JOB TITLE

Partnerships Director

Full Time/Salaried/Non-exempt

POSITION DESCRIPTION

The Partnerships Director will manage and sustain the organization’s growing national presence, modern partnership profile, and highly trafficked educational media platform. The Director of Partnerships plays a major role in curating and creating educational content with a network of innovative nonprofit service, product providers, and professionals that empower organizations to go from good to growth. This position will report to the Executive Director and will manage one or more direct reports. 

 

POSITION OBJECTIVE

To grow the awareness and support of Nonprofit Hub through meaningful partnerships that represent a win-win-win scenario:

 Win #1 – The Nonprofit Hub audience receives innovative and thought-leadership-level content from trusted experts.

Win #2 – Nonprofit Hub meets and exceeds financial goals through an innovative partnership model, allowing for continued growth.

Win #3 – The partners we work with have a delightful experience that leads to committed, mutually beneficial relationships.

 

ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION

Nonprofit Hub (NPH)  is a thought leadership and educational 501(c)3 organization that creates, curates, and manages a collection of content, events, and experiences that help nonprofits move from good to growth.  Nonprofit Hub curates and creates educational content that includes authoritative, inspiring, and easily consumed knowledge on the nonprofit sector’s most prevailing questions or problems. The Hub reaches over 50,000 nonprofits each week with content, resources, and referrals to the sector’s top service providers. The team hosts a membership-based platform offering content, training, networking, and other opportunities to nonprofit organizations and corporations seeking to partner with nonprofits.

 

Core Values:

Delightfully Empowered | Whether through unexpected value, exceptional experience, or revelation, we aim to delight and empower our audience and stakeholders.

Others-Centric | Everything we do is about others. Audience members, speakers, contributors, sponsors, or vendors are all our valued stakeholders whose success reflects back on us. In all we do, big and small, every day or extraordinary, we aim to set others up for success – including our fellow team members.

Consistently Increasing Excellence | We not only expect excellence, we pursue raising the bar on what is considered excellent in all we do.

Unabashedly Ambitious | This organization thrives on a drive to serve nonprofits. We feel no shame in going beyond conventional or expected methods to delight and equip our audience.

ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES

• Regularly communicate with inbound and existing partners with regard to sponsorship opportunities.
• Manages and grows a network of business memberships and supporters.
• Proactively seek new partnerships through networking, “cold email,” and using programs like LinkedIn, Hunter, and more.
• Manage the logistics of content delivery and coordination with partners (as needed).
• Develop, test, and manage proactive sales techniques, i.e., advertising, outbound email, and social media.
• Work with the team to develop well-planned content schedules using partner materials.
• Garner a clear understanding of all Nonprofit Hub, Cause Camp, and Cause Network programs. Help develop new sponsorship models for existing and new content and programs.
• Work with leadership to set and achieve quarterly and annual sales goals.
• Ensure contact records and revenue projections are accurate and up to date.
• Assists team with event management, including but not limited to annual conferences and weekly webinars.

 

REQUIRED JOB SKILLS

• Excellent written and verbal, and communication skills 
• Ability to clearly and confidently describe partnership benefits and Nonprofit Hub programs.
• Familiarity with outbound marketing strategies (lead generation) and full-cycle sales strategies. 
• Familiarity with short-form copywriting and content marketing strategy
• Possession of problems solving skills and the ability to look at a project from various angles 
• Must be able to work independently and remotely with limited supervision
• Proficiency with the following platforms and software tools is necessary for this position:
• WordPress (Divi Builder)
• CRM software, i.e., Active Campaign
• Proposal Software
• Google Suite (Gmail, Drive, Sheets, Docs, Presentations)
• Event Management Applications (Demio, Whova, etc)
• Zapier
• Spiffy
• Stripe
• Intuit Quickbooks
• Trello (preferred)
• Slack (preferred)

 

DESIRED EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE

• A degree in marketing, public relations, business, communications, public administration or a related field is desired. 
• Experience in nonprofit management and/or membership associations
• Knowledge of Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)

 

DESIRED PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES: Are you?

