Five Good Ideas to Increase Your Nonprofit Fundraising Revenue
Let’s keep it simple – five easy ways to increase your Nonprofit’s fundraising revenue.
Treat Major Donors Differently
Leverage Your Board
Increase Foundation Proposals
Create a Monthly Donor Program
Grow Your List of Prospects
Treat Major Donors Differently
- What amount is a major gift for your organization?
- How do you treat major donors differently? Think about this one! Do you assign a board member to build a relationship with the donor? Do you remove them from the mailing list (answer NO!)?
- 10% of donors will provide 90% of your organization’s funds
- Listen to your major donors
- Uncover motivational triggers
- Message and involve them
- Increase stewardship
- Try to meet face-to-face
Leverage Your Board
- Is your Board 100% giving?
- Does everyone make a PERSONALLY SIGNIFICANT annual financial contribution? This is key! Not their company – as an individual
- This is not a hobby, they need to have ownership
- Have Board Members solicit each other
- Members serve on at least one committee
- Audition non-Board Members
- Take Board recruitment very seriously
- Orientation is essential
- Is the Board large enough?
- Put term limits in your bylaws
- Orient Board around fundraising tasks
- Promote (everyone can do this)
- Thank (everyone can do this)
- Ask (not everyone will do this and some will only ask folks they know, others may only ask folks they don’t know – find out their preferences)
- Conduct a prospecting session with Board Member to identify prospective donors and map out ways to cultivate and approach these prospects
- Assign donors and prospects to Board Members and fundraising volunteers
- Watch out for compassion fatigue (spread the work around, don’t make a high performing Board Member a ‘victim of their success’
Increase Foundation Proposals
Are you applying to the Same Old Suspects (that everyone else is too)?
Find new foundation prospects
- Research on Candid
- Use this site to research the tax returns of foundations
- Find out WHO a foundation has funded
- WHERE the grantees are located
- HOW MUCH they give
Create a Monthly Donor Program
- Easier to give $41.67/mth than $500
- Convert a $50 donor to a $120 donor
- Monthly donors give 2 to 3 times longer than single gift donors
- Inertia on YOUR side!
- Reduce fundraising costs
- Produce predictable income streams
- Focus on service delivery not fundraising
- Appeal to younger and older donors
- Build stronger relationship with donors
- Can still solicit one-time gifts
- Add credit card and EFT to your website
- Encourage donors to give via EFT
- EFT donors have a 92% to 98% annual renewal rate
- Credit cards expire!
- Create an exclusive giving club
- Multiple donors
- New donors
- Lapsed donors
- Young donors and older donors on fixed income
- An upgrade of only $0.17 a day = $60/yr
- Monthly donors = OUTSTANDING planned giving opportunities
Grow Your List of Prospects
- 7x more likely to receive a donation from a current donor
- That said……..
- You must grow our donors
- Collect names through online research and recommendations from donors and Board Members
- Major / donors to sister organizations
- Foundation trustees
- List brokers (www.namesinthenews.com)
- Share / Buy / Rent lists with other organizations
- Borrow lists of political donors
- Collect names at events
- Hold an event
- Hold a joint event
- Ask current donors for contacts
- If you do not think the prospect will find your organization relevant – then the “prospect” is not a “prospect”!
Author
Mike is a recognized expert, thought leader, advisor and speaker in the Nonprofit world. Over the past four decades, Mike served as an Executive Director, COO, see more
