Donor Acquisition: Bring New Supporters To The Fold

With the new Acquisition metrics in Fundraising, Analyze, you can analyze donors who gave to your organization for the first time — or again, after five years since their previous gift — during the current fiscal year. To further analyze the effectiveness of your acquisition efforts, you can also compare those donors — and their giving — to previous years' efforts. These acquisition efforts can help bring new supporters to the fold, which helps increase your donor base and lessens the impact of attrition. To help acquire donors, such as if the current efforts take a downward trend, consider these best practices.

 
Put yourself out there. Like with online dating, harness the power of the internet to promote your mission and connect with prospective donors. Consider search engine marketing — possibly with help through Google Ad Grants — to raise awareness of your organization and enable curious parties to find your website. Use social media like Facebook and Twitter to share meaningful content and engage with people interested with your mission. You can also use your online presence to build email lists for targeted communications — think of them as love letters — to court those who have expressed an interest in your organization and its mission. For more information, see the Social Media Best Practices Help.

Court the right people. Part of donor acquisition is knowing who to pursue. To help determine your constituents' overall wealth, Target Analytics, a division of Blackbaud, Inc., automatically screens your active individuals and prospects located in the United States based on high-confidence public assets, including any real estate, private company information, and public company holdings and options. In addition to their estimated total assets, you can view each constituent's overall wealth as a five-star rating; the higher the stars, the better the wealth rating, just like a movie review. To gauge a prospective donor's capacity to give, refer to this information under Ratings on their constituent record or in the Wealth rating column in a constituent list. For more information, see the Blackbaud NXT Ratings Help.


Of course, wealth doesn't necessarily indicate philanthropy. To help determine whether a wealthy constituent also has a likelihood to give, research their giving preferences, contributions to other organizations, and financial information. With Prospect Research Management, you can track these details to better develop strategies to cultivate a relationship and determine their giving potential. For more information, check out the Prospect Management Help.

Make a good impression. To help market your mission, grab prospects' attention with strong imagery that supports why the should give and promotes your organization's brand. Tell a simple story that promotes the work your organization does and provides tangible evidence of the impact of your donors' generosity. Provide a clear call to action that enables people to show their support — like a prominent Donate now! button on your website —and suggested gift amounts of increasing giving levels. Once a donor gives, work to retain them — acquisition for the long-term! — and track those efforts under Retention in Fundraising, Analysis. For more information, see the Donor Acquisition and Retention Help.


For more suggestions, best practices, and dating puns, download the eBook Cupid's Arrow: Targeted Acquisition to Court Supporters from npExperts.