Your healthcare facility works hard to give your patients the best care possible, so it’s only fair that you get some of that love and devotion in return — with fundraising!
Healthcare fundraising is instrumental for securing the necessary staff, equipment, and facility renovations your organization needs to function at maximum capacity. However, many hospital fundraising teams are in the dark about how best to organize their efforts, rally their supporters, and jumpstart a steady flow of donations.
We know how busy your schedule is, so we’ll make this brief: below, you’ll find everything you need to know about healthcare fundraising, including top strategies that no medical institution can do without!
First, we’ll review the basics of healthcare fundraising. Then, we’ll take a closer look at each of these strategies:
- Overcome common healthcare fundraising challenges.
- Maintain a clean CRM for your healthcare fundraising.
- Incorporate corporate philanthropy into your healthcare fundraising.
- Develop a top grateful patients program.
- Host healthcare fundraising meetings about your hospital foundation.
- Send targeted healthcare fundraising communications.
- Create a stellar healthcare fundraising online donation form.
- Teach donors about legacy giving.
- Check in with donors and recognize generosity.
These essential fundraising tactics can save your healthcare facility time, energy, and money so that you can get back to doing what you do best: saving lives. Take a breather from your daily duties and follow along with us; we promise to make it worthwhile!
Healthcare & Hospital Fundraising at a Glance
Before diving into strategizing a new fundraising program or reaching out to donors or sponsors, a refresher may be in order. If you’re new to healthcare fundraising in general or have been delegated fundraising responsibilities for the first time, understanding the broader environment will be invaluable.
We recommend exploring Graham-Pelton’s complete introduction to healthcare fundraising, which answers these questions and provides valuable context for newcomers:
Why do healthcare institutions fundraise?
Graham-Pelton’s guide explains the importance of fundraising like this: “Healthcare fundraising […] enables growth, allowing institutions to expand access, fund research, secure life-saving equipment, and more.”
For context, while payment for services makes up a majority of revenue for many (but not all) healthcare institutions, it rarely covers all expenses. The operating margins of many US hospitals are quite tight, making the growth of operations, services, and programs extremely difficult without sustained increases in funding, as well. Smart healthcare fundraising strategies that deliver strong ROIs can go very far in building an institution’s capacity.
How does fundraising revenue fit into their broader revenue structures?
For hospitals and other institutions, fundraising is just one of many revenue streams. According to the guide linked above, they break down into five general categories:
- Payment for medical services (by patients, insurance companies, and governments)
- Sales (primarily food and goods)
- Grants (from governments and foundations)
- Donations (from individuals and sponsors)
- Endowments and other investment income
Everything besides payment for medical services could be considered fundraising revenue. Within that category, grants, donations, and investment income are generally considered part of healthcare development, a more specific form of revenue generation. The exact structure can vary greatly based on a range of factors, for instance, if a hospital is a research institution. It’s important to note that most fundraising activities are conducted by an associated hospital foundation rather than directly by the institution itself.
This diversity and the complexity of healthcare fundraising mean that many institutions turn to experts to help develop new and improved fundraising or development strategies. Healthcare fundraising consultants are often the right (and safer and more efficient) choice for these organizations. It’s highly recommended to consider hiring external, objective, and compliance-minded partners to help your institution improve its fundraising.
With this context in mind, let’s take a look at some of the specific healthcare fundraising strategies to keep in mind as you audit your current efforts, lay out a strategy, or begin defining your consulting needs.
1. Overcome Common Healthcare Fundraising Challenges.
In the realm of healthcare fundraising, the journey to securing vital funds is often fraught with unique challenges. While the overarching goal is to gather resources for better health services and research, hurdles can impede the process. Understanding these common challenges is crucial for developing effective strategies to overcome them:
- Misconceptions about services: Often, potential donors have preconceived notions or misunderstandings about the services healthcare organizations provide. For instance, a hospital specializing in pediatric care might be perceived as only serving certain age groups or conditions, thus limiting its appeal to a broader donor base. Addressing these misconceptions through clear, transparent communication is essential in aligning donor expectations with the organization’s capabilities.
- Data privacy and prospect research challenges: Healthcare organizations must ensure a delicate balance between complying with data privacy laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and conducting detailed prospect research. Effective fundraising often relies on identifying potential donors with the capacity and affinity to give. However, regulations limit the use of patient data, making it challenging to personalize fundraising strategies and gather adequate data on potential donors. This can hinder the ability to develop targeted fundraising approaches and build meaningful donor relationships.
