We’ve been through a lot together. We’ve listened, designed, written, pitched. We lost sleep with you, and celebrated that first big victory. Now, let us help you launch.
Whether it’s a new logo, a new building, or a new newsletter. Launching any of these things takes time and has to be intentional. Let’s make sure you’re not leaving anyone or anything, out.
There are so many things our donors can bring to the table for our missions. How can we be sure that we are getting exactly what we need when we need it? It all comes down to donor engagement. Not sure what that looks like for you and your agency? Let’s explore…
We engage donors everyday whether we realize it or not. Some of the people who are closest to us in our daily lives will be our best donors ( *think* partners, parents, children, care workers, the barista that knows your name). We engage them through conversation. HOW we have that conversation is what varies from day to day. How that conversation is received varies from person to person. The key is to figure out what works for them. Let’s start with social media. It is not the only strategy, but it literally stares us in the face for many more hours than I think we like to acknowledge.
Social media feels like the go to these days. With Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, ads and stories and tweets and videos, it can be overwhelming and time consuming. Be not afraid!! There are great tools available to help you schedule your posts ahead of time, like Hootsuite (you just have to actually use them…which will always be a personal challenge for me). And I promise, that intern that you have that you aren’t quite sure what to do with all the time, they are probably the most socially savvy person on your team. Give direction, curate a message, approve and let them post for you. And while you’re at it, learn from them. Learn the how and the why. Learn about the platforms they are most engaged in and what it is they are looking at that. Learn who they are donating to, who their friends are donating to and what their socials look like. Do they tell stories or one-off posts related to a specific event? Are they randomly generated when something exciting happens? Can we see faces? Do we hear voices? Spend time really listening to the stories you hear on your own social. Follow the people you respect most, other agencies in other parts of the country that share your mission, or fellow ED’s in your area. Many aspects of donor engagement are personal to your own style.
Donor engagement is not just social media based. Let’s talk about materials. What do you have in print? Rack cards? Business cards? appeal letters? There are so many people who truly appreciate getting a card in the mail, and handwritten notes can go a long way with others. What does your print material look and feel like? What do the images say about your mission and your brand? Have your print materials been updated recently and are they easy to read and access? Most importantly, how are they connected to your agency and how often do they get used, given out and referred to?
But wait, there’s more! One of the most important aspects of donor engagement are you and your team. The people you lead and who lead you. Make sure you are all clear on the mission. In fact, ASK your team what your mission is, and I don’t mean ask them what it is you do, ask them to tell you your ACTUAL mission statement. IF they can’t clearly articulate it (and I promise you, many won’t be able to) maybe it’s time for a review. Your mission is your best asset in donor engagement. See if your team members have an elevator speech, see if they have different ones for the different people they know. Maybe sit around one day (I know, that sounds dreamy…sitting around) and swap stories. Tell your team about the wins, tell them about the donors, tell them who you want to get to know and ask them who THEY want to get to know. Maybe there is some intersection there and wouldn’t that just be delightful? I’m still dreaming about sitting around.
PK
We’ve all been there. Something comes across our desks, or worse, brought to our attention on our social media and your first thought is “oh,.. S*#T!!” I’ve been there many times, reaching for the filing cabinet bourbon and getting ready for a long day (or week). But what should you do when something like this happens to your organization? It’s important to first, take the time to breathe and then do all of the assessments.
Here at Naked, we’ve seen a disaster or 2. We’ve walked through dumpster fires, and even just strolled through a few press releases. From major successes to minor setbacks, we’ve seen enough to say, you’re not alone and there will be a sea of support to get you through (oh, and we’ll bring the bourbon)
PK
Have you ever had the time to steward a donor? I mean REALLY steward a donor? The kind of stewardship that’s in it for the long game and the big ask. The kind of stewardship that comes with lists and requests, coffee, lunch, dinner and strategic planning invitations. The kind of stewardship where the donor is so actively engaged in your mission that they are your primary champion in the community and encourage their friend to give, and they even have their OWN pitch? This is that deep deep that gets into your head and makes you rethink every engagement you’ve ever had. No? Well let me take you on an adventure…
This type of engagement starts innocent enough, a newspaper article that jumps out to the right person at the right time. It has a specific ask, “please help us make our facility secure” and has a phone number. Now be prepared because you never know where this is going to take you. It’s like one of those choose your own adventure books…it can go really good and you win all the prizes and solve the mystery or really bad and you can wind up locked outside of your house for days. Make sure you’ve read the article and know what it is you need, and ask, “how do you think we can serve our community better?” Now here’s the key, listen to hear what they say, and put your pitch in your pocket for now. Chances are, if they’ve come into see you, they have some ideas.