• Ambitious and self-driven?
• Desiring a high degree of responsibility?
• Personable and easy-going – a team player?
• Passionate about helping nonprofits?
• An authentic communicator?
• Confident in starting conversations and building relationships?

 

SALARY + BENEFITS

$42,500/year + 10% Commission on New Business

2 Weeks Paid Vacation

5 Wellness Days (excused absence)

Insurance Reimbursement Stipend

Simple IRA with matching funds up to 3% of gross income

Remote Work and flexible hours

 

WORKING CONDITIONS

This is a remote (work-from-home) position that will require occasional travel for in-person meetings and events. This role requires a high level of responsibility and the ability to work in a fast-paced environment with competing deadlines. Team size is <5, allowing creativity, innovation, and inherent leadership opportunities beside other rockstars.

 

Nonprofit Hub is a remote operation where team members can work from anywhere. The team’s core working hours are 10:00 a.m. ET – 4:00 p.m. ET. To ensure that meetings can be easily scheduled and communication is fluid, all employees must schedule time to work during these hours.

 

Commitment to Equal Opportunities in the Workplace

Nonprofit Hub is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws. 

 

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS

Interested applicants should send a resume, cover letter, and three professional references to delaney.mullennix@nonprofithub.org.

The Power of Integrating Brand Strategy Into Your Nonprofit’s Website

By Matt Schwartz, Founder & Executive Director of Constructive.

Have you ever seen a nonprofit website that you know doesn’t represent an organization as it truly is? That doesn’t tell an organization’s story effectively or fails to clarify its impact. That makes it too challenging to understand nonprofits’ roles in their ecosystem and what unique value their programs and services offer. That makes it too hard to find and use the resources and support a nonprofit has to offer its audiences. Or that visually miss the mark with poor design and inauthentic stock imagery? 

I think we’ve all experienced this situation once or twice. Suppose you work for a nonprofit with an ineffective website. In that case, you may have also experienced being too embarrassed to send people to it so they can learn more about your organization. We all know there’s an actual cost when a website fails to represent a nonprofit well. After all, it’s one of the most critical strategic assets a nonprofit has in representing itself to the world. 

We ask websites to help drive our mission by projecting our nonprofit’s brand, being the hub of digital communications, and acting as a primary channel for audience engagement. Given a website’s importance, it must be closely aligned with another crucial strategic asset—a brand strategy. Effective brand strategy is foundational to how nonprofits understand themselves, their audiences, and how they progress together in advancing a mission. It’s the cornerstone of articulating mission, vision, values, and more through strategic positioning and messaging. Get these two things right and get them “talking” with each other—and a nonprofit has about 80% of what it needs to support its organizational strategy and strategic communications.

The truth is brand strategy is the essential foundation for all design and communications. And because websites do so much to support a nonprofit’s mission strategy—all on their own, with hundreds or thousands of people visiting daily—the value of an effective brand strategy shines. Think about what we ask our nonprofit websites to do once they’re live. They’re essential to strategic communications. A website is often the first place a person goes when they learn about a nonprofit. It’s a nonprofit’s ultimate brand ambassador—a representation of mission, vision, and values ready to welcome audiences 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It’s a digital platform for articulating the “who, what, when, where, why, how, and with whom” of a nonprofit’s impact strategy—a powerful window into an organization’s world and the ecosystem in which it exists. And after introductions are made, it remains the hub of digital communications, where a nonprofit’s marketing channels and external media continuously direct people.

For some nonprofits—particularly research institutes, think tanks, and nonprofits that deliver service online—a website is much more than just a platform for brand communications. It’s also a primary channel for doing the work—whether this means knowledge mobilization to address climate change, providing resources and professional development for teachers, or increasing access to vital mental health care services. Websites for associations and member-based nonprofits are invaluable to building and connecting communities. For advocacy nonprofits, websites are integral to driving support for campaigns. And, of course, their website is a vital fundraising channel for organizations that fund programs through individual donations.

