As we brace for the end to an unprecedented year, many fundraisers are focused on their annual year-end campaigns, while others are experimenting with new and different approaches to fundraising to claw back time and income lost earlier this year.

Combine pivots and time-crunch with a U.S. Presidential Election, recession and multiple natural disasters and you have a myriad of reasons why this year’s giving season will be different.  While Giving Tuesday is expected to be bigger than ever, the shifts in our culture, mindset and motivations forces us to approach the day with different tactics and engagement opportunities.  Many experts offer stellar advice on new considerations, but how do you know what’s right for your organization and donor base without truly understanding who your donors are?

The success of everything, and we mean everything, you do in fundraising hinges on how much you understand about the people that support or are passionate about your mission.  Constituent insights can be powerful when defining overall strategy, design, communications and donor cultivation for your Giving Tuesday campaign.  More specifically, deeper data and analytics can help you:

 

1.Make faster, more informed decisions based on known donor needs

Half of all nonprofit website traffic last year came from mobile and tablet users. (Source: M+R 2018 Benchmark Report)

Knowing your target donor’s daily lifestyle, habits and schedule can help you improve your Giving Day and overall user experience – ultimately leading to larger conversion rates and donations.

 

2.Increase personalization that is connected to motivators like returning fundraisers, top fundraiser, etc.

Approximately 71% of donors feel more engaged with a nonprofit when they receive content that’s personalized. (Source: Abila, Annual Donor Loyalty Study)

Tailor the Giving Day communications and experience to match your donors’ family status, their activity level, and specific lifestyle preferences.

 

3. Create conditionalized communications that drive greater engagement based on the fundraiser journey

Personalization reduces acquisition costs as much as 50%, lifts revenues by 5-15%, and increases the efficiency of marketing spend by 10-30%. (Source:  McKinsey & Company)

It’s not enough to personalize communications toward preferences.  Consider crafting communications based on specific actions and engagements along the donor journey to incite engagement and greater conversion.

 

4.Build a tiered Moves Management plan

Returning donors bring an average of 2.5x more funds than a new donor. (Source:  DonorDrive)

Identifying who your donors are and how they like to engage with your organization can help you “move” them into a higher giving or engagement level moving forward.

 

5.Leverage your donors’ favorite brands to secure new corporate donors

Corporate has outpaced individual giving by 5-to-1 in terms of growth rate over the past 2 years, and accounted for 2/3 of all COVID-related philanthropy, reaching $7.9 billion (Sources:  National Philanthropic Trust and Philanthropy and COVID-19).

One reason companies partner with nonprofit organizations is to build authentic connections with their supporters.  Establishing a shared constituency can help you win over corporate sponsors for your giving days.

 

Accelerist, a social impact intelligence platform, has partnered with GiveGab , the most trusted Giving Day Platform across civic, nonprofit and education sectors, to offer Giving Day hosts advanced insights on their donors through their audience analytics platform. These insights serve to foster improved relationships with supporters through optimal engagement strategies.

 

If you’re looking to elevate your giving day by better understanding your audience, start by asking these 5 questions:

 

1. Why are these donors supporting our giving day?
2. Who are these participants demographically?
3. What are their attitudes, beliefs or core values?
4. How can we be sensitive to cultural differences, language and societal values?
5. How much does our audience know about our mission, our work, our collective impact?

 

To further demonstrate how this data can help Giving Day hosts leading up to and following GivingTuesday – happening on December 1, 2020 – we’re sharing feedback from an organization that has already benefited from using Accelerist data to understand their donors. 

 

“As a data driven organization, I Live Here I Give Here values its partnership with Accelerist and GiveGab. Our partnership is instrumental in our work to increase generosity in Central Texas by utilizing analytic insights to deepen our supporter engagement, elevate our marketing strategies, and seek new relationships that align with our community’s needs.” 

– Lindsay Muse, Chief Operations Officer, I Live Here I Give Here

 

“At the Community Foundation of North Central Florida we are pleased with our partnership with Accelerist and GiveGab. The data provided helped our organization increase fundraising revenues, make more informed decisions and increased our efficiency. The data has been an asset in growing our fundraising and outreach throughout the entire organization.”

-Barzella Papa, President and CEO, Community Foundation of North Central Florida

 

Join us for a collaborative webinar on October 15th with GiveGab, Giving Tuesday, and our guests from the Community Foundation of North Central Florida and I Live Here I Give Here team to gain more insights into this partnership. 

Join Our Webinar