- Ethical concerns regarding facilitated access: Donors might expect preferential treatment in healthcare services as a quid pro quo for their donations. This is known as facilitated access and raises ethical questions, as it can lead to inequities in access to care. Establishing clear policies with donors about the non-transactional nature of their contributions is vital for upholding the integrity of the healthcare system.
- Donor stewardship complexities: Nurturing relationships with donors, also known as donor stewardship, is crucial but can be particularly complex in the healthcare context. Donors to healthcare causes often have personal stories or emotional connections to the issues at hand. This necessitates a more sensitive, individualized approach to communication. Balancing the emotional aspects with professional stewardship practices makes healthcare donor stewardship an intricate challenge.
In addressing these challenges, healthcare fundraising professionals must adopt a multifaceted approach, combining sensitivity, adherence to regulations, and strategic communication. Recognizing and tackling these issues is key to building a robust, ethical fundraising framework.
2. Maintain A Clean CRM For Your Healthcare Fundraising.
A customer relationship management (CRM) system is the backbone of any fundraising operation. In healthcare fundraising, where relationships and data sensitivity are paramount, the importance of a clean and well-maintained CRM cannot be overstated.
You’ll want to develop robust prospect profiles within your CRM, making it easier to get to know your donors. For each individual, you’ll want to gather data such as:
- Contact details
- Basic demographic information
- Past philanthropic giving to your organization
- Involvement in other philanthropic organizations
- Political affiliations
- Real estate holdings
You can affiliate each donor with a particular donor persona, too. Creating donor personas involves researching and identifying common characteristics among potential donors, such as demographics, motivations, and giving history. For instance, potential major donors may have given large donations to similar organizations or have real estate holdings. Meanwhile, a potential legacy donor may consistently give to your organization and have a high giving capacity.
By creating robust profiles and affiliating them with common donor personas, you can tailor your outreach and focus your efforts on areas likely to drive impact. After building constituents’ profiles, regularly update and clean your CRM to ensure the data is accurate, so you can engage donors with relevant fundraising appeals.
3. Incorporate Corporate Philanthropy Into Your Healthcare Fundraising.
Corporate philanthropy has been trending like crazy in recent years. Not only does it benefit organizations in the healthcare, nonprofit, and education fields, but it also generates positive publicity and employee engagement within active companies.
That’s why to get a leg up in your healthcare fundraising feats, it’s always smart to seek partnerships with corporations known for their philanthropic history and variety of giving initiatives.
For healthcare organizations, corporations can give you philanthropic support by:
- Sponsoring a healthcare-related fundraising event.
- Investing in a capital campaign to raise money for specific hospital needs like new MRI machines or a hiring budget for more nursing staff.
- Doubling their employees’ contributions to your organization via matching gifts.
As our favorite healthcare fundraising strategy, offering matching gifts is a reliable way to tap into corporate philanthropy and diversify your revenue streams. Watch this video for some tips for elevating your approach to corporate giving:
In addition, the whole point behind
cause marketing is to encourage mutually beneficial relationships between corporations and fundraising organizations. For example, the ever-popular
Red Nose Day collaboration with Walgreens has raised millions of funds to support impoverished children.
When approaching a corporation with a sponsorship proposal, remember to sell its team on a specific cause connected to the business. For instance, a company could screen employees to see if a large percentage are affected by a particular health concern or take an employee poll on a medical cause they would be interested in supporting. Essentially, the more you frame your pitch to highlight the corporate benefits of your healthcare fundraising partnership, the faster you’ll have them on board and committed.
4. Develop a Top Grateful Patients Program.
Although many hospitals already solicit donations from grateful patients, organizing a program around that specific purpose can do wonders for your healthcare fundraising. Grateful patient programs allow patients to express their thanks to a physician or facility that played a meaningful role in their treatment.
Not to mention, grateful patient programs can bolster your hospital’s reputation for patient care and attention, leading to more major donations. For example, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta offers an exemplary Grateful Families program that allows patients and their families to honor caregivers with a financial gift, share their testimonials, and engage in peer-to-peer fundraising. In addition, the Boston Children’s Hospital encourages families to honor loved ones with memorials and planned giving opportunities.
While assembling your grateful patient program, answer the following questions:
- How will your program be managed? Develop your program’s prospect research and solicitation pipeline and arrange frequent check-ins with your team members.
- Who are your grateful patient program team members? Recruit an integrated healthcare staff including doctors, nurses, hospital administration, and a development committee with major and planned giving officers.
- What are your budgetary concerns? Map out areas of your program that may require more financial support than others.
