and asks that appeal to your donors. While it’s most valuable to track your own results over time, industry standards can set a useful baseline. 

The following benchmarks come from The Nonprofit Email Report, and they include data specifically for small and large organizations. For the purposes of this study, “Small” nonprofits are organizations that have between 250 and 999 contacts on their lists. “Large” organizations have lists that contain 1,000 or more contacts. 

 

Average Amount Raised per Nonprofit Email Campaign

To set these fundraising email benchmarks, we looked at results from the four biggest giving days of 2022: GivingTuesday and the last three days of December. We found that the average nonprofit raised $5,598.51 per campaign. Large organizations raised $6,513.41 per campaign while small organizations raised an average of $3,522.54.

 

A Couple of Caveats

The data set included in this research included more than 37,000 different campaigns. We wanted to focus specifically on fundraising campaigns, but we didn’t have a surefire way of entirely eliminating non-fundraising emails like newsletters and impact updates.

To get as close as we could, we looked at email campaigns sent during those very high-volume fundraising days and how they impacted fundraising. Because those fundraising averages represent the results of very big giving days, your fundraising campaigns during other parts of the year may not match those results. And that’s okay! The appeals you send this spring are probably not as “successful” as the ones you’ll send on GivingTuesday or during the end of the year. As long as you’re seeing incremental progress—or, at the very least—seeing steady results, you’re doing fine.

 

What Does This Email Fundraising Benchmark Mean?

These benchmarks will be most helpful for fundraisers who want to evaluate their own fundraising results, especially at the end of the year. If your year-end fundraising results mirror these averages, great! If they don’t, compare your 2022 year-end appeals to the ones you sent during 2021. Did you see any improvement? Excellent. Did you see a decrease? That’s useful information, too! Use that as a prompt to revisit your strategy this year.

When you first glance at these benchmarks, how do you feel? It seems like large nonprofits out-perform their smaller counterparts, right? Their overall fundraising totals were higher, after all. But, when we took a closer look at the data, we found something wonderful.

This Email Fundraising Benchmark Should Thrill Small Nonprofits 

Fundraising totals are a great metric to use as you evaluate your fundraising email programs. They give you insight into how well your story and your appeal landed with your base of supporters. But another metric—the average amount raised per contact—can give you even deeper insight into how your appeal resonated with your audience. It’s here that small nonprofits’ ability to inspire generosity really shines.

When we looked at all nonprofits together, the average organization raised $1.11 per contact on their list. Small organizations raised an average of $6.15 per person, while large organizations raised around $0.88.

 

What Does This Mean?

Small nonprofits may not have raised as much per email campaign, but they raised more per contact. If you’re a fundraiser and feel pressure to hit the same fundraising totals as larger nonprofits, take a look at your average amount raised per contact. It’s a great indicator of how well you’re reaching your supporters and how effective your appeals are at inspiring them to give generously. Higher overall fundraising totals aren’t the #1 indicator of how well you’re doing: The big nonprofit up the street may raise more than you, yes. If you’re working with a much smaller list, it will be much harder for you to hit the same fundraising totals they do. But your donors may be giving more on average, and that’s something to be proud of.

You can take it a step further by looking at your average amount raised per contact through some other lenses. Try:

• Looking at your average raised for different segments: Which segments give most generously? Which segments tend to give less? How can you adjust your appeals to be more appropriate for those different segments? Should you change your communications tactics for different groups of people?
• Comparing the average amount raised for different campaigns: What appeals raised the most per contact? Which raised the least? What can you tell about your donors, their motivations, and their preferences? How can you apply those lessons to future appeals?
• A/B testing different versions of the same appeal to get a feel for which types of campaigns are most effective. Do your donors respond more strongly to one type of story over another? Do shorter appeals prompt more donations than long ones? Which calls to action is most compelling to your audience? 

The amount raised per contact is an invaluable email fundraising benchmark. Do you track yours?

