By Agneta Ronceret 
10 Ideas for Fundraising for Your Association
Fundraising is an art! From traditional methods to more contemporary ones, raising funds requires delicacy and expertise. You need to find the right balance between communication and engagement (not only from donors but also from your organization) to attract and engage your prospects.
Thanks to the digitalization of nonprofits, it has never been easier to reach out to the most charitable souls.An explosion of contacts that you need to sensitize to your cause, convince to help you in your missions, and finally retain. It is therefore essential for associations, foundations, NGOs, and cultural institutions to equip themselves with suitable tools, such as Eudonet’s CRM, to facilitate all tasks related to fundraising and its strategy.
In this article, we propose to introduce the foundation stones for a successful fundraising campaign.
First things first: Identifying your targets
Depending on whether you are addressing your loyal donors, potential donors, the general public, major donors or sponsors, the strategy for your fundraising campaign will not be the same. It is essential that before launching your campaign, you segment your contact database according to these different profiles to easily address the right message to the right person.
In addition to segmenting by type of donor, classifying them by age groups will allow you to adapt your communication and favor the best channels according to the generations you are targeting. For example, younger donors will be more easily reachable through the latest trendy social networks, such as TikTok or Snapchat.
In this task, your CRM will be of great help. You can easily segment your targets in a few clicks and determine which contact will benefit from which campaign strategy.
For each generation of donors you target, it is essential to understand the donor journey that corresponds to them. Understanding each of these “major profiles” will give you the keys to develop a generational strategy and better engage them in your cause.
Which levers to focus on for your fundraising?
To engage your donors in your fundraising campaign, you rely on both your existing donors and the acquisition of new donors. In the first case, your CRM will be your preferred tool. In the second case, the visibility of your foundation on the web will be your starting point.
Optimizing Visibility to Optimize Fundraising
Thanks to the widespread use of the internet, people of all ages can access your organization’s image, values, and commitment. It is therefore essential to invest some time in optimizing your visibility.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows you to increase your visibility on the web organically. This involves working on two fronts: reinforcing the semantics of your web content (website, blog) by using keywords on which you want to be positioned to appear in the top search results, and optimizing your code tags.
This tagging can include metadata descriptions of your web pages as well as tags for your images. All of this is done to please search engine algorithms and offer relevant results to internet users.
One-Time and Regular Donations, and Membership Fees
When it comes to financing, the notion of donations is the first thing that comes to mind. And one of the attractions for donors is also the tax deduction for their act of generosity. For this, you must provide them with tax receipts.
Additionally, an important source of income is membership fees to join the association.
Crowdfunding and Online Collections
To achieve your fundraising goals, you can also rely on the generosity of internet users. Crowdfunding platforms and other online collections allow you to reach a broad audience to finance a specific project. You can offer your generous internet users not only the required tax receipt (if applicable) but also physical rewards (such as a gift) or symbolic rewards (such as mentioning the donor in the association’s communications, for example).
Fostering Donor Loyalty
Tax receipts, rewards, thank-you notes, invitations to foundation events, and other small gestures are ideal for engaging and retaining your donors over the long term. It is more expensive to acquire a new donor than to retain an existing one. Therefore, it is natural that you incorporate a donor retention strategy into your development plan.
Word of mouth
Beyond being convinced by your action and a fervent supporter of your cause, there is no better ambassador for your NGO than a loyal donor or a satisfied volunteer in their relationship with you. The small attentions we talked about contribute to this. You can therefore hope that the commitment of your donor resonates in their personal and professional circles. To promote this approach, integrate an Ambassador (or Sponsorship) component into your fundraising strategy. You can offer, for example, events to which your most loyal donors can invite people from their circles.
Social media
As we mentioned earlier, social media is also an excellent way to develop your online visibility. Whether organically (SMO: Social Media Optimization) or through paid means (SMA: Social Media Advertising), you will reach a very large audience, raise awareness for your cause, and potentially generate a lot of donations.
To convert them into future donors, you can create donation forms and/or surveys to share on your various social platforms with your CRM. You can thus develop your contact base to solicit as soon as a fundraising campaign is launched.
SEA and Google Ads Grants
SEA (Search Engine Advertising or Search Engine Marketing) involves promoting content from your website or blog through paid search. This technique also relies on the keywords you have determined in your SEO strategy.
Organizing events
Charitable events are the perfect opportunity to raise more funds. Kermesses, galas, sports events, etc.: there are many options available to you.
Selling products or services
By selling products (goodies, pastries, auctions, flea markets) or services (your volunteers can engage in personal services, for example), you offer an instant reward to your donors. This is a very interesting lever to ensure their satisfaction and loyalty.
Organizing a raffle
In the same vein, you can organize a raffle to raise funds. A simple and effective principle based on selling tickets and drawing one or more winners for various prizes.
Organizing a marathon or charity event, and deploying fundraising campaigns using a CRM
With the development of the #Fit-life (“healthy lifestyle”), especially among younger generations, organizing sports events is a trend that one should be able to rely on. For this type of event, it is often the participants who act as ambassadors to their entourage to collect funds that will then be donated to your association. This is a strategy known as “peer-to-peer”.
But just because it’s a “marathon” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a “sporting event”. The marathon “Foundation-style” can also take the form of a long event. The Telethon is the most well-known example of this. Your marathon (which may not necessarily be televised) could take the form of an open stage for the public to discover new talents.
Organizing a charity gala
Finally, a charity gala is an event that is particularly interesting due to its versatility. You can use it to thank your donors, patrons, and volunteers, but also and above all to convince them to provide additional financial support. According to the tradition from across the Atlantic, auctions and raffles take place during these events.
Deploying your fundraising campaigns with CRM
After building up your contact database through web forms or with the help of purchased files, and when your segmentation is ready, you can rely on your favorite communication channels.
With the email editor in your CRM, you will be able to easily solicit your donors massively or by segment. The mail merge fields in your editor will allow you to address your communications to each recipient to personalize your message. And with marketing automation features, you can schedule your follow-ups on the day and time of your choice or your thank-you messages when a donation has been made.
Postal mail remains a preferred channel depending on the segment you are addressing. Also, the mail merge features in your CRM will allow you to personalize your letters, just like the mail merge fields in the email editor.
Your means to collect funds
Now that your fundraising campaign is launched, you need to offer a simple way for your donors to be generous. While street collections and receiving checks following a letter are still widely used in your fundraising, digital donations are developing and tend to become more permanent.
Therefore, it is crucial for an association, foundation, or NGO to get on board by offering online payment. These platforms offer many advantages for nonprofit organizations:
- They optimize the donor’s journey by responding to the immediacy of the donor’s desire;
- They make donations more accessible and immediate (coverage of the 3G / 4G / 5G network);
- They promote donor satisfaction by simplifying the act of giving;
- They encourage engagement from younger generations (Millennials, Generation X, Generation Y).
But above all, online payment platforms allow you to facilitate the processing of donations. Thanks to synchronization with your CRM, each donation is directly recorded in your tool, linked to the donor’s contact record but also directed to the relevant campaign. You can easily assign an RFM score to your donors, analyze your campaigns at a glance in your dashboard and on the most relevant indicators for you, or even issue tax receipts in just a few clicks.
Eudonet CRM: the partner for non-profit organizations
For over 20 years, Eudonet has designed and enhanced a CRM solution that helps nonprofit organizations develop their fundraising and make donor relations a success. Do you have a CRM project?
Do you have questions about what Eudonet’s CRM can do for your non-profit organization? Our experts are at your disposal!