- How will you screen prospects and organize donor data? Invest in top data management software and conduct daily patient screenings to analyze giving factors.
- What are your recruitment strategies? Get to know individual patients and devise a personalized solicitation game plan for current and discharged prospects.
To spread the word about your program, publish the opportunity on your website and create easily accessible materials like brochures around your hospital.
Finally, remember to treat your patients as people first and donors second by respecting their healthcare information privacy. Always handle your solicitations tactfully by consulting the HIPAA guidelines for getting a patient’s written consent on using their medical data for fundraising or promotional purposes.
Keep in mind that these are uniquely complex fundraising programs. They require careful messaging, extensive data compliance, and more steps that often don’t come onto your radar in other fundraising contexts. The healthcare fundraising experts at Graham-Pelton identify these key components of effective grateful patient programs:
- Compliance
- Patient Experience
- Case for Support
- Cross-Department Coordination
- Fundraising Resources
- Ongoing Measurement and Maintenance
According to Graham-Pelton, institutions (not just development departments) need to master the relational, analytical, and operational domains of these programs—i.e. their programs should be holistic, cross-departmental, organized, compliant, and patient-first. It’s highly recommended that hospitals partner with fundraising experts to develop, improve, or audit their grateful patient programs.
Overall, curating a powerful grateful patient program can help your hospital efficiently manage prospects and boost healthcare donations.
5. Host Healthcare Fundraising Meetings About Your Hospital Foundation.
When it comes to healthcare fundraising, hospital foundations are your medical institution’s advocates, go-getters, and best friends all rolled into one.
For those unfamiliar with the role of a hospital foundation, these nonprofits act independently to generate support for local hospital needs. As an isolated entity, these organizations usually have their own fundraising agenda and board of directors separate from the medical facilities they assist.
Hospital foundations commonly:
- Oversee healthcare donations and hospital endowments.
- Organize annual or capital campaigns for general or specific projects.
- Host fundraising events on behalf of a hospital.
- Provide educational scholarships to up-and-coming healthcare professionals.
It’s your obligation as part of your fundraising strategy to give your hospital foundation a hand by hosting informative meetings to showcase their brilliant efforts.
With these meetings or luncheons, your hospital can clarify fundraising options and meet face-to-face with interested prospects. In return, donors learn how to channel their gratitude toward the medical programs that they’re most passionate about.
From these interactions, hospitals can also determine areas of interest for constructing effective fundraising campaigns or events like charity auctions that address specific healthcare concerns.
6. Send Targeted Healthcare Fundraising Communications.
Once your medical institution lands a generous donation, your healthcare fundraising team should prioritize donor stewardship. You can grow donor relationships by initiating personal healthcare communications.
Your fundraising team can strengthen outreach and send valuable information by segmenting donors within your donor management software.
For example, donors should receive frequent updates on how their gifts have helped staff and patients, while prospects should receive news about programs that match their areas of interest. For instance, a former breast cancer patient may be particularly interested in supporting a fundraiser for the cancer ward. Furthermore, inform former patients when their medical team is honored for fundraising contributions.
Get the most out of your donor communications by doing the following:
- Share stories about your healthcare facility, physicians, or patients.
- Use emotional, eye-catching visual media like photos, videos, and infographics.
- Provide examples of how a donor’s support directly influenced your healthcare fundraising.
- Make donors feel part of something bigger by casting a long-term healthcare fundraising vision.
- Encourage donors to contact you with questions or concerns about donating.
Throughout all communications, focus on connecting donors with your fundraising efforts and, more importantly, emphasizing their value to your organization.
7. Create A Stellar Healthcare Fundraising Online Donation Form.
When was the last time your healthcare institution revamped its online donation form? If it’s been a while, it’s imperative that you understand how much this tool can make or break your healthcare fundraising.
For starters, online donation forms accomplish a variety of tasks that make your healthcare fundraising efforts outrageously easier like:
- Receiving online donations and securing more matching gifts by featuring an employer search tool.
- Reaching a wider audience by offering an accessible and shareable donation option.
- Collecting donor data to document preferred giving methods and average gift amounts.
- Tracking fundraising results to assess your virtual outreach.
In addition, your online donation form can be key to accepting annual fund gifts or capital campaign gifts via a fundraising webpage.
How to Design a Donor-Ready Online Donation Form
When crafting an outstanding online donation form, it’s best to keep the design details as simple as possible to attract and retain donors, such as:
- Sticking to one page with minimal (yet effective) branding.
- Limiting the number of steps it takes to complete the form.