How to Calculate Your Average Amount Raised per Contact

If you want to track your own, the formula is simple: Simply divide the amount raised as a result of your campaign by the number of people who received your email. If you sent your campaign to 850 people and raised $4,000, you raised an average of $4.71 per contact.

What to Do If You Want to Improve Your Amount Raised per Contact

As you evaluate your campaign performance, don’t panic if you notice your numbers don’t match industry fundraising email benchmarks. Okay? That’s important. Instead of getting discouraged or feeling bad, look at it as an opportunity to find ways to improve your campaigns. Benchmarks should never be a cudgel you use to beat yourself up: They should be a motivator!

 

If you want to work on improving your email fundraising performance, here are three steps you can take.

Appeal to Your Donors’ Identities

Giving to a nonprofit is a personal decision that’s driven by lots of different motivations. But, whatever that driver is—whether it’s because they’ve benefitted from work like yours themselves or simply want to make a small difference in their community—it’s almost certainly deeply tied to a donor’s sense of self. Resist the temptation to make your appeal logical to the point of eliminating emotion! When you write your next appeal, appeal to your audiences’ identity. Reference someone’s kindness, generosity, or enthusiasm for your cause.

 

A simple example would be writing something like, “Success stories like these are only possible because of the kindness and generosity of our community. Will you help others succeed by making a gift today?” You’re indirectly speaking to a donor’s identity as a kind, generous person—and that’s very compelling.

Make Sure You Actually Ask

When you write an appeal, you know it’s an appeal. You know that the end goal of your email is to inspire someone to make a donation. And, when you’re deeply immersed in telling a compelling story, it’s easy to assume that everyone else will know you want them to donate. Make sure you actually ask! Don’t simply tell a compelling story and drop a link to your donation form—include an explicit call to action. Ask someone to “Make a donation” or “Give today.” By the end of your email, every reader should know exactly what you want them to do.

Make It Easy to Act

After you’ve made a specific appeal, make sure it’s easy to respond to that ask. This means making it very easy to get to your donation form and make a gift. Here are some simple strategies that will help:

 

• Link to your form multiple times. If someone reads a paragraph that hits them hard, don’t make them scroll up or down to find a link to your form!
• As you link to your form, do so using a mix of buttons, linked images, and text hyperlinks. This will make it easier for you to give your readers lots of opportunities to navigate to your donation form without getting repetitive.
• Make sure your links are easy to click, especially on mobile. According to HubSpot, 41% of emails were accessed on mobile devices in 2021. Some sources put that percentage as high as 81%! Though that’s a humorously wide range, both figures reiterate that emails must be easy to engage with on mobile devices. 
• Double-check your donation forms. Clunky, awkward forms that cause a lot of friction will dampen the enthusiasm of even the most engaged potential donor. An easy way to get a feel for the efficacy of your donation form is to compare the number of clicks to your donation form and the number of gifts made on that page. If you get lots of clicks but few donations, something’s disrupting your audiences’ decision to give. Make a gift yourself and see where you get stuck, confused, or frustrated.

 

As you adjust your tactics, keep an eye on your email fundraising performance benchmarks over time. You’ll quickly notice what works, what doesn’t, and which strategies you can apply to future email campaigns.

Whether You’re a Large or Small Nonprofit, Track Your Fundraising Email Benchmarks

All nonprofits—regardless of size—will benefit from keeping a close eye on their fundraising email results and their progress over time. As you track your own performance, remember that industry benchmarks, while useful, are guidelines. Seeing incremental improvements in your organization’s campaigns is much more valuable than measuring up to industry averages.

 

If you’re a small nonprofit that feels pressure to perform at the same level as larger organizations with bigger lists, be encouraged! Even if you’re not hitting the same numbers as big charities, you’re probably doing a wonderful job engaging your existing donors and inspiring them to give generously. Keep an eye on your fundraising email benchmarks—particularly your average amount raised per email contact—and look for areas you can improve to get even better results. 

