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Principal Gift Fundraising: Securing Transformational Gifts

February 7, 2024/in Nonprofit Basics, Learning Center /by Adam Weinger

Nonprofits thrive on the support of major donors. The most major of the major gifts a nonprofit might receive are called principal gifts.

Principal gifts bring transformational benefits and drive incredible impact, growing organizations’ capacities to run programs, serve constituents, and make a difference. They’re elusive but achievable when you have an intentional strategy to identify and secure them.

What’s a Principal Gift?

Simply put, a principal gift is a large donation made to a nonprofit by a major donor.

Nonprofits commonly consider principal gifts to be worth $1 million or more, but it’s important to remember that their exact value is relative to the size of an organization’s average gifts. You can define a rough range for major giving for your organization by identifying your top 25 or so gifts received within the past five years and determining the median of this range. This number can serve as a minimum for defining major gifts. Principal gifts would fall at the very top of (or far above) this range.

So how do you snag a principal gift? What background knowledge and strategies do you need to succeed and start transforming your organization?

In this crash course, we’ll take a closer look at principal gifts, how to pursue them, and other ways to maximize the value of your development efforts through tactics like corporate philanthropy.

Understanding Principal Gift Fundraising

Before you can begin laying out a principal gift fundraising strategy, you’ll need to understand some important context.

Principal gifts vs. major gifts: What’s the difference?

A principal gift is a major gift, but a major gift is not necessarily a principal gift.

As explained above, your organization’s definition of a major gift is highly relative to your donor base and average fundraising data. A principal gift is simply a large gift at the top of or above that range of major giving.

Nonprofits pursue major and principal gifts using similar tactics but note that principal gifts have an especially long lifecycle. The larger the gift, the more discussions, care, and due diligence that go into the process. This is also true because principal gifts can generate significant publicity when given by high-profile philanthropists. Options should be weighed carefully before nonprofits and principal donors make public “investments” in one another and link their images.

You may also encounter the term lead gift. These are also large major gifts, but they’re received specifically in the context of major fundraising campaigns. A capital campaign’s fundraising goal, for example, is traditionally topped by a large lead gift, followed by a couple of smaller (but still major) gifts, and then more and smaller gifts down the line in a pyramid structure. This approach is highly efficient, allowing nonprofits to focus first on the handful of highest-impact gifts that will push the campaign the furthest forward.

Who gives principal gifts?

Major donors give principal gifts to nonprofits.

Sometimes, but not always, these donors are high-profile, high-wealth philanthropists—think Mackenzie Scott making waves in the nonprofit world with a new mega-gift. This situation is often what nonprofits imagine when they hear the term “principal gift.”

But again, it’s important to remember that the value of major gifts is relative and that no two donors are alike. What they do have in common is the capacity and inclination to give major gifts, whatever that might mean for your organization.

If you’ve taken concrete steps to invest in prospect research and major gift fundraising, there’s a good chance you’re already in touch with (or in the orbit of) a potential principal gift donor for your organization’s major giving range.

How are principal gifts usually given?

Principal gifts are not usually given out of cash but rather from saved assets (or a mix of cash and assets).

These non-cash assets often include:

Real estate
Stocks and other tradable securities
In-kind gifts of valuables like jewelry or art
Grants from donor-advised funds (DAFs)
Planned gifts like trusts and annuities
Cryptocurrency

When you pursue large donations, it’s important to be flexible in the types of gifts you can accept. Wealthy donors often prefer to give from saved assets rather than from liquid cash, not only because this won’t affect their day-to-day finances but also for the unique tax benefits that different non-cash gifts can bring. We’ll explore this best practice in greater detail below.

How do nonprofits pursue these gifts?

Nonprofits pursue principal gifts as part of their development programs, typically overseen by a dedicated staff member.

Nonprofit development provides the core structure and processes for principal gift fundraising. Having a development approach in place is generally a prerequisite for success. (Keep in mind, though, that even small shops succeed with development with the right tools and prioritization tactics!)

The fundraising strategies used for principal gifts are similar to those for other major gifts but heightened in intensity. One-on-one engagement is even more important for principal gift fundraising, for example. Other best practices take increased emphasis, as well, like the importance of networking in the prospect identification process.

How to Build a Principal Gift Fundraising Program: 10 Key Steps

So you’re ready to get serious about pursuing and securing principal gifts for your nonprofit. How do you build a program to support that goal? We break it down into the following key steps:

1. Understand principal donor motivations.

First, take the time to understand why principal donors give such large gifts. As with other major donations, these gifts are motivated by a range of different personal reasons. These might include:

The simple desire to give back
Giving back to a personally meaningful cause or institution
Tapping into significant tax benefits
Simplifying estate and financial plans with bequests and in-kind donations of property
Public recognition for personal brand-building

Always keep in mind that philanthropists give strategically—of course, they choose to give to the specific causes and organizations that matter to them, but additional motivations usually come into play. Understand these and you can better align your own goals with those of your prospects.

2. Audit your existing development practices.

Principal gift fundraising occurs as part of your other development practices. Review your current processes for major gift fundraising, planned giving, and other high-impact or nontraditional forms of one-on-one fundraising. Consider the entire major donor lifecycle and the steps, tools, and best practices you use at each stage. These include:

Prospect research and wealth screening
Prospect qualification
Gift cultivation and your messaging during this process
Your solicitation strategies
Your stewardship strategies and cadences
Your nonprofit’s gift acceptance policy (create one if needed!)

Pay extra attention to the logistical processes that drive this lifecycle, especially moves management and your CRM practices. You’ll rely on these for principal gift fundraising just as you do for other giving programs.

Ideally, you’ll have data to refer to. Check out your historical performance with major gifts. Is your prospect pipeline consistently full or running low? Are there stages in the lifecycle where many prospects seem to drop off? Are your qualification criteria appropriate and up-to-date?

Identify potential improvements and make them (and/or consider how you’ll adjust them for principal gifts).

3. Screen your database and research connections.

Next, you’ll begin identifying your first principal gift prospects.

Look to your existing base of support. A pre-existing relationship with your nonprofit is one of the most reliable indicators of giving likelihood. Run a wealth screening to find those donors and contacts with the means to give a gift in the upper half or so of your nonprofit’s defined range for major gifts.

It’s normal in major and principal gift fundraising to branch outside of your direct contacts to find prospects, as well. However, this doesn’t mean cold-calling individuals in your community who you know to be wealthy. Existing, organic connections will yield the best results. Look to your current major donors and consider what you know or could find out about:

Their families, friends, and community ties
Their careers, colleagues, and employers
Past nonprofits they’ve given to or volunteered for

Local histories, publications, social media (especially LinkedIn), the annual reports of other nonprofits, and more are all viable research routes. And remember, if you have strong working relationships with any major donors, don’t be afraid to just ask. Set up a call or lunch to let them know your organization is seeking more high-impact support. Do they have any friends, family, or colleagues who’d also be interested in your mission?

4. Map out your relationships with major donors.

Review everything you’ve learned from researching top prospects and their connections. Then, map it out.

This might mean using a notebook or simple design tool to literally draw connections between your contacts and individuals you’d like to meet—whatever works! You’ll likely be surprised to find that many high-impact donors move in similar social circles, especially in smaller communities.

Visually look for connections and correlate them to your research insights. This process can yield some valuable results. For example, you might find several connections from existing donors pointing to one individual in the community. This person might be a prime candidate for outreach because of the organic personal or professional connections that you already have with them.

5. Review your donor qualification criteria.

Before finalizing a list of prospects, you need to qualify and prioritize them. Principal gift fundraising is highly time-intensive and requires one-on-one communication over extended periods. You’ll need to have a plan to spend your time wisely, that is, by focusing first on those most likely to give.

Qualification is the process of defining the characteristics of a strong giving prospect and using them to update your prospect lists for more efficient and targeted outreach. Qualification criteria can include:

Certain giving capacities (shaped by your organization’s definition of major gifts)
Stock ownership
Property ownership
Active engagement with your nonprofit
Active engagement with other nonprofits
Demonstrated interest in or personal connection to your cause
Direct, second-degree, third-degree, etc. connection to your nonprofit
Personal vs. professional indirect connections

Note that some criteria can (and often should) be weighted more heavily than others. Existing direct connections with your nonprofit should be prioritized over indirect connections, or you may learn over time that personal indirect connections are better indicators than professional ones.

Not every prospect will check every box, but this approach does allow you to tackle the prioritization process in a standardized, easily repeatable way. Many fundraising experts recommend making qualification a recurring activity for your development team to ensure continued effectiveness—Graham-Pelton’s donor qualification guide lays out why and how to do this.

You should also keep your qualification criteria up-to-date over time, and create different variations of them for different giving programs. For example, while principal gift donors, major donors, and planned gift donors might share some common characteristics, these are not perfectly overlapping groups. Qualification makes it easy to build in a more targeted approach from the very start.

6. Build a preliminary list of principal giving prospects.

Next, use your qualification criteria to screen the list of donors and prospects you identified in Steps 3 and 4.

Rank them according to your criteria, and you’ll have a handy, easy-to-use shortlist of your very top prospects.

7. Develop outreach strategies.

Now you can begin thinking about how you’ll get in touch with your prospects. Consider these tips:

Review known communication preferences of existing contacts.
Look back at previous conversations with existing contacts to refresh yourself on their personal life developments, career changes, etc., and use these to begin new conversations.
Ask your existing contacts for introductions to new prospects based on the mapping exercise in Step 4.
Create or update your nonprofit’s general case for support.
Create more context-specific cases for support if needed. For example, if you’re seeking a lead or principal gift as part of a major fundraising campaign, you’ll need talking points tailored to the campaign’s objectives.
Prepare some preliminary shareable resources like your annual report, one-pagers, and brochures about your nonprofit and its impact. You likely won’t need these until you’re closer to actually soliciting a gift, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

With these tips in mind, take a closer look at everything you’ve learned about each prospect and conduct more research if needed. Use this information to lay out personalized outreach strategies for each individual.

8. Start reaching out to build relationships.

Begin reaching out! Work your way down your shortlist of prospects, starting conversations, having calls and meetings, and introducing them to your organization, its work, and its needs.

During this stage, take your time and follow standard gift cultivation best practices that you follow for other major gifts.

Take an interest in your prospects’ personal and professional lives, and work to show them how a partnership would drive impact in the community. Remember that gifts of any size can be restricted or unrestricted—if a prospect shows interest in one particular program or service that your nonprofit runs, lean into it.

You should also seek to learn more about your prospects’ giving motivations so that you can best tailor your eventual solicitations. For example, a wealthy middle-aged prospect might be nearing retirement age and interested in financial planning. You could explain to him or her that various types of planned gifts can actually provide donors with regular income payments while reducing their tax bills, making these arrangements ideal vehicles for principal donations.

9. Double down on moves management and record-keeping.

Throughout the cultivation and solicitation processes, keep close track of your touchpoints with prospects. Organized moves management is essential.

Use your CRM to record each touchpoint, add notes, and tag it with the appropriate prospect. This will take all the guesswork out of preparing for your next conversation and determining the right time to make the ask.

Check out our introduction to moves management for a quick overview of this process.

And aside from tracking your interactions with prospects, be prepared to handle other logistics once you make a successful solicitation. Finalizing a principal gift will involve working closely with the donor and perhaps their (and your) lawyer to hash out the details, especially for non-cash gifts that require legal transfers of ownership or other arrangements. Keeping tidy records of your organization’s finances is always important, and you’ll need to have crystal-clear records of your principal gifts.

10. Prioritize engagement and stewardship.

As you build relationships with principal gift prospects, introduce your giving programs, and lay out compelling cases for support, you’ll hopefully soon successfully solicit your biggest donation yet. Thank your donor, work out the fine print, thank them again, and begin facilitating the donation.

What next?