That’s a lot of heavy lifting! 

And it doesn’t stop here. A nonprofit’s website is about more than these essential external-facing roles. It’s also integral to operations—a tool that staff often rely on to do their daily work. Modern nonprofit brand strategy theory emphasizes leveraging brand strategy to increase capacity. The same holds for websites because the staff is regular users of the content management system that a website is built on—and that CMS is often connected to multiple external technology platforms like grants management software, CRMs, and fundraising systems that are integral to operations. Just like the quality of the experiences that a website creates for external audiences says a lot about its brand, so does the quality of the website’s software and how well it empowers staff to connect with the work. Doing this well requires understanding how the job gets done and how it impacts the mission.

The Power of Brand Strategy in Design

What makes brand strategy valuable to create a website that expresses what a nonprofit stands for and engages people inside and outside the organization? It’s all about context. Or better said, design (in the most full sense of the word) is all about context. Anything that’s designed (to say, everything that is not part of the natural environment) is designed for a specific use, for one particular person or group of people, to be used in a precise place or way, and for a specific purpose. You need to understand the context to successfully design for all those situational needs. That’s how designers create experiences that are useful, valuable, and resonant. 

The most effective design often takes a human-centered approach to meet the needs of people. So, to design websites that do all of the essential things that nonprofits need them to do, the more deeply we understand a nonprofit, its audiences, and the context in which these two things interact, the more effectively we’ll navigate the countless content, design, and technology choices that go into creating a website. And the better we’ll be at uniting work done by strategists, copywriters, designers, and web developers into a cohesive online experience aligned with a nonprofit’s purpose and the positive perceptions people have of the brand.

The brand strategy process is the place where all of this valuable context is defined. And the design is the tool that turns the many ideas in a brand strategy into something tangible that can be experienced. As someone who has been a designer and a brand strategist throughout my career, I’ve felt the power of this connection first-hand. It’s also why I believe that integrating brand strategy principles and practices into the website design process—and having the same strategist involved throughout the project—is so helpful. It creates a connective thread from brand thinking to the designed experiences a website creates so that people can engage with a nonprofit’s brand. And when teams have a deep understanding and appreciation for what a nonprofit’s brand truly stands for and the value the organization creates, they are better at making those ideas tangible.

Moving Beyond the User Experience

User experience design (UX)—the process of defining how people will interact with a designed solution and what will happen when they do—is the foundation of website design. It’s impossible to design a great website without great UX design, which is why you’ll hear so much emphasis on doing it well in a website design project. But here’s the thing: nobody visits a website looking for a great user experience. They visit for the opportunities a website creates for them to interact with a brand. People may not think they are visiting a website for a brand experience, but that’s what’s happening.

So, while UX design is vital to website design, I think it’s helpful to reframe it to go further than some of its limiting measures of success (e.g., “user-friendliness,” “content findability”). We’ve got bigger fish to fry! When our goals are much loftier than “online conversions” or “page views”—when we’re working to address serious social and environmental issues, we need to connect on a deeper level. And that’s where the more significant and profound underlying dynamics of what matters in the societal/nonprofit/audience relationship lie. We’re not just designing to be transactional. We’re prepared to resonate with people’s values and motivation and to inspire them to take action. 

For social change organizations, this means creating experiences with the specific goals of educating audiences, deepening their engagement with the issues, and, ultimately, helping people from different backgrounds and with other skills and resources to contribute to solving a serious problem. And when the change we seek will take a long time to achieve or will happen in a place far away from where we may physically be, sustaining engagement for the long term can be a challenge. We need to keep people connected to the brand. And a nonprofit’s website is both the most visible manifestation of the brand and one of the best vehicles for delivering value that keeps them connected to it.

