Meaningful communications that lead to generous and happy donors.

Developing a Donor Focused Communication Strategy

Brian BarelaDonor Experience Advocate@brianbarela

The more donor-centric my communications became, the more money I raised.

Sending more communications, even if it’s “social” media, will not significantly impact your ministry partner development efforts.

From Separate to ConnectedFrom Somewhere to AnywhereFrom Channel Specific to Channel AgnosticFrom I to YouFrom Scarcity to Abundance

A donor-focused communication strategy

Every communication sent to donors, whether it’s on email, social media, direct mail, phone, or SMS must work together to create a meaningful experience. Break down the silos and align your content to tell a powerful story.

From Separate to Connected

It’s critical to create digital content that allows current and potential donors to find out more about you and your organization as smartphones and tablet adoption fuels continuous content consumption.

From Somewhere to Anywhere

One communication on one channel, or one message forced into a variety of channels without optimizing for context will limit donor engagement and ultimately donations.

From Channel Specific to Channel Agnostic

Your donors receive personalized experiences when they shop, eat, and play. They crave the same when they give. Shifting the focus from you or your organization to them is the place to start getting personal.

From I to You

Talk about opportunities and outcomes more than needs and problems. Your donors want a for good return on their investment.

From Scarcity to Abundance

The tools and preferences of your donors have changed ...

The way they send and receive information has changed...

The tools they use to connect with people have evolved too...

SOCIAL media makes people happy. “Sincere, Open, Collaborative, Interested, Authentic, Likable”

“SOCIAL” created by Vala Afshar

It’s critical to think about the emotions we want to elicit and the context in which our donors interact with our communications. Social

media provides fundraisers unprecedented opportunities to demonstrate an interest in their donors lives.

Developing an donor-focused communication strategy will allow you to

multiply the time you spend on MPD.

A survey of 15 full-time fundraisers revealed a deep care for their donors, but communicate

with them on average 1x a month, usually through email and/or direct mail. Over 90% of

respondents did not segment their donors into groups. They shared they were uncomfortable

with social media as a primary communication channel and do not understand how it can

improve their fundraising efforts.

“Lack of time” “Desire to call ministry

partners more frequently”

Donors can perceive redundant communications from fundraisers as

impersonal. “Only 16% of donors gave more

money the following year.”--Fundraising Effectiveness Project

The number of or % of new partners per year.

Average length a ministry partner donates.

% increases in amount of special gifts or end-of-year donations.

You can measure whether your fundraising efforts are working by looking at the

following key performance indicators:

Average gift size

More Tailoring, Not More Time

Spending more time refining a communication strategy without thinking through first how well

it’s tailored to the preferences of your donors will not significantly improve your fundraising

efforts.

Your current and future ministry partners have limited attention, scan more than they read, receive more requests for

donations, and use more devices than ever to communicate

They should enjoy reading your communications.

Have a friend over read over the last two or three communications you sent to a donor. Ask

them to share with what they are thinking about and feeling about it to understand whether

they are accomplishing what you want.

Your current and future ministry partners have a limited amount of attention.

infographic courtesy of ExactTarget

It’s critical to improve the engagement your donors have with your communications, as both

devices and applications dramatically increase.

Your current and future ministry partners have more options when choosing to make

a donation than ever before.

The number of nonprofits has increased from 1,259,764 million to 1,574,674 million today. The growth

rate of the nonprofit sector has surpassed the rate of both the

business and government sectors. --source

The number of nonprofits has increased by 25% in the

last 10 years.

Your current and future ministry partners use more devices to communicate and

consume information.

infographic courtesy of ExactTarget

Unifying your communications across direct mail, email, and social will increase the

amount of time and attention your partners give you.

Casual

Connected

Cordial

Each channel (email, direct mail, social) of communication can be used to accomplish a variety of goals.

Your ministry partners have a variety of channel preferences and may interpret communications differently than you.

Optimize Email

Email is still the most frequently used digital channel by the majority of your

donors.

“Sorry for the late delay in getting back with you. Work has been crazy with year-end stuff and your email

kept getting buried in the other 300+ emails!”

--Donor

“For the first time ever, more emails are opened on mobile

phones than on desktops/laptops.”

--The Importance of Email in a Cross-Channel World, ExactTarget

Mobile optimized email communications can dramatically increase donor

engagement.