- Optimizing your online donation form for mobile or tablet use.
- Providing suggested giving amounts to accelerate the process.
- Allowing donors to share their gifts on social media platforms.
A cluttered or unresponsive layout can deter donors from following through with a donation. By offering an easy-to-navigate platform and more giving options to fit individual needs, your healthcare institution can make online giving a rewarding experience.
Then, embed the online donation form into foundation materials like digital brochures, e-newsletters, emails, and more with the URL link.
How to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy With Your Online Donation Form
Tap into corporate philanthropy by including a matching gift search tool on your online donation form!
If your healthcare fundraising team is unfamiliar with matching gift search tools, let’s look at our matching gift widget on Mercy Corps. Here’s how the process works:
- The donor enters their employer’s name to discover whether they have a matching gift program in place.
- If the company is listed, the donor reviews the company’s matching gift ratio, types of eligible organizations, and employee eligibility guidelines.
- If eligible, the donor fills out a form to initiate the matching gift process.
- The company confirms the donation with your healthcare organization.
Even better, you can leverage auto-submission to cut out a few of these steps. When a company uses CSR software that integrates with Double the Donation, their employees can let our software submit their match requests on their behalf.
In essence, make the most of your online donation form with a killer design and matching gift search tool to provide donors the luxury of multiple giving options to your medical institution.
8. Teach Donors About Legacy Giving.
Legacy giving, also known as planned giving, enables donors to make a lasting impact on healthcare organizations. Your organization should educate donors about the benefits and processes of legacy giving, ensuring their generosity continues to support vital healthcare services and research for future generations.
Legacy giving involves donors committing to contribute a major gift, often from their estate or financial planning. It provides long-term financial stability, enabling healthcare entities to plan and execute future projects with confidence.
Common forms of legacy gifts include bequests in a will, life insurance policies, trusts, and retirement plan assets. Each method offers different benefits and considerations, and here’s how you can educate donors on these opportunities:
- Informative Sessions and Materials: Providing detailed brochures, webinars, and workshops can demystify the process of legacy giving. These resources should cover how to set up legacy gifts, tax benefits, and the impact of these gifts on healthcare services and research.
- Personalized Meetings: Address individual donor’s questions and concerns, providing a personalized approach to their unique financial situation and philanthropic interests.
- Success Stories and Testimonials: Share stories of how legacy gifts have contributed to significant advancements in healthcare to illustrate the impact of these donations. Whether through video or written content, these can inspire others to leave their mark.
By providing clear and inspiring guidance, healthcare organizations can communicate the profound impact each donor’s legacy can have. This not only secures long-term funding but also ensures that the donor’s philanthropic vision is honored and fulfilled.
9. Check In With Donors and Recognize Generosity.
In healthcare fundraising, actively engaging with and recognizing donors’ generosity is essential for long-lasting relationships. Regular updates on the organization’s progress, upcoming events, and how their contributions make a difference keep donors connected and engaged.
eCards, in particular, offer a flexible, cost-effective way to express gratitude and acknowledge contributions. eCardWidget’s guide to charity eCards explains that they can be easily customized to reflect your healthcare organization’s brand and the donor’s impact, and their digital nature allows for immediate and environmentally friendly recognition.
Using an eCard site, send cards when someone gives a sizeable donation or when someone is celebrating a birthday or other milestone. Recognizing milestones in donors’ lives or their history with the organization adds a personal touch to these communications. When possible, include updates on your organization’s achievements and the direct impact of their donations.
Beyond eCards, organizing appreciation events and offering public acknowledgment (with the donor’s consent) in newsletters or on social media can further celebrate and appreciate their support.
However you approach it, combining regular, personalized contact with thoughtful recognition initiatives will empower your healthcare organization to foster ongoing engagement with donors, encouraging continued support.
Additional Resources For Better Healthcare Fundraising
There’s no doubt that healthcare fundraising is a group effort that requires a lot of sweat, creativity, and grit. However, with the right fundraising strategies up your sleeve, it can also be fun and rewarding for both your hospital and donors. Have a blast with your healthcare fundraising by aiming for even bigger donation goals with these powerful tactics!
For more game-changing resources, dive into these additional resources:
Understanding the Fundraising Cycle: 5 Ways to Raise More
/in Donor communications /by Adam WeingerWhether you’re a seasoned nonprofit professional or a newcomer to the fundraising world, your team likely follows a similar set of processes to attract, acquire, and retain donors. This framework is called the fundraising cycle, and optimizing your current practices can make a big difference in your campaign results and donor retention rate.