Looking for more information on industry email benchmarks (and more areas where small nonprofits really shine)? Download your copy of The Nonprofit Email Report: Data-Backed Insights for Better Engagement!

The post New Fundraising Email Benchmarks Reveal Exciting Insights for Small Nonprofits appeared first on Nonprofit Hub.

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If you’ve been in the nonprofit world for any time at all, you know the importance of a multichannel approach to fundraising.

You can no longer rely on just one or two strategies to bring in revenue. As it has been said before:

“Your audience is in more than one place—you need to be, too.”

But it can be intimidating and daunting to look at all of the different ways you can get in touch with donors and determine which combination of methods will work best for your organization.

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet or special sauce when it comes to fundraising. Each nonprofit has different fundraising goals and a different pool of donors and prospects.

However, the tips that we’re going to discuss in this very article are general enough for any nonprofit that is looking to move toward a more multichannel fundraising approach.

Here are the strategies we’ll be going over:

1. Determine where you are.
2. Discover your donors’ preferences.
3. Train your staff.
4. Have different strategies for various giving levels.
5. Write great emails.
6. Create a stellar online donation page.
7. Up your social media game.
8. Implement a great acknowledgement strategy.
9. Track, track, track.

If you’re looking for help making a multichannel fundraising ask, look no further.

It’s going to be difficult to implement any sort of plan if you aren’t sure of your starting point.

To determine where you stand, take a look at your past successes and shortcomings with certain fundraising strategies.

Did your last email campaign blow your expectations out of the water (in a good way)?

Was your winter gala perfectly executed?

Did your phonathon fall a little flat last spring?

Ask yourself these questions as they relate to your overall fundraising strategy. Determine weak areas and highlight your organization’s strengths.

You’ll be much more prepared if you have a good idea of where you stand with your existing fundraising strategies.

Key takeaway: Be realistic and take stock of your previous fundraising methods. Use that info to propel your fundraising approach forward.

While you may have great ideas about getting in touch with your donors, it is they who, in the long run, will determine which communication strategies they like the best.

Therefore, it’s crucial that you:

1. Research your donor base.
2. Determine the kinds of messages to which they most often respond.
3. Use this information to segment and target your donors.

For instance, if you regularly send out direct mail appeals to most of your donors, but you have only a 10% response rate, it might be time to scale back that method.

Conversely, if your donors overwhelmingly appreciate emailed newsletters with “Donate Now” buttons that lead to your donation page, keep crafting great emails that will grab donors’ attentions.

Researching your donor base isn’t exactly a perfect science, however. Donor preferences change, and you won’t always know how each and every supporter likes to be communicated with.

To supplement these efforts, you can directly ask donors how they’d like to be reached.

You can do so by:

• Including a “Preferred Communications” option on your donation form.
• Asking donors in person during fundraising events or in-person meetings.
• Having a section on your direct mail letters that lets donors specify their preferences.
• Sending out a link to a survey via email.

By researching your existing donor base, looking at your past successes, and combining them with your donors’ stated communication preferences, you’ll be able to better target the various appeals you make through different channels.

Key takeaway: Multichannel fundraising requires precision and planning. Make sure you’re sending the right messages to the right supporters.

You’ve looked at your past success, and you’ve determined how you should be getting in touch with your donors.

It’s time to start fundraising, right?

Wrong!

Before you ride off into the fundraising sunset, you have to make sure that everyone on your organization’s staff is on the same page with regard to fundraising strategies and communications.

Make sure that fundraisers in particular know proper etiquette and methods for approaching major gift donors and planned giving contributors.

Since these supporters make some of the largest donations that nonprofits receive, it’s crucial that the staff members approaching these donors know the right way to ask for donations and maintain good relationships with them.

There will be other training that your staff will need to undergo. If you bring on a new type of software or start planning a new type of fundraising event, your team members will all need to be on the same page.

Key takeaway: Multichannel fundraising isn’t a one-man undertaking. Make sure that your staff members all know what their jobs are with respect to your fundraising approach.

