Two business people meeting

4 Strategies to Use LinkedIn to Give Nonprofit Donors a Reason to Connect

Two business people meeting

When You Can’t Get Up Close And Personal, How Do You Build Relationships With Folks Online?

 

Are you Linking In?

If not, it’s time to take a new look at this social platform to appreciate it for the beneficial research and relationship-building strategy it can be for you.

I find it to be a highly under-utilized tool when it comes to building your nonprofit brand, establishing authority and credibility, researching and recruiting new volunteers, donors and employees, and building stronger relationships with your current constituents.

Today we’re going to talk about how to use LinkedIn to uncover new donor prospects and build donor relationships.

Not too much. Just four no-nonsense strategies.

To begin, let’s look at two connection models:

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Ice Cream Cone Spill

10 Common Nonprofit Major Gift Asking Mistakes to Avoid

Ice Cream Cone SpillWhen you’re not aware you’re making a mistake, it’s hard to avoid it.

So let’s get curious. I’m going to ask you to close your eyes for a minute to imagine a donor you’ve been wanting to ask for a major gift. I’m going to ask you to visualize a space where you’re meeting. Put them in your office, their home, a café or even a Zoom screen. Choose what’s comfortable, and where you think you’d be most likely to meet with this donor within the next month or so.

Okay… do you have your donor and your meeting space in mind? Excellent!

Now, before closing your eyes, commit to visualizing these four things:

  1. You’re in the room together.
  2. You smile. They smile back.
  3. Someone else is in the room with both of you.  Imagine you brought them with you. Who are they, and how does it feel having them there to support you?
  4. Bolstered by the smiles and good company, what do you say to open the conversation?

Okay, are you ready to close your eyes? Even if this feels a little weird, why not give it a try?

EXERCISE: You can do this by yourself, but it works better if you do it in a pair. Find a co-worker, friend or family member to prompt you to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Notice if you’re holding tension anywhere in your body. Relax those areas (forehead; neck; shoulders; hands; belly; thighs; calves; feet).   Now have them ask you the following questions:

(1) Pick a donor to meet with.

(2) Pick your meeting space.

(3) Pick an additional person to support you in the room (e.g., program director; subject matter expert; volunteer; executive director; board member; other donor). Describe who they are, and how it feels having them there.

(4) Open the conversation. What are you saying to them? What are they saying back? What’s their body language? Are their eyes lighting up? Are they smiling? Leaning forward? Play this scenario out just a bit, until you get to a place of comfort or discomfort.

Then open your eyes.

What did that feel like?

What felt comfortable to you? Uncomfortable? Did it feel more comfortable and pleasant than you may have imagined?

Smiling people, committed to the same cause, hanging out in a comfortable space together…. from such a space can come many good things.  

  • What did you say to open the conversation?
  • How did that feel?
  • If it felt good, why?
  • If it didn’t feel good, why?

Take a few minutes to journal some answers to those questions. I guarantee this will help you shift the energy for the next time you move into this space – in real time – with a donor.

A Mistake is Just a Misjudgment

It’s not fatal; you can correct it. But first you have to recognize it happened!

Mistakes in major donor conversations generally arise when you don’t know enough about the donor, or vice-versa. That’s why there are two kinds of major donor visits:

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Three San Francisco Hearts: heartsinsf; Love Captured Heart; Planes

Nonprofit Major Donor Fundraising A B C’s

Three San Francisco Hearts: heartsinsf; Love Captured Heart; Planes

You don’t just roll out of bed one day, randomly go visit a major donor prospect and ask for a random amount. At least not without a boatload of advance preparation. Right?

It’s a lot smarter to begin at the beginning.

And then take it step by step from there.

According to a plan.

A plan to secure BIG gifts for you BIG mission.

It’s always a great time to review what you can do to get yourself and your solicitors (staff and volunteers) ready to make win/win matches between your organization and your prospective major donor/investors.

Ready for some A, B, C’s?

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How Do You Keep Former Nonprofit Board Members Engaged?

Heart hands

Sustain the positive energy of love and connection

Are you throwing your former board members out like yesterday’s trash?

