Most people hate fundraising. It’s unfamiliar. It’s confusing. It’s a bit embarrassing. You have to actually ask people to take out their wallet and donate money!
The worst part is that it takes up your valuable time. Instead of working hard to change the world, you’re focused on raising money.
I’ll bet that you didn’t get into the nonprofit industry thinking that you’d spend so much time on fundraising. Am I right?
With this guide, I want to turn fundraising into something straightforward, easy-to-understand, and hopefully, fun!
By the end of it, you should feel more confident about raising money for your nonprofit organization. I’ll also link to my complete guide on nonprofit crowdfunding, in case you’re looking for more of a step-by-step blueprint.
I’ve put together a new GUIDE that’s packed with science-backed nonprofit fundraising methods, resources, strategies, and killer marketing methods.
You should check it out if you want to get more donations and you want to fast-track the entire process.
The Different Types of Fundraising
Not all fundraising is made the same. There are different ways of attracting new donors who want to support your organization’s mission.
You can think of the types below as tools in your toolbox. You might find out that you’re better at one type of fundraiser than another.
It’s all about discovering what works best for your nonprofit. There is no one size fits all. Every nonprofit has different core strengths. Also, each has access to different levels of financial resources.
Online
- Crowdfunding
- Peer-to-peer Fundraising
- Text to donate campaign
Offline
- Grants and government funding
- Charity event
- Direct mail
- Contest or raffle
- Corporate partners and programs
- Silent auction
- Selling products
Complete list of ideas
As you can see, there are a lot of weapons in your arsenal. By looking through some of the ideas, you’ll get a feel for the ones that will resonate best with your brand, skills, and resources.
Which is easiest and which should you use?
I feel like there’s an elephant in the room. Let’s get it out of the way.
Yes, I’m a HUGE advocate of crowdfunding and online fundraising, but that’s not the best option for every nonprofit out there.
The growth of EVERY nonprofit is limited by the skill set and temperament of the founder. You could also extend that to the quality of the employees that work at the nonprofit.
I always hated that term “nonprofit organization,” because it makes it seem like some detached faceless entity.
At the end of the day, a nonprofit is just a group of people coming to work everyday, trying to make a dent in the world.
To get started figuring out which fundraising avenue you should pursue, ask yourself these questions:
- What are you and your team good at? What skills do you have?
- What skills would you like to become better at? How would you like to grow?
- What resources do you have available to you? Both in financial and social terms.
- How much time do you have to devote to fundraising?
- What is your current goal, and what level of resources are required to get there?
These questions are going to give you an accurate picture of where you stand.
If you have no web presence, and no one in your organization has the faintest idea how to use email/social media/technology, you probably shouldn’t start with an online fundraising campaign.
First, start with the quick win and focus on what you DO have and DO know. Maybe you have a really big social network and the contacts to put on a fundraising event. Start there.
No matter what you’re good at as an organization, you should also have one area where you’re trying to get good.
In the case of technology, you could start with something simple, like communicating with your donors through an email list in addition to direct mail.
Once you get the hang of that task, you could start a website and begin to start social media profiles.
As you gain more confidence with technology, you can begin to explore crowdfunding or other fundraising streams.
What you should focus on as the BIG goal
I’ve seen this time and time again. It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to get good at.
It could be building a business or starting a nonprofit. Every beginner searches for “quick wins” and “quick results.”
In some ways, I think that quick early results are good. They help you develop confidence, which gives you the energy to try out more types of fundraisers!
However, this type of thinking is destructive in the long-run.
Don’t look at each fundraiser as a financial transaction. Don’t think to yourself, “okay, how can I get people to do X, Y, or Z.”
Instead, you should pretend that you are building an organization that is going to be around for HUNDREDS of years. You’re building a brand that’s going to last.
When you come from this mindset, your priorities change. You seek to establish longterm partnerships, build a community around your cause, and genuinely connect to and make friends with your donors.
There’s a saying in business that it’s easier to earn revenue from an existing customer rather than convert a new one.
As you’re doing your first couple of fundraisers, keep in mind that you’re building a donor list. These are your “customers” that you should treat spectacularly so that they’ll also give the next time.
Ask yourself, “How can I make people WANT to do X, Y, or Z.”
In one short sentence, your entire focus should be on building your brand, your tribe or community, learning as much as possible, and lastly, getting funds.
