donor retention

Using Donor Data to Improve Future Fundraising Campaigns: 4 Tips

September 27, 2021 By Jacob Spencer

An abundance of moving parts comes into play each time you plan fundraising campaigns for your nonprofit. You must figure out your goals, determine which tools and solutions you’ll leverage, reach out to the right people, and push your campaign across the finish line. All in all, these campaigns can be tricky to plan and execute successfully.

If you don’t know where to start when planning your next fundraising campaign, you already have access to a valuable resource that can reveal a lot about how you should carry out future initiatives: your donor data.

The data you’ve collected on donors over the years runs the gamut, from their communication preferences to their giving frequency and history of involvement. Don’t just stuff this information in a dusty attic, never to be seen again! Take what you’ve learned and apply it to future campaigns to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Here are several effective ways to use donor data to improve your fundraising campaigns:

Collect donor data using your online giving page.
Use your nonprofit CRM to centralize and sort donor data.
Practice audience segmentation.
Reach out to prospective major donors.

To make the most of your donor data, your organization needs access to a variety of tools — a constituent relationship management (CRM) system, marketing platform, and online fundraising platform are just a few. As we walk through each tip, we’ll dive more into how these tools can support a data-driven fundraising strategy.

1. Collect donor data using your online giving page.

Proper data collection is the first step in harnessing the power of your data to improve your campaigns. One of your organization’s most important tools to capture supporter information is your digital fundraising platform.

If your organization doesn’t already have an online fundraising platform, Donately recommends finding a solution that allows you to gather donor data using your digital donation forms. Robust fundraising platforms allow you to funnel data from your giving form to a centralized dashboard where you can view donor insights about your entire supporter base.

This feature grants you access to readily available donor information such as:

Who your most active donors are
What the most popular donation amount is
The effectiveness of a specific fundraising or marketing campaign
The most popular times of the day or days of the week for donating

Then, you can use this information to plan your fundraising efforts. For example, let’s say your most popular giving amount is $20. For your next fundraising campaign, offer suggested giving amounts of $20, $50, and $100 to give supporters a benchmark for how much they should give.

Or, perhaps you discover your most popular days for donations are Thursdays. For your next campaign, you should publish your most important or informative social media posts on Thursdays.

Once people land on your giving page, inspire them to follow through and share their information by ensuring your donation page offers a secure giving process with the help of a powerful donation processing tool. Be sure to look for an online donation tool that’s built with nonprofits in mind and can accept a variety of payment methods to make the giving process as convenient as possible.

With a comprehensive online fundraising platform, you’ll not only be able to efficiently gather donor data, but you’ll also be able to offer supporters a secure, professional donation process.

2. Use your nonprofit CRM to centralize and sort donor data.

Your nonprofit’s CRM is another essential tool for centralizing and reviewing donor data. This system allows you to record interactions with supporters, plan outreach campaigns, and review your fundraising progress through detailed reports.

As Bloomerang’s nonprofit CRM overview states, your CRM will record data such as:

Basic donor information like contact information, addresses, and names.
Information on donors’ past involvement with your organization, including donation history, volunteer experience, and event attendance.

You can gather this information using website forms such as your digital donation page, volunteer registration page, or email newsletter sign-up form.

As you accumulate these data points, you’ll need a way to keep them organized in your CRM system. Using proper data hygiene practices upfront ensures that when it comes time to plan future campaigns, your donor data is updated and readily available. These practices include:

Regularly auditing your database to determine inconsistencies, such as misspelled names or outdated addresses.
Eliminating errors, like duplicate entries.
Standardizing data entry procedures, such as determining guidelines for abbreviations and street addresses.

With these data management procedures in place, your team will be able to confidently craft a fundraising plan for future campaigns because they will know that your data is clean and accurate. You’ll also be able to see a greater return on your investment because you’ll only reach out to active and accurate email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses.

3. Practice audience segmentation.

Your donor data reveals valuable insights about your donors’ interests, values, and preferences. Through website forms, surveys, and personal interactions, your organization gathers information on its donors all the time. When you store these details in your CRM, you can then use this information to group donors based on shared characteristics in a process called donor segmentation.

As you evaluate your organization’s donor data, look for patterns and trends. For instance, you might create audience segments based on donors’:

Demographics: Creating groups based on demographic characteristics such as age or geographic location allows you to speak to each group in ways that are relevant to them. For instance, you might send an email or direct mail appeal to your older audience members, while younger supporters may likely be more receptive to social media outreach.
Engagement type: Many of your donors aren’t just monetary supporters. They’re also volunteers, peer-to-peer fundraisers, board members, and advocates for your cause. By dividing supporters based on engagement type, you can send each group appeals that they’re more likely to engage with. For example, you can send volunteer opportunities to your volunteer group and lobbying opportunities to your advocates.
Engagement frequency: Not all donors give regularly, or even more than once. Your organization likely has donors that run the frequency gamut, including monthly, yearly, occasional, and one-time donors. By segmenting supporters based on engagement frequency, you can send more personalized messages to each group.
Matching gift eligibility: When you store information about audience members’ business affiliations, you can also gain access to crucial information about their eligibility for matching gifts. In corporate matching gift programs, businesses match donations that their employees make to nonprofits and other charitable organizations. You can use a matching gift database to determine your match-eligible audience members, create a segment of these individuals, and reach out to them with information on the impact of matching gifts.

Consider your goals for your next marketing or fundraising campaign. How can you create supporter segments that best align with your campaign goals?

For example, perhaps you’re hosting a local fundraising event and planning to send out invitations to audience members. You can create a segment of local donors and send out the invites and driving directions to your event. Then, you can create a segment of donors who live further away and send them the link to your event’s livestream.

With these segmentation techniques, you can craft more personalized, relevant communications for donors. Your supporters will appreciate your efforts to appeal to their interests and take their preferences into account. This can lead to greater engagement with your marketing and fundraising efforts.

4. Reach out to prospective major donors.

Data can also reveal information about individuals who don’t already have an established relationship with your organization. You can use data to get in touch with prospective major donors who have the capacity and willingness to contribute a larger gift to your cause. This process, called prospect research, can give your nonprofit’s fundraising efforts an extra boost with the help of high-impact donations.

To conduct prospect research, your organization can use its internal supporter database along with external sources such as government financial records, nonprofit databases, and social media. As you browse through these sources, look for individuals who exhibit a combination of wealth and affinity indicators:

Wealth indicators include factors such as stock ownership, real estate ownership, and business affiliations. These characteristics all reveal information about an individual’s wealth, which lets you know if they can contribute a larger gift.
Affinity indicators are factors that demonstrate that an audience member has a personal connection to your cause and a strong willingness to give. These indicators include having a strong existing relationship with your cause or a history of supporting similar organizations.

