Kindful teamed up with One Click Politics and hosted and Advocacy + Fundraising webinar. In case you missed it, here’s a quick recap of the key points – plus the answers the questions you asked at the end of the webinar.
We at Kindful presented on how to turn your advocates into donors. Our friends at One Click Politics presented on how to turn your donors into advocates.
Turning advocates into donors
Segmenting your advocacy list based on preferences can increase the engagement rate (and ultimately the response rate) of your fundraising appeals.
You can create groups in your database based on your advocates actions. Then, match these lists to other programs your nonprofit offers. Finally, send targeted emails based on those interests.
Now that you’ve segmented your lists, these emails won’t seem out of left field to your advocates since it references their previous actions.
An email nurturing series is a great way to drive advocates towards giving a donation.
This is a series of 3-5 emails that introduce your advocates to your organization as a whole.
It can include things such as:
- Welcome email
- A success story from your nonprofit
- Ask to follow you on social media,
- Introduce them to other programs your nonprofit offers,
- Include a soft ask.
The length of this series can vary and it doesn’t have to contain every component. Test what cadence works best for your audience.
It’s okay to ask your advocates for a donation as long as it’s done in the appropriate ways.
Here are four ways to do this:
- Include a link to your donation page in your email signature.
- Offer a text to give opportunity at advocacy events. This can be through a quick video overview shown at your event or the text to give number printed on promotional materials.
- Include advocates in your big giving campaigns including year end, fiscal year end, and matching gift campaigns.
- Ask your advocates to crowdfund for your organization.
Advocates can make great evangelists for acquiring new donors.
Create social media posts your advocates are passionate about so they will share them.
Create a hashtag around your cause and start getting your advocates to use and promote it.
Turning donors into advocates
Advocacy alerts receive five times as many responses as fundraising appeals.
Advocacy-driven fundraising is proven to yield better results in both donations and actions taken.
Advocates are 7x more likely to become donors than non-advocate supporters of your organization.
By engaging in consistent advocacy-driven fundraising you can identify your super advocates.
Connecting a fundraising appeal with and advocacy initiative can potentially triple the amount of donations you receive.
Advocacy initiatives provide a more concrete and tangible example of how to achieve your mission.
Advocacy-inspired fundraising that is tied to relevant and timely news stories provides the best fundraising opportunities.
When your advocacy and fundraising message is specific, urgent, timely, and inspiring, you have a higher chance of success.
Questions
1. How many emails is a good number of emails to send in a nurturing series?
You really will need to test what’s the best cadence for your organization. It also depends on the type of information you are sending and how your audience engages with your emails. But if you need a starting point, test starting with three emails – a welcome/vision email, a success story email, and then an email that showcases your programs that also contains a soft ask for a donation. Remember to make sure to recognize any actions they’ve done in the past.
2. Can you talk more specifically about crowdfunding and how you would do it?
Say you’re advocates attended a rally to support a bill for cancer research and your organization also raises money for cancer research. You can do one of two things. You can host a large event – maybe a 10k race – and ask your advocates to create teams. In Kindful, you’d create cause pages, and then have your advocates rally their friends together to raise money towards a certain goal.
A second option is to let your advocates start their own campaigns – think charity:water style. It’s up to you how to promote it, but make sure to let your advocates know this is an option your nonprofit provides.
3. Can you segment your lists too much?
As long as you keep track of who is receiving what appeal and who responded to what – there really isn’t a limit to how many groups you can have. They key is to not over-communicate with your advocates in the wrong way so they unsubscribe.
4. What’s the best platform to send out automated emails for the welcome email series?
Either Emma or Mailchimp are great platforms for nonprofits to use for an automated welcome series.
5. If you only have one program (not multiple), do you have any suggestions for engaging advocates/donors for one-program organizations?
We have some news-relevant calls to action in happening right now as well.
You can still follow the points above, but one great way to engage advocates for one-program organization is to try to increase your social media presence — especially if you have timely news-relevant CTAs. Create a hashtag (or you can use one that is already trending and gain momentum from that). If you have powerful, relevant content, people will share it.