Ongoing engagement and stewardship are already important for your major donors—doubly so for principal gift donors. They are extremely valuable partners for your mission. You should have a plan to:

Stay in touch and aware of developments in their lives
Keep them up-to-date on the progress of your work and any specific campaigns or programs they funded
Offer ongoing opportunities to get involved with event invites, personal meetings, tours, and more
Offer new giving options over time that you think they may be interested in

By maintaining and growing your relationships with key supporters over time, you’ll retain their support, secure additional gifts in the future, and build a stellar reputation for your nonprofit. Who wouldn’t want to be known as an organization that inspires transformational gifts and fosters a thriving community?

Learn more about the essentials of donor stewardship

How to Make the Most of Your Development Strategies

You’ve built effective development strategies and are well on your way to securing a principal gift that will take your work to the next level. Your prospect pipeline is humming along, and everyone’s excited to drive your nonprofit’s goals forward. What next?

Stay on the lookout for ways to maximize the impact of your development work. There are all kinds of ways you can generate more value through your giving programs. For example:

1. Promote matching gifts and volunteer grants. These employer-offered CSR perks are effortless ways to boost the value of your donations. Ask your donors (at all giving levels) to check their eligibility, or research it for them. Nonprofits’ board members are also often significant donors—don’t forget that their board service might qualify for volunteer grants through their employers, as well!

360MatchPro by Double the Donation streamlines the entire process for you and creates easy value-adds up and down your donor pyramid. Learn more or request a demo to see our platform in action. For more information on how the platform works, check out this video:

2. Provide flexible giving options. As mentioned above, major and principal donors often like to give from assets rather than cash for numerous reasons. Be prepared to offer and discuss these giving options. Making it easy to give in a preferred way almost guarantees that you’ll raise more in the long run. Look for tools that simplify the process of accepting stock donations, gifts crypto, donor-advised fund grants, and more as needed.

3. Monitor federal and state tax changes. Tax incentives are powerful motivators for donors when large gifts are involved. Stay aware of developments at the federal and state levels so that you can have productive conversations with prospects. Help them understand the potential benefits of donating (but don’t give explicit financial advice—leave that to the financial and legal professionals).

4. Suggest gift-matching challenges to your top donors. Planning a new major fundraising campaign or giving day? Try asking a longtime major donor to offer a unique gift-matching challenge! This involves your major donor matching all gifts made to your organization within a specific timeframe, and it can be an easy way to supercharge your fundraising results in a short time. Plus, it’s an easy way to engage your major donor with a serious opportunity to drive impact.

5. Research further funding connections and opportunities. Keep researching your donors’ and prospects’ connections over time. Major supporters who are philanthropically active might have connections with foundations that you can tap into to get your foot in the door for new grant funding. Wealthy individuals might even eventually form their own private or family foundations—make sure your nonprofit is a preferred partner right from the start.

Additional Considerations of Principal Gift Fundraising

Principal gift fundraising can completely transform your nonprofit’s ability to pursue its mission. But it also comes with unique challenges and considerations to keep in mind:

By forging such a big partnership with an individual, you link your organization’s image with theirs. Consider their reputation, the publicity that an announced gift will generate, and whether you can (or want to) honor any restrictions that a donor places on their gift. You can turn down a gift in the best long-term interest of your mission. Think carefully about these factors long before soliciting a gift. Reference your gift acceptance policies, and create them now if you haven’t yet.
Prepare for the logistics of accepting non-cash gifts. You may need to liquidate stock, work with attorneys and accountants to make arrangements for complex planned gifts, or even handle accepting gifts of real estate. Consider these processes in advance and be prepared to invest in new tools, hire external professionals, and expand your bookkeeping practices as needed.

It’s also recommended to look for ways over time to build more business connections as your organization grows. By integrating corporate philanthropy into your development strategies, you can build extremely fruitful and resilient revenue sources for your nonprofit. Ask your major and principal donors about their careers. Learn more about their employers. Use your existing relationships to springboard new corporate partnerships or sponsorships—the sky’s the limit!

New to corporate philanthropy? Here’s the complete playbook.

Despite its nuances and unique considerations, principal gift fundraising is easily the highest-impact form of fundraising that a nonprofit can conduct.

Understand its distinctions and why major donors choose to give. Build and improve upon your existing development strategies, and focus heavily on research and preparation. With the right plan in place and plenty of time to build relationships, you’ll be on your way to securing a transformational gift.

Want to learn more? Take a deeper dive with these related resources:

This comprehensive guide covers everything nonprofits should know about conducting feasibility studies.

How to Conduct Feasibility Studies: Your Nonprofit’s Roadmap

February 2, 2024/in Nonprofit Basics /by Adam Weinger

Imagine pouring your heart, soul, and crucial resources into a project, only to watch it falter due to a lack of proper planning. This is a nightmare scenario for any nonprofit.

However, what if there was a strategic tool that could significantly reduce this risk, ensuring your efforts are well-directed and more likely to succeed? This is where a well-conducted feasibility study comes into play.

To lead a successful fundraising campaign, your nonprofit has to put a lot of time and effort into planning it. From conducting prospect research to investing in the right fundraising tools, there are several moving parts to manage. These tasks become especially critical (and complex) when planning large-scale campaigns, like capital campaigns, and a thorough feasibility study can help substantially.

These studies can be complex, so we’re here to help you get up to speed on the basics. We’ll explore the following:

What Is A Feasibility Study?
Benefits of Conducting Thorough Feasibility Studies
Suggested Elements to Include In Your Feasibility Studies
5 Steps to Conducting a Fundraising Feasibility Study
An Example of A Feasibility Study
Working With a Fundraising Consultant to Conduct A Feasibility Study

These studies can guide you through the complex maze of project planning, helping you avoid common pitfalls and align your resources with your most achievable and impactful goals. Now, let’s learn what makes this step in the fundraising process so pivotal and how it can transform the trajectory of your nonprofit’s endeavors.

What Is A Feasibility Study?

A feasibility study is a comprehensive assessment that evaluates the viability and potential success of a proposed project or large-scale initiative, like a capital campaign.

The study tests your preliminary plans and goals by gathering input from the stakeholders who will later help make the campaign a reality, including board members, major donors, and other funders and partners in the community. Nonprofits typically conduct feasibility studies before:

Undertaking a capital campaign. These are time- and resource-intensive projects designed to raise a specific amount of money in a set period of time. Their end goal is typically to raise funds to construct a new building, renovate an existing building, or purchase equipment.
Launching a new program or service. Before introducing a new program or service, you should determine where it aligns with your mission and whether stakeholders will be supportive of the initiative.
Expanding an existing program or service. Before adapting existing initiatives, make sure there’s enough demand for the change and that you have the necessary resources to see the project through.
Seeking major funding. If your nonprofit is considering growing an endowment or capitalizing on a significant anniversary to raise major gifts, both scenarios necessitate strong donor relationships, which you can cultivate through a feasibility study.

Because of the size of these projects, they can take multiple years to complete, which is why it’s so critical to know whether your nonprofit is ready to launch a campaign at the desired scale long before you invest in planning it.

Who Conducts Feasibility Studies?

Various individuals or groups can conduct feasibility studies, depending on the nature and complexity of the project, as well as the resources and expertise available to the nonprofit organization. Those commonly involved in conducting feasibility studies include:

Internal Staff: In particular, this means those with expertise in project management, research, and analysis. This could include program managers, financial officers, or strategic planning staff.
Consultants: External professionals who specialize in feasibility studies and strategic planning for nonprofits bring an objective perspective and specialized skills that may not be available internally.
Board Members or Advisory Committees: Experienced individuals from your board of directors or specially formed advisory committees can provide oversight and strategic input. They can contribute insights based on their understanding of the nonprofit’s mission and goals.

Overall, it’s crucial that the team or individual leading the study has the necessary skills, objectivity, and understanding of the nonprofit’s goals and the community it serves.

How Far In Advance Should We Conduct A Feasibility Study?

For a nonprofit organization, the ideal time to conduct a feasibility study is well before committing significant resources or detailed planning to a proposed project, especially for large-scale initiatives like capital campaigns or major program expansions.

Typically, this means conducting the study at least a month or longer in advance, depending on the project’s complexity and scope. This lead time allows for thorough research, stakeholder consultation, and strategic assessment, enabling the organization to make informed decisions and adjust strategies based on the study’s insights. What’s more, it provides a window for addressing any identified challenges or aligning the project more closely with the organization’s capabilities.

Benefits of Conducting Thorough Feasibility Studies

Essentially, a feasibility study helps nonprofits make informed decisions by providing a thorough analysis of the practicality and potential impact of a proposed project. It’s critical for ensuring effective resource use and alignment with the organization’s mission and goals. Graham-Pelton’s guide to capital campaign feasibility studies explains that these studies identify how you can move forward with the campaign, rather than only if you can.

Here’s a rundown of the benefits of conducting a feasibility study when considering substantial projects or new initiatives:

Informed Decision-Making: A feasibility study provides comprehensive data and analysis for evidence-based decision-making while identifying and strategizing against potential risks to prevent costly errors.
Clear Planning and Execution: A thorough feasibility study lays out a roadmap for project implementation, including timelines, milestones, resource needs, and management structures.
Strategic Alignment: Conducting a feasibility study ensures that the proposed project aligns with the organization’s mission, goals, and strategic plan. This alignment is crucial for maintaining focus and ensuring long-term success.
Stakeholder Trust: Demonstrating a commitment to due diligence through a feasibility study can build confidence among donors, board members, corporate partners, and community members. It shows that the organization is prudent and committed to maximizing its impact, helping to increase supporter retention.
Performance Benchmarks and Evaluation: During the study, you’ll establish clear benchmarks and indicators for measuring the project’s success, facilitating ongoing evaluation.

Overall, a well-conducted feasibility study is a valuable tool for guiding your nonprofit through complex decisions, ensuring the effective use of resources, and maximizing the chances of project success. That way, you can be an effective steward of donations by not wasting resources on an unsuccessful initiative.

Suggested Elements to Include In Your Feasibility Studies

Any time a nonprofit conducts a feasibility study, they’re looking for specific elements, so they can make informed decisions about their upcoming initiative. The specifics of what the study focuses on depends on the nature of the project. Here are common elements organizations include in their feasibility studies:

The executive summary includes an overview of the project and the main findings of the feasibility study.
The project description gives a detailed explanation of the project, including objectives, scope, and intended outcomes.
A market analysis assesses the demand for the project’s offerings by identifying target demographics, community needs, and existing competition or similar services from other organizations.
The organizational capability evaluates the nonprofit’s ability to execute the project, considering factors like management skills, staff capacity, operational resources, and organizational structure.
A financial analysis provides detailed financial projections, including costs, potential revenue streams, funding sources, and overall financial sustainability. This may also include an analysis of fundraising potential for the project.
Risk analysis identifies potential risks associated with the project, along with strategies for risk mitigation.
Legal and regulatory considerations review any legal, regulatory, or compliance issues relevant to the project.
A stakeholder analysis provides insights into the perspectives and potential reactions of key stakeholders, including donors, corporate sponsors, community members, and beneficiaries.
The sustainability assessment evaluates the project’s long-term sustainability, including ongoing operational, financial, and environmental considerations.
An implementation plan outlines how the project will be executed, including timelines, milestones, staffing needs, and management structures.
Outcome and impact metrics define success key performance indicators (KPIs) and how the project’s outcomes will be measured.

Collectively, these elements provide a holistic picture of the proposed project’s feasibility, helping the organization make informed decisions about whether and how to proceed.

5 Steps to Conducting a Fundraising Feasibility Study

To get a complete picture of your organization’s current ability to conduct your large-scale campaign, you’ll need to conduct a thorough feasibility study. Let’s walk through the five major steps you’ll need to take to conduct your study:

1. Conduct a preliminary assessment.

The preliminary analysis in a feasibility study is a crucial early step that helps determine whether a more detailed study is warranted. It involves these key components:

The initial idea assessment involves a basic evaluation of the project idea to determine its viability. It includes understanding the project’s purpose, the goals it aims to achieve, and the problem it intends to solve.
Market research helps you understand the market size, current trends, and competition. It’s intended to assess the current demand for your service or project.
A technical analysis determines the availability of required technology, necessary technical skills, and achievability within the desired timeframe.
A financial analysis assesses the project’s viability by estimating the costs and projected revenue.
A risk assessment identifies potential risks early on, such as technical limitations, budget constraints, or market volatility.
A preliminary conclusion is drawn about whether the project appears feasible and whether it makes sense to proceed with a more detailed feasibility study based on the above findings.