Focus Your Website on Building Brand Experiences

So, if your organization is looking to redesign its website and has never taken the time to develop a brand strategy, now would be a good time to do so. Yes, it will require time, money, and patience. But it is an investment well worth making—and one that will pay you back many times over. What’s more, not only will your team be energized by the process, you’ll be amazed by how much easier decision-making about things like website structure, navigation, content strategy, and design is when it’s clear to all what the actual value of your organization is to its audiences.

However, it’s not always possible to undertake a significant brand strategy process—and that’s OK! That’s because it’s very likely to integrate elements of the brand strategy process into the research, strategy, and design phases of a website redesign. While your nonprofit won’t gain the organization-wide benefits that flow from defining an effective brand strategy, integrating brand strategy thinking and exercises into a redesign will ensure that your website is more effective at communicating and connecting people to your nonprofit value.

Whichever approach you take, before you jump into the website redesign, be sure to pull your key stakeholders together and engage them in the kind of thoughtful strategic exploration that should inform every branding process. Doing so will enable you to build your website—and the brand experience—around the deeper, underlying values that do so much to energize audiences to believe in your brand and support your mission. And if you’d like to learn more about how Constructive can help you with the brand strategy and digital design practice we’ve refined across our 22 years, we hope you’ll get in touch!

 

This spotlighted blog post is courtesy of Constructive 

 

Federal Grant Checklist to Help You Prepare

As you conduct grant research to uncover new opportunities for your organization, you may come across grants from federal government agencies. And as grant funding through federal economic recovery programs distributes, we’ll see even more competitive opportunities arise at the federal, state, and local levels.

Federal grants can be game-changers for nonprofits. It gives them funding for programs and improvements while also boosting their track record and reputation. However, applying for a federal government grant is time and resource intensive. They are highly competitive to win and demanding to manage if received. 

This means you must be prepared to compete effectively for federal grants. So how can you set yourself up for success?

This federal grant checklist walks through our recommendations for preparing to compete for federal grants.

☑Registration

First, ensure that your nonprofit registers in the federal grant system. Competing for federal grants will require at least these three steps:

1. Receive a DUNS (Data Universal Number System) number to identify your nonprofit in the federal system
2. Register with the federal System for Award Management at SAM.gov. This platform manages and reports on grants once you receive them
3. Register your nonprofit at Grants.gov, where you’ll find and apply for federal grants

Depending on the opportunity you are pursuing, you may need to register in additional federal systems to compete. For example, several agencies like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration require registration in a system called eRA Commons.

Most importantly, handle this process early. Registration can be complicated and involves a waiting period. You must renew your registrations annually. Begin the registration process (or double-check your renewals) at least six weeks before a grant application deadline.

☑Time and Capacity

Federal grants can have a turnaround time of only a few weeks between the initial release and application deadline. This tight window of time means that you’ll need the capacity of your team to handle everything required of the application. 

The steps to apply for a federal grant can include compiling lists of community partners, securing letters of support, detailing a program model, and developing budgets. You may also need to prepare other unique attachments, handle logistical upload tasks, and more. As soon as you identify a grant opportunity, sit down to objectively assess what your team can accomplish with its current resources.

These steps are easily overwhelming. You just can’t stop progress on other fundraising activities and grant deadlines while you are focused on submitting a federal grant. It can be a wise and fruitful investment to partner with a grants consultant with experience at the federal level. They can advise you and manage the steps of compiling a high-quality application.

☑A Collection of Standard Application Materials

If you pursue a federal grant, having a ready-made set of standard application materials can save your team time and stress. Most federal grant applications require these documents: 

• Reviewed and audited financial statements
• Organizational and program-specific budgets
• Bios and resumes for leaders and key program staff

If you don’t have these materials on hand but want to begin pursuing more grant opportunities, create them early before you enter the time crunch leading up to a deadline.

☑Data to Illustrate Your Impact

Data is an integral part of any winning grant proposal. It completes the story you tell about your vision and goals. It gives more authority to your claims by illustrating your track record of success, the impact you’ve had so far, and the problem you’re seeking to solve. Effective use of data can make your proposal stand out in a crowded field.

