How to Make the Most of Your Digital Fundraising Program

While not a new concept, many small organizations can be slow to adopt digital acquisition. You may have a lot of questions about the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of implementing digital acquisition strategy. This struggle is understandable, as maintaining a digital presence often seems overwhelming. But with some simple steps you can learn how to improve your digital fundraising operations and begin acquiring new donors.

Spotlight

The American National Red Cross

The American Red Cross is a historic organization that works every day to prevent and alleviate human suffering. In other words, we help people prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies. We provide domestic disaster relief, blood collection and distribution services, preparedness information, health and safety training, service to the armed forces, and international services.

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Nonprofit Management

Using Social Media in Peer to Peer Fundraisers

Article | July 20, 2022

Much of the nuts and bolts of fundraising costs money, and expenses can impact your organization’s bottom line. Still, many successful nonprofits have enjoyed robust giving in recent years due to one relatively inexpensive method to exploit: social media. We’ve become much more familiar with the various social media platforms recently; if the pandemic showed us anything, there is connective power to social media platforms. From the comfort of our homes, we can engage with people and organizations in our hometowns and far away places. If you are fundraising for a nonprofit, this connectivity is one way to attract new donors, cultivate current donors, steward your donors, and, ultimately, encourage gifts from friends new and old. Through peer-to-peer social outreach, the most impactful online connections are made, just as in “real life” fundraising. Peer-to-peer fundraising can look a few different ways. One way is by encouraging your supporters to set up their own fundraiser pages. Some fundraising softwares make this easy by allowing a person to set up their own campaign. All of a sudden, their network becomes your network, too! Understanding the Best Platform for your Organization Another way of tapping into peer-to-peer power is through social media. How can social media help attract new donors? First, take an inventory of the social media accounts associated with your organization. Do you have a Facebook page? LinkedIn? Instagram? TikTok or Twitter? Find someone savvy within your nonprofit – or a friendly supporter – to help you determine if all of these (or some of them) are a good fit for your nonprofit’s personality and mission. Do you serve an adult client base? Facebook and Instagram might be good starting platforms for you. Does your organization help teenagers? Post to Instagram and TikTok. Perhaps a professional LinkedIn page is more in line with what you do. If so, make sure it is up to date and that you are interacting with other like-minded organizations! Organizing Campaign Content for Donors Once you have your platforms figured out, pushing organizational content that highlights your group’s work and mission will help you attract new friends and cultivate your loyal supporters. Think about posting entries that highlight the work you do in short sentences and compelling pictures, and think about posting on some kind of schedule. Perhaps you post about programming on Tuesdays and feature a client or member on a Thursday. Mindless posts are not compelling – make them relevant, interesting or clever, and tactical. Overwhelming the social media feed is not the goal – compelling content which drives social media users to your organization to learn more is. Peer-to-peer social media fundraising often begins with peer-to-peer content sharing. Once you have a handle on the kinds of posts your organization will create – and when they’ll be pushed out – you must leverage the power of social media connections to help further your organization and its case for support. Encourage all of your staff and Board members to “friend” you on the various platforms, and encourage them to boost your content by sharing it with their networks. Do you have an event coming up? Be sure to get this out to your social media contacts and ask them to share it. Has a donor been particularly generous, and can you feature them in a social media post? If you can do so, “tagging” the donor will, in many instances, automatically push your content out to their networks. The reach becomes massive with the right connections. Leveraging Peer Audiences Cultivation and stewardship of your nonprofit’s loyal supporters are very easy on social media. Pictures and words of gratitude or recognition are simple to post and can demonstrate your organization’s impact far beyond the reach of any email or mailing list. Finally, social media’s usefulness in fundraising cannot be overstated. Create virtual events that allow friends to RSVP and share them with their networks. Use Instagram to push out the publicity about the fundraiser – any promotional materials you may have or can create – to manufacture some “buzz” about the event. Utilize TikTok to showcase aspects of the fundraiser: perhaps highlight a program that the fundraiser will benefit or a behind-the-scenes of the event planning. There is no need to restrain creativity – give viewers a reason to return to your site, your event, and your nonprofit!