The preliminary analysis doesn’t require a deep dive into data, but instead, it provides a high-level view to determine if your project warrants further investigation. It helps to filter out unfeasible projects at an early stage, so you don’t waste time and resources. Once you’ve concluded your preliminary analysis, you can determine if a larger feasibility study is needed.

2. Identify key supporters and stakeholders.

Without a substantial number of supporters to back your campaign, you’ll struggle to meet your goal. That’s why one of the first steps in conducting a fundraising feasibility study is identifying your key supporters and stakeholders.

Involving key stakeholders such as donors, community leaders, beneficiaries, and partners can be crucial. While they may not lead the study, their input and feedback can provide valuable perspectives and data.

Of course, you likely already have some supporters that come to mind, like your board members, long-time major donors, community stakeholders, and local business owners. Learn more about them by conducting prospect research.

Prospect research is the process of identifying new potential donors (or, at this stage, getting to know existing supporters) who have both the capacity (wealth) to give large gifts and an affinity (warmth) for your cause. Prospecting will involve leveraging your current donor database, prospect generator tools, government records, and more to learn about your supporters.

Once you’ve identified a prospect likely to support your project, it’s time to get to know them. During this stage, take your time identifying your key supporters. After all, building a genuine relationship with a prospect is far more valuable than scurrying to secure a one-time donation.

3. Create a case for support.

The next step in a feasibility study is to draft up a case for support (also known as a case statement). This document explains the purpose of your campaign and gives compelling reasons why your supporters should help you with your campaign.

According to our guide to fundraising feasibility studies, your case for support should include:

An overview of your organization’s mission, story, and larger goals
An explanation of why the project is needed
Specific challenges and solutions that may occur during the campaign
Projected costs and a timeline
Reasons your supporters should help fund the project

Once you’ve created a compelling case for support, you can use it in the interview phase of the feasibility study to gather feedback on your campaign from your key supporters.

4. Interview your key supporters and analyze your data.

During this step of the study, you’ll find out how your supporters feel about your campaign and how viable your project is given your organization’s current capacity.

For the interview portion of the study, you should prepare thoughtful questions that help you better understand why your key supporters back your organization and what they think about your project. Here are some questions to add to your list:

Do you believe there is a need for this project in our community or target area?
How relevant do you think this project is to our mission and the community we serve?
Would you be willing to support this project? If so, in what ways (e.g., financial, volunteer, advocacy)?
Are there any aspects of the project that you think could be improved or revised?
Do you believe that the resources required for this project could be better used in other ways?

Many nonprofits hire a fundraising consultant to conduct these interviews, so they can obtain objective information from key supporters. For the data analysis process, you’ll take a critical look at the results of your interviews, your donor data, and the information you’ve gathered from prospecting.

5. Evaluate the results of your study.

Once you have all of the information from your feasibility study compiled, it’s time to evaluate the results. Typically, your results will point to four options:

Move forward with the campaign.
Adjust your working fundraising goal up or down depending on the results.
Adjust the timeframe of the campaign to allow for a longer donor cultivation process.
Hold off on conducting the campaign.

If your organization is ready to move forward, it’s time to make any necessary adjustments to your campaign plan and present it to your organization’s leaders.

However, learning that your nonprofit isn’t quite ready for a large-scale campaign can be a tough pill to swallow, especially after investing time and effort into a thorough feasibility study. If this is the case, you can use the feedback and data you’ve gathered to begin refining your organization’s strategies and planning for a bright future.

An Example of A Feasibility Study

Now, let’s look at those steps in action with an example. Reviewing examples of feasibility studies offers valuable insights into practical methodologies, demonstrates real-world applications and outcomes, and helps identify common challenges and effective solutions.

Examples serve as a learning tool, providing a reference for best practices and potential pitfalls. That way, you’ll feel empowered to conduct more effective feasibility studies for your own projects.

Let’s explore an example we created to help you better understand feasibility studies. While fictional, this example emulates real nonprofit projects and how a thorough analysis can help determine plausibility.

Feasibility Study Example: Urban Gardens

Project Name: Green City Gardens

Background: Green City Gardens is a project proposed by a nonprofit focused on community development. The project aims to create community gardens in urban areas, bringing life to spots that lack green spaces. These gardens would be muli-purposed: provide fresh produce to local residents, foster community engagement through gardening, create natural habitats for wildlife, and offer educational opportunities for students.

Need for A Feasibility Study: Given the multifaceted nature of this project, the nonprofit recognized a comprehensive feasibility study was necessary to assess viability. Key considerations included:

Community interest, including willingness to volunteer and maintain the gardens.
Land availability and suitability to identify potential garden sites, considering soil quality, sunlight exposure, water availability, and urban zoning regulations.
Funding and resource acquisition which involved estimating the cost of creating and maintaining the gardens. This also included exploring potential funding sources like grants, donations, and partnerships.
Environmental impact to pinpoint the environmental benefits of the gardens, such as increased biodiversity and improved air quality, and any potential negative impacts.
Partnerships with schools, businesses, and local governments to support the project’s implementation and sustainability.
Legal and regulatory compliance to ensure the project complies with all relevant laws and regulations, including land use policies and environmental guidelines.
Long-term sustainability, which involved creating a plan for ongoing maintenance, funding, and community involvement.
Impact measurement to establish metrics and methods that quantify the project’s impact on community well-being, environmental health, and educational outcomes.

The feasibility study involved conducting surveys and interviews with community members, consulting with urban planning and environmental experts, and researching potential funding sources. The outcome of this study would determine whether the nonprofit should proceed with the Green City Gardens project, modify it, or explore alternative initiatives.

Working With a Fundraising Consultant to Conduct A Feasibility Study

Many nonprofit organizations find it helpful to call in the help of a third-party expert—a nonprofit fundraising consultant—when conducting a feasibility study. While these professionals will get to know your organization’s unique goals, they can also help you take an objective approach to the feasibility study and set you up with the fresh strategies you need to succeed with your campaign.

Specifically, they can help with the following:

Conducting thorough prospect research
Facilitating objective interviews with key supporters
Assisting your organization with data analysis and interpreting the results of your study
Helping your nonprofit determine the next steps after a feasibility study

Feasibility studies are an important part of preparing your organization to dive into a large-scale campaign. Make sure to allow yourself plenty of time to collect all the information you need to evaluate your organization’s capacity and to lean on the help of outside experts as you conduct your own study!

Other Resources to Explore

Feasibility studies stand as a cornerstone in any nonprofit’s strategic planning. They provide clarity, direction, and a sense of realism, ensuring that passion and purpose match practicality and potential for impact. They are critical in guiding organizations like yours through informed decision-making, optimizing resource allocation, and ultimately fulfilling worthwhile missions more effectively.

To continue learning about effective nonprofit management, explore these educational resources we think you’ll love:

200+ Amazing Fundraising Ideas to Help You Reach Your Goals – If your feasibility study found that you need additional financial support for your project, explore these out-of-the-box fundraising ideas for nonprofits.
Fundraising Strategy for Beginners: How to Create Your Own – Looking to streamline your entire fundraising strategy? This guide shares common questions and in-depth steps to create a foolproof strategy.
Choosing the Right Prospect Research Consultant: 5 Factors – Prospect research helps you learn more about potential donors in your community. In this article, you’ll learn what to consider when hiring a consultant to assist you with prospecting.

This article will explore the basics of planned giving,

Nonprofit Basics: Planned Giving

November 10, 2023/in Nonprofit Basics /by Adam Weinger

Planned giving is an important part of a robust nonprofit fundraising strategy. This diverse category of gifts can unlock growth for your organization, help you reach new prospects, and deepen your ties with donors.

Getting started with planned giving is challenging for many organizations since this form of fundraising is unlike typical campaign-based and annual fundraising. However, the benefits of launching even a small-scale preliminary planned giving program are worth the effort and will scale over time to drive even greater results for your nonprofit.

To get started, you must understand the basics. This quick guide will cover the essentials by answering the following key questions:

What is planned giving?
What are the benefits of planned giving?
How do you get started with planned gift fundraising?

What is planned giving?

Planned giving consists of donations to nonprofits made through donors’ estates or financial plans. Organizations that pursue these gifts consistently do so through dedicated planned giving programs, which are often managed as part of or alongside their other development efforts like major gift fundraising.

Most planned gifts are bequests established in donors’ wills and disbursed after their passing. But planned giving is much more than bequests—it’s an extremely diverse category of gifts.

What are the common types of planned gifts?

In addition to bequests, planned giving includes donations like:

Retirement plans and life insurance: A donor chooses to name a nonprofit as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy or unused retirement assets.
Charitable gift annuities: A donor gives a large donation in exchange for a fixed income payment. The nonprofit can invest these funds and keep any remaining funds when the annuity’s terms are up or the donor passes away.
Charitable remainder trusts: A donor gives a gift of cash or securities in exchange for an income payment of a percentage of the principal amount, which can be revalued and increased annually depending on the type of trust created.
Charitable lead trusts: A donor makes payments to the nonprofit for a certain number of years or their lifetime. At the end of that term, the payments are returned to the donor or their beneficiaries.

Each type of planned gift brings different requirements and benefits, so the gift that a donor ultimately decides to make will hinge on several factors including their financial situation and giving motivations. Some gifts will also work best for only certain types of high-impact donors.

Many nonprofits also pursue a variety of non-cash gifts alongside their planned giving programs since the processes of identifying these donors and setting up their gifts can be fairly similar. Popular non-cash gift options include:

Grants from donor-advised funds
Donations of real estate
Gifts of private or public stock or mutual funds
Gifts of cryptocurrency

Explore the additional resources at the end of this article to start learning more about these types of donations.

What is the state of planned giving today?

How much opportunity is there for nonprofits in planned giving today? Who creates planned gifts? Understanding the context and trends of this type of giving will empower your organization to create the best possible strategy.

Consider these 2023 statistics from FreeWill, a will creation and planned giving platform for nonprofits:

The total number of estate plans created increased by 12% over the previous year.
15% of those users chose to create a bequest gift—a total of 40,123 bequests adding up to a value of over $2.36 billion.
The average size of a charitable bequest was $46,594.
Younger will-makers are expressing an increased interest in bequests. Those aged 18-24 were the most likely to include a bequest in a will, and their average gift increased by over $9,000. Those aged 25-44 were the only other age segment to also increase their average gift value.
Older will-makers still represent the largest groups involved in planned giving, with adults aged 65-84 committing 38% of all bequest dollars.

(Source: FreeWill’s 2023 Planned Giving Report)

These trends are occurring within the larger phenomenon of the “Great Wealth Transfer,” an unprecedented transfer of assets from the aging Baby Boomer population to their heirs and charitable organizations—estimated to be around $68 trillion over the next 25 years.

Key takeaways: Donors are making wills and estate plans, especially as they age. If you’re not asking them to consider creating a planned gift, you’re missing out. Considering the giving patterns of older donors, the Great Wealth Transfer, and younger generations enjoying or entering their prime working years, a robust planned giving strategy can generate significant revenue for your organization. You’ll just need to know how to talk about planned giving effectively, starting with its benefits.

What are the benefits of planned giving?

Planned giving can help both the donor and the nonprofit in significant ways. Let’s take a closer look.

Benefits for Donors

Planned gifts allow donors to create lasting legacies and impact on the missions that they care about and/or have been meaningful for their families.
These donations are also highly flexible, giving donors the option of designating specific purposes for the funds and updating their instructions over time.
Planned gifts often also bring significant tax benefits for donors, usually relating to estate taxes, which can be a major motivator for some. However, the exact tax implications of planned gifts can vary widely, so it’s crucial to avoid giving donors explicit advice and instead direct them to professionals to confirm the specifics.