To help you start optimizing your fundraising cycle activities, we’ll review these topics:
Understanding your organization’s approach to the fundraising cycle can greatly enhance your fundraising prowess. As we review the details of the fundraising cycle, consider how your nonprofit currently operates within each stage. Let’s explore how to leverage these tips and secure sustainable support.
Fundraising Cycle: Important Terms to Know
You’ll likely encounter these terms as you delve deeper into the fundraising cycle. Here are their definitions and an extended example of an animal shelter to contextualize them:
The animal shelter’s fundraising cycle starts by identifying goals, which is followed by planning adoption drives and fundraising events, which is followed by the launch of these campaigns and ends with the nonprofit assessing performance.
The animal shelter creates a strategy of organizing an open house adoption fair, inviting interested supporters to a small-group shelter tour, and then concluding the cycle by inviting these attendees to the shelter’s annual fundraising event.
The animal shelter keeps donors updated and interested in its cause by sending out monthly donor newsletters highlighting new additions to the shelter and pointing out upcoming fundraising events.
The animal shelter notices a shift in their donor dynamics when it experiences an influx of young professional donors who prefer to give on mobile devices, so the organization revamps its online giving page to align with their preferences.
An average donor lifecycle for the animal shelter might be a donor who hears about the shelter from a friend, adopts a pet, donates at least once a year, and eventually upgrades the value and frequency of their gifts.
The animal shelter’s team invites animal lovers in the community to join them for an adoption open house where the nonprofit can show the impact of its mission in an emotional way and secure support.
After a donor gives for the first time, the animal shelter’s team sends a personalized thank-you letter. Also, the team puts the new donor in an outreach segment that’s designed to suggest new engagement opportunities so they can scale up their support.
The animal shelter practices donor development by prioritizing outreach and building relationships with donors and prospects by leveraging the emotional impact of adopting an animal. As donors progress through their lifecycle, tactics get increasingly personalized so that the donor trusts them enough to devote more gifts to them over time.
Now that you know these essential terms, let’s answer some other questions you might have about the fundraising cycle.
Fundraising Cycle FAQs
What are the stages of the fundraising cycle?
Fundraising cycles might differ from organization to organization, but the typical fundraising cycle includes these stages. Let’s view them through the lens of the example animal shelter from earlier:
The animal shelter uses multiple analytics and strategies to pinpoint potential donors who are more likely to support its cause. The team focuses its efforts on those who have adopted animals from them.
Once the animal shelter’s team has pinpointed a group of donor prospects from its group of adopters, it examines the public information available that could signify each prospect’s financial capacity to give. For instance, the team could leverage public records to research the prospect’s past contributions to charitable causes, as well as their participation in animal welfare programs as volunteers.
Next, the animal shelter’s team gathers the contact information for each prospect and adds them to its outreach stream. To show prospects how important the shelter’s work is, the team might invite them to a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility or highlight metrics from previous annual reports in outreach materials.
Depending on the prospect’s giving potential, it might take the animal shelter’s team some time to build a strong relationship with them. After the team has cultivated a firm connection with the prospect, it’s time to make an ask tailored to the prospect’s interests, preferences, and giving potential.
Once the prospect has donated, the animal shelter’s team expresses its appreciation. For example, the team might send a handwritten thank you note, publicly recognize the donor online, or add them to a plaque in its office. Even after the donor gives, the team continues strengthening their relationship so the donor renews their support in the future.
Your fundraising circle will eventually follow this pattern with consistent iteration over time:
Why is the fundraising cycle important?
Using the fundraising cycle as a blueprint for your own strategies can help your nonprofit:
Leveraging the Fundraising Cycle: Top Strategy for Each Stage
As you plan to implement a fundraising cycle for the first time or optimize your existing setup, keep these tips in mind to improve your efforts.
Identification Stage: Use Data Analytics and Key Performance Indicators
In the initial stage of the fundraising cycle, your team needs to start strong by precisely researching and pinpointing donor prospects. By using a data-driven approach, your nonprofit can reduce errors, save time and resources, and quickly funnel prospects to stage two. These tips can help you implement data analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs) into your strategy:
Throughout this stage, ensure that your team is following the correct data hygiene protocols so you can maintain efficiency and effectiveness. NPOInfo’s guide to data hygiene for nonprofits suggests adding these activities to your routine:
Qualification Stage: Implement Donor Scoring
Once you’ve identified donor prospects, you need to prioritize who you plan to reach out to so you can secure gifts faster. Donor scoring provides a standard measurement to help you structure your outreach. You can score donors based on the following criteria:
Your nonprofit should pick criteria that align with your objectives. For example, if your nonprofit is deeply involved with a corporate sponsor, you might consider adding a field to account for that sponsor’s employees as they might have unique motivations for supporting your cause. Here’s an example donor scorecard to inspire your nonprofit:
Cultivation Stage: Segment Donor Audiences
From general community members to major giving prospects, your team has many donor audiences that you should target with your communication strategy. However, to resonate with the most donors possible, you need to create unique messages for them.