But to see these benefits, you’ll need the actual data. Determine whether your organization is ready to quantitatively demonstrate a strong track record by considering these questions:

• Do you have a record of data collection, evaluation, and successful outcomes with other programs?
• Does the program you’re proposing have a compelling need and data to back it up?
• Do you have internal structures in place for data entry and analysis, like a properly-configured CRM or database?
• Are you prepared to engage an external evaluator to support the analytics and evaluation that may be required for executing and managing the grant?

Building a data and tech infrastructure is a worthwhile investment for growing organizations. It will allow you to craft more compelling grant proposals over time and continually assess and improve your strategies.

☑Partners and Supporters

Federal grant applications often require letters of support, sometimes referred to as Memorandums of Understanding. They prove that you have a network of supporters in your community who can vouch for your work and who may be directly involved in helping to achieve the proposed plans and goals. These supporters and partners might include other organizations, local foundations, corporate sponsors, public officials, major donors, and constituent organizations or individuals. 

Securing signed letters can be a lengthy process, so start as early as possible. Discuss your potential documentation needs with your key partners ahead of time. You want them to be ready to help if you are putting together a proposal for a new program soon. For funding opportunities for existing programs, documenting your partners’ current and planned participation will also simplify the application process.

☑ Grant Management Capabilities

Let’s say you win a federal grant—congratulations, and great work! 

But there’s still plenty of work regarding grant management and reporting. Federal grants have stringent post-award requirements to prepare. For instance, once you use the funding, most federal grants will automatically require an official financial audit. Specifically, you’ll need to ensure that you have these capabilities and resources:

• A team to handle program execution, financial management, and compliance
• Staff who can make grant-related work a top priority for the duration of the program
• Time and resources to create detailed financial reports and the tools to manage and track federal funds separately from the rest of your finances
• The infrastructure and staff to manage data collection, analysis, and reporting
• The ability to effectively learn and use the required federal grant management systems
• The team capacity to actively manage your relationship with your federal grant management officer and/or program officer.

It sounds like a lot, but it comes with the territory of competing for game-changing federal funds. If you currently have any gaps that would complicate these types of tasks, taking the time to build your internal capacity and infrastructure beforehand is likely the smartest move. A focus on development and capacity-building, expanding your network of partners and major donors, and improving your systems can yield dividends once you’re ready to compete.

Federal Grant Checklist Summary

Writing a compelling grant proposal is always hard work that requires careful thought, attention, and preparation, and federal grant opportunities are especially so. The points in this checklist cover the most important steps, resources, and capabilities that will help you stand out in a crowded field (and avoid biting off more than you can chew).

Key takeaway: There are many steps and components to preparing a competitive federal grant application. A federal grants consultant can help improve your chances of funding—and bring you peace of mind! But now you can get prepared with this federal grant checklist.

Your best competitive advantage will be an active grants program backed up with best practices. This will give your team experience, allow them to hone their skills, and prepare when the time is right. If you’re new to grant seeking, working with experts can help you build a robust pipeline of opportunities and show you best practices in action.

 

Fundraising Essentials to Maximize Your Year-End Giving Campaign

Know you need to try something new but don’t know where to start? This curated list of essential fundraising training, guides, and podcasts will help you raise the bar and raise more funds this year-end. Don’t repeat what you did last year! Instead, invest time to discover what experts are finding works.

YE Guides on Fundraising Essentials

If you learn best with a step-by-step guide, check out these top-downloaded guides written by industry experts. Whether you’re going to get specific with Giving Tuesday appeals or looking for the ultimate year-end giving guide, you’ll find them both below. Stock donations? Yes, you need to be prepared before year-end. Email campaigns? Yes! Just make sure you use the proven template created by Next After.

Ultimate Year-End Giving Guide (Blog)

Get Started with Giving Tuesday (???? PDF Guide)

The Ultimate Stock Donation Guide (???? PDF Guide)

Fundraising Email Template (???? PDF Guide)

Lessons from Experts

Don’t take our word for it! Listen to a podcast interview with Tim Sarrantonio or learn through a webinar taught by fundraising guru Rod Arnold. Tim will tell you the truth behind where donor behavior is moving and what is trending, and Rod will help you understand how to build a campaign that starts early and ends strong.