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Nonprofit Management

The Ultimate Donor Relations Strategy to Increase Member Retention

Article | July 12, 2022

A common mistake nonprofits make is spending all their resources and efforts on marketing and attracting new donors or members. Your initial conversation rates may be great, but what happens after a year, when it’s time for them to renew? A lot of organizations struggle with their retention rates. They work really hard on their renewal appeals, only to see declining numbers month after month. Of course, a number of factors could be at play here: perhaps the donor is no longer interested; their financial situation has changed and they no longer have capacity; maybe they were supporting a specific program or project that has now been completed.

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Nonprofit Management

5 Videos That Show Creative Ways to Market Your Nonprofit

Article | July 13, 2022

Video marketing increases brand engagement, reflects your nonprofit brand personality, and informs the public about your impact. The key is to approach your video marketing strategy in a creative way so you can stand out from the crowd. The following five videos are creative examples from which you can draw inspiration, from capturing your audience’s attention to building strong storylines that deliver information in innovative ways. In each example, we’ll dissect some best practices and learnings you can take away in order to level up your own videos.

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Nonprofit Management

Non-Profits Cannot Afford to Ignore These Business Practices

Article | July 28, 2022

While not-for-profit organizations have different missions and objectives than for-profit businesses, both need the appropriate management team and operational procedures to operate and develop. Unfortunately, maintaining good business processes can be problematic in the not-for-profit sector due to funding, staffing, and management resource limitations, which prevent companies from attaining their full potential. Through this article, you can learn about business tactics that would help build a strong foundation and structure for your non-profit organization to reach its full potential. Management and Board Supervision Management and its governing board must understand their roles, responsibilities, and authority. The rules, processes, and board training materials of the not-for-profit should formally reflect this knowledge. Board members need to be trained and made aware of their duties. Depending on the size of the organization and the backgrounds of its board members, the training's regularity and formality will probably change. CPA firms and other organizations offer resources and instruction on good board procedures. The training should include organization-specific topics, including the entity's programs, activities, mission and philosophy, strategy, finances, and the board's relationships with the organization and its employees. Management of Finance and Cash Flow For any firm, having strong finances is essential. The majority of not-for-profit organizations create annual budgets, but many fail to take into account setting up operating reserves or keeping track of and anticipating unrestricted net assets and cash flows. A formal operational reserve policy that outlines guidelines for how and when the reserves can be used as well as how they are funded should exist and be authorized by the board. Implementing Technology Investment in IT ought to be included in the overall strategy. For not-for-profit organizations, there are numerous options for systems and software, including cloud-based resources, in areas including general accounting, donor administration, record retention, and management reporting. Monthly-fee subscriptions could offer hosting, better functionality at a reduced price, and little IT support. The market for cloud-based services has improved in recent years, offering higher quality at significantly lower prices. In addition, many cloud service providers give discounts to not-for-profit organizations. Adhering to these above-mentioned business tactics would undoubtedly help your non-profit organization be structurally sound with a solid foundation. However, to develop a value proposition and new revenue sources, leadership must be able to view a not-for-profit company differently.

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Spotlight

The American National Red Cross

The American Red Cross is a historic organization that works every day to prevent and alleviate human suffering. In other words, we help people prevent, prepare for, and respond to emergencies. We provide domestic disaster relief, blood collection and distribution services, preparedness information, health and safety training, service to the armed forces, and international services.