This may not be your intention, but you’re kind of guilty of this if you don’t continue to (1) let them know how special they are, and (2) build personal relationships with them. After all, one of the foundations of Penelope Burk’s groundbreaking work in Donor-Centered Fundraising is the finding donors want one thing first and foremost: “Show me that you know me.”

Are You Showing Former Board you Know, Love and Feel Specially Connected to Them?

CONSIDER THIS:

  • As board members, they got used to being treated as “insiders.”
  • Now that they’ve stepped off the board, you’re treating them as if they mean less to you.

Every single communication with a former board member should let them know you know who they are.

If you treat them like they’re toast, don’t be surprised when they start sending you little bread crumbs instead of the whole slice – or loaf – they once sent. People want to be appreciated. It’s just human nature. And facilitating philanthropy (the word literally means “love of humankind”) is a very human endeavor.

Don’t stop loving your former board members.

Stop blaming them for stopping to love you. Blaming is a cop out. Instead, look in the mirror and see what part you may be playing in their changed behavior.

SPECIAL TIP: You can apply much of the suggestions in this article to former staff as well.  I often marvel at the hands-off way I’m treated by some of the places where I once worked, sometimes for many years.  Places where I donated too, because I believed in the mission. Now I’m just a “prospect” or “lapsed donor” to them, and the communications I receive come across a bit infantalizing. After all, I know this stuff.  I wrote a lot of this stuff!  It just feels like they’re telling me “since you don’t work here any more, you mean nothing to us.”

Why Former Board Merit Their Own Engagement Strategy

Former board should be one of your top segments for cultivation!

IN A NUTSHELL:

  • They have a deep understanding of your vision, mission and values.
  • For years, they made your nonprofit one of their top philanthropies.
  • They have numerous connections with your cause, including relationships with staff, each other, and even beneficiaries.
  • At one point you were part of their identity and family.
  • You likely have a special place in their heart.
  • They may even have included you in their estate planning!

Don’t stop making beautiful music together! Continue to treat them personally, unless they specifically ask you to stop. Don’t simply relegate them to your impersonal e-news mailings or mass annual appeals. Treat them like major donors and develop a love and loyalty strategy that invites them to stay engaged with you, albeit in a new way.

8 Strategies to Build a Former Board Member Love and Loyalty Strategy

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Three San Francisco Hearts: What-We-Do-for-Love; Tales-of-the-City; ColorFall-of-Hope

4 Types of ‘PERSONAL’ Your Nonprofit Must Adopt Today

Three San Francisco Hearts: What-We-Do-for-Love; Tales-of-the-City; ColorFall-of-HopeEarly in my career I received a piece of fundraising advice that has stuck with me to this day:

People are all people.

And what do you do with people if you want to build a relationship?

You get PERSONAL!

In fact, if I had to tell you how to win over donors with just one word, “personal” is the word I’d choose.

This One Word, ‘Personal,’ Should Become Your Mantra

Let it underscore everything you think about and do.

Your annual appeal writing. Your special events. Your newsletters. Your blog posts. Your proposals. Your reports. Your social media. Your donor cultivation.

If you take just this one word to heart — PERSONAL — you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

  • This one word that can set you apart.
  • This one word can help you build relationships like nothing else.
  • This one word can sustain you, through thick and thin.

Also Make ‘Personal’ Your Spiritual Discipline

Though we we give lip service to the importance of practicing empathy and donor-centricity, truly valuable tools in building donor relationships, these terms are subsumed by the umbrella of the ‘person’ to whom they apply. Start there.

Visualize your person, and before engaging in any strategy or tactic, ask yourself:

Is there a more personal way to deliver this message?

Begin to build a PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE into your planning.

Make sense?

GETTING PERSONAL has always mattered.

Today, in a still-disrupted, socially distanced, increasingly virtual environment, with striving for greater diversity, equity and inclusion at the forefront, how you get personal and how you define people are more important than ever.

Today I’d like to flesh out the multiple meanings of this word, and discuss how getting personal can help you achieve your nonprofit fundraising and marketing goals.

