Spring Cleaning for Your Nonprofit Fundraising
In much of the United States, it already feels like spring has sprung! Temperatures are warming and plants are growing once again. After a whole winter of being cooped up indoors, it feels great to spend time outdoors. Something about the fresh start and new birth of springtime lends itself to spring cleaning, too — a fresh start for your home. After a winter’s worth of grime and dust, it feels invigorating to deep clean and start fresh.
Springtime can be a great time to freshen up other things, too, whether it be your nonprofit’s office space or perhaps something less tangible, like your nonprofit fundraising efforts themselves. Here are some spring cleaning tips for freshening up your fundraising efforts after a long, hard winter.
1. Hold a New-Donor Nonprofit Fundraising Drive
Capitalize on those universal feelings of newness, freshness, and rebirth by conducting a campaign targeting new donors. Remember that it’s only 90 or so days past New Year’s Resolutions season. Plenty of people resolve to give more to charity each year, and plenty of those people fail to follow up. Perhaps they didn’t have a specific charity in mind when they made their resolution. You could be that charity!
Whatever the reason, take advantage of the new-start attitude that spring creates and leverage these feelings into a campaign to attract new donors.
2. Clean Up Your Donor Rolls
Spring is the perfect time to delve into your database of donors for some spring cleaning. Consider sending a postcard to “dormant givers,” those in your database with a history of giving but who haven’t given anything to your charity in the last 2 or 3 years. Let them know you’ve missed them and you’d love to hear from them again. Give them pre-written response options, such as:
- Yes, here’s my gift of $___!
- I can’t give right now, but please keep me on your mailing list.
- Please remove me from your charity’s mailing list.
Add other options as appropriate to your organization. These options allow dormant givers to give you the information you need about their current situation. You’ll be able to clean up your donor rolls without deleting dormant givers who may have just forgotten about you or who hope to give again when their situations improve.
3. Implement a Mobile and Online Giving Option
If you’ve not yet implemented a mobile and online giving solution for your charity, it’s time to dust away the old way of thinking about donations. Today’s givers love the flexibility of being able to give anywhere, anytime — not just in person at big ticket fundraisers. They love the ability to give directly on your organization’s website using a clear “Donate Now” button on the front page, too.
Millennials in particular love the idea of setting up automatic recurring donations. They already pay for many things in monthly subscriptions (think Netflix, streaming music, etc). And 52% are amenable to the idea of monthly giving toward nonprofits. By adding a convenient mobile and online giving solution to your fundraising efforts, your donors will thank you with increased contributions.
As you take time over the coming weeks to do some spring cleaning around your home and office, consider whether your nonprofit fundraising strategies could use some spring cleaning, too. A little work right now can go a long way toward improving your giving outcomes throughout the rest of the year.