Related News

Fundraising, Nonprofit Technology

Blackbaud Unveils New TeamRaiser Activity-Tracking Feature Good Move

Prnewswire | March 31, 2023

Blackbaud, the world's leading provider of software for powering social impact, has announced the general availability of a new expansive feature for Blackbaud TeamRaiser® in the U.S. and Canada. Good Move™ is designed to help charitable organizations energize their constituents and raise more with a mobile-first gamified activity-tracking and peer-to-peer fundraising experience. This new feature leverages Kilter acquired by Blackbaud in late 2022. "Blackbaud is proud to launch this new opportunity for more powerful engagement and fundraising among our customers and their communities," said Graeme Port, senior director of product management for Peer-To-Peer at Blackbaud. "Offering new ways to attract participants and donors will expand the reach and mission of fueling social impact." TeamRaiser is a leading peer-to-peer fundraising event software for nonprofits, and with the addition of Good Move, will deliver easy-to-use fundraising experiences with the ability to track fundraising and activity goals on real-time leaderboards. Featuring a variety of activity-tracking capabilities (syncing fitness devices, checking into gyms/studios, manual entry tiles) and customizable event types (mindful minutes, read-a-thons, traditional walk/runs, pickleball tournaments, hiking challenges, etc.), TeamRaiser customers can take their fundraisers to the next level and build events that truly resonate with their supporter base for greater returns. "We are grateful for Blackbaud being a valuable partner since 2013 as we've grown together to further our missions," said Stephen Holley, co-founder, president and CEO of Carry The Load and Veteran U.S. Navy SEAL. "Core to our mission at Carry The Load, hundreds of thousands of volunteers have walked millions of miles to honor and remember military service members and first responders who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Launching the Good Move application will expand our reach as a nonprofit and ultimately make a greater impact for those we serve." The Good Move application is now available to all TeamRaiser customers at no additional cost and can be added to any existing campaign or used to create an entirely new one to further engage constituents. About Blackbaud Blackbaud is the leading software provider exclusively dedicated to powering social impact. Serving the nonprofit and education sectors, companies committed to social responsibility and individual change makers, Blackbaud's essential software is built to accelerate impact in fundraising, nonprofit financial management, digital giving, grantmaking, corporate social responsibility and education management. With millions of users and $100 billion donated, granted, and invested through its platforms every year, Blackbaud's solutions are unleashing the potential of the people and organizations who change the world. Blackbaud has been named to Newsweek's list of America's Most Responsible Companies, Quartz's list of Best Companies for Remote Workers, and Forbes' list of America's Best Employers. A remote-first company, Blackbaud has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica and the United Kingdom, supporting users in 100+ countries.

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Fundraising, Nonprofit Technology

iWave Introduces Interactive Dashboards for Donor Insights and Trends

iWave | March 10, 2023

On March 09, 2023, iWave, the leading fundraising intelligence solution in the industry, announced the release of its new interactive dashboards and visual analytics for healthcare, education, and nonprofit organizations. The robust suite of dashboards provided by iWave enables organizations to make strategic and operational decisions at a glance, as well as swiftly identify opportunities and trends among their donors and prospects. Examining vast amounts of data and gleaning insights can be challenging and time-consuming using conventional methods due to the growing volume of donor information. The addition of interactive visual analytics empowers fundraising professionals to explore vast amounts of data and efficiently communicate vital insights to their teams. The latest addition to iWave encompasses the following dashboards: Operations: Real-time tracking of in-app activities to help organizations improve platform usage. Major Giving: AI-powered analytics for wealth and philanthropic data visualizations for donors and prospects. Executive Summary: A customized donor portfolio summary includes philanthropic, wealth, and biographic information to share with leadership members. Planned Giving: Planned Giving: Wealth, age, and cause data analytics for donors likely to give a legacy gift. Maps: An interactive geographic map of prospects and donors to choose event locations, plan donor visits, and determine staffing needs depending on geographic distribution. iWave's interactive dashboards are powered by Tableau, enabling organizations to explore, evaluate, and illustrate fundraising data for quicker, data-driven decision-making. These compelling visualizations facilitate the transformation of data into actionable insights. About iWave iWave is a leading software solutions developer based in Charlottetown, Canada, specializing in providing comprehensive and user-friendly fundraising intelligence platforms to nonprofit organizations. Its 30 years of experience in aggregating wealth, philanthropic, and biographic data allows it to empower fundraising teams with actionable intelligence that helps them learn more about their donors, raise more money, and maximize their impact. With its outstanding support team and industry tips on our blog, the company helps nonprofits fundraise with confidence.