You can conduct personalized donor outreach efficiently by segmenting your donors based on shared characteristics. For example, you might segment them based on their relationship to your mission, demographic factors, or giving capacity. That way you can send out targeted communications without painstakingly writing an original message for everyone.
As you start to segment your communications, consider adding these tactics to improve results:
Solicitation Stage: Promote Matching Gifts
The fourth stage is the most crucial for achieving your end goal of securing a donation. Offering many ways to give helps you target as many prospects as possible and convert them into loyal donors. You likely already offer tried and true ways to give such as individual donations, but you can attract even more people by promoting and leveraging matching gifts.
Did you know that 84% of donors are more likely to donate if they know their gifts will be matched? Many employers offer matching gift programs, which your nonprofit can leverage to inspire community members to give. Besides promoting matching gifts, you can boost the likelihood of donors matching by using matching gift software. The right solution will connect to a database of companies with matching gift programs and tell your donors about their company’s policy based on their work email. Ultimately, offering matching gifts is a win-win-win—your nonprofit receives crucial funding, your donors can multiply their impact effortlessly, and their employers can give back to a worthy cause.
Want to learn more about matching gift software? This educational video from Double the Donation is a great resource for beginners:
Stewardship Stage: Leverage Donor Feedback Loops
Once you’ve acquired donors, you need to actively maintain your relationship with them to keep them actively engaged long-term. Feedback loops can inform your engagement strategy with insights straight from your donors and help them feel valued by your organization. Here’s how to implement them to improve your fundraising cycle:
By openly communicating with donors during the feedback process, you demonstrate your commitment to improving your practices to serve donors better and that you respect your donors’ opinions. This can help you attract more donors in the future and retain current donors.
Wrapping Up + Additional Resources
Now that you understand how the fundraising cycle works and why you should leverage it, you can start creating and improving your own. With some planning, standardization, and iteration, your nonprofit can make a solid structure that works for your niche and, ultimately, improve the donor journey and secure lifetime support.
Here’s How You Can Celebrate Matching Gift Month This February
/in Learning Center, Fundraising Ideas, Marketing Strategies, Learning Center /by Adam WeingerFebruary is a time to celebrate love and happiness—and matching gifts. That’s why it’s been dubbed the official Matching Gift Month. This year, we recommend taking the opportunity to scale up your matching gift promotional efforts accordingly.
We’ll cover everything you need to know to celebrate corporate giving and drive action (and matches) this February.
This includes:
Looking for new and exciting ways to amplify your nonprofit’s matching gift efforts leading up to Match Month? You’ve come to the right place. At Double the Donation, we’re experts at matching gifts, and we’ve compiled a list of suggestions sure to elevate your engagement efforts this February.
Ready to bring your matching gift fundraising to the next level? Let’s explore top recommendations for making the most of Match Month—and see what your team can do to bridge the knowledge and funding gaps alike.
What is Matching Gift Month?
Matching Gift Month is an annual celebration of corporate donation matching, often used to increase awareness and usage of match programs. Held in February each year, Match Month is an opportunity to recognize the extensive impact that corporate philanthropy programs, like matching gifts and more, can have on nonprofit fundraising groups.
And what is that impact? Research indicates that an estimated $2 to $3 billion is donated through matching gift programs each year. That’s a substantial source of funds provided to charitable causes like yours. Not to mention, the mere existence of a match incentivizes individual donors to give at new heights, too. The same reports state that 84% of donors are more likely to give if a match is available, while 1 in 3 would give a larger amount if a match were to be applied.
However, an additional $7 billion goes unclaimed by qualifying nonprofits and their donors each year—largely due to a lack of information surrounding the programs. That’s why many mission organizations and schools are taking the opportunity to elevate their matching gift fundraising and push the initiatives forward this year. And Match Month is the perfect chance to begin.
10+ Powerful Ways to Celebrate Matching Gift Month This Year
These smart marketing and engagement ideas inhabit a fun sense of novelty this month. But they’re also impactful for long-term engagement in your organization’s overall strategy.