Once you’ve identified prospective major donors through the prospect research process, you can start developing relationships with them using deliberate, consistent outreach efforts. Introduce them to your organization and mission, invite them to participate in volunteer events or your annual fundraising auction, and show them how their support can make a major difference for your cause.

Having the support of major donors gives your organization a leg up when it comes time to launch a major fundraising campaign like a capital campaign. Using your data to identify major donor prospects allows you to build these relationships in a natural, genuine way.

As you can see, the supporter data you collect over the years can magnify your future fundraising campaigns. You can assess your most and least effective strategies and move forward with what you know works best for your organization.

Remember, you’ll need a variety of software tools, such as an online fundraising platform, CRM, and matching gift database, to make the most of your donor data research. Be sure to assess your current tools and strategies to determine if you’re using them effectively, and conduct thorough research before investing in any new solutions.

Beyond Recognition: Building a Donor Stewardship Strategy

August 10, 2021 By Derrick Spitler

Once a supporter has donated to your nonprofit, your relationship with them doesn’t end there—in fact, it’s just beginning. It’s your organization’s responsibility to continue to foster a meaningful connection with the donor to secure their loyalty and deepen their engagement over time.

Having a plan to continue to engage with your donors can help improve donor retention and increase a donor’s lifetime value. Ultimately, this means more support for your organization’s cause.

From thanking your donors to offering additional ways to engage, there are certain elements that every successful donor stewardship plan contains. At Eleven Fifty Seven, we’re familiar with these best practices, and we’re here to share them with you. To build a comprehensive donor stewardship strategy, we recommend you follow these tips:

Make a plan
Show your appreciation
Offer ways to get more engaged
Stay in touch
Monitor your progress

With a solid donor stewardship strategy in place, your whole team will be on the same page and prepared to cultivate meaningful, long-lasting relationships with your supporters. Let’s get started.

1. Make a plan

Before your nonprofit revamps your existing program or implements a donor stewardship strategy for the first time, you’ll need to start with the basics. The first step is to make a plan.

Determine what your nonprofit aims to accomplish with your donor stewardship program. Establishing concrete goals can help keep the program focused and will make assessing your success much easier. Some goals your nonprofit might set for your stewardship program are:

Increasing year-over-year donor retention rates
Adding a certain number of donors to your sustained giving program
Ushering a certain number of donors on to the next giving tier (i.e. mid-level donors to major donors)

Depending on your nonprofit’s goals for your stewardship program, you’ll need to be able specifically target subsets of your donor base. Your nonprofit’s CRM should provide segmentation and targeted communication capabilities so you can isolate and reach out to donors based on their gift size, frequency, or type, at the least. Consider addressing the following groups directly:

New donors. You need to have a specific strategy in place for new donors to welcome them to your organization and secure a second donation.
Loyal donors. Donors that have a proven track record of engagement and interest in your nonprofit’s cause will want to have access to certain information and opportunities. These donors are good candidates for peer-to-peer fundraising outreach, volunteer leadership roles, and other, more commitment-heavy opportunities for deepened engagement.
Major donors. Because major donors are such significant contributors to your nonprofit’s mission, you need to be able to target them individually with highly personalized stewardship strategies.

Once you’ve created these segments, you need to take all of your donors’ Communication and engagement preferences into account to refine your outreach strategy. Targeting donors according to these preferences can maximize the success of your outreach efforts by reaching donors where and how they prefer to be reached.

You may consider creating a donor stewardship matrix as your nonprofit lays out a plan for your donor stewardship strategy. A stewardship matrix outlines the type of donor, the type of communication, and the frequency of communication that each type of donor will receive. This is a great way to translate your plan into a concrete deliverable or roadmap that your whole team can reference if there’s ever any doubt about how to approach a given donor for stewardship.

2. Show your appreciation

One of the major aspects of donor stewardship for any group of donors is to show your appreciation for their gifts. This is the first and perhaps most important element of your donor stewardship strategy. Appreciation and recognition should begin right after a donor contributes to your organization, beginning with a “Thank you!” (or alternative wording) appearing on a landing page after a donor contributes. From there, a donation receipt email with additional thanks is also standard practice to let your donors know their gift was received and appreciated.

There are additional, supplemental ways to show appreciation for donations, and the exact strategy you implement should depend on the level of gift. (More significant gift = more significant recognition.) Recognizing your donors appropriately increases donor loyalty and fosters deeper relationships with all of your donors. Consider the following strategies when implementing a donor recognition program as part of your broader stewardship efforts:

Thank-you messages. An email or letter containing a genuine thank-you message can go a long way to let donors know their gifts are appreciated. Make sure to describe the impact the donor’s gift will have on your organization.
Thank-you gifts. Thank-you gifts not only provide a concrete token of gratitude, but if you offer branded merchandise, they can also serve to remind the donor of your organization. Be sure to offer gifts that are proportionate to the donation amount—for example, a keychain may be suitable for an average donor, but a mid-level donor might appreciate a leather-bound notebook or silk scarf.
Public acknowledgment. Public recognition for your donors can range from a dedicated section or page on your website to naming a building after a donor to including their name on a donor recognition wall or plaque. The Eleven Fifty Seven guide to donor recognition walls contains examples of the wide variety of forms that donor recognition walls can take. Public recognition allows your donors to receive broader recognition for their philanthropic endeavors.
Donor appreciation events. Donor appreciation events are interactive, fun ways to show your donors you’re grateful for their support. You might offer exclusive behind-the-scenes tours, donor appreciation luncheons or mixers, or other unique experiences either virtually or in-person.

While a comprehensive donor stewardship program certainly involves more than donor appreciation efforts, donor recognition is still an essential element of every stewardship strategy. You can think of recognition and appreciation as a baseline from which to build your program.

3. Offer more ways to get engaged

Ideally, every donor who expresses interest in your organization would go on to become even more involved with your nonprofit. In order to facilitate deeper engagement, you need to provide every donor with additional ways to get involved, not just request further financial support.

