As a fundraiser, you’ll want to make sure all the effort you put in to fundraise doesn’t get wasted on unsuccessful initiatives.
The following points from the Global Trends in Giving Report could help to focus your efforts and increase the amount of donations you receive.
With a combination of online and offline giving, this list has you covered as a precious resource to inspire your fundraising strategy.
Community-Driven Fundraising
We are constantly being bombarded with messages, images, pleas – Brands, people and not-for-profit organisations all vying for our attention. We are being dragged in all directions to notice what people are doing and what people are buying. So how do you get noticed among a sea of mass-marketing across all media?
To emerge through the noise, you need to take a different, more personal approach. Someone might scroll right on past a Facebook ad for your fundraising event, might they might take notice if the plea was instead from a friend.
You will likely already have loyal supporters who give to your cause – If you can inspire them to take your charity into their community, you could hugely benefit from peer-to-peer fundraising. Not only would you receive donations, you would also gain more supporters who will form an organically grown community which can keep on growing!
Recurring Giving
Almost half of donors give on a monthly basis via an enrollment scheme.
This recurring form of giving is so financially beneficial for your business. With the opportunity to communicate with these donors every month, you can keep them engaged and frequently remind them what a good cause they invest in and why they chose to give to you in the first place.
These type of donors tend to really care about your cause (otherwise they wouldn’t give every month). If someone chooses to donate to your charity, they are likely engaged and supportive of what you are doing. While they are in this frame of mind, it would make sense to encourage them to give on a monthly basis rather than a one-time gift.
The fact that 45% of donors give recurringly is a fantastic figure and implies that a huge number of donors are willing to commit to an organisation or cause they care about, and support them on a regular on-going basis. All you need to do, is ask!
Payment Preferences
As with so many things in this day and age, more and more is done online. People don’t tend to carry cash anymore, and prefer to pay for things on a card. And this is actually a great way to boost your donations. If you ask someone for a cash donation, it’s easy for people to say no – They haven’t got cash on them, they need the coins for the car park, etc. But when using a card to pay, those excuses are null and void.
Make sure you have easy to use online giving options – With a potentially huge gap between people giving online via credit card (60%) and giving with cash (6%) you would be missing out on a big donation boosting tool if your online methods weren’t functional.
And even better if you’re able to use portable donation points that can take payments with just a simple tap!
Lifestyle Choices
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a ‘typical’ donor? You know, the type of person you’re pretty certain would donate if you could just reach out to them.
Well, the data in this report would suggest that there is a type of person you could target, who would be more likely to choose to give charitably.
People with the following lifestyle choices were found to also be likely to partake in charitable giving:Those who vote
- Those who leave a charitable gift in their Will
- Those who volunteer
- Those who recycle
- Those who sign online petitions
This would also suggest that people who are choosing to give today aren’t just stationary supporters – They don’t want to sit back and watch what their money does, they want to be an active part of it. They want to see change, and they want to be a part of that change happening. This brings us back to why community-driven fundraising can be so successful.
You can also engage potential supporters by using these lifestyle choices in your marketing material, to appeal to their interests and nature and show that you are like-minded in your ambition to make change happen.
Social Media Platforms Inspire Giving
I’m sure by now that you’ve got various social media platforms, and possibly even have an employee who’s time is devoted to your social media strategy, communicating to supporters and catching the eye of new donors.
Social media has an enormous influence on fundraising and provides so many opportunities to drive initiatives, ask for donations, inspire community projects and share success stories. Every Like, Share, Retweet, Regram builds your followers and increases your reach.
If you’re wondering which platforms are most worthy of your time and efforts, then data from this report suggests that Facebook (56%), Instagram (20%) and Twitter (13%) are your best online fundraising friends.
This is like community spirit and organically grown supporters, but on a potentially quicker and more dynamic scale.
The other great thing about this, as discussed in a previous blog, is that people love to look good in-front of their peers. If you can see a friend has donated £20 on a Just Giving fundraising page, you are probably more likely to match that donation or even increase what you give.
And don’t forget to ask your followers to share your content and spread the word on your great cause!
Donation Size Trends
Social media might fuel sponsorship donations and organically grown online communities of supporters, but it’s been found that the donations gained from social media tend to be smaller in value.
There seems to be a direct correlation between communication method and donation size – 40% of donations under $100 were inspired by social media, whereas 33% of donations over $1000 were spurred on by email.
So, don’t forfeit email communication for social media – There needs to be a careful balance between the two so you can successfully encourage both types of donations.
Be Grateful
Say thank you! Donor’s love to be thanked, but apparently there is one particular mode of communication that people prefer for this.
They want it to be personal, but they also don’t want to feel like money and time has been mis-spent by writing a tonne of hand-written thank you notes.
Instead, a personalised email is the favourite with a staggering 68% of donors saying they would rather receive a thank you by email rather than letter (20%), postcard (5%), social media (3%) or text message (3%).
Hopefully that has got your brain ticking with ideas to put into practice! Check back next week when we’ll finish our list of trends in giving and how you could use them to boost your fundraising.