5 Tips for Successful Fundraising Campaigns
Fundraising is more than just raising funds to support mission-critical activities; it is about thoughtfully engaging stakeholders and supporters in your mission on an ongoing basis. Industry practice is to put significant time and resources into end-of year campaigns. However, planning and executing fundraising campaigns throughout the year can bolster your pipeline, help cast a wider net, and draw the attention of donors when they are not inundated by requests from other organizations.
Let’s get started! Here are 5 tips to keep stakeholders engaged and build successful fundraising campaigns:
Develop a plan
Set realistic goals
Optimize communications
Emphasize the extra
Engage your board
1. Develop a Plan
Give yourself time to plan (3-4 months): fundraising campaigns are a marathon, not a sprint, and the time spent on planning is well worth the long-term return on investment.
Establish your goals: clearly articulate the outcomes you are hoping to achieve. For example, thinking through questions like: what does success look like for this campaign?
Set responsibilities: identify staff members' roles and designate responsibilities for the various stages of the campaign; then ensure that they are being held accountable for their responsibilities.
Identify your audience/stakeholders: defining the capacity, interest, and mission-alignment of your audience will play a critical role in the marketing of the campaign and its eventual success.
2. Set Realistic Goals
Base your goals on past performance: past campaigns metrics are an effective measure of realistic goals for campaigns that are project-based, seasonal, or based on specific programming. Adding an increase of 10-20% to the average of the past few campaigns is a helpful formula to help set realistic goals.
Be creative: segment donor lists based on capacity and interests, and tailor campaign collateral to those segments. What will motivate smaller donors most? Larger donors? A small donor may see more impact to being 1 of 50 donors while it may be harder to see the impact of giving $25 towards a $10,000 goal. In contrast, larger donors may stretch to help to get a significant amount of the way there with a $1,000-$2,000 donation.
Try to secure a matching contribution: gift matching greatly motivates both the entity or donor making the contribution as well as individual donors whose gift is multiplied and therefore has greater impact.
Align your goals with impact: making clear connections and articulating campaign impact illustrates the tangible effect of donor support and makes them much more likely to give again in the future.
3. Optimize Communications
Avenues of communication: create an abbreviated communications plan based on your unique campaign goals and audience. Begin by deciding how you will communicate with stakeholders: direct mail, email, text, social media, or a combination.
Build on past successes: analyze past performance to inform your communications strategy, from high level strategic decisions to more granular ones like identifying the best days and times to reach your audience.
Set the schedule: strategic touchpoints are key, design a communication plan with an outreach cadence that has at least 3 touchpoints.
Plan ahead: draft communications at least 30 days in advance. It is even more important to do this if you have decided on sending direct mail, in which case, you should plan for postal delays and pad your timeline accordingly.
4. Emphasize the Extra
Highlight the unique aspects of your program or model: include facets of your program that are above and beyond traditional models.
Tie the request to your mission: introduce supporters to the people at the core of your mission. Supporters who feel emotionally connected to your work become long term donors.
Make the ask as tangible as possible: sharing the immediate and tangible effect of what the campaign will support resonates more deeply.
5. Engage Your Board
Leverage your board for matching gifts: ask your board to come together with a collective matching gift to incentivize others to give.
Board member connectors: your board is one of your greatest untapped resources and they care about the success of your work! Encourage board members to participate in outreach, reconnect with lapsed or renewing donors, and introduce their contacts and friends to your mission and the impact of your work in the community.
Equip your board members: give board members the tools to reach out to their networks, like language for emails, marketing collateral, and talking points.
Key Takeaways
Be clear and intentional from planning through execution.
Identify and leverage the resources already at your disposal to strengthen your annual fundraising activities.
Lean into your mission, partners, and community to help you create memorable campaigns that keep your donors engaged in your important work.
For more help with campaign planning, please access our free, comprehensive Campaign Planning Tool.