Depending on your donors’ interests, past involvement, and preferences, continue to provide them with information about the following opportunities:

Volunteering. Donors who also volunteer are more likely to develop a strong connection to your cause than those who don’t choose to volunteer. Periodically update your donors about volunteer opportunities and volunteer impact to give them an additional venue through which to engage with your nonprofit.
Peer-to-peer fundraising. Particularly loyal donors or volunteers—not necessarily the highest-tier donors—are the best candidates to recruit for peer-to-peer fundraising activities. They’re most likely to feel passionate about your nonprofit’s cause and want to spread your mission to their social circles.
Fundraising events. Lunches, galas, town halls, tours, and other events thrown by your organization should be promoted to your list of current donors. Not only does this provide exposure to garner more attendance at your event, it provides donors with another way to engage with your organization, strengthening the relationship over time.

Continuing to offer additional engagement opportunities builds an even deeper connection with your supporters as they interact with your nonprofit in more ways. They’ll accumulate a variety of experiences, memories, and relationships associated with your organization, making their connection that much more significant.

4. Stay in touch

Maintaining a consistent cadence of communication with your donors is essential to ensure your organization remains in the forefront of your donors’ minds. This will make it more likely that your donors continue to give and stay involved. As such, regular communication is a valuable aspect of donor stewardship.

There are several ways to make sure you stay in touch with your donors, many of which should be executed without an ask for another donation. There are ample other reasons to reach out to your donors, including:

Providing updates on donation impact. Donors love to hear how their contributions are making a difference. Consider isolating certain groups of donors and sending updates about what their donation was able to help you accomplish. This provides concrete evidence for the necessity of donations and builds trust with your supporters—after all, they like to see that your organization is doing what it promised with their funds.
Circulating an e-newsletter. A newsletter is a wonderful way to provide updates about a variety of topics related to your nonprofit’s programs and operations. You might offer a more detailed, behind-the-scenes type of newsletter for more significant donors and a more broad overview of activities for your lower-tier donors who may not be as invested in your organization yet. Still, in every version you circulate, provide links to additional engagement opportunities so every reader can get more information or become more involved if they choose.
Recognizing birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays. If you have your donors’ birthdays stored in your CRM, it should be fairly simple to establish an automatic “happy birthday” email to each of them. While this may seem insignificant, it provides donors with another opportunity to build a relationship with your brand—and of course, it makes them feel good. Additionally, consider marking your donors’ anniversaries of giving—for example, on the one year anniversary of a donor’s involvement with a food bank, an email might begin, “One year ago today, you started your journey to help support hungry families in our community…” Doing this reminds donors of their commitment to your cause and keeps your organization in mind.
Sending surveys requesting feedback and exploring your donors’ interests. Sending surveys requesting your donors’ input really makes them feel like you value their thoughts and opinions. After all, most relationships are based on trust and mutual understanding. Trying to better understand your donors is always a positive addition to a donor stewardship program, as it better positions you to effectively reach out to them in the future.

Keeping in touch on a regular basis with your supporters is vital to ensuring your cause stays top of mind. Still, be mindful of the volume of communications you send to your donors. You definitely don’t want to bombard them with constant emails, so make sure to prioritize quality and quantity of touchpoints.

5. Monitor your progress

Your donor stewardship program should help your nonprofit accomplish the goals you laid out at the beginning of the program implementation. In order to monitor the success of your program, you’ll need to keep track of the metrics associated with your program’s goals.

For example, you may choose to monitor retention rates to determine if your efforts are leading to an increase in donor retention. Alternatively, you might keep an eye on gift size for specific segments to determine if those donors are, on average, increasing the size of their gifts.

Objective measurements of progress like those laid out in the Donorsearch guide to nonprofit fundraising metrics can provide concrete insights into the effectiveness of your donor stewardship strategies, guiding improvements or reinforcing effective tactics.

As part of your nonprofit’s effort to improve your donor retention strategies, you may even reach out to donors to ask them what they want to receive from your organization. What kind of opportunities would they like to be made aware of? How would they like to be recognized for their support?

Feedback like this can help your organization remain donor-centric and continue to improve your strategies and programs over time, increasing donor satisfaction and loyalty.

Donor stewardship is vital to maintaining a sustainable fundraising strategy with high levels of donor retention, satisfaction, and engagement. It’s significantly easier—and less expensive, on average—to maintain current donors’ support than attempt to acquire support from new donors. Keep this in mind as you design your donor stewardship program, and always prioritize the donor over all else. Best of luck!

6 Ways to Effectively Show Fundraising Impact to Donors

July 15, 2020 By Jon Osterburg

The global pandemic has changed the day to day lives of individuals and nonprofit organizations alike. Nonprofits are struggling to get the fundraising revenue they need as everyone is feeling the effects of the economic downturn resulting from the virus.

Many nonprofits are focusing their efforts on their long-term fundraising plans and in the meantime, simply keeping their doors open and their staff members paid.

However, as we adjust to the “new normal” and resources provided by the government such as the CARES Act start running out of funding or expiring, nonprofits need to find fundraising strategies that will sustain them through these troubled times.

One of the most important things that nonprofits can do to improve their fundraising strategies and adjust for the times is to put an emphasis on impact.

Individuals contribute to causes rather than to organizations. Therefore, showing them how their gifts are making a difference for your cause through financial transparency is always a great idea to further your fundraising efforts.

There are three different types of impact that your organization can show to your supporters. You can show them the impact donors make:

On your long-term annual strategy and goals.
Toward reaching your fundraising goal during campaigns.
Toward your short-term goals and mission.

Within these categories are various strategies that your nonprofit can use to communicate the impact that your supporters have on your mission. We’ll walk through six of our favorite strategies within the categories in this article.

Ready to learn more? Let’s get started.

Annual Impact

All of the combined contributions made by your supporters help your nonprofit achieve your long-term annual goals. Expressing your accomplishments that have resulted due to this combined generosity is a great way to explain the large-scale impact of supporters.

1. Form 990

Your nonprofit is required to communicate some elements of impact you’re making toward your mission to the IRS each year as a part of your Form 990.

Jitasa’s article on Form 990 filing explains the purpose of filing saying, “The Form 990 is the tax form that tax-exempt organizations fill out each year to remain compliant with the requirements of the IRS. It’s the IRS’s method of evaluation to make sure your nonprofit is legitimate and that you’re being financially honest.”

In order to ensure your organization is being “financially honest,” your nonprofit is required to report on key financial information about your organization as well as how you’ve used your finances in order to work toward your mission.

It’s important to recognize that your Form 990, due to the honest and transparent nature of the document, is a valuable fundraising tool because of the transparency it encourages.

As you file your tax forms each year, your nonprofit should consider:
Hiring an accountant to ensure all of the information on the forms is correct and well-documented.
Posting your 990 so that you provide the financial data directly to your supporters.