Benefits for Nonprofits

Planned giving is inherently meaningful and can greatly deepen relationships between your organization and its donors when thoughtfully stewarded.
Financially speaking, planned gifts can be extremely helpful for nonprofits. They’re often much larger than typical cash donations, and they’re usually unrestricted. A planned giving program can create a projectable, dependable source of general funding.
Planned gifts are also more accessible to more donors than cash gifts of the same values—while you might have only a handful of donors who can give a major cash gift, there’s a good possibility that you have more donors who could give the equivalent through saved assets.
Effective stewardship strategies have also been shown to increase annual donations from committed planned donors over time.

How do you get started with planned giving?

Your organization should spend time creating a strategy for its planned giving program before getting started asking for these gifts. Follow these steps to successfully execute your program:

Educate and organize your teams. Decide your goals and determine who will lead your planned giving efforts (usually a member of your development or fundraising department). Educate the members of your fundraising, marketing, or communications teams and any other staff who will play roles in your program.
Gather the right tools. You’ll need tools to market your program, track donation data, and help donors set up their planned gifts. Look for a planned giving platform that gives donors free will creation tools and provides you with the data you need to follow up and steward your relationships with them over time.
Identify potential donors. When looking for prospects, start with those most dedicated to your cause, including board members, volunteers, and longtime donors. Ask about their awareness of and interest in planned giving (and if they’ve already created a planned gift). Use these responses to build an initial prospect list, get a sense of their shared characteristics, and refine your approach as you learn more.
Create a legacy giving society. This can cultivate a feeling of community and inclusion in your organization, especially if it comes with perks like public acknowledgment or access to special events.
Outline a marketing strategy. Use multiple marketing channels to explain what planned giving is and why it’s so beneficial for both donors and your mission. Make it easy for donors to access information about planned giving, ideally by adding it as a section on your Ways to Give page or on a dedicated planned giving microsite.
Steward and learn more about planned donors over time. As you begin asking for and receiving planned gifts, actively work to keep those donors involved and engaged. Learn more about why they choose to give to inform your future strategies.

Don’t be afraid of starting small—your planned giving program can grow over time. By beginning with a targeted focus on simpler gifts like bequests, you can lay out an effective framework for eventually asking for more complex planned gifts or different types of non-cash gifts over time.

The key is to keep learning more and refining your approach as you go. Your development team already likely follows best practices for conducting prospect research, qualifying donors, building relationships, and stewarding donors. Use and adapt these strategies to your new planned giving goals.

Additional Planned Giving Resources

Nonprofit Basics – Learn more nonprofit management essentials by exploring our other introductory guides and glossary entries.

Planned Giving Marketing – Here are seven strategies to get your donor base on board with planned giving.

Donor-Advised Funds — Check out this complete introduction to DAFs, a type of philanthropic fund that’s skyrocketed in popularity in recent years.

Moves Management — Learn the basics of how to keep track of donor interactions as you work towards a specific goal like creating a planned gift.

This article will explore why recognizing donors is vital and share recognition examples your nonprofit can emulate.

Donor Recognition: When & How to Acknowledge Supporters

November 8, 2023/in Nonprofit Basics, Learning Center /by Adam Weinger

What would you do if your organization hit a record number of new donors within a year?

Celebrate! But what about after the initial excitement wears off? Discovering that donors share the same passion for your cause is exhilarating. However, many organizations fail to communicate their appreciation adequately, which can have negative retention effects.

In fact, lack of recognition is one of the top five reasons why donors choose to stop giving. That said, donor recognition is a key part of donor stewardship, which can usher first-time donors into long-term supporters.

In this guide, we’ll explore the ins and outs of donor recognition and discover how your organization can create an effective acknowledgment strategy. Let’s dive in!

What is donor recognition?

Donor recognition describes the practice of thanking your organization’s donors for their gifts to your nonprofit. It’s a way for nonprofits to express gratitude and reinforce supporters’ commitment to the cause.

Many nonprofits separate recognition into tiers based on the type of gift and amount given by a donor. We’ll explore this concept more later, but for now, know that nonprofits refer to this tier system to ensure their recognition level matches a donor’s generosity.

There are several methods for recognizing donors. Everything from a simple phone call to a fancy outdoor display falls under this category. At the most basic level, you should send a prompt donor thank-you letter or email acknowledging them for responding to your fundraising appeal and supporting your mission. As with any nonprofit fundraising letter, this thank-you should:

Be personalized with the donor’s preferred name
Include relevant, engaging images
Convey the impact of the donor’s support

Despite the various methods, the purpose of every donor recognition strategy is always the same: to acknowledge a donor’s generosity.

Why does donor recognition matter?

Donor recognition is a vital component of nonprofit fundraising and relationship-building. It’s what inspires donors to stick around and continue supporting your cause, so you can pursue your mission and build a community behind your cause. Let’s explore how meaningful donor recognition impacts both nonprofits and their donors.

Benefits for Nonprofits

Acknowledgment plays a fundamental role in acquiring, retaining, and inspiring greater support. For nonprofits, meaningful donor recognition helps:

Increase donor retention. Recognizing donors makes them feel like they are making a difference. It also indicates that your organization prioritizes showing appreciation regardless of the gift amount.
Encourage recurring giving. Donors who feel recognized are more likely to give more and give more often. When you take time to recognize a donor’s gift, you indicate that they’ve made a smart choice to donate to your cause.
Acquire more donors. Recognizing donors publicly can act as a form of social proof. When people see their friends donate to a cause, it motivates them to explore the organization and maybe get involved themselves.
Promote a positive brand image. Organizations that prioritize donor recognition further their positive perception in people’s minds. People notice when nonprofits go the extra mile for their supporters.
Encourage an atmosphere of gratitude. Staff, volunteers, and other supporters want to work for an organization that expresses gratitude regularly. The positive emphasis on appreciation creates a vibrant work culture.

Nonprofits rely on their donors to power their missions, making proactive recognition a vital part of their fundraising efforts. From retaining donors to expanding your community of supporters, showing gratitude goes a long way.

Benefits for Donors

On the other side of things, proper acknowledgment can impact donors in several ways, too. Here’s a quick rundown of how you can influence supporters by recognizing them:

Make donors feel valued. Donors like knowing that their gift is appreciated. Frequently showing recognition makes them feel valued as important contributors to your organization.
Affirm their decision to give. Donors could have given to any cause, or not given at all. When you recognize their contributions, you reassure them that they made the right choice.
Deepen their connection with your organization. When organizations recognize donors individually, it makes them feel like a part of the team. This deepens their connection and can even encourage them to get involved in other ways like volunteering.
Remind them of their impact. With plenty of distractions, donors can easily forget to support your organization regularly. But, when you recognize them, you remind them of their special part in driving impact. After all, 41% of donors will give again when they receive personalized outreach on the impact of their support.
Offer community connections to like-minded people. Recognition policies, especially event-oriented ones, allow donors to connect with like-minded individuals and expand their personal and professional networks.

As you can see, consistent donor recognition accomplishes both nonprofit-related and donor-related objectives. That’s why creating a robust recognition program now can cause positive ripple effects for your organization for years to come.

When should you recognize donors?

The short answer: as soon as the gift is received. Expressing acknowledgment and gratitude promptly is what makes donor recognition matter. After all, saying thank you a few weeks or even a few days later does not carry the same meaning. Instead, aim to recognize a donor within 48 hours of receiving their gift. Many nonprofits document their official gift recognition and substantiation procedures in their gift acceptance policies.

Of course, more involved recognition strategies like a naming opportunity will take longer to complete. However, all donors should receive a prompt and personalized acknowledgment. More specifically, plan to thank donors at every touch point. For example, capital campaigns should use donor recognition strategies that actively support the larger campaign purpose and complement each stage of the project.

Who should your nonprofit recognize?

Your goal should be to make all supporters feel recognized and valued for their contributions, regardless of the size of their gift.

But, it’s important to choose recognition strategies that adequately address the level of a donor’s generosity. Responding with an unexpected abundance or limited amount of recognition can throw your donor relationships off-kilter, leading to feelings of dissatisfaction.

To avoid this, you’ll need to create donor recognition levels based on donation type, donation amount, engagement level, and donor type. Let’s explore each in more detail below!

Donation Type

There are several different donation types, from matching gifts to in-kind donations. Generally, donors give through one of the following donation methods:

Cash: Direct monetary deposit to your nonprofit organization.
In-Kind: Food supplies, medical supplies, or other tangible goods.
Time: Donors can choose to devote part of their time to volunteering with your organization and may even apply for volunteer grants to help you raise more funds.
Matching Gifts: Many corporations offer matching gifts as a part of their philanthropic initiatives, meaning they match their employee’s donations at a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio.

Depending on the type of donation, you can organize your recognition program to acknowledge donors’ specific gifts. For instance, if a donor opts to give through a matching gift program, your recognition should acknowledge their thoughtfulness in doubling their donation.

Donation Amount

Many nonprofits segment their donor tiers by donation amount. How you determine the tiers will depend on your organization’s average donation size. A smaller nonprofit’s average donation size might be $200 while a more established nonprofit’s average donation size might be closer to $2,000.

For example, a community-based nonprofit’s donation recognition levels might look something like this:

Friends: $100 – $499
- Tax receipt and handwritten thank-you note from the Executive Director
- Recognition in annual report

Believers: $500 – $4,999
- All the benefits of the Friends level
- Exclusive updates on nonprofit activities, impacts, and forthcoming initiatives
- VIP experiences and behind-the-scenes access or unique networking opportunities

Advocates: $5,000 – $19,999
- All the benefits of the Believers level
- Website or newsletter recognition feature
- Named sponsorship recognition

Visionaries: $20,000 – $49,999
- All the benefits of the Advocate level
- Press release and major publication recognition
- Special event recognition
- Naming opportunities
- Ongoing personalized stewardship

You can also organize these levels based on impact. For instance, a food pantry might categorize amounts by their ability to feed five families, 50 families, or 250 families. Adjust the amounts and the recognition titles to best suit your organization’s average donation size and mission impact.

Engagement Level

You can also categorize donors by their engagement level with your organization. This identifier will significantly impact how you decide to recognize them. Here are the various engagement levels to consider:

First-time donors: It’s important to promptly recognize first-time donors to affirm their decision to give to your cause and welcome them to your organization. Welcome packets full of fact sheets about your organization, branded merchandise, a thank-you note, and upcoming volunteer opportunities are a great way to recognize new donors.
Repeat donors: Currently active donors who know your organization well are also worth recognizing. Show them your appreciation with personalized phone calls, exclusive nonprofit updates, and event invitations tailored to their interests.
Major donors: Donors who give significant amounts of money to your cause deserve thoughtful recognition. Keep them in the loop with specialized impact reports and dedicated donor thank-you events as a part of your stewardship efforts.
Legacy donors: People who decide to dedicate their life’s earnings through planned gifts or estate plans qualify as legacy donors. Include these generous individuals in legacy society publications and send them exclusive updates on their future gifts’ impact.

You can categorize this donor data within a dedicated CRM so that your team can reference and update it throughout your relationship. That way, you’ll never miss a beat when recognizing new or long-time donors.

Donor Type

When you think of donor recognition, you might primarily think of individual contributors. However, there are a few different types of donors, and you should adjust your recognition strategies for each type. Donor types differ across three major categories:

Individual donors are private individuals who contribute their personal funds. They are the most common type of donors and range from small contributors to high-net-worth individuals making major gifts.
Corporate donors are companies that provide financial support or other resources. Corporate giving takes various forms, such as monetary donations, in-kind contributions, employee volunteer programs, or cause-related marketing partnerships.
Foundations are organizations formed to provide funding and support to charitable causes. They can be private (i.e., established by individuals or families) or public (i.e., government-funded or endowed by corporations).

As mentioned, you’ll need to adapt your recognition efforts for each donor type. For example, personalized acknowledgments and donor spotlights are suitable for individual donors, while corporations might benefit from specialized CSR employee engagement programs. Foundation recognition, on the other hand, would take the form of grant acknowledgments.