Email services such as Mailchimp provide the following benefits:

Customize the design and format for smartphones, tablets, and traditional desktops/laptops.

Track how many people open your emails, and if they click on a link.

Rate your subscribers based on interaction.

Receive a notification when an email is no longer valid or when someone unsubscribes.

Create segments (groups) of people.

Visit mailchimp.com/features for more information

How to increase the number of people who open, read, and respond to your email.

Compose email for the size of a smartphone screen; increase the font to at least 16pt, remove header images, keep text to no more than 3 sentences.

Eliminate PDFs as attachments to decrease the amount of time it takes for donors to open and read your updates.

Segment your emails into groups. The first segment to create would be your top 10-20 donors. Other segments could include geography (by state or region), demography (age), or interests (college students).

Using open and click rates to determine future content, especially email titles. Remember most people use the title to decide whether or not to open an email. Take an extra 1-2 minutes to make your email title as engaging and “openable” as possible. Say “thank you” more. Consider ways to make the donor the subject of the communication, rather than you or your organization.

From $60 a year to $600: Mailchimp’s tracking and ratings features

led to a significant increase in giving. In order to raise a significant amount of new financial support, one fundraiser ran an increase campaign among his existing donors. In the past, the people targeted in the campaign would be prioritized by current gift size.

Using Mailchimp’s user rating feature allowed a new way to measure donor interest beyond their average annual donation amount.

A donor that gave just $60 a year but rated extremely high by Mailchimp decided to increase to $600 a year when asked. Without this additional metric the fundraiser may have passed over this person in favor of those who gave larger amounts.

Additional Email TipsEmail communications should provide content that complements your direct mail efforts. If your direct mail letter focuses on a ministry success story, use an email to share a personal story. Be sure to stagger the distribution of your direct mail, email updates, and any social media posts to signal to your donor an awareness that you are interested in them throughout the month, rather than on a specific day or week.

Use links to blog posts, videos, or websites to create opportunities for deeper engagement. While most people scan email throughout the week or during work hours, many have long periods of free time (think parents at a soccer game). Providing links inside an email keep the length brief but allow the donor to engage beyond the email if they have time and interest.

Capture the email of both husband and wife. The husband and wife may share a personal email account, but both may have separate and even multiple work email accounts. Be sure to spend time throughout the year seeking to update and acquire the most used email address for both the husband and wife.

Optimize Facebook

Facebook offers the ability to regularly interact with your partners around their

interests while they are using their smartphone.

“Facebook revealed a new design for News Feed that includes larger visuals, more opportunities to drill down to specific types of content and a user interface that is more

consistent with Facebook’s mobile design.” --Inside Facebook

On average Fans see 1/500

updates, or 0.016%, from a page they have liked.

90% of fans who like a page, never visit the page again, interacting only with content on their newsfeed.

Beware of using Pages as the primary means of communicating with your

partners on Facebook.

Many of your ministry partners use Facebook pages to transact with brands,

not interact with people. By using a Facebook page instead of a profile you risk

coming across as impersonal.

Infographic courtesy of Subscribers, Fans and Followers, ExactTarget

1. Go to Facebook.com/bookmarks/lists

2. Select “Create List”

3. Name the List

4. Add ministry partners to the List

Create a list of your ministry partners to understand and interact around their

interests.

The updates your ministry partners share can help you build meaningful relationships with

them.

Liking, commenting, or sharing a donor’s update provides a high-touch interaction with

minimum effort. If you are using a CRM or database to manage donor information you can

enrich the basic contact or giving history data with information about their interests.

The updates that gain the most likes, comments and shares combine an

interesting photo with text that invites activity.

“102M People Accessed Solely From Mobile In June, Up 23%

Since March.”--Facebook Better Get Mobile Quick.

Posts that include an image take up 4x as much space than a post that

only uses text.

Optimize the text and images for small screens (tablets +

smartphones).

Optimize Your Online Presence

49% of mid-level and major donors will always visit a nonprofit’s website before making a

first-time gift or donation.

Google calls this the ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth), the moment when

a person makes a significant decision based on information they

access online.

“79% of consumers now say they use a smartphone to help with

shopping.”