No two donors are the same. The beauty of multichannel fundraising is that it accounts for the differences between donors and helps your organization tailor asks according to preferred communication style and giving level.

Let’s not mince words here:

You can’t feasibly have in-person meetings with every single donor.

You also shouldn’t email a major gift donor asking for a massive donation.

Instead, implement different strategies for the various giving levels that your organization has laid out.

If you have a pool of major gift donors that you need to solicit, craft a general strategy for those appeals that you can then individually tailor for each person.

For your smaller gift donors, send out mass communications that are segmented according to their relationship with your organization (first-time donor, monthly giver, volunteer, etc.).

Depending on your donor pool and their preferences, you’ll need to formulate your own plan for segmentation according to giving level.

Key takeaway: Switch up your communications to donors of different giving levels to effectively reach each demographic.

After you’ve developed your multichannel fundraising strategy and gone through all of the preparatory steps, it’s time to implement your plan!

When sending out emails to donors, there are a few best practices to keep in mind:

1. Write a great subject line
   
   This is what donors will see first. Don’t ruin an emailed appeal with an unimaginative subject line.
2. Incorporate images
   
   A massive block of text is going to be off-putting to email recipients. Make sure that you break things up by including images of the people, animals, or communities that you help.
3. Optimize for mobile devices
   
   Many of your donors are checking their emails on their smartphones and tablets. Do your emailed appeals look just as great on a small screen, or are donors having to pinch, zoom, and swipe to find out what your email is about?
4. Give donors ways to contribute
   
   Your emails can be perfectly crafted and explain your mission exactly, but that won’t do much good if you don’t tell your donors how to give to your organization. Give them a link to your online donation page and include your address and phone number.

You shouldn’t always be sending out donation appeals via email, though. Remember that email is a cost-effective and efficient way to get in touch with a lot of people–it doesn’t always have to be about donating.

Use emails to:

• Update donors on projects.
• Invite them to fundraising events.
• Inform them of organizational changes.
• Let supporters know about volunteering opportunities.

You can always include a call to action or a link to your donation page within these other communications.

Just remember to vary the types of communications that you send out to donors via email.

Key takeaway: Craft amazing donation appeals (in addition to other types of emails) to effectively get in touch with your donors.  

Even if you craft the most amazing email ever, your donors might not be willing to give unless they can do so easily.

Here’s where having a great online donation page comes in.

According to this article, “Lifetime revenue per donor increases when donors come from an online source.”

There are an overwhelming number of donation form best practices, so we’re just going to hit some of the high points here.

1. The simpler, the better
   
   If you want to give your donor conversion rate a boost, make sure that your donation form is as simple as possible.
   
   This doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be bare and boring, but it does mean that you should eliminate all extraneous links and menu navigation. You should also keep text to a minimum and include no more than one image somewhere on the form.
   
   The reason for keeping a donation form simple is, well, simple: you don’t want to distract your donors while they’re trying to make a contribution to your organization.If they get led away by a link on the sidebar menu before they can press the “Donate Now” button, you’ve missed out on a contribution!Keep your donation form simple to increase your donor conversion rate and create a positive giving experience for your supporters.
2. Offer recurring donations
   
   Are your donor retention rates lower than you’d like them to be? Try offering recurring donation options on your form to encourage donors to set up monthly, quarterly, or yearly giving.
   
   Instead of giving once (and only once) online, your donors will be able to continually support your organization without having to visit your donation page each time.
3. Keep donor data secure
   
   This should be a good practice for your fundraising strategies across the board, but it’s crucial to keep your online donors’ information safe and secure.
   
   Maintain compliance with the payment card industry data security standards (PCI DSS) to make sure that your donors can give with confidence.
   
   Not only does staying in line with PCI DSS compliance give your donors peace of mind, it also protects your organization from any liability. Your organization can face fines if you don’t have a secure donation form.
4. Limit the number of required fields
   
   Research has shown that the more information donors have to provide, the less likely they are to complete the donation process.
   