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Fundraising,Nonprofit Technology,Financial Management

Armanino Leverages Predictive Analytics to Help Nonprofits for Fund Planning

Armanino | January 20, 2023

The national accounting and consulting firm Armanino LLP recently announced the launch of its Strategic Development Outsourcing (SDO) service, giving nonprofit organizations the only resource in the accounting and consulting fields. SDO, the new service, brings a purposeful development approach powered by analytics and data to help organizations to focus on internal resources to obtain maximum performance. The three-phase approach is used by Armanino's Strategic Development Outsourcing service to drive the results for the nonprofit's funding. The first phase of three is to provide an in-depth analysis of the organization's present fundraising performance compared to the benchmarks of other nonprofit organizations. The second phase identifies potential funding gaps and builds a three-year development model using predictive analytics. Finally, the third phase is to provide expertise to support bridging the funding gap and design a strategy for the nonprofit's funding. Armanino provides ongoing support for custom report creation with donor analytics, maintaining a donor database, assisting with significant gift planning, donor segmentation, planned to give, detailed fundraising analysis, and compliance functions. The company's SDO service evaluates organizations' current donor base using many industry-leading strategies, to help them source new prospects and gauge individual, corporate and institutional funding. The service has the power to provide access to previously inaccessible solutions and data tools, allowing the organizations to take complete advantage of the collective resources and expertise provided by Armanino's state-of-the-art consulting practice offers. About Armanino Founded in 1969 as an accounting and business consultancy, Armanino LLP is one of the top 25 Certified Public Accountants in the nation. The company provides business management, an integrated set of audit, tax, and technology solutions and consulting regionally and nationally. It offers services to companies in every stage of the business. Armanino focuses on intelligent technology and is one of the leaders in the cloud revolution of financial, operational, sales, and compliance tools that are changing the way companies do business. The company is an independent member firm of Moore North America Inc. (MNA), a regional member of Moore Global Network Limited (MGNL), one of the leading accounting and consulting membership organizations.

Read More

Fundraising, Nonprofit Technology

Blackbaud Unveils New TeamRaiser Activity-Tracking Feature Good Move

Prnewswire | March 31, 2023

Blackbaud, the world's leading provider of software for powering social impact, has announced the general availability of a new expansive feature for Blackbaud TeamRaiser® in the U.S. and Canada. Good Move™ is designed to help charitable organizations energize their constituents and raise more with a mobile-first gamified activity-tracking and peer-to-peer fundraising experience. This new feature leverages Kilter acquired by Blackbaud in late 2022. "Blackbaud is proud to launch this new opportunity for more powerful engagement and fundraising among our customers and their communities," said Graeme Port, senior director of product management for Peer-To-Peer at Blackbaud. "Offering new ways to attract participants and donors will expand the reach and mission of fueling social impact." TeamRaiser is a leading peer-to-peer fundraising event software for nonprofits, and with the addition of Good Move, will deliver easy-to-use fundraising experiences with the ability to track fundraising and activity goals on real-time leaderboards. Featuring a variety of activity-tracking capabilities (syncing fitness devices, checking into gyms/studios, manual entry tiles) and customizable event types (mindful minutes, read-a-thons, traditional walk/runs, pickleball tournaments, hiking challenges, etc.), TeamRaiser customers can take their fundraisers to the next level and build events that truly resonate with their supporter base for greater returns. "We are grateful for Blackbaud being a valuable partner since 2013 as we've grown together to further our missions," said Stephen Holley, co-founder, president and CEO of Carry The Load and Veteran U.S. Navy SEAL. "Core to our mission at Carry The Load, hundreds of thousands of volunteers have walked millions of miles to honor and remember military service members and first responders who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Launching the Good Move application will expand our reach as a nonprofit and ultimately make a greater impact for those we serve." The Good Move application is now available to all TeamRaiser customers at no additional cost and can be added to any existing campaign or used to create an entirely new one to further engage constituents. About Blackbaud Blackbaud is the leading software provider exclusively dedicated to powering social impact. Serving the nonprofit and education sectors, companies committed to social responsibility and individual change makers, Blackbaud's essential software is built to accelerate impact in fundraising, nonprofit financial management, digital giving, grantmaking, corporate social responsibility and education management. With millions of users and $100 billion donated, granted, and invested through its platforms every year, Blackbaud's solutions are unleashing the potential of the people and organizations who change the world. Blackbaud has been named to Newsweek's list of America's Most Responsible Companies, Quartz's list of Best Companies for Remote Workers, and Forbes' list of America's Best Employers. A remote-first company, Blackbaud has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica and the United Kingdom, supporting users in 100+ countries.