Your website and social media accounts provide information that current and potential donors

may use to evaluate whether or not to start or continue giving. They may also compare you to

other charitable giving options using online research.

Traditional Decision Making Process

By the time a donor meets with you in person the chances are high that

have researched you online and through word of mouth, and have

already made their decision. Realize that the in-person meeting is no

longer the “first” moment of truth in the decision making process.

The ZMOT introduces a new step in the decision making process.

Google’s ZMOT reveals a new critical step in the decision making process

that fundraisers must understand and optimize. Consider an informal

interview with 1-2 donors to ask them about the ways they use mobile

devices, social media, and the web to research and give to nonprofits.

The number of sources people use to make a decision are dramatically increasing.

Many donors are looking at websites and asking a variety of people about

you or the nonprofit you represent. Consider all the possible online

sources of information and be prepared to answer questions or respond

to questions that may come from your nonprofit’s website, or online news

sources.

Charity: Water understands the importance of winning the ZMOT with potential donors.

charity: water’s website provides a highly visual, easy to understand

experience that focuses on the donor, rather than the organization.

Websites that use multimedia (video, photos and text), have plenty of whitespace and

automatically change to format a smartphones, tablets and traditional screens will ensure a positive experience for current and potential

ministry partners. 1. Visit google.com

2. Type in “free tumblr style Wordpress themes”

http://bit.ly/freemobilethemes

Visit the link below to explore 18 Free Wordpress themes:

Donor Engagement

Cru conducted over 62 hours of interviews with ministry partners who donated to a

variety of ministries. 3 core themes emerged:

3. Supporting an individual brings to life the organization’s mission and personalizes the impact that donors are making in a way that giving to a faceless organization does not. This can only be done when it’s relational.

1. Donors ultimately give to people, not to organizations.

2. While donors need to be personally aligned with the organizations they back, ultimately and whenever possible, donors give to people.

Donors ultimately give to people, not organizations.

While donors need to be personally aligned with the organizations they back, ultimately

and whenever possible, donors give to people.

“A free party game for horrible people.”

Raised $15,570 from 758 people, $11,000+ over their goal

Sold over 100,000 copies

Kickstarter campaigns demonstrate the power of people giving to people.

Crowdfunding campaigns work best for short-term trips and projects and acquiring a first

gift.

Crowdfunding campaigns work best for short-term projects, and are least

effective for monthly sustainer campaigns. Gaining the first gift,

regardless of the amount, should be the goal in a campaign of this

nature. After cultivating the first gift, it’s then best to come up with a

plan for gaining a larger donation or converting them to a monthly

amount.

Supporting an individual brings to life the organization’s mission and personalizes the impact that donors are making in a way that

giving to a faceless organization does not. This can only be done when it’s relational.

“Donors are more passionate than we expected.”

“Many donors want to be valued beyond their capacity to give money. They want to be partners. This more accurately describes their desired behavior.”

charity: water’s donate your birthday campaign reveals how passionate

people are about the causes they support.

Donor-centric communication can significantly improve donor acquisition,

retention, and engagement.

I led Jenny to Christ yesterday!

Your investment in our ministry allowed me to lead Jenny to Christ yesterday!

Please pray for me as I’m speaking to 500 college students tomorrow.

You can make a difference in the lives of 500 college students tomorrow. Please pray tomorrow at 12pm that I can share the Gospel boldly with them.

I’m going on a six week summer project to serve college students from around the country. Your generous prayer and financial support will allow me to mentor college students during a short-term trip this summer.

These are examples of changing the

subject from the fundraiser to the

donor to increase interest and

engagement.

You are awesome.

What’s happening because of your investment is even more awesome.

Thank you for being so awesome.

A tongue in cheek format for writing a donor-

centered communication.

There is a stark difference between donor-centric and organization-centric communications that significantly impacts how a person feels and

thinks.

“Receipt for your donation to Saran” “One Time Online Donation Submission”

“Horses are not food. Save them from slaughter.”

“Create peace of mind”

The examples on the left side focus on the donor and the benefits they

receive from their donation. The examples on the left focus on the

organization and the problems they seek to solve.

From Separate to ConnectedFrom Synchronous to MobileFrom Channel Specific to Channel AgnosticFrom I to YouFrom Scarcity to Abundance

A donor-focused communication strategy