Understanding the Future of Individual Giving (????️PODCAST)

Year-End Giving Starts NOW! (????️ WEBINAR)

Other Favorites

Read a few of our team’s favorite year-end-themed articles:

11 Fail-Proof Ideas for Holiday Fundraisers (BLOG)

Boost Your End of Year Fundraising (BLOG)

 

 

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6 Easy Steps to Boost Donor Acquisition

 

If you have been in the fundraising arena for any amount of time, then you know that donor acquisition is the topic that keeps nonprofit professionals up at night. The fact is only 20% of first-time donors become recurring donors. This leads to database decay if you don’t have a constant stream of new donors to fill those gaps. But how are fundraisers supposed to keep bringing in new donors and keep their database fresh? How can you effectively put your mission in front of those people who are most likely to become a donor and, fingers crossed, donate again? And better yet, how do you and your organization keep your costs at a minimum while maximizing your donations?

There’s a certain comfort in doing things as they have always been. You can’t deny that. But, the problem is that the old ways simply aren’t working as well as they could be. While charitable giving has gone up since the pandemic’s beginning, organizations are not retaining these new donors. They are losing money because of it. According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, acquiring a new donor costs $1.25 just to raise $1. Meanwhile, the typical cost to raise the same amount from a current donor is just .20 cents! So it’s time to look at donor acquisition and donor retention through a new lens in the hope of more effective and efficient fundraising.

 

Donor Acquisition Outreach Methods

 

The nonprofit fundraiser always had go-to tools in their outreach toolbox. Those main tools are often advertising, events, phone solicitation, and word of mouth. While these are all considered effective outreach methods, they could all be doing just a bit more in terms of acquisition. Let’s take a look at each of these. Then, we can explore ways to aid your mission in achieving higher donor acquisition and donation levels, all while elevating donor retention. 

Let’s start with advertising. This is a highly sought-after way of getting your message out into the world. However, it can be ineffective and extremely costly. Most advertisements are delivered to the masses in hopes that maybe, just maybe, the message will resonate with someone. No matter what, everyone gets the same information in the same way. The problem with this method is that people are different. Not everyone belongs to your specific target audience. Putting your advertising in front of someone who doesn’t align with your mission wastes time and money. This is because they have a very low chance of converting to a donation.

Fundraising events are also a staple of the fundraising guru’s donor acquisition toolbox. Every large nonprofit has its big events that are considered essential to yearly fundraising. However, it is vital to take a closer look at the actual profitability of these events. The truth is they historically aren’t very profitable. The high costs of planning and executing these events can take a huge bite out of the funds raised. Although it’s nice to see that you raised $50,000 during an event for your nonprofit, it is also imperative to understand your event’s true ROI. No one wants to talk about the $25,000 used on the event space, food, valet, entertainment, and the time your staff spent planning and executing these events. Some might even respond, “But we are raising awareness for our mission!” However, there are other ways to raise awareness without using a big chunk of your fundraising budget. There are even ways to yield a greater ROI for those staple events you host yearly.

Different Methods

Phone solicitation is yet another outreach method often utilized by nonprofit professionals. And it makes sense. It’s a low-cost way of getting your message in the hands –  or ears – of potential donors. Does it work, though? When was the last time you answered a call from an unknown phone number? With the advent of phone scams and the ability to block unwanted calls, phone solicitation took a hit in the commercial and nonprofit sectors. The ROI just isn’t there unless you really get lucky. 

The last tool in our fundraising toolbox is word of mouth. This always seems like a tried and true method because we trust our friends and colleagues to steer us in the right direction regarding where we want to spend our money, whether a planned donation or a large purchase. However, it often takes significant time and effort to spread your message. Honestly, there are only so many people you can reach this way. It’s not necessarily a tactic to eliminate, but nonprofits cannot rely on word of mouth alone to make a difference in their fundraising efforts. 