Your nonprofit’s Form 990 is publicly accessible, so your supporters can go look it up if they so choose. However, even better than encouraging supporters to view this official documentation is providing them an extended version that offers additional context. This comes in the form of an annual report.

2. Extended Annual Report

Your nonprofit’s annual report is your organization’s opportunity to express the progress you’ve made toward your long-term goals and recognize the supporters who have helped you achieve this progress.

In your annual report, your nonprofit has the opportunity to express your financial information, including your fundraising campaign successes, your completed projects, and your plans that may not have turned out how you had originally planned. That’s right, you should be sure to include the “failures” that you’ve encountered.

By creating an extended annual report, your nonprofit can communicate the context in which things did not go as planned and outline how things will change in the future. This shows that you’re not only transparent with supporters, but constantly learning from your experiences.

In Bloomerang’s nonprofit annual report guide, they explain that the primary elements of a complete annual report include the following:

Your financial information. A visual representation such as a pie chart of this information helps ensure your supporters can read it effectively. Be sure to express your fundraising expenses, your overhead expenses, and the costs associated with projects and programs in this chart. You can make a similar one with revenue, charting out the revenue from fundraising, grants, and fees for goods and services.
A project report. This is your time to explain to your supporters all of the victories and project successes you’ve had over the past year. Essentially, it’s your time to really show the larger impact of all of the fundraising gifts you’ve received. Give an overview of the new projects that you’ve launched, those that you’ve completed, and others that are in progress. Get supporters excited about all of the philanthropic steps you’ve taken towards your mission. After all, this is what they’re funding by contributing.
Appreciation for your supporters. In your annual report, you can give a shout out to your major donors who have made an incredible impact towards the successes you’ve had over the past year. By acknowledging their generosity in this wide-spread report, you not only show your gratitude, but you also provide an incentive for other supporters to give at the level of the acknowledged major supporters.

Expressing the impact of your combined donations and contributions from supporters allows them to see the big picture goals and achievements that have come about from their and other’s gifts throughout the year.

Campaign Impact

While annual reports and tax forms provide an effective overview of the annual goals and successes at your organization, rarely is this the only way that you should communicate impact to supporters. You should also make sure that supporters have an immediate understanding of how their contribution has made an impact on the specific campaign.

3. Fundraising Thermometer

A fundraising thermometer is a gamification strategy that provides additional incentive for supporters to give and help your nonprofit reach your campaign goal. The thermometer is generally placed directly on your fundraising page and provides a visual representation of your campaign goal.

When you choose your revenue goal for each campaign, you should make sure it’s based on your philanthropic need, is aspirational as to push the limits of your fundraising capabilities, and is achievable as to motivate your supporters to reach it.

Representing that goal on your fundraising thermometer allows supporters to see exactly how their donation will affect your progress to that overall goal. It provides the incentive to give more in order to help the bar reach the top of the thermometer and help your nonprofit reach its overarching objective. The many benefits of a fundraising thermometer include:

It shows the immediate impact of a donation to help reach a goal, satisfying the desire for instant gratification after contributing to a campaign.
It provides an effective and visual way to track your progress transparently with donors.
It provides additional incentive to give, which encourages supporters to give more.
It motivates your staff and volunteers to maintain momentum as the campaign continues.

Your supporters want your nonprofit to reach its goals. By engaging them and showing them how their donation can make this happen, your nonprofit can maximize the support you have from contributors to your campaign.

4. Supporter Acknowledgement

Another way to show your supporters the impact they’ve had on your specific campaign goals is to tell them! This is an especially effective strategy when it comes to major campaigns and major donors.

Take, for instance, a capital campaign that your nonprofit has been working so hard to carry out. You’re working your way through the quiet phase of the campaign, having synced up with your nonprofit bookkeeping and accounting team to make sure you have the fundraising capacity to reach the aspirational goals in both the quiet and public phases of the campaign.

You have five incredibly generous major donors who support you during the quiet phase of this campaign, contributing a bulk of the revenue that you need to reach your goal.

These are the supporters that you should acknowledge for their generosity in order to communicate the immense impact that they’ve had on your campaign.

You can acknowledge them in a few different ways:

Keep these supporters in the loop as you proceed with the campaign. Give them progress updates and ask for their opinions and feedback on various aspects of the campaign.
Shout out to the supporters on public platforms such as social media, your newsletter, or in your annual report.
Organize an appreciation event with an exclusive invitation list. Be sure this event (or virtual event) is focused on stewardship and acknowledgment rather than fundraising.

Simple acknowledgment can make an enormous difference in your efforts to communicate the amazing impact your donors have on your nonprofit’s campaigns. Do your part to make sure they feel appreciated and understand the difference they’ve made for your mission.

Mission Impact

5. Upfront Explanation of Gift Impact

As stated earlier, nonprofit supporters give to causes, not to organizations. Therefore, one of the best ways to reel in your supporters is to provide them examples of what their generous contributions will accomplish for the cause before they even give.

On your donation page, we recommend providing a simple explanation of the impact that various sizes of gifts can make toward your mission. This is an especially effective strategy when your nonprofit has included suggested giving levels on your donation page because it makes it easy for supporters to choose the impact they want to have before donating.

For example, a city homeless shelter asking for donations may use the following explanations of donation impact on their giving page:

A donation of $25 will feed a homeless individual for a week.
A donation of $100 will feed a family of four for a week.
A donation of $500 will provide all food and shelter for a family of four for a month.

This shows the potential impact of specific gift sizes on the goals of the cause. When a supporter chooses to give $100, they’re really choosing to support that family of four for one week.

6. After-the-Fact Explanation of Gift Impact

Just as you can provide the explanation of impact before a donor gives, you may also choose to share the impact of gifts in response to the donations. This should become a natural part of your organization’s letters of thanks to supporters.

When you write a thank-you letter to your supporters, be sure to make it specific, personal, and include the impact statement regarding their contribution.

There are two ways you can accomplish this. The first is to explain the impact of each donation made to the organization. For instance, this letter may include phrasing like this:

Dear Susan,

Thank you so much for your gift of $100 to the Thoughtful Thanksgiving campaign. Your generosity has provided the Smith family, a family of four, with food for the entire week of Thanksgiving.

Or, you may decide to explain the impact of the entire campaign while still specifically referencing their individual donation. This letter may look something like this:

Dear Susan,

Thank you so much for your gift of $100 to the Thoughtful Thanksgiving campaign. Due to generosity like yours, this campaign successfully provided food for 500 families who would’ve otherwise had very little for the week of Thanksgiving.

