Guest blog by Raviraj Hegde, the director of growth at Donorbox.
For nonprofits of any size and type, reaching out to donors and prospects is key. But, what outreach strategies should your nonprofit focus on each month? The more you involve your community in your organization, the more support you’ll receive.
An effective outreach strategy can encourage the community to donate to your cause. Implementing these strategies monthly can help gain positive attention from donors.
Part 1: Establish a Goal
Who do you want to reach through your outreach? What issues(s) does your nonprofit solve? You’ll want a certain level of community outreach depending on your organization’s goals and mission. Think about what goal is realistic for you to set and stick with it.
It’s likely your goal will have sub-goals. Defining your goals before trying to reach out to donors can save you time and funds in the long run.
For Example, suppose your organization motivates donors to recycle to help keep rivers clean and wants to raise its yearly donor engagement from 4% to 5.1%. Using Facebook ads, it’s possible to inform enough people of this and increase donor engagement by years end.
Part 2: Create A Plan for How You’ll Complete Your Goals
Setting a target goal is necessary to deliver a successful outreach strategy. But, it’s also necessary to plan for how you’ll reach it.
Your nonprofit helps the homeless in your city, how can you do this effectively? If your nonprofit offers job training to prisoners to help reintegrate them into society, think of how you can do this effectively. If you work with individuals with disabilities, how are they part of the community now and how can you make overall community involvement even better?
Let’s look at the elements of the plan:
Channel: Should you start a social media campaign to create awareness? Or would direct mail be more effective?
Target audience: It’s an important question you should think about, it can harm your organization not to. Neighbors? Clients? Parents? Patients? Users? Existing and past donors? New donors?
Clients/served by mission: You should ask yourself who does your organization help? Who would have the most interest in this work?
You can find the answers to these questions when creating audience personas.
Creating audience personas can help reach your target audience and potential donors. An audience persona is a perceived view of what your audience looks like.
You’ll create these personas with the information you gather through research. This can come from donor phone calls, donor surveys, or your websites analytical data. Armed with this information, you can tailor your message to appeal to them.
But remember, when your goals change, your audience changes, so your personas should change. You’ll want to recreate your personas to connect with that audience
You won’t convince everyone to rally behind you.
Message: You need to send the right message to the right people for the best results. But what’s the right message. This is going to be different for different audiences.
Timing: How often do you need to reach out to each audience group?
Let’s look at the above in more detail: What’s the best way to send your message to your audience?
Once you’ve identified your audience, you can see what’s the best message, the best channel and the most optimum timing.
In this age of modern technology, it’s easier than ever to grow your reach online. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can supply incredible tools for nonprofits.
But, don’t be afraid to use some good ‘old-fashioned’ channels too. Phone calls, brochures or direct mail can be more effective in some cases.
Depending on your target audience, you’ll get better results with different tools. Test things out and see what works best for your organization.
For example, social media can work well with millennials. Social media use even among the elderly from 65 and up has increased 34% says pew research center.
Part 3: Set Deadlines
Setting goals is great, but you want to accomplish them in a certain time frame. Determine a time frame to complete your goals. If you want to plan a community meeting to discuss how best community members can get involved with your organization, determine what time frame this should be done in.
After all, your organization has other goals it must reach, be sure to schedule your activities on a calendar, keeping in mind what gets done and when. Those who plan always win.
For example, plan to send 2 monthly email messages once every 2 weeks to keep donors informed of your current activities.
Part 4: Create Your Message
Every nonprofit has a message they want to share. From making a sick child’s dream come true to creating a drug-awareness program, clearly defining your message is key to your success.
Find your message. Let donors know what you stand for and what you mean to accomplish. Let donors know how they can help. This will help keep donor attention. Make sure your message exemplifies what you stand for while also being memorable.
For example, the March of Dimes message is to “improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality.” From this, you get the entire scope of the job they’re trying to accomplish. Your message should thoroughly explain what your nonprofit plans to achieve.
Part 5: Learn from Your Results
The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That’s not what you want for your nonprofit. For this reason, you should analyze your results and learn from them.
Donor Management Software is perfect for this as it helps nonprofits monitor donor activity. This software tells you which donors donated, when, and how much was donated. It allows you to communicate even better with them, make sure that thank you letters go out right away and you can even follow up with some surveys to find out your donor’s satisfaction, questions and interest.
And of course, it’s important to confirm that the messages you send resonate with the donor personas you created and you actually generate some new donors and raised some money in the process!
Use this 5-part plan to create attention grabbing messages or plan thought-out events accordingly. No matter how small or large you are, how new or established you are as a nonprofit, anybody can improve on your nonprofits success!
Raviraj Hegde is the director of growth at Donorbox. He is a digital strategist with over 5 years of experience. He is passionate about helping nonprofits with online fundraising. He enjoys playing badminton and travels the world when he’s not at work.