For the best results, we suggest integrating multiple of the following methods—both this month and beyond.
1. Give your internal team a refresher course.
Before ramping up your organization’s matching gift efforts for Match Month, it’s a good idea to take a look inward. Hopefully, your internal fundraising team should be well-versed in matching gift information. But perhaps you’ve had a few new team members join since your last group training. Or maybe your staff (and volunteers!) could just use a refresher.
The solution? Start the month off right with your own team. Take the time to reiterate the importance of corporate matching gift programs. Practice asking common matching gift questions, ensuring that all individuals have the knowledge and assets to answer them.
You can even provide your team with access to educational resources and other materials to help grow their knowledge and preparedness for the celebrations ahead.
We have some fantastic free eBooks, blog posts, templates, webinars, and more at Double the Donation.
Plus, we offer the industry’s first-ever Matching Gift Academy—an online learning hub encompassing 45 lessons and more than 7 hours of informational video content across 10+ modules.
When it comes to driving matching gift revenue, your internal team encompasses your greatest assets. Make sure they’re equipped to advocate for the opportunities as best they can!
2. Share on social media.
Your organization likely has at least one, but likely a number of profiles on popular social media sites. Whether it’s a Facebook page, an Instagram profile, or even a TikTok account, your strategic web presence can go a long way toward marketing matching gifts online.
And what better time is there to begin (or to elevate your strategy) than a month dedicated to all things matching gifts?
To get started, consider sharing the following types of content on your nonprofit’s social profiles:
Images and videos
Social media platforms are increasingly visual-focused. If you want to grab—and maintain—your audience’s attention as they scroll through their feeds, research indicates that incorporating eye-catching images and videos is the way to go. In fact, studies show that image-based social posts receive 2.3 times more engagement than those without, and posts with video content can see up to 10 times higher engagement levels.
That said, Match Month is an optimal time to produce and share matching gift marketing videos and imagery. Or get started with our pre-made social media graphics here!
(Hint: click each image to enlarge the attachment and download a copy.)
Industry research
Highlight key statistics that effectively demonstrate the potential that corporate matching brings. Double the Donation has compiled some of our favorite metrics here, including an overview of unclaimed funding and a wide range of participating companies.
Check out these examples:
of Fortune 500 companies offer matching gift programs.
individuals work for companies with matching gift programs.
of corporate cash donations are made through matching gift programs.
was contributed through corporate matching gift programs last year.
in matching gift funds are left unclaimed by eligible donors each year.
Success stories
Social media is driven by connectivity, networking, and social proof. That’s why case studies, testimonials, and other success stories can be some of the most influential content you can share!
Take a look at a few examples here:
Your supporters care about the impact your organization (and, by extension, their donations) brings. When your followers see the influence that other matching gifts have had, they’ll be more likely to take steps to do so themselves.
Reiterate that donation-matching programs enable donors to double their impact without reaching back into their own wallets. If you can put it in terms of tangible impact (e.g., feed two shelter cats for the cost of one), even better!
3. Optimize your site for matching gifts.
Social media marketing is great—but there’s only so much you can share in each post. So, how can you ensure your audience can easily access the information they need to take action? Be sure every matching gift-related item you share links back to additional resources for learning more.
The best place to house those resources is your organization’s website. If you already have a built-out matching gift web page (which you should), consider driving traffic to the page for supporters to learn more about the opportunity. And if you don’t have an existing matching gifts page, Match Month is the perfect time to build that online hub.
Here’s an example of a well-designed matching gifts page to consider:
This inspiring sample follows all of our recommended practices. Take a look at the embedded matching gift search tool (which empowers donors to locate the information they need in seconds), a helpful infographic to visualize the involvement process, a detailed FAQ section, and information about the institution required for donors’ requests. Not to mention, it’s prominently located on the school’s navigation menu!
From there, we also suggest integrating matching gifts directly into your online donation process. Ideally, this should include an employment data widget to your giving form and company-specific program details on the confirmation screen.
Consider adding a separate page about one-off matching gift programs, too. (We’ll talk more about those below!)
4. Send a Matching Gift Month newsletter.
Does your organization send regular newsletters as a way to keep donors and other supporters in the know about upcoming events and opportunities? A matching gift-focused newsletter—whether physical or digital—can serve as a powerful tool for raising awareness of matching gift opportunities.
And it’s a great way to elevate engagement with the annually celebrated Match Month.
At the very least, consider adding a section about Matching Gift Month involvement in your standard newsletter. But an entire edition dedicated to matching gifts can go a long way toward inspiring participation in the programs!