Both approaches are effective, although the first is more personal and may better connect with the donor’s emotions. If you’re looking for more examples of full-length letters of thanks, check out the free templates from resources like this one.

As your nonprofit adjusts to the “new normal” that society has been hurdled into, remember the importance of communicating impact to your donors both and now and into the future. It’s a great way to show them that they can still make a difference even in these troubled times.

Retain New Donors With Easy Stewardship Emails

June 16, 2020 By Allison Weber

In times of crisis, many nonprofits gain a large number of new donors—but few retain them. According to The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, less than half of all donors are retained year over year.

While there are countless donor retention strategies, many can be expensive or time-consuming. Thankfully, there’s a quick way to keep your nonprofit top of mind with your new (and old!) high net worth donors: a donor stewardship email program. To start, you simply need to put yourself in your donors’ shoes and do a little planning.

Many people give to a nonprofit once and then move on. In many cases, this is because other organizations inspire them in new ways. As a result, for your nonprofit to retain its existing donors, you need to keep them motivated to continue supporting your mission.

You may not be able to inspire them to feel exactly how they did the first time they learned about your work. It’s tough to compete with the excitement of something new. But you can offer value in another way—by building meaningful relationships with them.

So imagine this: you’re a new donor who recently gave a large gift to your nonprofit. What’s the best way for the nonprofit to build a relationship with you? By showing that you matter. And saying it often.

A donor stewardship email program does just that—it keeps donors engaged in your work through consistent, thoughtful outreach. It creates an authentic connection between your mission and their interests. And prevents your longer term donors from feeling like they don’t hear from you much unless you’re making a fundraising ask.

To get started with a stewardship email program, map out a plan that addresses the basics: what to send, when to send, and how to send it.

Donor Email, What To Send

Just because a stewardship email is thoughtful doesn’t mean that it needs to be complicated. In fact, it shouldn’t be. Your high net worth donors are busy, so be brief to get your message across. Plan to send short emails that do two key things: express gratitude and offer something useful.

Let your donors know that you saw something and thought of them, so you wanted to pass it along. Depending on your donors’ interests, examples of useful items could include:

Evidence of the impact of their support (annual reports, progress updates)
Materials to help them learn more about your cause (white papers, press releases)
News articles relevant to your mission and their interests (new research, current events)
Assets that will help them share their passion for your work (suggested social posts, printables)
Messages of gratitude (thank you videos or quotes from your staff and the people you serve)
Sneak peeks into upcoming happenings (events, campaigns)

It’s crucial to put yourself in your donor’s place as you think about what to share. Think about what truly excites them about your work. After that’s clear in your mind, decide from there what resources to share.

How to Send Donor Emails

There’s no need to invest in the latest marketing technology for stewardship emails. Ask donor relationship managers to send stewardship emails from their normal email inbox. That way, their messages feel personal, not commercial and mass produced. Simplify the process by creating a quick written email template with areas where relationship managers can add in:

The donor’s name
Why they think the resource is relevant to the donor’s interests
Instructions on how to view or use the resource
An invitation for feedback on the resource
A sincere message of thanks for their support

When it’s time to send a message, the relationship manager can simply paste the template into a blank email, edit as needed, and send.

When to Send Donor Emails

Reach out to your donors often, but don’t overdo it. Perspectives vary on how often to communicate with donors, and you should experiment with what works best for your nonprofit.

As you test different rhythms, pay attention to how much time you are investing, changes in your donor retention rates, and what responses, if any, you receive from your donors. It may take several months for your experiments to bear fruit. Relationship-building takes time.

If you’re looking for a number to start at, send one stewardship email per month to each of your high net worth donor for one year. Create a donor communication calendar that outlines possible topics you can highlight each month during the year, depending on when you know that different organizational materials will be published or various holidays and events are happening. But always be ready to adjust your calendar as new topics take priority.

When asking for feedback on the resources you share, don’t hesitate to ask whether your donors would like you to continue sharing similar content with them in the future. That will help you understand whether you should change your strategy or stay the course.

A donor stewardship email program may sound complex, but it’s actually very straightforward. It will help you build relationships with top donors through quick, thoughtful gestures, provided via email. It’s an excellent solution for busy nonprofits looking to stay connected and supported by the generous people helping them realize their vision of a better world.

Utilizing Financial Transparency as the Foundation to Fuel an Art Culture that Moves People

February 12, 2020 By Chris Safford, CMA, MBA

In today’s landscape, managing the increased cost of operating a nonprofit can be a challenge to any organization, even the arts. Still, research and experiences continue to prove that they make profound impacts on communities and an individual’s overall well-being and identity.

California Arts Council made one the largest investments in arts and culture in nearly two decades, reinforcing the state’s commitment to organizations trying to address societal challenges and shaping the future of our next generations with arts.

Relative to this, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), one of the nation’s most innovative contemporary arts centers, strives to reinvent the role an arts institution can play in the community it serves through local programs within local San Francisco schools and communities. Since its founding in 1993, YBCA has been on a mission to generate culture that moves people through year-round performing arts, civic engagement programming and visual arts.

Today, the center’s initiatives range from fighting for food justice with art and cooking alongside the Healthy Corner Store Coalition of San Francisco to developing a curriculum focused on community memory, using art and gardening as tools for local youth with Bessie Carmichael Elementary School. The center also spotlights artists and activists across the community, hosting a multitude of performances, programs and exhibitions.

Evolving the Arts Through Technology

It’s critical for nonprofit organizations to effectively manage grants and donations, as well as continue their initiatives to secure the necessary funds to expand their services and offerings. As a premier performing arts center, it was essential for the YBCA to remain extremely organized and establish strong financial visibility and accountability in order to continue supporting current activities and scale their operations. Doing so required an approach to adopting technologies that allow them to derive deep insights into operational expenses and use the data to inform business actions that align with the company’s future goals.

Looking to grow their organization, streamline its systems, move to the cloud, and modernize its financial management, the YBCA needed to implement new technology that both fit where they were at, as well as support the organization’s goals for the future.

Honing in on Culture by Eliminating Siloed Finances

The YBCA team decided to turn to Sage Intacct to implement radical changes the growing organization needed to track against its goal to generate a culture that spurs and supports societal movement. With Sage Intacct, YBCA was able to analyze the operational context for every transaction, introduce automated processes, develop meaningful key performance indicators (KPI) and bring together datasets that were thought to be unimaginable before. By doing so, the team was able to dedicate more time to strategic activities, sped up its lengthy financial processes while increasing budget accuracy by 30% and improving finance productivity by 25%.

