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Since its conception in 2012, Giving Tuesday campaigns have raised increasingly more each year—the total of donations on Giving Tuesday in 2022 was $3.1 billion. The opportunity for nonprofits to capitalize on Giving Tuesday is high, but what happens after this Tuesday? How can nonprofits use the springboard of this popular event for retaining donors long-term? Follow these tips for continued success beyond the giving season.
3 donor retention strategies for nonprofits to avoid
Every nonprofit knows the battle of donor retention, but many don’t understand the big picture or the strategies to see long-term success. The short answer is that nonprofits are not putting in the right kind of effort to see increases in their donor retention. Generally speaking, nonprofits are doing the following which should be avoided:
- Focusing too much on donor acquisition and not enough on donor retention.
- Not communicating in a personalized enough way to their donors to inspire them to make further donations.
- Losing future donations by not employing segmented email marketing campaigns.
Now that we know which strategies to avoid, let’s take a look at ways to retain donors after your Giving Tuesday campaign.
Cultivate a relationship with new donors from Giving Tuesday campaigns
With Giving Tuesday being one of the biggest charitable giving days of the year, it is also one of the biggest opportunities to begin new and lucrative relationships with people donating to an organization’s cause.
Capitalizing on the movement’s inertia with a tailored fundraising campaign can mean less effort in gaining new donors and more ROI. While the donations are the primary targets, there is also an enormous opportunity to bring one-time donors from annual Giving Tuesday campaigns into the fold and create a long-term relationship. When creating a Giving Tuesday campaign:
- Nonprofits need to focus on the presentation and verbiage that will set the foundation for that long-term relationship.
- Not only does a nonprofit have to present a campaign that entices a potential donor, but it also has to resonate.
- Supporters must feel a kinship to the cause and a sense of urgency that inspires them to engage with the organization.
Employ donor retention tactics during acquisition
Recognizing a donor’s value and communicating an organization’s appreciation for that value are two important aspects of donor retention. This value isn’t monetary but instead is relative to their perceived sacrifice and identification with the cause. An organization can include verbiage in their Giving Tuesday campaigns that address topics that are entwined with better donor retention, such as:
- Explaining how and where donors’ contributions will be used.
- Explaining how each and every donation is valued and integral.
- Highlighting how the organization wants input, suggestions, etc. from all donors.
Get to know your donors better during Giving Tuesday
Now that the right donor retention verbiage has been included in your Giving Tuesday campaign, questions for gathering metrics for the future should also be solicited from both donors and non-donors who visited. These metrics are integral to a retention strategy because this information will be used to tailor follow-up communications and build relationships that may inspire more donations in the future. To gather these metrics, consider a survey like the one below that asks the donor for metrics such as:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Reason for donation
- Preferred way of donating (debit, credit, PayPal, etc.)
- Perceived impact of donation
- Donation experience rating
- Reason for choosing the organization
- Comments and suggestions
A survey can be presented to donors and visitors on your website on a page or as a pop-up, on social media, or via email. Some fundraising platforms also have built-in data collection capabilities that can gather astonishing amounts of detailed data that can help an organization learn how to better communicate with their base.
Personalize follow-up communications with market segmentation
One of the most crucial opportunities to increase donor retention is the “Thank You” email to new and existing donors. This opportunity is where nonprofits have the chance to make first-time and one-time donors to their Giving Tuesday campaigns into recurring donors.
What is segmentation?
Market segmentation for nonprofits is dividing donors into smaller groups with commonalities and then personalized emails are created for each segment. Sending out the same direct mail, email, or any other communications to all subscribers is not a strategy that will retain donors.
Write the right “thank you” correspondence
Once an organization has identified its segments for donors, the next step is to create personalized “Thank You” correspondence for each of those segments. Based on all the data that has been collected, it should be relatively manageable to discover which points to positively stress with each segment, but there are also many reasons donors stop giving.
- For example, an organization may not want to include another donation request in an initial “Thank You” correspondence to a lower-income donor, but they may want to include it for other segments.
- Likewise, an organization may want to tailor a “Thank You” correspondence to include more women’s issues for female subscribers than it might for male subscribers.
Another important factor to consider is time. Acknowledging the support of donors in a timely manner can make all the difference in how valued the donor feels. Some things to consider are:
- Sending an initial “Thank You” email immediately or within a day of receiving a donation, then sending out a more personalized correspondence within a week.
- It’s important to know that the main reasons supporters don’t give again or stop giving are because of poor communication and a perceived lack of appreciation.