Donor stewardship can be as simple as that, having a conversation where you aren’t asking for anything, but giving your donor (or potential donor) a real opportunity to be part of your mission. It’s creating opportunities for them to feel like champions and creating free, feel good moments for them to listen, learn and share. Behind the scenes though, that’s where the real work is. It’s putting together your donor profile, learning what you can about them from the Google machine, remembering birthdays, kids names, important dates. It’s about celebrating them as they celebrate you. It’s about creating an understanding that you will commit the time they require as long as you both know there is an ask, a need being fulfilled, and that you are both driven by the mission.
Fundraising and grant writing are a necessary function of the work we are so driven to do. But have you ever just sat back and thought, how can I do this better? How can I write a year end appeal that is actually appealing? How can I incorporate Giving Tuesday in a meaningful way? How do I reach more donors on my social media? And the BIGGEST question, how do I get my Board to do their part? With Covid-19 changing the way you raise money, its time to start thinking more intentionally about how you ask and what you are asking for.
Having a fundraising plan is an essential part of doing the work. Figuring out what that plan looks like is an adventure in calendars and post it notes, and I mean the BIG post it notes. I always like to start with a message, what am I trying to convey, and how can I carry that throughout the year? How do I frame all of my campaigns so that they steward the message for the entire year? How do my grants fit in? For me, this has always started at the end of the year, in my appeal. I set the tone for the upcoming year, state my goals and aspirations. I tell my donors and hope they want to follow the journey with me. It can be as simple as following the adventures of a shelter dog from intake to adoption, or following a teammate throughout the year and the ups and downs they face.
What it cannot be is exploitative. We as a sector have to stop branding the “misery” we perceive our clients go through. We have to stop raising money on the backs of the people we serve. Focus on the good, focus on the positive, focus on the impact your mission makes, your agency makes. Look inward and highlight the difference your team makes. It’s definitely a change. I recognize that it’s one I myself have had to make ( and believe me, my most successful campaign had an element of this in it) and it isn’t easy, but there is going to be a way.
Tell me you fundraising dreams over a hot cup of something, I want to know (unless your dream is that Oprah answers that letter that someone on your Board of Directors told you to write…I don’t live that life). and if I’m honest with both of us right now, I want it to be a cold drink.
Moving my way through the non-profit world over the last 20+ years has really opened my eyes to something. Technology, in most non-profits, is sacrificed for the work of the mission. For many, the choice of buying a program participant a bus ticket to safety takes precedence over that lap-top we know we need. Being able to pay for another week’s worth of food for the shelter is more valuable than upgrading our Windows software. We’re building our websites for free on software like Wix and Weebly because we really just want to have a presence, but are we really considering the impact of that on clients, donors, and most importantly, on the image we are creating for the community we serve?
But what does having a web presence mean? And what really is the harm in not updating our hardware and software? Well, let’s unpack these things and how they relate to our work, our missions, and the people and communities we serve.
Websites
Non-Profit websites have spent years playing catch up to the for-profit world. Relying heavily on free, or nearly free website design sites like Wix, Weebly and others. Not that there is anything wrong with using those sites, they certainly have their place in the sector. But as non-profits, what exactly are we leaving on the table by not designing EXACTLY what we need. Well, I’ll tell you. We are walking away from:
Having a website that is not optimized for today’s user means we are also leaving on the table the future of our missions. Okay, well maybe it’s not that drastic, but when we neglect to take into consideration that as our society’s demographics are changing, so are their demands for how our websites perform. We now need them to be mobile friendly, incredibly fast, and easy to navigate. Millennials (and younger) want to be able to find things quickly, they want to donate with a text, and they want to be able to share your content, their donation and your information in a few taps on their phone. Getting here, to this magical place of optimization, delightful user interfaces and fast loading mobile sites can feel overwhelming and over budget. But if you have clear goals, a set of audience priorities and stand behind the mission of your organization it can happen (on time and under budget).
So, what about that hardware and software?
We have to stop starving ourselves. Non-profit Executive Directors, frontline staff, and volunteers all deserve a good chair! and a computer that works! and software that was released in the same decade we are working in! Don’t let yourself believe anything different (don’t do it!) Let’s take a stroll back in time.. to a time when you were in school, doing that 20 page history paper in your college computer lab. Everyone used the same computers, inserting disks, saving, printing, taking their disk and leaving. Hell, we even had to format our own disks before we could use them! Do you remember that feeling when your disk corrupted and you couldn’t get ANY of your work? Do you remember last year when your hard drive crashed in the middle of your annual appeal? Or that time when your computer was SO SLOW that the donor who wanted some 990 information couldn’t get it? How about that virus? Did you lose control of any donor or participant data? I’ll wait while you think of the million other things that go wrong with our computers when we turn them on.
It’s hard to tell ourselves we deserve nice things, but we do AND we should plan for them. It’s ok to start with a small plan, maybe upgrade one computer and software a year as your budget allows, and make an intentional plan to replace all of it, and make an intentional plan to continue to upgrade every few years and soon enough everything in the room is working like this run-on sentence is.
PK
