Growing Your Not-For-Profit’s Donor Base

Last week I was in a meeting where I was asked my thoughts on how to grow a donor base for a not-for-profit organization. And while we all know the best way to ensure your organization continues growing is to retain the donors you have already attracted to your cause, filling the leaky bucket or building your base so you can expand and grow your programs, is critical to a healthy organization. Here are a few techniques to boost your donor acquisition:

1.      Understand Your Donors.  A donor persona or profile is critical to knowing the demographics, preferences, behaviours, and interests of your existing donor file. Knowing this will help you to create a targeting profile or look-a-like audience to help reach new prospects.

2.      Donor Segmentation.  While this process often is like developing your donor persona, it goes further in that it matches characteristics together for additional targeting. Gift size, frequency of giving, lifetime of giving, preferred communication methods, which acquisition channels they came into the organization through, can help in the targeting of new prospects and categorize them.

3.      Optimize your Website’s Landing Pages and Site.  Ensuring that online users are immediately engaged with your landing page, can easily navigate through your content, has skimmable, actionable headlines and clickable calls to action (CTAs), and is optimized for desktop and mobile applications will ensure every potential donor enjoys a seamless online experience.

4.      Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is critical to helping your organization rank higher, reach farther, and grow faster. Optimizing your site for both search engines and users boosts your online visibility, and keyword research, on-page optimizations, and content can attract and engage audiences.

5.      Apply for Google Ad Grants.  This charitable initiative run by Google provides not-for-profit organizations with up to $10,000 a month for Google Search advertising. Google is a key search engine, and grant helps expand your organizations search advertising campaigns.

6.      Develop Content-Rich Campaigns. This applies to both direct mail and email campaigns, broadcast, and social media.  Ensuring your appeals have compelling imagery and incorporate the 3 R’s of nonprofit storytelling – Resonance, Relevance. and Respect – will help prospective donors resonate with your cause more quickly, piquing their interest in donating for the first time.

7.      Create Social Media CTAs. This versatile donor acquisition tool is vital for sharing photos, videos, and downloadable resources.  But you can easily tag and share your posts with relevant communities that would be interested in spreading your message.  Include clickable CTAs for important functions – namely, donating, subscribing, and advocating.

Growing your donor base is critical to ensuring the health of every not-for-profit.  If you are not growing, you’re shrinking. And while this sounds so cliché, if you are not planning every year for growth and expansion, you will quickly find your organization unable to fund the vital programs it strives to provide.