Clairity Click-it: Powerful Ways to Increase Fundraising Revenue

Don’t go batty! “Click-it!” to find the resources you need to stay grounded.

This week’s Click-it is dedicated to helping you increase your fundraising revenue through a number of different strategies: monthly giving, sponsorships, targeted campaigns (e.g., #GivingTuesday), targeted communications, cause marketing, crowdfunding, cultivating mid-level donors, and more. These strategies will both help elevate awareness for your cause and increase your base of supporters.

And towards the end of the “Click-it,” as usual, you’ll find a bunch of completely free resources!

Monthly Giving

Click-it: 9 Ways to Promote and Encourage Monthly Giving on Your Website. Is your fundraising revenue flat? If you’re looking for a way to create an upward arc, look no further than monthly giving! The Eleventy Marketing Group brings us this great article showing some practical ways to build and grow a monthly giving program. They also share a statistic from the 2014 M+R Benchmarks Study: the overall growth rate for online monthly giving to nonprofits rose 25% in 2013, pointing to the collision of two of the biggest areas of fundraising growth: monthly giving and online giving.

Sponsorships

Click-It 20 questions to help you get a bigger sponsorship by Mazarine Treyz also includes a book review of “The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit,” a chance to win this book (!), and an opportunity to sign up – at a big discount – for her sponsorship e-course. According to Sponsorship.com, the 4th quarter is when most sponsors start allocating their budgets for next year — and when 43% of sponsors make decisions. That’s RIGHT NOW.

#GivingTuesday

Click-it: Fundraising Meets the Power of Peer-To-Peer Campaigns. Here’s another way to play on #GivingTuesday, as reported by Derrick Feldmann on the Guidestar Blog. See how one organization decided to focus on increasing the number of donors who actually give. Smart! The organization raised $12,000 on Giving Tuesday last year— a modest amount for them — but the approach increased their base of supporters and elevated awareness of their cause in a way that will pay dividends down the road. For me, the BIG take-away from this article goes way beyond just this one giving day — and I can promise you’ll be hearing a lot more from me in the coming year on this subject:

Today, a fundraiser has to be good at two things to be successful:

1. cultivating and maintaining relationships with individual donors

2. developing and managing peer-to-peer networks

Click-it: #GivingTuesday or Gratitude Tuesday? Choose How You’ll Roll. Just in case you missed my article about giving #GivingTuesday a new twist, check it out here on their website – where you’ll also find a boatload of other tools and resources. Hint: Next year? #GratitudeTuesday!

Communications

Click-It: Top 5 Fundraising Ideas from The Next Generation of American Giving [+Slides]. Blackbaud put together an awesome infographic dissecting the giving proclivities of different generations – and you can use this data to your advantage to inform your fundraising and improve performance. In this post, Frank Barry at npEngage offers up five ideas relating to how best to communicate with different types of constituents. Useful stuff!

FREE RESOURCES

Marketing

Click-It:  WIN/WIN for the Greater Good [Book about Cause Marketing Partnerships]. Bruce Burtch has been called the “Father of Cause Marketing,” partly due to the wisdom published in this highly-acclaimed ‘how to’ blueprint for organizations of any size and from any sector to build highly productive partnerships.  With his recent retirement, his one wish is to assure his experiences are shared and utilized to the greatest extent possible. SO he has kindly provided me with this PDF of his book for you to download. Thank you Bruce for all your contributions to our sector!

Click-it: State of Storytelling in the Nonprofit Sector [Free Whitepaper Download). The better you tell your nonprofit stories, the more revenue you’ll raise. I hope by now you know this, as it’s backed up by plenty of research. Human beings are wired to accept stories into their hearts. And hearts, not heads, are what motivate action. Go to the Network for Good site to get your free copy of this whitepaper that will help you:

• Harness lessons learned from 400 other nonprofits.
• Create a storytelling strategy.
• Get more mileage from stories.
• Measure the impact of stories.

Fundraising

Click-It: This week I had the pleasure of hosting guest presenter, Dana Ostomel, for a free “Crowdfunding 101” webinar. If you weren’t able to attend the live presentation, you can listen to the recording here. More and more, knowing how to do online social fundraising will be a required skill for fundraisers. It’s never too soon to begin to get up to speed.

Click-It: Cultivating Mid-Level Donors for Maximum Results. Major individual fundraising is where most of the contribution revenue comes from. Not grants. Not sponsorships. Not events. You can access two free resources here to help you boost your major gift fundraising. How? By taking a look at good prospects who are hiding in your database! Get: (1) a free whitepaper from Veritus Group, and (2) an informative video conversation between Bloomerang and Jeff Schreifels.

Grab great free stuff from nonprofit experts!

Click-It: It’s time for Mazarine Treyz’ annual Halloween Goodies Giveaway! You’ll get lots of free treats from a host of nonprofit experts, including:

• Get your free mini sponsorship e-course from Mazarine Treyz
• 14 Cause Marketing All Stars Share Their Winning Strategies from Joe Waters
• The one thing nonprofits should know about business-nonprofit partnerships from Impact Flow
• The Ultimate Guide to Nonprofit Donor Management from Bloomerang
• The Nonprofit Fundraising Formula from Joe Garecht
• A storytelling e-course from Vanessa Chase
• “13 Tips on Asking for Major Gifts + Sample Ask Script” E-book by me!

P.S. If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, the AFP Golden Gate is pleased to announce a scholarship fund for members to attend one of two courses offered on January 11-12, 2016:

1. The AFP Fundamentals of Fundraising Course (two full days | $400 for AFP Members)
2. The CFRE Review Course (two full days | $400 for AFP Members) – I’m teaching!
   To apply, email to: admin@afpgoldengate.org with your (1) Name, (2) Organization, (3) Annual Budget, (4) Program you wish to attend, (5) Amount of scholarship you request, and (6) Brief statement of why you request the scholarship at this time and what you want to get out of the program.* The deadline to apply is January 4, 2016. *Special consideration to women of color, LGBT individuals, and those most in need. If you fall into one or more of these constituencies, please make this clear in your statement.

Batty Photo: Flickr, Anna Lee