For nonprofits, having a granular view into whether funds are being used effectively and efficiently is vital. The ability to generate insights into the fluidity of key operational tasks and functions, including the center’s grants, projects, programs, departments, revenue types, and donor activities all within one platform, enables organizations like the YBCA to inject efficient processes across its operations. For example, with this streamlined process, the center’s finance team can quickly deliver any information the city requires before releasing grant funding each year, which prevents the interruption of funding that could ultimately result in the delay of vital programs. The elimination of duplicate data entry led to a 60% faster close, saving $30,000 on extra employee costs to help execute their financial processes and instead get to the core of the mission they strive to accomplish on a daily basis.

These tools also offer a window into important trends and provide valuable data for future campaigns and assisting when establishing realistic goals. YBCA is now able to better target their audiences by importing individual donor demographics and event attendance data into Sage Intacct. This enables the organization to progress while keeping its mission in clear view, ensuring that important movements have the opportunity to be showcased for years to come.

The Power of Acknowledgement – Three Elements of Donor Retention

January 1, 2019 By Bill Sayre

What is your philanthropy’s superpower? Every nonprofit has powers, but the most important one that eludes many organizations is the power of donor retention. Unfortunately many nonprofits expect to lose more than 60 percent of donors after their first donation.

It is time to take on high first-time donor attrition rates and secure donor loyalty. Studies show that over the long term, retaining 10 percent more of first-time donors can lead to a 200 percent lifetime return. Here are three nonprofit powers to help improve donor retention and turn one-time donors into life-long supporters:

Efficient Donation Processing and Acknowledgement

When a new donor makes a contribution they may feel they have fulfilled their duty to support your cause. Yet the power of speed – efficient donation processing and meaningful acknowledgement – encourages them to come back. Supporters expect timely, accurate and efficient processing of their donations. Whether outsourced or handled in-house, it is critical that donations are managed with care and precision.

Cutting edge technology can allow nonprofits to process donations faster and more accurately, allowing quicker donor acknowledgement. Automated mail extraction and high-speed scanning equipment helps minimize processing costs, while searchable web-based document image archive and retrieval systems allow donor inquiries about transactions to be researched more quickly and efficiently as well.

Saying Thank You

Once donations are processed, the next power to use is the strength of gratitude. A heartfelt thank you can help secure the second donation, turning a one-time donor into a life-long supporter. To super charge a thank you letter, nonprofits should personalize it to make it more meaningful. Nonprofits can do this by using the donor’s name, referencing the specific campaign that they responded to, discussing how their donation will be used, and even acknowledging repeat donors’ past gifts. Follow-up communications and solicitations can discuss more specifically how funds were used to make a difference. For example, if they gave in response to the recent earthquake in Nepal, specific information on the relief that was delivered and its impact can be provided along with an ask for an additional gift to continue the efforts or to have funds available for immediate use when the next disaster strikes.

Saying thank you doesn’t need to be limited to mail. Follow up calls are another way to say thank you that can make a significant impact on a donor and ensure their first time giving isn’t their last. Calls are easy to personalize and can truly show donors the importance of their contributions. Thanking donors via follow up calls strengthens donor relationships and leads to higher rates of donor retention, in addition to more frequent giving and larger gifts.

Whether saying thank you with a hand written note, a call, on social media, or through a video, nonprofits can make donors feel like superheroes by focusing on what they helped the organization to accomplish. It is the joy that comes from hearing the difference they made that encourages donors to stay involved.

Donation Security

Nonprofits are also responsible for keeping donors and their personal information safe, both physically and in the cyber world. By protecting donors in a world of breaches and identity fraud, nonprofits can safeguard valuable donor relationships.

Nonprofits can build trust through physical security of donor funds and information. A first step is to implement a 24/7/365 surveillance system to safeguard donations and donor information in the facility where donations will be processed. Additionally, tracking of the vehicles used to transport the mail from the post office to the donation processing facility should be used.

Once donors and their contributions are physically safe, nonprofits can focus on the cyber-sphere, starting with the basics. One of the first steps is ensuring standard data security software like firewalls, antivirus software, spam and spyware, data-loss prevention software and intrusion detection software are in place. Data encryption is also essential. End-to-end encryption should be used on all inbound and outbound data files creating another obstacle for hackers.

Additionally, all organizations that deal with donor credit card information should be Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant, ensuring credit card information is being handled appropriately and securely. PCI DSS provides a framework for data security that covers prevention, detection and reaction to security incidents, holistically safeguarding donor information.

These security elements are critical to maintaining your nonprofit’s reputation with both first-time and life-long donors. Having the strength and ability to protect donors creates a sense of trust.

Donors can be a nonprofit’s biggest believers or their kryptonite. These three elements of donor retention – efficient donation processing and acknowledgement, appropriate donor recognition and robust security – can help retain new donors and make them feel like superheroes. As a helpful resource, we encourage you to take our donor retention assessment to discover your nonprofit’s retention opportunities.

Want to Increase Repeat Donors? Just Follow the Rules

August 28, 2018 By Gary Smith

It takes a lot of effort to bring in new donors. That’s why hanging on to the donors you have—and getting them to donate again and again—is key for any nonprofit.

So how you do you increase your pool of repeat donors? Here are a few rules to get you there.

Rule 1: Remember, your nonprofit is only as good as your last interaction.

The interaction a donor will remember most is the last one they had with your organization, so offer the best service possible at all times to all of your donors. Make sure you keep the donation process easy and streamlined. Acknowledge donations in a timely fashion and don’t keep donors waiting for promised tax documentation.

Rule 2: Let donors “get their feet wet.”

Small donations can lead to larger ones down the line. Are you looking for products or supplies? Offer a “trial donation” where the donor only commits to a small amount. If that goes well, you can contact them to see if they would like to make a larger donation.

Rule 3: Spread good will.

Give donors the chance to piggyback on your public relations efforts. Sure, you may publicize their name in your lists of donors, but consider going one step further. Ask if they would like to talk about their donations in your press releases or promotional materials.

Rule 4: Ask for feedback and follow through.

It’s a good idea to send out surveys to your clients to ask about how the donation process went for them. Keep it short to increase your chance of receiving a response, and consider 10 percent a good return rate. Make sure you designate someone to go through the surveys and notify staff of any problems they need to address.

Rule 5: Honor your donors’ preferred form of communication.

