Tag Archives: donations

More Ideas on Fundraising During a Recession

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The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently offered these 10 tips:

  1. Don’t treat giving as a financial transaction – instead, treat donors as you would friends or family that are going through hard times.  Give them a way to stay involved, even if they are unable to make the level of donation they have in the past.
  2. Keep close ties to donors – remember to thank donors frequently and don’t treat every contact as a solicitation.  Don’t just send an autoreply – make it personal!
  3. Offer matching grants – to give donors a way to make even a smaller than normal contribution more meaningful
  4. Ask donors to give monthly – include as an option on all of your fundraising campaigns
  5. Look for ways to save money on fund raising – this is the ideal time to accelerate the move from direct mail to online to reduce costs.  Also use web conferencing to reduce staff travel.  Focus on special events that produce the most revenue.
  6. Seek alternatives to soliciting private donations – for example, can you rent part of your space for outside meetings or offer mission-related products?
  7. Collaborate to raise money – try joint initiatives with other organizations with compatible missions
  8. Scale back ambitious campaigns, but don’t give up on them – change the goal or lengthen the timeframe
  9. Avoid emergency solicitations – don’t let it get to this point – donors won’t want to recommit if your organization seems in danger of failing
  10. Shore up relations with grant makers – foundations and government agencies may still be able to help in 2009.

The Chronicle also reports that some nonprofits are reporting that more people are giving, even if the average gift is less.  This has been confirmed in many recent studies referenced in this Care2 post about the prospects for online fundraising.   Even in hard times, donors will still give.  Stay as positive as you can when planning your fundraising campaigns this year.

A Year End Donation Story

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With 2008 ending soon, I realized this week that it was time to finish charitable donations to maximize our tax deduction.  Although my wife and I give to many of the same organizations each year, we usually make many contributions at year-end.  Since I so often talk about the advantages of online giving, I decided to make most of our donations on the web.

Interestingly, some of the nonprofits I support haven’t learned the lessons of integrating offline and online campaigns.  Many of the direct mail pieces we received came with increasing frequency, but offered no dedicated web address to use other than the organization home page.  When I went online on one nonprofit’s site, I couldn’t find a way to join or renew my membership, nor could I find a phone number to call.  With the help of Google, I found a phone number and asked that they please not keep wasting my money on constant direct mail requests when I 1) prefer to donate online and 2) want our donations used for the nonprofit’s mission, not for mailing costs.

I’ve also found that even for nonprofits who we support, I am still a bit reluctant to receive email updates throughout the year, possibly because they also come a bit too often and don’t offer enough incentive for me to open them.

Maybe some people take the time to read long direct mail pieces, but I’m not one of them.  Nor do I want to navigate lengthy email messages.  Interestingly, none of the organizations we support asked how often we wanted to be contacted and whether we preferred online or offline communications.  Perhaps these would be good questions to add to your donation form.

There’s one day left – make sure you donate to your favorite causes (even if it’s not as easy as it should be).