   For instance, if you require donors to give out their name, address, phone number, email address, and make them create an account just to give $30 to your organization, they’re probably going to get frustrated and drop the process altogether.
   
   Only collect the information you need. Make everything else an optional feature or remove it completely.

Your online donation page is an extension of your organization’s digital outreach. Make sure that it’s on par with the rest of your website and online communications.

Key takeaway: Your donation page is a crucial component of a multichannel fundraising strategy. Don’t forget to make it amazing.

Many of your donors are using social media sites and apps to connect with their friends, to stay up to date on current events, and to stay in touch with the causes and organizations they support.

You should post quality social media content regularly and interact with donors who reach out on your social media accounts.

One of the first steps in creating a stronger social media presence (and subsequently asking for and receiving donations via social networks) is to post content regularly.

This means that you should post status updates, pictures, and videos of the work that your nonprofit is doing. You can also post social media shout-outs to your biggest supporters!

While you can post appeals on your social channels, you shouldn’t always bombard your followers with pleas for money.

Instead, vary your content to appeal to a wide variety of supporters:

• Share success stories that show donors what their contributions are going toward;
• Post information about an upcoming fundraising event;
• Invite followers to learn more about volunteering opportunities;
• Provide info about employee and corporate giving programs;
• And more!

Social media is a powerful tool and can be used to grow your reach and find new donors. Use it to your advantage by posting great content as well as donation appeals.

Key takeaway: Social media isn’t just a platform to ask for contributions. Use it as a way to stay in touch with people who care about your cause.

A donor who has made a gift between $5k – $10k to a nonprofit organization is 5 times as likely to donate charitably as an average person is. Therefore, it makes sense to have a great acknowledgement plan in place to encourage donors to give again and again!

The best way to gauge how you should thank donors is hidden in their giving method.

Did they give online?

→ Send an email acknowledgement and follow up with a social media shoutout.

Did they mail in a check?

→ Send out a thank you letter or card.

Did they give a substantial amount of money?

→ Have a board member give them a call or meet them in person to thank them.

Whichever route you take for donor acknowledgement should be genuine and sincere. You should also use your emailed and direct mail acknowledgements as donation receipts so that donors can easily claim their donations during tax season.

You should always immediately thank a donor who has made a contribution, but the acknowledgements shouldn’t stop there.

Instead, continually express your appreciation to donors and use previous donations as a starting point for future donation appeals

Key takeaway: Send out stellar acknowledgements to cultivate and steward the great relationships you built with donors during the donation process.

It’s going to be difficult to know which fundraising methods are the most effective if you aren’t tracking your progress.

And it’s been said on this blog before: the first step for recording the ROI across all your selected channels of communication is establishing your donation goal.

Setting a goal will help keep your team accountable and give you something to work toward.

You should also set benchmark measurements to track your progress over time (as opposed to, say, setting a goal for the next year and only checking in once the year has passed).

Some key performance indicators to keep in mind include:

• Donor retention: How many donors stay in your donor pool over time?

• Donor acquisition: How many first-time contributors did you bring in?

• Return on investment (ROI): Did the donations you brought in outweigh the cost it took to acquire them?

• Average gift size: How much are people giving to your organization, on average?

• Average gift growth: Are donors giving more and more each time or remaining fairly consistent?

These five are just a starting point. Check out these other metrics and see what works for your organization.

Key takeaway: Set an appropriate fundraising goal and measure your success against a variety of metrics. Adjust course as necessary.

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As stated at the beginning of this article, each organization will require a different approach to multichannel fundraising. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for every single organization.

However, these nine strategies are a good starting point for any organization that wants to ramp up its multichannel fundraising approach.

What about your nonprofit? What success have you had with multichannel fundraising? What would you suggest to other organizations who want to get started?

The post 9 Tips for Making a Multichannel Fundraising Ask appeared first on Nonprofit Hub.