To develop positive relationships with donors, nothing beats in-person meetings with telephone conversations the next best. But taking those steps can backfire if a donor prefers you contact them only by email. Find out how your donors prefer you contact them, and then honor that request. If you’re receiving product donations, set up a schedule for how frequently you should contact a business. Some companies may want to donate on a quarterly basis, others every six months. It’s best to set those parameters up front.

Rule 6: Remember to ask the next question.

If you call and a company says they have nothing to donate at that time, ask if you can call back in six months. A lot of companies have “gatekeepers,” so if you call in six months and tell the person answering the phone, “Joe asked me to call him back,” your call is more likely to go through. And if you’re lucky enough to schedule an in-person meeting with a potential donor, remember the next question you should ask is whether anyone else would like to join you for the meeting. The more people you know within a company, the stronger relationship you’ll be able to build and the better chance you’ll have that that relationship will continue if your main contact leaves the company.

Rule 7: Add value to those donations.

Give your donors value beyond the tax benefits they receive. Offer specifics on where their donations went and how your organization used them. Give them as much personal connection as you can to the good their donation is doing. Taking the time to do that is the best way to turn that one-time donor into a long-term giver.

How Technology Makes Pickups and Drop-Offs of Nonprofit Donations Easier

May 29, 2018 By Jordan Behan

In Nashville, Tennessee, two families turn the key to enter their new homes, built by Habitat for Humanity. Thanks to the generosity of donors, families all over the world will be sleeping soundly tonight in homes built by the global charity.

Habitat for Humanity was founded in 1976 with a mission to build simple, decent, and affordable housing for families in need. For the work of building, they depend on the kindness of volunteers all over the world. For fundraising, a major part of the revenue that they generate comes from their ReStore locations, where they sell donated building materials, new and used.

Especially in larger city centers, these ReStore locations process a lot of volume—with donors requesting pick-ups and dropping off goods that can be resold. It’s a concept that a lot of nonprofits that operate retail locations will be familiar with. To help them process these donations and issue receipts, many ReStore locations have leveraged technology to save time and effort, both for donors and the teams in the stores. Here’s how.

Online Booking Gives Donors the Control They Want

Taking bookings for pickups over the phone takes time, and requires nonprofits to have dedicated team members focused on that task alone. The same is true of emailed booking requests—a time still has to be confirmed between both parties and the back-and-forth can take a non-trivial amount of time.

Online booking puts the control in the hands of the donor. The nonprofits can offer available pick-up windows in the booking tool, leaving it up to the donor to choose a convenient time. No more guesswork and no more back-and-forth. The LA chapter saw a saw a 300% increase in Habitat for Humanity donations by using online booking. “It’s really important for us to make it easy for people to donate,” says Karen Moore, ReStore Acquisition Manager for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles (Habitat LA). “(It’s) really very simple for our donors; a step-by-step program for people to schedule a pick-up of the items they want to donate.”

“We opened our second store location in September 2016,” says Robin Henrichsen, ReStore Donations Manager of Twin Cities Restore in Minnesota. “To support increased donation pick ups and sales, we expanded our truck fleet from one to two trucks. This change was easy to implement in the software system and got us up to speed quickly for increased donations pick ups. We increased donation pick ups 170% in the first year with two trucks.”

Nonprofits Save Time on Scheduling and Administration

Since the customer has made the booking themselves, the nonprofit’s scheduling software automatically adds the booking to the calendar. It can even suggest the most convenient route for pickups. This way, the teams working at the ReStores can focus on staging the materials in the stores and ringing up sales at the register.

“We’re more organized, and we are able to take less time to schedule a pick-up,” says Kyle Thornhill, ReStore Manager of Habitat for Humanity of Huron Valley. “In the past, when someone would call to add an item to their pickup or to switch their date, we’d have to shuffle through papers and then rewrite their donation receipts. This took lots of time and also created a window for human error, which occurred often.” The switch to using nonprofit donation software worked. “We were doing approximately 40 pickups a week and (now) we’ve been doing approximately 64 pickups a week,” says Thornhill. That’s an increase of 60%. “We are currently having our best year-to-date and have beaten our sales records for each month since this past July.”

“Since we implemented online donation scheduling, we’ve seen that over 50 percent of all donation pickups are now scheduled online. That’s a better use of time than having to schedule over the phone with a member of our Call Center staff,” says Ryan Smith, Chief Retail Officer of Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver. “Our donations have gone up 25 percent, our sales 35%, and earnings 40%.”

No Need to Create Manual Receipts for Donors

Receipts are another way that technology can save time. When the donor processes the booking themselves, the system can issue a donation receipt digitally. This saves both paper and time, which makes the locations much more efficient over the long term.

Donor Drop-Offs Can Be Made Easier with Technology

Habitat for Humanity of East Bay/Silicon Valley has take the use of tech at their ReStore to the next level. Donors have the option of entering their items into an online donation form before dropping them off. Or, when donors bring items to drop off, they can also use one of the location’s iPad “kiosks” to process the donation and get a receipt.

Donors used to have to wait for store staff to record their donations and issue receipts, but the new way saves much more time. “The online form saves our donors time and offers them the convenience of automatically receiving a professional-looking email receipt containing all the details they need for tax purposes,” says Matt Nelson, Project Specialist at Habitat East Bay/Silicon Valley.

With so many conveniences it brings to nonprofit retail locations, and an increasingly savvy public who demand convenience, booking and scheduling software can be a major asset in helping nonprofits grow their donations and resulting revenue.

About Vonigo
Vonigo is a service business management platform that helps streamline operations and increase sales of mobile service companies and nonprofits. Vonigo offers a unified suite of configurable cloud-based modules including; CRM, scheduling, online booking, work order management, estimating, dispatch, routing, GPS, invoicing, payments, reporting, and more all accessible over the internet from any desktop or mobile device. Millions of jobs have been successfully booked and managed with Vonigo.

Going Deeper: How to use Social, Financial and Location Data to Inspire Donors

May 16, 2018 By Gabe Cooper

Every thriving nonprofit needs loyal, committed donors who feel like they are a part of your cause. And, in order to retain truly engaged donors, you need build personal relationships at scale. The problem is that building thousands of authentic personal relationships can seem almost impossible. After all, each relationship requires time, energy and resources from your already strapped team. Even though this task seems daunting, there is hope! The right types of data can give you the fuel you need to know your donors better, communicate with them on an individual level and ultimately grow giving.

The secret weapon to building relationships at scale lies in three key data sources: social, financial and location. Here’s a look at how you can tap into this information to create sustained engagement around your cause.