Top Donor Recognition Ideas

Depending on the above considerations for each donor, there are several ways you can recognize them. As always, you’ll need to match the strategy to your relationship with the donor for maximum impact. Here are some top recognition ideas based on engagement levels and donation amounts:

Digital eCards

To make your recognition both prompt and personalized, use digital eCards. This approach allows you to send a branded thank you to donors. These digital tools make it easy to honor donors and spread the word about your cause. It’s as simple as logging in, customizing your design, drafting a thank-you, and sending it to your donor’s social media account or inbox.

Not to mention, eCards are a great source of revenue when you sell them to supporters, too. Check out this video for an in-depth review of how this technology works:

From thanking donors to raising funds, digital greeting cards can add a special touch to your fundraising techniques. Greeting cards are perfect for any occasion, including saying thank you to your valued supporters!

Phone Calls

Simple and straightforward, a phone call from your nonprofit’s Executive Director is a meaningful way to recognize a donor. This strategy will make donors feel seen by your nonprofit’s efforts. Be sure to have the donor’s donation type and amount handy so you can express gratitude for their specific gift.

Branded Gifts

Send your donor nonprofit branded merchandise as a thank-you! Blankets, t-shirts, hats, and hoodies all make for fabulous donor recognition gifts that will make your donor feel welcomed into your organization. If your nonprofit has an online gift shop, consider sending a donor a discount to choose a branded gift that best suits them.

Thank-You Notes from Beneficiaries

Your donors likely expect a thank-you message from your nonprofit’s team, but you can pleasantly surprise them with a handwritten appreciation letter from your beneficiaries. All you need to do is:

Sign up beneficiaries to write letters. Ensure they know that this is a small time commitment to encourage more people to join.
Provide writing resources for beneficiaries. Offer items such as a thank-you card template, paper, and pens to make the writing process as easy as possible.
Coordinate letter drop-off. Instead of sending letters themselves, ask your beneficiaries to drop their thank-you letters off at your office. This way, beneficiaries don’t need to pay for stamps, and your donors’ sensitive information is kept safe.
Send the thank-you notes to donors. Make sure to send your letters in a timely manner. If you’re worried about stamp prices, look into qualifying for USPS’ nonprofit discount to cut costs.

Take the following example from Youth For Understanding. The nonprofit offers study abroad opportunities, helping young adults learn about the world via semester and year-long exchange programs. They had previous program participants craft thank-you notes to send to their host families or anyone else who made their experience memorable.

This idea is a fun twist on traditional approaches to nonprofit thank-you cards, allowing your beneficiaries to build personal connections with donors and secure their future support.

Explore donor recognition eCards.

Social Media Spotlights

Looking for a way to make an individual donor feel special? Social media spotlights are an effective option for highlighting your donor’s generosity. First, make sure your donor follows you online and regularly engages on the platform you choose. Then, with their permission, feature an image of them with a caption describing the impact of their generosity and why your team is grateful for their support. Or, host a livestream during a big campaign to thank donors.

Appreciation Videos

Appreciation videos are great for social media posts and blog posts on your website. These do not need to be long. However, be sure to include your executive staff thanking individuals for their support. You can also include, with their permission, a thank-you from the beneficiaries who your donors have helped. Doing this will help your donors understand the importance of their gifts.

Donor Lunch

Invite your donors to a dedicated lunch to celebrate their generosity. Send an invitation in advance and keep the invite list small to focus on a couple of key individuals. This option is great for donors who would appreciate more than a thank-you note but are uncomfortable attending a large dedicated event.

Donor of the Month Program

While your donors don’t give for the attention, you can still provide public shoutouts to your mid-tier contributors. Unlike social media spotlights, Donor of the Month is a time-bound award that’s given to the donor who’s made a big impact during that calendar month.

For instance, some good candidates for this award include a volunteer who decides to donate for the first time or an existing donor who smashes their peer-to-peer fundraising goal. You can highlight their dedication to your mission by:

Featuring them in your newsletter
Allowing them to write a guest post for your blog
Interviewing them and sharing the video on your website and social media accounts

Ensure your donor consents to being publicly recognized and notify them in advance so you can get your appreciation materials out on time.

Outdoor Displays

Take your recognition outside with a vibrant outdoor display to honor your donors. A nonprofit-specific monument or statue outside your facility can be a valuable addition to your headquarters. Consider partnering with design and construction partners to ensure that your display can withstand weathering and is designed to inspire. Include donor names in a plaque beneath the display.

Donor Plaques or Walls

Probably the most well-known recognition practices, donor plaques and donor walls are popular strategies. Donor plaques honoring the sole donors of a nonprofit project are often posted outside of buildings that the donors funded, for example. Donor walls can display several names and are best unveiled following a capital campaign.

Appreciation Events

Host a virtual happy hour or in-person dinner as a way to say thank you to donors. This can provide a valuable opportunity for donors to network with other supporters and discuss your cause. You could even run an online cooking class or informal craft tutorial. Or, you can make your event larger scale and host a fancy gala; just be sure to keep the focus on donor appreciation.

Donor Hall of Fame

Donor social media shoutouts and Donor of the Month are great ways to publicly appreciate your donors, but you can take this idea to the next level for major donors by starting a Donor Hall of Fame. This honor should be reserved for your most engaged and influential donors and awarded sparingly (e.g. once or twice a year). You can inaugurate donors by:

Hosting a dinner in their honor
Adding their picture to a wall in your organization’s office
Naming events and items after your donors

Unlike Donor of the Month and one-off shoutouts, this idea immortalizes your most impactful contributors. By going the extra mile with this idea, you can demonstrate how donations fuel your mission and that donors forever mark your nonprofit.

Board or Committee Invitations

Invite mid-sized and major donors to serve on advisory boards or committees. This form of recognition engages them more deeply in the organization’s work by showing you value their input and expertise.

Volunteer Opportunities

Volunteering might not seem like an appreciation idea at first glance. However, many donors will appreciate engaging with your cause in new ways. By encouraging donors to volunteer, you’ll deepen their involvement in your mission. This will help them form a more personal connection to the work your organization does and see the impact of donations.

Private Tour

With this donor recognition idea, you’ll show donors where the magic happens! Even though they contribute to your mission substantially, many of your mid-sized and major donors may not have seen your office space and work sites before. Give donors an inside look into your organization by showing them around.

A great chance to use this type of recognition is when someone contributes to fund a specific project or initiative. For example, let’s say a major donor gave to your capital campaign to relocate to a bigger office. You might host an in-person tour or record a virtual one to show them around the new space.

Tips to Level Up Your Donor Recognition

Now that you have some creative donor recognition ideas, it’s time to brainstorm how you’ll cater each one to your unique donor community. Here are some ways to take these donor recognition ideas up a notch:

Communicate impact. According to Blackbaud, two of the top reasons donors churn are because they never received information on how their gift was used, and they don’t think the organization needs them. Avoid this by tying donations to tangible results. For example, show donors you need their support by telling beneficiaries’ stories and giving them an inside look into their impact.
Get permission for public recognition. While some donors might love a public shoutout, others might prefer private recognition, like a phone call or letter. Before acknowledging anyone publicly, ask them if it’s okay first!
Get creative. While a traditional thank-you letter can show appreciation, catch your donors’ attention by testing new recognition techniques. You have tons of powerful technology at your fingertips. Pair that with your team’s creativity, and you’ll come up with out-of-the-box ideas. Even formatting your letters as eCards can make recognition more impactful.

Creating a thoughtful donor recognition strategy can go a long way in showing that you genuinely care about their support. Pay attention to what resonates with donors, and you’ll learn how to show appreciation in more meaningful ways.

Final Thoughts and Additional Resources

Your donors are the reason you can continue pursuing your mission. By properly recognizing them, you’ll increase donor acquisition and retention. Remember, acknowledge your donors often and authentically to convey your nonprofit’s appreciation for them. Be sure to always ask for their permission for public recognition and mention how their specific gift impacted your mission. In turn, thoughtful recognition will pave the way for stronger donor relations.

Did you enjoy this guide to donor recognition? Check out these resources to learn more:

How to Write The Perfect Donor Thank You Letter – Do you want to make sure you get your thank-you note just right? Follow Kwala’s thank-you note guidelines for tips!
Donor Data Management: A Quick Guide for Nonprofits – Keep your donor data clean, organized, and accessible with NPOInfo’s guide to donor data management. That way, you can make sure to send the best types of acknowledgment to each donor!
Get to Know the Basics of Corporate Matching Gift Programs – Did you know that you can double your supporter’s revenue through matching gifts? Learn how in this ultimate guide.

Learn more about how donor walls are useful for nonprofits.

Donor Walls – Nonprofit Basics

February 17, 2023/in Nonprofit Basics /by Adam Weinger

Donor walls are a great way to show appreciation to donors and demonstrate the impact of their contributions, which can aid in donor retention and acquisition. They provide a tangible way to thank and recognize donors for their support, while also creating a sense of community and allowing donors to show off their commitment to the organization.

What is a Donor Wall?

A donor recognition wall is a permanent display honoring an organization’s generous supporters, which can take the form of an immersive, interactive experience. Nonprofits, universities, medical facilities, and faith-based organizations are among those that create these walls to recognize major donors, corporate sponsors, and major contributors. The cost of a donor recognition wall will depend on its size and materials used, but it’s considered a critical investment that can improve donor retention and add a beautiful focal point to a space.

Different Types of Donor Walls

Traditional Donor Walls

Traditional donor walls are the classic option, often made of engraved metal plaques, acrylic with vinyl or etched lettering, glass, or other material-based components. They’re typically arranged in a board or giving tree. The appeal of a traditional donor wall is in the art-like overall aesthetic and the luxury of tactile donor names. These are a good option for organizations with low volumes of donors to recognize. Updating the list of donors can be moderate in cost, and the initial investment is less than a digital donor wall.

Digital Donor Walls

Digital donor walls are a more modern approach, made of a screen or a series of screens. They can display a dynamic amount of names with many giving levels and types of giving. Videos, photos, and other multimedia elements can be added to the screen(s) in real-time. They’re great for organizations with a high volume of donors to recognize or that want to showcase their history, mission statements, ‘Why I Give stories’, donor highlights, impact stories, and more. There’s no cost to add or update the list of donors, but the initial investment is more than a traditional donor wall.

Hybrid Donor Walls

Hybrid donor walls are the best of both worlds. They combine the art-like cabinetry found in traditional donor walls and blend it with the ease of use and magnificence of digital donor walls. This provides a more interactive and engaging experience for donors and visitors, while still providing a tangible way to recognize and honor donors. The initial investment for a hybrid digital donor wall is the most expensive option, but there is generally no cost to update the list of donors.

Virtual Donor Walls

Virtual donor walls are accessible through nonprofit websites, leveraging much of the same software technology as a digital donor wall. These can be used to keep recognition up to date and leveraged for online marketing strategies. They are particularly useful for organizations with no physical or public presence that other donor walls would require. Updating the donor lists has no cost, and the initial cost to develop a virtual donor wall is a fraction of the cost of other digital or hybrid solutions. Virtual donor walls are a great way to recognize and honor donors online, making them a cost-effective solution for organizations that don’t have the budget for traditional or digital donor walls.

Benefits of A Donor Wall

Culture of Philanthropy-Building

Donor walls are a powerful tool for building a culture of philanthropy within an organization. They provide a tangible way to steward and thank donors for their support, while also creating a sense of community and shared purpose. By displaying donor names and contributions in a public space, donor walls demonstrate the impact of individual giving and encourage others to get involved.

Donor Acquisition and Retention

In addition to recognizing donors, donor walls also serve as an important tool for donor acquisition and retention. They provide a way for potential donors to see the impact of giving and understand the value of their contributions. They also help to build a sense of community and shared purpose among donors, which can encourage them to continue giving and even increase their level of support.

Donor Engagement

Donor walls are not just a display of appreciation, but they’re also a way to engage donors and encourage them to continue their support. They provide a tangible representation of the impact of giving, and help donors to see the value of their contributions. By recognizing donors in a public space, donor walls create a sense of community among donors and build a sense of shared purpose. This can encourage donors to stay connected with the organization and continue their support.