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Three-San-Francisco-Hearts: Love-is-Contagious-San-Francisco-Glow-Transparent-Harmony. Benefit for S.F. General Hospital Foundation

Try These Nonprofit Donor Retention Tweaks with BIG, Happy Outcomes

Three-San-Francisco-Hearts: Love-is-Contagious-San-Francisco-Glow-Transparent-Harmony. Benefit for S.F. General Hospital FoundationHave you ever received confoundingly terrible customer service? Maybe at a restaurant, hotel, fast food restaurant or retail outlet?  It happens all the time and, likely, you’ve thought to yourself: “Why on earth are they treating me like this? It’s so stupid! Don’t they realize I’ll never come here again?”

Sadly, this is exactly what many donors feel when:

  • You make it difficult for them to give.
  • They receive poor follow up from you.
  • You don’t seem to know them, or even try to get to know them.
  • You treat them as one of the masses, rather than making them feel special.
  • You ignore what they’ve told you or shown you.

“Customer service, like everything an effective organization does, changes people.”

— Seth Godin

Part of the Problem is Culture

Think about it. When you experience poor service in the for-profit world, it’s likely because the person with whom you’re interacting has no stake in the business. They see their job as just a job, and really don’t care about the business as a whole. Whether or not a customer returns again means little to them.

This also happens at nonprofits without a donor-centered culture of philanthropy. While the customer, or donor, may not always be exactly “right,” it is imperative everyone in your organization recognizes and appreciates the value donors bring.

“Each person directly associated with your organization should value donors and implicitly or explicitly express that value with gratitude and appreciation. No exceptions.”

— Brian Lauterbach, fundraiser, consultant, entrepreneur

“Without tackling internal issues head-on, we believe the prospects for major fundraising progress are limited. In most organizations, fundraising is limited more by organizational culture and structure than by lack of strategic or tactical know-how.”

— Alia McKee and Mark Rovner, Founders, Sea Change Strategies

NOTE: How to instill a culture of philanthropy is a topic for another article (like this one), but at base it has to do with how people treat each other in your organization.

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Three San Francisco Hearts: Love Sent. Received, Shared; Together Under the Stars; Justice

Are You Treating Your Donors Like Gumballs?

Three San Francisco Hearts: Love Sent. Received, Shared; Together Under the Stars; JusticeWant your donors to sustain you? Then you can’t consume them in five minutes.

Yet all too often nonprofits treat their donors exactly like a gumball dispensed from a machine. Chew it up. Spit it out. Done.

Oh, yeah… maybe you send a quick thanks to whoever gave you the change to buy the gum.  But that’s as far as your gratitude takes you. You’re over it. You never even think about that gumball again. You probably can’t even remember what color it was. You’re off hunting down your next snack.

Little snacks are nice.  But they won’t sustain you over time.

One-time donations are the same way.  And they’ll stay that way – one time – if you treat them the way you treat your gumballs.

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Three San Francisco Hearts: Rainbow, Love, Resilience. Benefit for S.F. General Foundation.

Top Strategies for Making Friends with Nonprofit Donors

Three San Francisco Hearts: Rainbow, Love, Resilience. Benefit for S.F. General Foundation.Today a friend, who serves on the board of a struggling local arts organization, asked me what they can do to increase their fundraising. I asked her a few questions; then answered simply: “Have more conversations with people; make more friends.”

You see, they have people who know about them but they’re just not giving.

They have donors, but they’re not giving enough.

Why? Because they haven’t been treated like friends and family. They don’t feel connected.

What’s the best advice to build stronger connections with likely supporters?

1. People Give to People

Remember this basic truth. Humans are a social species.

People also buy from people.

So if you consider fundraising “making a sale” (which I do, because it’s part of being human to be constantly trying to persuade others; read Daniel Pink’s To Sell is Human), you must show up as authentically human.

And how do you do this?

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Head and Heart

Easiest 7 Strategies to Get Inside Your Donor’s Head and Heart

Head and HeartHere is some wisdom gleaned from many decades of personal nonprofit work.

It derives from both my stints as an in-the-trenches development professional (five different organizations, wearing many hats, over a 30-year career), and my past decade as a coach/consultant for nonprofits of all sizes and shapes.

I will also be sharing quotes from donors Penelope Burk surveyed (also here), as these authentic testimonials provide great insight into how donors think and feel.

Finally, we’ll conclude with seven relatively easy things you can do to connect more meaningfully with your supporters so they’ll stick with you through thick and thin!

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