Discover your ideal donor
Show me any audience, and I’ll find commonalities among them.
There could be similarities in interests, personality types, or even how they “see themselves” in society.
When you’re trying to rake donors in to your fundraising campaign, it’s absolutely crucial that you pinpoint the characteristics of the people most likely to join your cause.
The reason it’s important is that it’s going to make your marketing and outreach SO MUCH EASIER. It will cost less time and less money to gain new donors.
In the marketing world, I’d label this as a “donor archetype.”
You can begin to get a better understanding of your ideal donor by asking questions like:
- How old are they? What level of education do they have? How much do they make? Where do they live? What’s their sex/race/religion/etc?
- Do they support charities already or not? Why do they support charities? Where do they find charities to support? Do they attend charitable events?
- What do they care about and why? Why are they passionate about x, y, and z? How do they seem themselves? What are they proud of?
- What influences them? What do they read? What do they watch? Where do they spend their most time? Who do they look up to?
Here’s an example of a donor persona, created by HubSpot. Here’s another good one created by WealthEngine.
You can begin to figure out your “ideal donor” by asking lots of questions, observing their behaviors, gathering data with some of the tools I’ll mention later, and LISTENING to what prospective donors tell you.
As you begin to fill up this war-chest of information, you’ll begin to act on it and create better marketing and outreach strategies. You’ll be able to fundraise more effectively and efficiently.
Okay, let’s explore an example… let’s say that you’re trying to raise money to bring more business-related education to inner-city kids.
You notice that a lot of your donors are millennials in various business-related disciplines. These are younger adults who make good money ($60k+ per year), are living in the city, and consider themselves to be hard working and charitable.
You probe them a bit and you learn that it’s actually REALLY hard to meet new friends in the city outside of work. Also, they want to find other things to do in the city besides just going to work and eating at restaurants.
With some more probing, you realize that many of your donors are at a time in their life where they’re discovering who they are. They’re growing, as young adults, and are figuring out their life.
Woah, that’s a lot of information! You could also gain all that just by having a few conversations and connecting with them on a friendship level.
That information might yield some solutions on your part like:
- Charity-fueled networking parties. You can meet other young professionals and also do good in the world! Who knows what could come of that, whether it’s business partnerships or even social relationships.
- Introducing top donors to inner city kids for mentoring sessions. The young professional would gain a stronger sense of purpose by becoming a mentor and sharing all of their business or life experience with an inner city child trying to learn about business.
- An exclusive online Facebook group where members are invited to events around the city. Because they’re a member of your non-profit, they’ll get discounted tickets at cool new things happening around their area, and you’ll get donations from those businesses.
As you can see, you can come up with a lot of ideas when you’re working with some real information about your donors.
First, get to know your donors and who they are. Look for commonalities and figure out what they’re searching for. Then, you can help get them closer to what they want. That could even mean delivering on the emotions that they’re searching for.
If all of your donors are giving money because they want to feel charitable or like they’re doing good in the world, then you better make sure you thank every one of them and show appreciation so that YOU allow them to experience those feelings.
Use the BEST tools available to make it easier
Okay, so I was an economics major in college (cue collective yawn), and I was always fascinated with why economies grow.
Imagine there’s a factory floor. There are machines that produce clothing. This floor has a certain level of output each day. That’s determined by:
- The number of workers
- The number of machines
- The efficiently of the machines.
At a certain point, having more people or more machines isn’t going to help that factory floor produce more cotton. There’s a limited amount of space.
What WILL help that factory produce more is increasing the efficiency of the machines. That way, a new machine will produce twice as much as the old machine.
It comes down to the fact that every economy is only as good as the skill of its laborers and it’s technology.
This is also true of nonprofits.
You could have the BEST employees in the world, but if you don’t use tools to enhance your productivity and reach, you’ll hit a growth plateau.
There are some great tools out there that will help you manage this fundraising process. I’ll be talking about three in this YouTube video.
So what’s next?
I hope that you found this article to be helpful. If you want to see more of my ticks for raising money online with crowdfunding and MASTERING donor psychology, pick up a copy of my ebook, NonProfit Crowdfunding Explained.
I’ve put together a new GUIDE that’s packed with science-backed nonprofit fundraising methods, resources, strategies, and killer marketing methods.
You should check it out if you want to get more donations and you want to fast-track the entire process.
I also invite you to leave any questions that you have as a comment below!