Overall, donor walls play a crucial role in building a culture of philanthropy within an organization. They provide a powerful tool for recognizing and thanking donors, encouraging giving, and promoting transparency and accountability. They are a valuable investment for any organization committed to building a strong culture of philanthropy and fostering a sense of community among donors.

Other Resources to Explore

Nonprofit Basics – Learn more about other nonprofit management essentials by checking out these expert resources.

8 Donor Engagement Strategies to Drive Nonprofit Support – Donor engagement is crucial for building a strong nonprofit organization. Take advantage of the strategies discussed in this article to boost your efforts.

Retaining Matching Gift Donors: 4+ Effective Strategies – Retaining donors in addition to acquiring new donors, offers a multitude of benefits. Explore ways to keep matching gift donors engaged with your organization.

Nonprofit Basics: Amazon Smile

January 20, 2023/in Nonprofit Basics /by Adam Weinger

Both online shopping and online fundraising have grown in popularity in recent years. More than 268 million people in the United States shopped online in 2022 alone, and 54% of donors worldwide prefer to donate online.

With online shopping and online giving soaring in popularity, it makes sense that nonprofit organizations would attempt to find a solution to bring online shopping into the online fundraising world in an effort to earn more donations. That’s why many nonprofits have combined those two trends to bring in revenue through programs like Amazon Smile.

What is Amazon Smile?

Until its discontinuation in early 2023, Amazon Smile was a program that allowed shoppers to give back to their favorite charities while making everyday online purchases through Amazon. Shoppers could give to nonprofits through purchases that they were going to make anyway, regardless of whether they were able to make an additional donation. It was also an easy way for nonprofits to earn donations from their loyal supporters, many of whom are happy to make additional donations through fundraising programs like this if given the opportunity.

Once an organization registered with Amazon Smile, supporters would start shopping for their cause, and a portion of their total sales went back to the nonprofit of their choice.

Benefits of online shopping fundraiser programs like Amazon Smile

Although Amazon Smile has come to an end, it isn’t the only program of its kind that nonprofits can participate in. Here are some reasons your nonprofit may consider signing up for an online shopping fundraiser program:

It’s unique. Your nonprofit holds various fundraisers each year to encourage donations and inspire support. Take advantage of this creative fundraising idea that’s free, easy to set up, and brings in year-round revenue.
It’s passive. Amazon Smile is considered a “passive fundraiser” because supporters are taking actions they would have taken anyway and can contribute to your nonprofit without a second thought. However, you should still market your fundraiser to continuously remind supporters to access the resource.
Supporters feel like they’re making a difference. Online shopping fundraisers allow supporters to make a positive impact through their purchases, meaning that these supporters are not only gaining the benefits of whatever item they’ve purchased, but also the benefit of helping their community through your nonprofit. Plus, many people enjoy looking into ways they can shop ethically, and shop-for-a-cause programs are great ways to do so.

Whether your nonprofit is new to the online shopping fundraiser space or participated in Amazon Smile and is wondering what next steps to take, be aware that there are other similar fundraising programs available with connections to different networks of retailers. Your nonprofit should do research and carefully consider which shopping donation option is right for your organization.

Other Resources to Explore

Nonprofit Basics – Learn more nonprofit management essentials by exploring other expert resources.

Passive Fundraising: How to Earn Extra Revenue [+5 Ideas] – Explore strategies to make passive fundraisers, including online shopping fundraiser programs, more successful.

Shop for a Cause: How to Give Back While Shopping Online – Discover more ways for your nonprofit’s supporters to further your mission through their everyday online purchases.

Learn the basics of Google Ad Grants with this quick guide.

Nonprofit Basics: Google Ad Grants for Nonprofits

December 20, 2022/in Nonprofit Basics /by Adam Weinger

As one of the most influential companies in the world, Google empowers charitable organizations to increase their visibility within Google Search for free through its dedicated corporate giving program called Google Ad Grants. We’ll cover everything you need to know about this program.

What Are Google Ad Grants?
How to Get Started With Google Ad Grants
Make the Most of Your Google Ad Grant Budget
Other Resources to Explore

Since Google has over 92% of the global search engine market share, you’d be remiss to turn down the free advertising money. The program can help you connect with prospects around the world without negatively impacting your marketing budget.

What Are Google Ad Grants?

The Google Ad Grants program awards organizations $10,000 worth of Google Ads credits each month. Eligible organizations use these credits to bid on keywords and promote their web content. With free access to Google’s keyword research tools, nonprofits can place compelling ads in prominent locations on Google Search results pages, connecting them with likely supporters for their cause.

Google’s program enables nonprofits to go beyond driving more meaningful website traffic. Depending on the pages you promote with the Google Grant, here’s how the Google Ad Grant can support your initiatives in more creative capacities:

Increase revenue by sharing donation and sponsorship opportunities.
Recruit volunteers to support your projects.
Boost attendance for your webinars, charity races, and other events.
Effect change through grassroots activism, petitions, and other advocacy activities.
Inform and educate users about your cause and work.

Participants can fully leverage the program by crafting powerful ad copy combined with effective keyword research, strategic bidding strategies, and carefully-chosen landing pages.

How To Get Started With Google Ad Grants

The good news is that Google makes it straightforward to join the program. Applying for the Google Grant is a simple, multi-step process. Here’s what you’ll need to do:

Meet the requirements. You’ll need to agree to the program’s policies, hold valid charity status, and have a high-quality website to meet the eligibility criteria. Governmental entities, healthcare organizations, and educational institutions are automatically ineligible.
Sign up for Google for Nonprofits. Visit Google for Nonprofits’ registration website and fill out the subsequent forms. Once you’re approved, this will unlock the Google Grants application. Plus, you’ll have access to a variety of other organizational tools and perks through Google for Nonprofits.
Wait for verification from Percent. Percent partners with companies like Google to provide mission-driven organizations with free and discounted products. When you apply for Google for Nonprofits, they’ll be the ones to verify your nonprofit’s legitimacy. Typically, requests are reviewed in 2-14 business days. Know that Percent may reach out for more information or documentation to verify your organization.
Apply for the Google Ad Grant. Log into your Google for Nonprofits account and fill out the Google Grants application. You’ll provide additional identifying information, such as your website URL and details regarding your goals with the program.

Keep an eye on your email for your invitation within the next few business days. Once you’re approved, you’ll automatically receive $329 per day to spend on your Google Ad campaigns.

Best of all, the grant will automatically renew each month. You just need to keep your account in good standing by adhering to the ongoing compliance requirements.

Make the Most of Your Google Ad Grant Budget

As with any marketing effort, you need a carefully-crafted plan to drive real results for your nonprofit. Let’s walk through some tried-and-true tips.

1. Optimize your website.

Your Google Ads will drive traffic to your website. With this in mind, you should prioritize the user experience to drive more donations, boost volunteer registrations, or achieve any other goal. Ultimately, you want users to click through your site to find a professional design that drives them to engage with your organization.

Here are a few elements of your website to consider:

Promotable pages: Fill your site with high-quality content to promote through Google Ads. Each page should be centered around a core topic, whether it’s your donation form, volunteer registration page, or information about a major initiative.
Mobile responsiveness: Half of all nonprofit website traffic comes from mobile devices. Mobile users will likely encounter your Google Ads, so make sure your design automatically reformats itself based on screen size.
Security: Your website should encrypt information users share with you. Your URL should show “https” instead of “http” to offer users greater protection on your site.
Organizational information: List your EIN somewhere on your site, preferably in your website’s footer. You might also have a page devoted to explaining your mission.

Tie all of these elements together with powerful graphic design. This will create a cohesive site that inspires users to explore your site and convert into supporters.

2. Create robust ads with compelling copy, landing pages, and ad extensions.

Optimize your ads by paying special attention to these core building blocks for your ads:

Landing pages: These are the pages you’ll drive users to visit. Choose ones that match the user intent for your keywords and are designed to drive users to complete the desired action. For example, if you’re targeting terms like “animal rescue volunteering,” you should link to your volunteer registration page.
Copy: Users will read this to understand the content of your landing page and determine whether it meets their needs. Ensure your ad copy is specific, concise, and strategically features keywords. You’ll also want to include a call-to-action with action verbs such as “donate,” “sign up,” or “support” to tell users what next step you want them to take.
Ad extensions: These allow you to expand your ads with additional information. For instance, sitelink extensions allow you to link to additional landing pages on your website, while call extensions include a button that mobile users can tap to call your organization.

These will result in more compelling ads and ultimately drive more clicks and meaningful traffic to your nonprofit’s website.

3. Maintain compliance.

Nonprofits interested in the Google Ad Grant need to keep a few requirements in mind when selecting their keywords and monitoring their campaigns. Specifically, they need to:

Use keywords longer than a single word. Choose keywords that are at least two or three words long. This helps ensure that your content is more closely aligned to specific search queries. However, Google does allow a few exceptions specifically for nonprofit ad campaigns.
Avoid generic keywords. Generic keywords provide little context for what content a website visitor is about to click on. For example, “e-books and downloadable content” does not explain what type of content visitors would download. Choosing words specific to your mission and goals also increases the chances that the visitors who click on your ads will be interested in your content.
Remove or pause campaigns with low-quality scores. Quality scores are a 10-point assessment of your campaign’s relevance to the keyword, useful content, and potential to earn a high CTR. Google Ad Grant campaigns must have a quality score of at least three. If you have campaigns with lower quality scores, pause or remove them.
Maintain a 5% click-through rate (CTR) each month. Google Ad Grants accounts that fail to achieve a 5% CTR for two consecutive months may be deactivated. You can avoid this by ensuring all of your ad campaigns are enabled and potentially pausing ad campaigns that have a high impressions rating but low CTR.
Have valid conversion tracking. All Ad Grants accounts created after January 2018 need accurate conversion tracking. You can track your conversions by creating a Google Analytics account and connecting it to your Google Ad Grants account. Set a goal in Google Analytics related to the action you want a supporter to take after clicking on one of your ads, like donating. Then, import your goal to Google Ad Grants, so you can monitor if supporters who click your ads go onto complete your target goal.
Have at least two ads per ad group and two ad groups per campaign. When launching a Google Ad campaign, you’ll create ad groups. Ad groups are multiple ads that target the same keyword cluster of closely related terms. For example, you might target both “donate” and “charity” in separate ads in an ad group. Creating multiple ad groups helps get your ad in front of more people searching keywords related to your nonprofit.
Use at least two sitelink ad extensions. Sitelink ad extensions make your ads better and provide searchers with more opportunities to click on your ads by listing additional pages on your website that are relevant to the searcher’s query.
Respond to the Ad Grant program survey. Google surveys Ad Grant participants every year. Your survey will be sent to the email addresses connected to your Google Ad Grants account. Be sure you get a confirmation email when you have completed your survey. You can also access the survey directly from Google if you aren’t receiving confirmation notices.

Maintaining compliance improves your ads and ensures you continue getting Google Ad Grant funding. Of course, meeting all of these requirements can be difficult, especially when you’re just getting started. That’s why many nonprofits turn to consultants for help. Working with a Google partner makes this process much easier since these agencies are the first to here about programmatic updates.

4. Consider professional Google Ad Grants management.

A lot goes into managing a Google Ad Grant account between developing compelling ads and meeting ongoing requirements. The last thing you want is your account to be deactivated after not meeting the compliance requirements.

That’s where a professional Google Grants manager can step in to save the day. Turn to a professional to ease your marketing team’s workload through services like:

Google Ad Grants applications
Campaign development, including keyword research and ad copy development
Ongoing compliance and account reactivation

We recommend working with one of Google’s certified partners. These consultants have been vetted by the Google Ads team and demonstrated a clear understanding of the program. Plus, this will give you a direct line to the latest updates to the program, so you can create the best ads possible and comply with regulations.

Whichever agency you choose, professionals know what it takes to stand out on Google Search. They know the ins and outs of the program, so you can sit back and relax knowing that you’re inspiring as many prospects as possible.

Other Resources to Explore

Nonprofit Basics – Learn more nonprofit management essentials by exploring other expert resources.

