If COVID-19 has taught fundraisers and communicators anything, it’s that donors have moved online. How else would they gain news and information, connect with each other and engage with their favorite causes? In fundraising offices, the then-novel “digital gift officer (DGO)” of two years ago suddenly became a core competency in 2020.
Nonprofits must catch up quickly to meet donors and prospects where they are. There is plenty of data confirming that people want to give – and give generously. On Giving Tuesday in November, supporters broke giving records – a 29% increase over 2019. “This groundswell of giving reaffirms that generosity is universal and powerful and that it acts as an antidote to fear, division, and isolation,” said Asha Curran, co-founder and CEO of Giving Tuesday. What’s more, social media played a critical role – with more than 1.9 million people globally raising more than $135 million on Facebook and Instagram alone.
Digital-first has finally brought communications and analytics staff together. In the business world, their work is commonly referred to as “acquisition and retention” of new customers as part of the marketing function. Sound familiar when it comes to donor strategies?
Think of the analytics staff as the “insights team.” With access to leadership’s vision and future strategies, they can deliver important “customer” insights aimed at ROI. An American Marketing Association study in 2019 reported the companies used marketing analytics 43.5% of the time, a 13% increase since 2013 – and such growth was expected to continue.
This research forges a symbiotic relationship with marketing. Together they (1) shape a thoughtful strategy, (2) apply data-driven insights and select the right data-driven tools and (3) deliver compelling messages through content marketing across e-letters, websites, social media and more. The custom combination of these three elements applied with a continuous lens of “storytelling” are keys to realizing the outcomes your organization seeks.
Why storytelling as the motif?
People like to read about themselves and about what others are doing to bring good – especially during this time when both the pandemic and politics are incessantly telegraphing negativity and disruption. Donors and prospects are motivated by hearing these stories – not by an organization “telling” them what to do (e.g., “we need you to support us…”). In marketing, it’s what I’ve always called the “outside-in” view. What do your stakeholders need and want from you, rather than what you need and want from them?
Not only is digital the prevailing way to communicate with donors now, it also allows for personalization and segmentation that mass print materials do not. You’ve heard about “personas,” the composite “personalities” or images distilled to define “ideal” customers or donors. Digital-first allows you to customize your messages, one donor at a time, to prioritize and engage donors and prospects with the stories you believe will motivate them.
Virtual is here to stay
Who remembers when Zoom meetings, Microsoft Teams, Slack or Google hangouts weren’t central to our daily lives? It was less than a year ago! And there’s no turning back. Many fundraisers immediately leapt to the challenge. By early April, Evertrue, a digital fundraising platform, reported that it accelerated into overtime to transform its processes and offer new tools, such as scheduling and managing virtual visits. By then, they found that 52% of advancement teams were counting “virtual visits” in their tracking metrics and 85% counting video chats as donor meetings. Fundraisers were already generating contact reports from smartphones and laptops to sync with their relationship management database.
In a whitepaper I wrote for The Napa Group, I noted how other experts were making the business case for digital-first: In an April 2020 report, McKinsey & Company reminds us that “A digital future lies ahead. By acting early and being bold and decisive, CEOs can accelerate their digital transformation and reach the next normal sooner.”
How do you form and activate a digital-first strategy?
Whether you are a small or large nonprofit, this framework will facilitate your efforts:
- A core enterprise-wide team focused on all aspects of the customer experience – strategy, budgeting and planning, analytics and digital and offline tools
- Discovery and testing of digital potential digital solutions, their ease of use and how they affect outcomes
- Redesigned roles to structure collaboration across the organization and avoid duplication
- Retraining and “upskilling” – ensuring that all communications and marketing staff can operate effectively in a digital environment, guided by different capabilities for each job
- Delivery of services in an integrated, streamlined model that provides consistent quality (responsibilities, workflows and processes) and supported by clear governance
- Operational alignment around metrics for defining success
To learn more, contact us. We’ve accelerated our virtual tools to assist others in doing this every day!