It might be disheartening to hear that many tools in your fundraising toolbox aren’t quite what they used to be.

So how can you supercharge your outreach while decreasing the time and effort it takes to reach fundraising nirvana? Here are six easy steps to help you boost your donor acquisition.

 

Step 1: Define Your Goals

 

You should always begin with the end in mind. Set an actual goal and make it measurable. Much like the KPIs you might set for your staff, you should set KPIs for your fundraising goals. For example, you can set goals for donor retention, average donor growth, and rate of donation growth. Meeting your fundraising goals and working toward your nonprofit mission becomes much more attainable by beginning with the end in mind.

 

Step 2: Find Prospects Who Care

To meet your fundraising goals, your organization needs to find prospective donors that care about your mission. Often, development and fundraising teams dedicate their time to prospect research to accomplish this task. They look into information like demographics, wealth, and past nonprofit work to determine who could be interested in giving to their organization. The truth is, this is a time-consuming process. It is often far more costly than anyone wants to admit. This is where you might want to look into purchasing or renting donor prospect lists from list buying services that are privacy compliant and can deliver affinity-driven donor prospects. By doing this, you can hopefully find many more prospective donors who have an affinity for your cause. In turn, you can convert them into lifetime donors. 

 

Step 3: Get to Know Your Prospective Donors

 

Once you have created a list of people you know will be interested in giving to your cause, you should dive deeper into understanding what will speak to them. Whether you are planning an annual gala, a direct mail campaign, or another outreach method, this is key to sending the right message to the right person and ultimately winning over that prospect’s heart – and gift. 

We aren’t just talking about intent or demographic details either. None of that shows affinity or immediate action potential. You need to get down to the nitty-gritty of who these people are. You should define characteristics such as preferred contact method, interests, and giving potential. Knowing more about your prospects will put you in the driver’s seat and make your campaign much more successful.

 

Step 4: Plan Your Asks and Segment

All prospective donors are not alike. Some can give a single high-value gift, while others can give more frequently in smaller amounts. So it becomes imperative that you know the appropriate amount for each individual to achieve the best results.  

The best way to prepare for the big ASK is by segmenting your list of prospective donors. In doing so, you can define the unique message received by each prospect to ensure that it resonates and yields a greater return. Doing this ensures that you reach them how they are most likely to consume your message and act. It may be direct mail, a phone call, social media advertising, or another preferred method. 

 

Step 5: Perform Targeted Outreach

 

Once you have your ready-to-give donor prospects segmented, you need to consider how you will perform your outreach. The good thing is that there are far more options available now than there have been in the past. Gone are the days of “spray and pray” marketing tactics. More targeted advertising methods are available for nonprofit fundraisers to reach their donor prospects and surpass their fundraising goals. This can include direct mail, social media, and digital ad placement. With this kind of advertising, you can be intentional about the viewing audience and share your mission with those most likely to donate. Even better, you can choose where your audience sees these ads. Social media, banner ads on websites, and even advertising on streaming services, such as Netflix, are new options to update your donor acquisition toolbox. 

 

Step 6: Track Outcomes and Measure Success

 

Last but certainly not least, track the outcomes of each campaign so you can truly measure success. Remember those goals we talked about a few minutes ago? This is where you determine if you’ve reached them. Or maybe you found that you haven’t contacted them effectively, and it is time to improve your message. 

This can be as simple as a spreadsheet or as complex as hiring a service to get real-time conversion data from your campaign. Either way, measuring your campaign results and knowing the fruits of your labor are of utmost importance. You will begin to understand what worked and what didn’t in the campaign. From there, it will allow you to make conscious changes and improve outcomes over time. 

While these steps may take some time to implement, remember that each little move counts. Make one or two simple changes to your campaign strategy at a time, and before you know it, you will be attracting new mission supporters destined to last.

 

This spotlighted blog is courtesy of our friends, boodleAI.