Hiring a Google Grants Agency: A Guide and 5 Expert Agencies – Explore the role a professional Google Grants manager can play further. Plus, get our top agency recommendations.

What Is A Google Ad Grant? The Ultimate Guide for Nonprofits – Continue researching the basics of the Google Ad Grant with this complete guide from the experts at Getting Attention.

Nonprofit Basics: Employee Engagement Ideas

December 15, 2022/in Nonprofit Basics /by Adam Weinger

As a mission-driven organization, it’s important for your nonprofit to have employees that are invested in and passionate about their work. In other words, it’s critical to the nature of nonprofit work to have engaged employees who want to drive your mission forward and deliver results for your beneficiaries.

While that might seem obvious, it is a little easier said than done. According to Gallup, only 36% of U.S. employees are engaged at work. Nonprofits face unique challenges when it comes to employee engagement, not the least of which is that they have to compete with the for-profit sector for talent and often have limited resources to work with when honing the employee experience. Actively pursuing ways to engage your employees can help with this issue.

What is nonprofit employee engagement?

Employee engagement refers to how your employees feel about their jobs and how invested they are in your organization’s larger goals. Engaged employees are passionate about their work, enjoy their jobs, and feel satisfied with how they are valued and compensated for their efforts. They’re also very loyal to the organizations they work for and are more likely to stay retained in their roles.

Fostering employee engagement and overall satisfaction is an important part of nonprofit HR, which manages all aspects of the employee lifecycle. From recruiting to exit interviews, keeping the entire employee experience in mind can help you strategize to come up with employee engagement ideas that boost employee retention and help you meet employee needs.

6 Ideas for Engaging Your Nonprofit Employees

Nonprofit employee engagement is essential for building up a strong internal team that can drive your mission forward. These ideas can help you fine-tune your own organization’s strategy:

Give Them Meaningful and Challenging Work.

Menial, repetitive tasks aren’t fun for anyone. Employees should be doing meaningful work that challenges them and helps them tap into their strengths and build new skills. Employees won’t be innovative and excited about their work if they feel their skills are undervalued or that they aren’t really contributing to a larger purpose.

Make sure you give them meaningful work that puts their skills to use. They’ll feel much more fulfilled this way!

Provide Opportunities For Continued Learning And Career Development.

Employees don’t want a stagnant experience at your organization. To encourage continued growth, provide them with opportunities to do things like:

Go to conferences
Join professional organizations
Continue their education in other ways, such as through certification courses
Practice their skills by volunteering

There should also be a clear-cut path for career development and growth so that employees know how they can advance in their roles. For example, employees should have access to knowledge about how they could pursue becoming a manager or director and feel able to discuss those opportunities with their manager.

Start An Employee Recognition Program.

An employee recognition program sets up a formal framework for acknowledging staff members for their work and accomplishments. Implementing these programs shows your employees that you see the hard work they’re doing on your nonprofit’s behalf. Some common examples of these programs include:

Employee of the month. For this recognition program, you’ll highlight your top performer every month. You can make this announcement in a company-wide meeting and present the top performer with a trophy and a gift.
Structured bonuses. Recognize hard workers by compensating them for their efforts. Select a few performance metrics for evaluating your employees. Set a threshold for that metric, and give bonuses to employees who meet and exceed that threshold. For example, for roles in sales, you could reward employees who’ve sold over $100,000 of products in the past year.
Loyalty awards. Recognize employees who have been employed at your company for certain durations of time. For example, you can recognize employees on their one-year work anniversary, five-year anniversary, and ten-year anniversary.
Peer-to-peer appreciation. Foster a more positive work environment by prioritizing peer-to-peer appreciation. Encourage employees to recognize each others’ hard work and contributions. This visibility will create an atmosphere that will empower employees to give you their best work.

Regularly recognizing employees’ accomplishments and progress lets them know you’re paying attention and value their hard work. Plus, don’t forget to appreciate your remote employees as well. Since these staff members work virtually, it’s easy for them to feel disconnected from the workplace. Implementing a recognition program for them can make them feel more engaged in their jobs and help them form connections with other employees.

Celebrate Milestones and Special Days With eCards.

Recognizing milestones and reaching out on special occasions communicates that you care about employees beyond their day-to-day work at your company. From celebrating anniversaries to spreading cheer during the holidays, online greeting cards have so many great uses, which is why they make the perfect addition to your employee engagement program.

Not to mention, they’re incredibly low-cost, so this initiative won’t take much to fund. Here are some special occasions that you might celebrate for your employees:

Birthdays: Say “happy birthday” to your employees, letting them know you’re thinking of them on their special day.
Work anniversaries: Show appreciation for employees’ dedication to your company by recognizing their work anniversaries.
Promotions or achievements: Send congratulatory eCards to celebrate employees’ promotions, achievements, or milestones in their professional growth.
Holidays: Spread joy by sending eCards to employees during holidays like Christmas, New Year, Thanksgiving, or other cultural and religious celebrations.
Personal milestones: Commemorate important personal milestones for individual employees, such as marriages, births, graduations, or other significant life events, with eCards that convey warm wishes and congratulations.

Create work eCard designs for different occasions like these. Then, personalize the message you send with each one. Employees will feel appreciated and engaged in no time!

Hone Your Organization’s Internal Culture.

Liven up your work atmosphere and make sure employees have fun. Encourage employees to get to know their coworkers by hosting parties and events. Surprise your employees with fun perks to make them feel appreciated.

Cultivate an atmosphere of positivity and openness so that concerns don’t fester and employees are comfortable in their work environment.

Be Transparent With Your Employees.

Being honest about the good and the not-so-good will show your employees that you see them as valuable team members that should be included in organizational happenings. Show your employees that you care about them by addressing issues honestly and focusing on solutions for moving forward.

If employees feel like they can bring up issues with management, then you’re more likely to catch potential problems before they’ve fully evolved. Not to mention, employees who feel cared for are more likely to care about their work.

Other Resources to Explore

Nonprofit Basics – Learn more about nonprofit management essentials by exploring other expert resources.

Working With a Nonprofit Human Resources Consultant – An HR consultant can provide a third-party perspective on how your nonprofit handles employee relationships and help you to improve. Learn more in this guide.

Compensation Consulting: The Ultimate Guide (+ Top Firms!) – Compensation affects employee satisfaction. Working with a compensation consultant is a great option for nonprofits looking to hone their approach. Start exploring these recommendations!

How to Collect, Manage, and Use Your Nonprofit’s Donor Data

December 1, 2022/in Nonprofit Basics /by Adam Weinger

Between donations, events, and volunteer participation, you collect donor data constantly. The rise of fundraising technology and nonprofit digital marketing has only made data more accessible, and that can be a great thing for professional fundraisers!

Your donor data is incredibly valuable. It provides you with insight into who your donors are, what motivates them to support your cause, and how you can keep your cause top of mind.

In this quick guide, we’ll share the fundamentals of managing your nonprofit’s donor data, so you don’t let yours go to waste!

What Is Donor Data?

Donor data refers to the information that nonprofits collect about their individual donors. The most common types of supporter data organizations store include:

Full names, preferred nicknames, and titles
Contact information such as mailing addresses, emails, and phone numbers
Employer information
Preferred communication channels
Donation history and average gift amount
Wealth indicators (such as real estate or stock holdings)
Other engagement history (such as events attended and hours volunteered)

To organize this information, nonprofits typically store data in a donor database or a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Nonprofits can integrate external tools (such as online donation forms and event management software), so new donor details will automatically be added to supporters’ profiles within the main database.

Why Is Donor Data Important?

Data fuels today’s fundraising efforts. As we mentioned, you collect data at every turn. When you leverage this data thoughtfully, your nonprofit can experience these benefits:

Cultivate donor relationships. The data you store for supporters gives you a better understanding of what types of engagement opportunities will resonate with them and what channels will help effectively deliver those opportunities to them. By knowing donors’ priorities, communication preferences, and behaviors, you can cultivate meaningful relationships that drive improved fundraising results.
Prevent donors from lapsing. Jitasa’s guide to donor analytics explains that your donor data can help you monitor individual donors’ engagement. If someone stops giving, attending events, or reading emails, you can reach out to engage them before they lapse entirely.
Demonstrate impact. By storing engagement history, you can track the impact of donors’ contributions on your organization’s mission and programs. In turn, you’ll be able to follow up and demonstrate the impact of your work when thanking donors and other stakeholders. That will help build credibility and trust with your community.
Tap into corporate philanthropy opportunities. By gathering employer names and job titles, you can pinpoint which donors are eligible for their companies’ corporate giving programs, such as matching gifts and volunteer grants. Then, you can follow up and let eligible donors know about relevant opportunities. (Hint: If you don’t have this information on hand, you can invest in a matching gift solution or conduct an employer data append.)

Between highlighting the right engagement opportunities and communicating impact, your organization stands to gain a lot from effective donor data management practices. Of course, to properly manage donor data, you first need to collect the right details.

What Donor Data Should We Collect?

The more information you have about your donors, the better prepared your organization will be to tailor your fundraising efforts and communication strategies to meet individual needs and preferences. This ultimately fosters deeper donor engagement and maximizes philanthropic support for your cause!

Understanding giving histories, communication preferences, interests, and more enables your organization to craft targeted appeals that foster long-term donor loyalty. While we briefly touched on common types of supporter data nonprofits gather, it’s worth a closer look. NPOInfo’s guide to donor data management delves into a range of data you should collect to set your team up for success.

Some of the highlights include:

Demographics: Get to know supporters based on their characteristics. Demographic donor data typically includes age, gender, location, and employment details.
Contact information: Make sure you collect postal addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and social media handles. This will allow you to connect via multiple channels and ensure you reach out to the right people for your email solicitations, phonathon fundraisers, and other campaigns.
Giving habits: Common giving data you’ll want to collect includes gift amounts, frequency, preferred methods, and recency. You can also track recent upgrades and downgrades in support to stay on top of lapsed engagement.
Interactions: The types of interactions nonprofits record vary from organization to organization. For inspiration, you might track event attendance, social media engagement, volunteer activities, website visits, email open rates, and direct mail response rates.

Storing this kind of information will empower you to separate your community into meaningful segments and deliver targeted fundraising appeals to each group.

Knowing who your supporters are depends on your ability to collect and synthesize the right data. Doing so will ultimately empower you to experience the benefits we mentioned earlier.

How to Effectively Manage Donor Data

You know why you should collect details and have all the right information about supporters. Now, how can you leverage that data to drive deeper relationships?

Let’s take a look at three recommendations for maintaining a clean CRM and ensuring your donor relationships thrive.

Use Data Appends to Build Stronger Profiles.

You won’t know everything about your supporters. But did you know you can use reliable data sources to enhance your donor profiles and append missing or outdated data elements in your database?

When you leverage a trustworthy data append service like Double the Donation, you can pull details like these to inform your strategy:

Employer information (to uncover matching gift and volunteer grant eligibility)
Landline and cell phone numbers
Email addresses
Mailing addresses and updates
Birthdates
And more!

Then, backed with these fresh new donor insights, your team will be empowered to…

Fill in data gaps: Fill in missing or outdated elements to establish a more complete understanding of who your donors are and what drives them to give.
Enhance its fundraising strategy: Appending demographic and behavioral data can help your team understand donors’ backgrounds, values, philanthropic motivations, and giving capacities. This information can help inform your fundraising and engagement plans, leading to more effective cultivation and stewardship efforts overall.
Stay in contact: Supporters move, get new email addresses, and change their phone numbers daily. Appending donor data means you can stay connected by filling in missing or outdated contact details.

Luckily, the appending process is fairly straightforward. Your team will send a file with donor data for each constituent to your appends provider. Then, the appending company matches the information you supply to a larger, external database with updated information. Some providers will even conduct manual checks to make sure the appended data is accurate!

Dive into the appending world with our data append starter guide. You’ll learn what types of information you can append and how to get started.

Use Your Donor Data to Personalize Communication.