Donor’s Social Data

Last year, 81 percent of people in the U.S. had a social media profile. That number always seems stunning to me, but not surprising. The broad adoptions of social media allows your nonprofit to tap into a wealth of personal data on your donors. And with modern software, you can dynamically mine insights on your donors instead of having to manually comb through your social profiles one at a time.

For example, let’s say you have a donor who’s been with you for three years and has given a gift to your organization around tax time every year. You want to understand her motivations and interests better, and are hoping to encourage her to give a little more (or a little more frequently).

By reviewing the information she’s shared on Facebook and Twitter, you might learn that she’s on the board of several organizations, in a senior position at a Fortune 500 company and has a cousin who sits on your board. This one piece of data tells you she could be a great fit for recruiting corporate sponsors for your 10K fundraising event because of her personal and corporate connections. It also likely means she has a high net income and so you should avoid a $50/month recurring donation ask.

A good CRM uses insights like these to give you recommendations about what kind of gift you can ask donors for, what events you should invite them to and how you can leverage their hobbies and interests to grow giving. Simply by unleashing algorithms that dig through social channels, you can learn about donors’ occupation and co-workers; interests and passions; friends and social connections; other organizations and networks relevant to your cause; and how supporters are related and connected to one another.

Donor’s Financial Data

Although you can get some idea of what income bracket a giver may fall into by knowing their job title and company name, you need deeper financial details in order to compel additional giving. For instance, every donor has a unique “giving capacity.” This means the maximum amount of money (or time) a person can comfortably give to your cause without breaking their budget.

Best-in-class CRM software is able to combine your own historical financial data with data from third party wealth databases (real estate holdings, etc). From these analytics, you can gauge a person’s overall giving capacity, and identify if there’s a large gap between what they’ve donated and what they could donate. If there’s a significant gap, you’ll be able to use specific campaigns to target the donor and ask for more, knowing you’re not pushing them past what’s comfortable for them.

Also based on this financial data, you can create forecasts around what giving might look like in the next few months, or years. This can give you the insight you need to stay the course you’re on (if predictions are positive) or switch up your tactics (if they’re negative). More data gives you more power to make the best decisions for your organization.

Donor’s Location Data

A lot of times a donor’s physical location (home address, work, etc) can provide the most valuable insights into their giving behavior. By leveraging geo-locations to figure out how givers are connected to one another (and to our organization) geographically, you can create a more complete picture of each individual donor. And by knowing where each person is located, you can offer them volunteer or participation opportunities that are relevant to them and more likely to be attended.

Knowing which donors are clustered together in neighborhoods, around churches or near landmarks important to your cause helps quickly optimize fundraising. This is especially true if you can see what issues/campaigns drive giving in particular areas. Mapping donors helps target direct marketing efforts, determine event locations and identify your biggest evangelists for the cause.

The amount of data available today can seem overwhelming. But when you are able to tap into the most relevant data… at exactly the right time… you can transform your fundraising. Going deeper into the social, financial and location details behind the people funding your organization can help you quickly build relationships at scale and create a profound impact on your success.

This type of in-depth data helps you better personalize your communications, leaving the donor feeling known and appreciated – and leaving you with far better odds of getting larger, more frequent gifts.

Are You Using DAF’s to Attract a Younger Donor Base? You Should Be.

November 14, 2017 By Charlie Vanek

Millennials. Some associate this word with new opportunities: they consume information differently than older audiences, use different evaluation processes to make decisions, and have very different expectations in multiple areas of their lives. For many across the public and private sectors, this word is symbolic of an audience that is hard to attract and retain. Community foundations will rely on millennials, as well as Generation X, for their organizational sustainability going forward, but have experienced many challenges engaging these new donors. Younger generations expect that the organizations they donate to have the technology to answer specific questions around the constituents that benefited from their donation as well as the longer term impact on the community or issue.

This movement from checkbook philanthropy to investment-minded philanthropy is a significant change that community foundations need to account for moving forward. It also contributes to a second challenge facing many organizations: how do I make a younger donor emotionally invested in a community they may not have lived in for a significant period, or to remain emotionally invested in a community they have moved away from? Let me ask you a question. Have you considered donor-advised funds (DAFs)?

Community foundation-supported DAFs encourage a level of transparency and accountability that is craved by millennials when investing their funds in a philanthropic cause. By investing in a DAF, donors serve in an advisory role, choosing where their money goes and supporting specific issues and causes they care about. Though this level of involvement may cause some uneasiness, this is an opportunity for community foundations to strengthen their relationships with millennial donors by offering expertise on causes and local organizations. This provides an opportunity to gain a great partner, increasing the likelihood they’ll become a recurring donor, especially if your donor management technology enables them to consider and see the direct impact they are making. According to the Council of Foundations, donors are also more likely to serve on your board, or participate in special events sponsored by your community foundation. What a great way to engage those younger donors you will need to serve in leadership positions in the future!

Another straightforward and simple reason to consider DAFs: they’re popular. According to the National Philanthropic Trust, grantmaking from DAFs to qualified charities jumped almost 17% from 2014-2015. In 2016, a donor-advised fund, Fidelity Charitable, made headlines when it took the top spot on the Philanthropy 400, a ranking of the US charities that raise the most money. For millennials, DAFs provide an easy way for them to give in a way that allows them to feel more in control of the difference they are making. The Nonprofit Times acknowledges that often this audience wants to make a philanthropic contribution, but is unsure where to give and how much. So, beyond the obvious tax break benefits, community foundations can capitalize on their impact stories when discussing the possibility of DAFs with prospective donors.

As demonstrated in the Philanthropy 400 list, the growing popularity of DAFs means they are also being utilized by top firms as investment options. Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard are all offering DAFs as financial management options for their clients, again touting the benefits of tax breaks and the high level of flexibility around when clients need to use these funds. While community foundations often see these private sector financial institutions as competition, increased general awareness of DAFs as a result of their mainstreaming could mean less work for your organization when it comes to educating potential donors on what this type of investment looks like. Instead, you can focus on the key differentiators for community foundations: your unique knowledge of the needs of the community, and your experience helping other donors tell their community impact stories.

If your community foundation does not yet offer DAFs it’s time for you to join the 80% of your peers that do (2014 Urban Institute Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy). If you are part of the 80%, that’s great! Continue to share the unique benefits a community foundation DAF can offer donors, and make sure you have the technology that give millennials the experience they expect, and that can tell your donors the impact stories they are looking for..

Good luck!