A few months into 2021, has your organization taken the time to evaluate your donor retention rate? Many nonprofits receive an influx of charitable donations around the holiday season, but how many of those one-time donors continue to contribute to your mission moving forward?
Moving into a new year is the ideal time to take stock of your organization’s ability to capture new recurring donors and boost donor retention. And maintaining a solid base of recurring donors is more cost-effective than expending time and resources on garnering new donors consistently throughout the year.
Here are some strategies you can implement this year to make that a reality and ultimately bolster your donor base:
- Acknowledge donor impact in your gratitude messaging.
- Incentivize donors with engaging social media strategies.
- Drive donor engagement with matching gifts.
Acknowledge donor impact in your gratitude messaging.
Your organization likely already has a system regarding gratitude messaging; there are however a few key ways in which you can optimize your thank-you messages so that donors feel appreciated and inspired to return again and again to make contributions to your organization.
Beyond personalizing each gratitude message, ensure that you are appropriately acknowledging each donor despite varying donation amounts. Having a formal donor recognition policy in place will allow everyone at your organization to have a standardized approach to gratitude messaging so that no donor goes un-thanked for their generosity!
Another way to show donors how appreciated their gifts are, is to show them concrete ways in which their contribution has helped your organization further its cause. Providing statistics or numerical information about what your donor’s gift has allowed your organization to achieve can have a lasting impact on a donor’s memory and inspire them to give again - consider sharing a narrative story that provides a personal touch for donors wanting to know more about the impact they can have by donating to your cause.
Fundraising Letters provides great templates for gratitude messaging for your nonprofit to utilize - find them all here!
Incentivize donors with engaging social media strategies.
Meeting donors where they’re at is essential - and donors spend time on social media channels so it’s pivotal to not only maintain a robust presence but to truly engage with donors through these avenues.
While social media is a key avenue through which you can share educational information and calls-to-action with donors, you can also drive donor engagement by offering opportunities for donors to share the impact they’ve made on causes they care about, engage in peer-to-peer fundraising efforts, and communicate with other members of your donor community.
Inviting donors to share via social media that they’ve made a contribution to your organization can be an effective means of incentivizing other individuals to donate, and can elevate the community feels that your donors experience when they get plugged into your organization. Encouraging donors to create peer-to-peer campaigns can also allow donors to feel closer to your cause by taking ownership of some of the fundraising efforts.
Finally, tailor your content towards encouraging community engagement between your donors and followers; be responsive to donors and followers on social media, and consider metrics that reveal what varieties of content they tend to favor!
Drive donor engagement with matching gifts.
Providing multiple avenues of giving not only drives higher donor conversation rates but can also serve to optimize the giving experience for recurring donors.
But how can you keep recurring donors familiar with your process engaged in new and exciting ways? Consider utilizing matching gifts, a form of corporate philanthropy in which companies financially match the individual contributions their employees make to charitable organizations. Your donor can turn their $50 donation into a $100 donation without ever reaching back into their wallets. Making donors aware of their matching gift eligibility via email outreach, on a “Ways to Give” page, and better yet, during the donation flow, is sure to capture your donors’ attention - and better yet, encourages donors to make larger donations!
The 360MatchPro by Double the Donation integration with Arreva’s ExceedFurther, All-in-One, Digital Fundraising and Donor Relationship Management software allows you to embed matching gift automation directly into your donation flow, enabling your organization to notify donors of their match eligibility during the donation process, directly guiding them to next steps upon submission of a donation, and even handling follow-ups. Donors will be inspired to give and keep on giving once they know they have the power to double their donation, and this integration makes the process simple for both donors and nonprofit teams.
With these strategies in your toolbox, your organization can convert new donors into recurring donors this year with a breeze and see the return on your efforts all year long.
Learn more about maximizing matching gift revenue with a personalized demo with Double the Donation, and be sure to mention you use Arreva when you schedule!
About Double the Donation: There’s an unnecessary gap between fundraising organizations and corporate giving programs, to the tune of $4-7 billion in unclaimed matching gift revenue annually. Double the Donation helps nonprofits and educational institutions increase fundraising from corporate matching gifts and employee volunteer grant programs. Double the Donation maintains a database of employee matching gift and volunteer grant programs. With more than 20,000 entries in the database, Double the Donation presents match-eligible donors with their company’s specific program requirements, including a direct link to their company’s online matching gift submission portal or PDF download.