Donor relationships are built on establishing personal connections. Show individuals that you care about them individually by using donor data to:

Craft tailored messages for segments. Segment donors into different groups based on interests and engagement levels. Once you’ve done that, you can craft tailored messaging that speaks directly to each group’s interests and needs. This may include personalized emails, direct mail campaigns, or phone outreach specific to the group’s giving history or interests.
Send relevant engagement opportunities. Store each donor’s past history with your organization, so you can reach out with applicable opportunities. For example, share information about corporate giving based on individuals’ eligibility, upcoming events based on past attendance, and certain programs based on recent giving history.
Use the right outreach channels. Make sure you’re delivering these wonderful engagement opportunities through the right channels. By questioning each donor’s communication preferences, you can reach out using the channels they check most frequently, whether it’s email, text, phone call, or direct mail.

Your donor data can take your nonprofit marketing up a notch. Today’s CRMs allow you to store pretty much any information you want, so you can form meaningful segments and deliver the right messages to the right groups.

Protect Donor Data By Taking Security Precautions.

When someone gives to your organization, they’re entrusting you with their personal information. Failing to take proper security precautions can result in a violation of that trust. If your donor data falls into the wrong hands, you might even lose some of your donors altogether.

To avoid this, here are a few security steps any nonprofit should take when handling donor data:

Implement access controls. Restrict donor data access to only those individuals who need to access it to fulfill their responsibilities. Access to any sensitive information should be granted on a need-to-know basis based on an individual’s job.
Use reliable software. Any tools you use should exercise proper security practices. For starters, ensure any systems encrypt donor data. Encryption scrambles data, making it unreadable to unauthorized users.
Regularly update and patch systems. Ensure your software systems are up-to-date at all times with the latest security patches to prevent vulnerabilities a hacker can exploit.

Increased reliance on technology can be a benefit and a challenge all at once for nonprofits. While you can gather more information than you ever thought possible, unauthorized users can exploit system vulnerabilities to steal that information. Make sure to take every precaution you can to protect your donor data, and it’ll pay off!

Other Resources to Explore

Nonprofit Basics – Learn more nonprofit management essentials by exploring other expert resources.

Wealth Screening for Nonprofits: The Definitive Guide – Interested in pulling wealth indicators for your donors? Read this ultimate guide to learn how wealth screening works for nonprofits.

Prospect Research: The Ultimate Guide for Nonprofits – Prospect research is the process of gathering information about your donors and prospects. Explore our prospect research guide to learn more.

This article explores what data appending is and why nonprofits should consider using this service.

What is a Data Append and Why Does it Matter for Nonprofits?

November 25, 2022/in Nonprofit Basics, Learning Center, About Double the Donation /by Adam Weinger

Today’s marketers rely on customer data to make informed decisions to inspire interest, increase engagement, and ultimately sell their products and services.

In the nonprofit space, nonprofit marketing and fundraising professionals stand to gain from strategically collecting, maintaining, and leveraging the donor data stored in their organization’s CRMs. But your supporters move, get new email addresses, and their information changes over time. That means your data can quickly become outdated, which is where data appending swoops in to save the day.

Updating and gathering data manually can be a taxing process, but data appending uses automation to streamline the work for you. We’ll clear up confusion surrounding the process to help you transform your CRM into an effective tool your nonprofit’s fundraising and marketing efforts can rely on.

What Is A Data Append?

A data append is the process of adding missing or updating existing data points in an organization’s database. The process involves comparing the information in the nonprofit’s current database to that stored in a larger, more comprehensive data source. Data append services use external data sources to fill gaps in data, including:

Contact details
Demographic data
Behavioral information
Employment details

All kinds of organizations use data appends, including for-profit businesses, charitable nonprofits, and political campaigns. For example, have you ever gotten a text message promoting a candidate in an upcoming election even though you can’t recall sharing your phone number with any political causes? Chances are they got your information—your name, phone number, and political party registration—from a data append.

For nonprofits, specifically, data appends allow them to maintain clean donor data and gain more comprehensive insights into their supporters when they have limited information. Ultimately, accurate data can help your organization learn more about your supporters, leading to better tailored fundraising and donor cultivation strategies.

Why Is Data Appending Important?

At its core, data appending enhances your data quality by filling in gaps and correcting inaccuracies. With this information, you can strengthen your donor management and make the most of each dollar spent on your data append.

There are all sorts of situations nonprofits might find themselves in where a data append is the right answer, including:

Missing key information. Do all of your nonprofit’s various forms require supporters to complete all core fields? For instance, your email newsletter subscription might only ask supporters for their name and email, meaning you’ll miss all of those supporters’ phone numbers. Not to mention information you’re unlikely to ask supporters for but is still useful, like demographic data.

Current information is outdated. As mentioned, your supporters aren’t static, and many donors aren’t going to think to update your nonprofit when they change addresses, start using a new email, or even change their names. An append keeps you up to date, helping you maintain your connections to each supporter over time.

Data got lost. It’s not ideal but it happens: your nonprofit lost data when migrating systems, something with your technology went wrong and information needs to be deleted, or someone just made a mistake and got rid of data you needed. Appends are your nonprofit’s lifeline in these scenarios.

But beyond simply cleaning up your donor database, you stand to benefit a lot from the appending process. Backed by accurate and complete data from the append, you can:

Personalize outreach: Marketers use data to personalize communication, content, and offers to match each recipient’s needs and preferences. Customizing outreach to suit individual donors makes for a memorable supporter experience. Appending demographic and behavioral data can help nonprofits personalize communication.
Update contact information: When a supporter’s information does change, appending emails, phone numbers, and other contact information allows you to stay connected without needing to get in touch with them.
Cultivate donor relationships: Sending appeals based on accurate data allows you to present valuable engagement opportunities and communicate that you care about each individual donor. When you send messages that fit donors’ interests and demographic details, they’re more likely to respond positively to your outreach.

Ultimately, data appending can enhance your understanding of supporters, which will shine through in your outreach. With your append, you get the data you need to drive greater fundraising outcomes and forge stronger supporter relationships.

How Data Appending Works

At the surface level, data appending seems like a simple process, but there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes to ensure accuracy and completeness. For the most part, your provider will take care of all the nitty-gritty details, such as gathering the data, ensuring it’s accurate, and formatting it to easily fit into your CRM.

NPOInfo’s guide to data append services offers a look behind the scenes of what your provider will do to make sure the data will be usable for your nonprofit:

Format the data from the nonprofit to be consistent, usually in a comma-separated value (CSV) format, in order to be analyzed correctly.
Upload the data into a single file and send it via the service’s secure file transfer protocol.
Match the organization’s database with the data in the external source by using your donors’ unique identifiers, such as their names, addresses, and phone numbers.
Enhance the data by filling in missing information and correcting inaccurate data based on the corresponding records in the organization’s database.
Verify and validate the appended data to ensure accuracy and completeness. This ensures the supplemental data is high-quality and will be useful for the client, which in this case is your nonprofit.
Send the data file to the client to be downloaded for their use. The file can be offered in essentially any format your nonprofit needs.

On your nonprofit’s end, the process is much simpler. From the nonprofit perspective, all you need to do is send your constituent information to a provider. You can streamline the process by taking the time to clean your database beforehand by removing duplicate information, unnecessary data, and donor profiles you don’t need (such as the information of deceased and long-since lapsed donors).

But if you just want to send your data append provider your database information in its current state, you can do that, too. Whatever the state of your database, your service provider will take it from there!

Types of Data You Can Append

As a nonprofit marketer, you’re likely flooded with new data points at every turn. With all the constituent data you collect through volunteer registrations, event sign-ups, and donations, it can be challenging to filter it down to the most helpful details.

When it comes to data appending, we already know the burning question on everyone’s mind: What information is actually worth appending?

Before getting an append, ensure you know which information will actually propel your marketing and fundraising efforts forward. While the append service will be happy to take you as a client, purchasing data you don’t need is far from the best use of your nonprofit’s resources.

Of course, what is the right data depends on your nonprofit’s unique situation. To help you get an idea of what you should request, here’s an overview of the most common types of data nonprofits need from appends:

As the graphic shows, there are a wide number of specific data points you can get from an append, but all of these can be sorted into roughly three categories.

Contact Information

Like we’ve touched on, your constituents move, change their phone numbers, and get new email addresses all the time. Having accurate contact information allows you to successfully deliver appeals and stay in contact without interruption.

Leverage data appending to verify contact information, including:

Phone numbers. Contacting donors via text or phone call is one of the most personal ways you can connect with your supporters. It also opens the door to innovative fundraising strategies like text banking and text-to-give. Phone number appends ensure you have the right phone number for each supporter at all times.
Email addresses. Email marketing remains one of the most lucrative digital marketing avenues for nonprofits. Whether you’re making fundraising appeals, sending out volunteer schedules, or providing an update on your latest project, make sure you have the right email addresses for supporters with this data append.
Postal addresses. Digital marketing might be the default for your outreach, but some supporters still prefer the personal touch of direct mail. Plus, knowing people’s addresses allows you to send them engagement opportunities based on their location, such as inviting nearby supporters to in-person events and remote ones to virtual activities. Ensure your solicitations, thank-you letters, and event invitations are delivered to the right addresses with a postal address append.
Social profiles. As a marketer, you know the immense power that social media holds to connect you with a global audience. Get in touch with current supporters and inspire them to share your cause online by finding their social media profiles. Boost your presence online by reaching out to loyal supporters to ask them to follow you and share your posts.

Communication is the foundation of nearly all nonprofit’s fundraising efforts, making this one of the most helpful types of data appends. If your email bounce rates have skyrocketed or you get sent straight to voicemail, a data append can verify whether you have the right contact details for constituents.

Employer Data

We can’t emphasize the importance of corporate philanthropy enough. Between matching gifts and volunteer grants, your nonprofit has a lot to gain from promoting these opportunities to supporters.

However, to promote these opportunities to the right supporters who actually qualify, you need accurate employer data for constituents. That’s where an employer append comes in handy. NXUnite’s guide to data appending explains that knowing employment details empowers your team to:

Uncover corporate giving opportunities. Knowing where your donors and volunteers work enables you to find their employers’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) guidelines. Then, you can determine your supporters’ eligibility for matching donations and volunteer grants.
Identify corporate partnerships. If several of your supporters work for the same company, that’s an indicator that the business might be a strong candidate for a corporate partnership, such as a sponsorship or an arranged corporate volunteer day. Use that information to kickstart a conversation with the company. You might even have supporters facilitate introductions with company leaders.
Estimate wealth data. While not a direct wealth indicator, knowing who employs your donors and what their roles are can help you estimate their incomes and giving abilities. Though append services can’t provide you with donors’ salary information, some may be able to provide job titles, which at the very least lets you know if a donor is working in an entry-level position or has risen to a senior management position.

Between driving donor engagement and establishing meaningful corporate partnerships, employer appending has quite a few benefits worth looking into. We recommend pulling this information if you’re looking to tap into the world of corporate giving or need help identifying major giving prospects.

Demographics

A supporter’s demographics can give you insight into their backgrounds, values, and philanthropic priorities. This type of data append allows you to extract important background details like:

Net worth
Ages and dates of birth
Gender
Ethnicity and race
Marital status
Political affiliation
Lifestyle attributes like hobbies and interests

Whether you want to send a birthday gift or verify contacts have a certain political affiliation, demographic data appends allow you to deliver highly personalized outreach that speaks to supporters’ interests.

Other Resources to Explore

Appends provide nonprofits with the data they need to strengthen their support relationships, build lasting connections, and make strategic marketing decisions. Supplement and update your database with the information you need to stay current with your supporters’ busy lives.

The right append for your nonprofit depends on your engagement strategy and current data-gathering practices. Curious to learn more about data appending? Check out these breakdowns on specific append types:

Demographic Appends: Stewarding Relationships Through Data. Dive further into the benefits of demographic data appends and learn how to get started with this guide.
What Is an Email Append? All Your Questions Answered. Boost your deliverability rates and stay connected with your supporters by learning all about email data appends.
Power Up Your Fundraising Campaign With Employer Appends. Interested in tapping into matching gifts and other corporate giving opportunities? Discover what you can do with employer appends.