Want to Raise More Money Online? Stop Endlessly Pestering Your Donors

The internet presents fundraisers with a powerful way to reach out to prospects and donors. Blackbaud found that while overall giving slowed down to 1%, online giving was up 6.8% for 2019. But not all the metrics are encouraging—for example, the same report found that retention of first-time donors who gave online was only 24% for the first year.

A larger problem is the sheer volume of online appeals for donations. Each week, I get emails from several nonprofits, often with news, but usually with a solicitation. Even worse, around Giving Tuesday and at the end of the calendar year, I get dozens and dozens of emails.

In an earlier era, the cost of mailings and telephone outreach created barriers to how often nonprofits could contact donors and prospects. Email and social media have dramatically lowered these barriers, creating new fundraising opportunities for nonprofits—including groups with minimal capacity. But a major downside is that all organizations are now struggling to be heard in a much more congested digital environment.

So what does a nonprofit have to do to rise above the noise of its competitors? And how can some of the age-old rules about communicating properly with donors inform more effective online fundraising?

The Endless Ask

Experts have been sounding the alarm about going overboard with funding appeals for years—and backing up their warnings with data.

Author Penelope Burk has long been an advocate against over-solicitation by nonprofits. In her monumental “Donor-Centered Fundraising,” she notes a rising trend. Out of first-time donors, 65% never made a second donation to the same not-for-profit, an increase of 50% over the year prior. Notably, when she surveyed donors about why they stopped giving, she found that 69% said that over-solicitation was “highly or somewhat influential in their decision.” In other words, for Burk, the issue isn’t the donors; it’s nonprofits who don’t know how to treat those donors and get them to keep giving.

With respect to Giving Tuesday, a day emblematic of online fundraising, Burk aptly wrote in 2018: “It’s been five years since the first Giving Tuesday, and as fundraisers are celebrating its highest returns ever, the cracks are beginning to show… Giving Tuesday may be falling into the trap of focusing only on the money, when raising money in conjunction with mindfulness about the diverse groups of donors who fund not-for-profits is so essential.”

Personally, I received over 25 emails soliciting me to give on Giving Tuesday and around New Year’s Day—and I deleted every single one of them without reading. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve been unsubscribing from the vast majority of nonprofit mailing lists. Other people I talked to felt similar about the barrage of emails and solicitations. There were so many around Christmas and New Year’s that one person was prompted to ask tongue-in-cheek if nonprofits still wanted their money even if it was after the first of the year.

Fighting Donor Attrition

Burk advocates a donor-centered fundraising model and she offers a threefold suggestion on how to reduce donor attrition: “Prompt, meaningful acknowledgement whenever they make a gift; Confirmation that each gift, regardless of its value, will be assigned to a program, project or initiative narrower in scope than the mission as a whole; A report on measurable results achieved to date in the program or project they are funding before they are asked for another gift.”

So how can nonprofits implement these suggestions with online giving? Make sure to thank the donors in a meaningful way and let them know how the gift is going to be used. Moreover, nonprofits should be more careful about how often they send out emails to their donors and prospects. Nonprofits should not be sending me solicitations each week, or even each month. They should be more cautious and considerate of when and how I’ve been solicited in the past.

Another Way: Just Say Thank You

Nonprofits could try something completely different from the rest of them: a thank you campaign.

Achieva, a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit that supports people with disabilities and their families throughout their lifetimes, thanked donors on Giving Tuesday. Achieva had held their own Giving Day earlier in the year, but did not want to compete with the other nonprofits. David Tinker, vice president of advancement, says, “You hear that charities just communicate with donors when they need something. There’s not enough thanking and stewardship.” For the second year in a row, Achieva decided to thank donors and volunteers.

They created personalized videos that were relatively short, 30 seconds, with a customized beginning, and then footage of participants in Achieva’s programs also saying thank you. They were able to track metrics such as open rates and even whether the email was forwarded. Notably, Tinker reports that the open rate was over 80%.

In replies to this outreach, some people said “you’re welcome,” while some expressed that it had made their day. Others responded by saying they were happy to support the organization.

Achieva is an excellent example of what Burk has been trying to say in her work. Achieva developed a way to communicate with its donors that meant something. It was more than just a form letter.

I’m hoping we’ll see more places taking Achieva’s approach and being more mindful of how they are communicating to their prospects and donors online. Hopefully, more nonprofits will come up with heartfelt ways of connecting with their donors.

Is it possible for nonprofits to devise an online solicitation campaign that rises above the noise? It’s hard to say when people like myself delete every email without reading them. But that might be because I don’t expect nonprofits to do something other than ask for money.

Achieva gives me faith that nonprofits can find a better way to do fundraising online. The question is whether nonprofits themselves can believe that—or whether the deluge of emails will just keep coming.

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