Read More

Fundraising, Nonprofit Technology

iWave Introduces Interactive Dashboards for Donor Insights and Trends

iWave | March 10, 2023

On March 09, 2023, iWave, the leading fundraising intelligence solution in the industry, announced the release of its new interactive dashboards and visual analytics for healthcare, education, and nonprofit organizations. The robust suite of dashboards provided by iWave enables organizations to make strategic and operational decisions at a glance, as well as swiftly identify opportunities and trends among their donors and prospects. Examining vast amounts of data and gleaning insights can be challenging and time-consuming using conventional methods due to the growing volume of donor information. The addition of interactive visual analytics empowers fundraising professionals to explore vast amounts of data and efficiently communicate vital insights to their teams. The latest addition to iWave encompasses the following dashboards: Operations: Real-time tracking of in-app activities to help organizations improve platform usage. Major Giving: AI-powered analytics for wealth and philanthropic data visualizations for donors and prospects. Executive Summary: A customized donor portfolio summary includes philanthropic, wealth, and biographic information to share with leadership members. Planned Giving: Planned Giving: Wealth, age, and cause data analytics for donors likely to give a legacy gift. Maps: An interactive geographic map of prospects and donors to choose event locations, plan donor visits, and determine staffing needs depending on geographic distribution. iWave's interactive dashboards are powered by Tableau, enabling organizations to explore, evaluate, and illustrate fundraising data for quicker, data-driven decision-making. These compelling visualizations facilitate the transformation of data into actionable insights. About iWave iWave is a leading software solutions developer based in Charlottetown, Canada, specializing in providing comprehensive and user-friendly fundraising intelligence platforms to nonprofit organizations. Its 30 years of experience in aggregating wealth, philanthropic, and biographic data allows it to empower fundraising teams with actionable intelligence that helps them learn more about their donors, raise more money, and maximize their impact. With its outstanding support team and industry tips on our blog, the company helps nonprofits fundraise with confidence.

Read More

Fundraising,Nonprofit Technology,Financial Management

Armanino Leverages Predictive Analytics to Help Nonprofits for Fund Planning

Armanino | January 20, 2023

The national accounting and consulting firm Armanino LLP recently announced the launch of its Strategic Development Outsourcing (SDO) service, giving nonprofit organizations the only resource in the accounting and consulting fields. SDO, the new service, brings a purposeful development approach powered by analytics and data to help organizations to focus on internal resources to obtain maximum performance. The three-phase approach is used by Armanino's Strategic Development Outsourcing service to drive the results for the nonprofit's funding. The first phase of three is to provide an in-depth analysis of the organization's present fundraising performance compared to the benchmarks of other nonprofit organizations. The second phase identifies potential funding gaps and builds a three-year development model using predictive analytics. Finally, the third phase is to provide expertise to support bridging the funding gap and design a strategy for the nonprofit's funding. Armanino provides ongoing support for custom report creation with donor analytics, maintaining a donor database, assisting with significant gift planning, donor segmentation, planned to give, detailed fundraising analysis, and compliance functions. The company's SDO service evaluates organizations' current donor base using many industry-leading strategies, to help them source new prospects and gauge individual, corporate and institutional funding. The service has the power to provide access to previously inaccessible solutions and data tools, allowing the organizations to take complete advantage of the collective resources and expertise provided by Armanino's state-of-the-art consulting practice offers. About Armanino Founded in 1969 as an accounting and business consultancy, Armanino LLP is one of the top 25 Certified Public Accountants in the nation. The company provides business management, an integrated set of audit, tax, and technology solutions and consulting regionally and nationally. It offers services to companies in every stage of the business. Armanino focuses on intelligent technology and is one of the leaders in the cloud revolution of financial, operational, sales, and compliance tools that are changing the way companies do business. The company is an independent member firm of Moore North America Inc. (MNA), a regional member of Moore Global Network Limited (MGNL), one of the leading accounting and consulting membership organizations.

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