5. Look for fundraising match opportunities.
Some companies extend their programs to encompass gifts collected by an employee through a peer-to-peer fundraising effort on behalf of a nonprofit organization—even if the funds didn’t come directly from the employee’s own wallet.
Programs like these are known as fundraising match programs. And since these initiatives can also be considered a form of donation-matching, they can fit perfectly into a well-rounded Matching Gift Month plan!
Here’s how it works:
For example, let’s imagine that John Doe of State Street Corporation raises $1,572 for your organization. This is collected from 15 peers and associates through a social fundraising effort your team hosts this Match Month. When John requests a match from his employer, State Street supplies an additional $1,572 for your cause. This brings the total value of John’s fundraising efforts to $3,144!
That’s a lot of extra funding for your mission—all while engaging your donors at new heights and growing corporate support.
6. Encourage non-eligible donors to advocate for new programs.
Unfortunately, not all companies match employee donations (though new programs are added every day). And some employers are likely interested in getting started—they might just need a little push to do so.
Luckily, your existing (and non-match-eligible) donors can be some of your best champions for inspiring new matching programs. Sometimes, all it takes is an email from a philanthropic employee to get the ball rolling for a new corporate program. And Matching Gift Month can be the perfect time to begin laying a foundation.
Consider sharing a template like this to provide a baseline for supporters considering advocating on your behalf this month:
We’ve even written a dedicated blog post on the topic. Feel free to send this article—How to Advocate for a Matching Gift Program to Your Employer—to your donors to guide them through the process of proposing programs for their companies.
7. Pursue one-off matching gift program opportunities.
Most companies that match employee donations agree to do so to most nonprofit causes. However, if an organization has an existing partnership with a corporation, it may seek a one-off (or unique) matching gift program that is exclusive to the cause.
In some cases, this type of offering can be an ongoing sponsorship opportunity. But it also may be limited to a particular period of time—such as Matching Gift Month! Thus, February (and/or the weeks leading up to February) can be a great chance to begin pursuing such a relationship.
There are a few types of one-off matching gift programs to consider. These include…
Keep in mind that both types of programs can be beneficial to your cause, your donors, and your corporate partners. In either case, your donors’ employing companies can be some of your most valuable prospects!
8. Follow up on previously made donations.
Your organization’s work promoting Matching Gift Month might very well drive a number of new donations—and matches—to your cause. But another strategy you can employ involves following up on previously made gifts. Then, encouraging still-eligible donors to submit their requests retroactively.
Here’s a sample follow-up email you might send:
Not to mention, Match Month falls just a few weeks after the year-end giving season when most organizations see elevated giving. Many of those donations may still qualify for corporate matching, even into the first few months of the new year.
In fact, tons of companies set generous matching gift request deadlines—often accepting submissions for up to a year after the initial donation is made. Take this opportunity to remind eligible donors about their employers’ matching gift programs and how they can get involved.
9. Include matching gifts in staff email signatures.
This is perhaps our simplest suggestion for celebrating Match Month, but it can be particularly effective when paired with some of our other top ideas. We recommend adding a quick line mentioning matching gift opportunities to all of your team members’ email signatures.
More than likely, your organization sends a ton of emails—from donation appeals to thank-you messages and even nonprofit programming outreach. By incorporating matching gifts in automatic signatures, you can use every piece of communication with your cause as a way to promote donation-matching.
While you could add a simple blurb beneath an individual’s name and contact information, making it stand out can produce great results. For that reason, consider getting a graphic made and added to each person’s signature.
You can even use the space to link to additional resources where recipients can learn more.
10. Consider matching challenge grants.
Corporate matching gifts aren’t the only type of match opportunity your organization should keep an eye out for—they’re just the most widely available. But other match-based initiatives, like challenge grants, also have the potential to multiply the impact of a group’s fundraising success.
Rather than a company matching the donations its employees make to charitable causes, challenge grants are facilitated as a way to offer a donation match to all of a nonprofit’s supporters. Typically offered by a generous major donor, corporation, or foundation, these programs are generally organized according to a set time frame (e.g., a 24-hour period) or predetermined threshold (such as up to $10,000). Then, any individual who gives within the time frame prior to the match fund being depleted will have their gift doubled for your cause by the challenge grant supplier.
It’s important to remember, too, that challenge grants and matching gifts are usually not mutually exclusive. That means you can layer a few matching gift opportunities on top of one another (for example, a donor’s gift being matched through a challenge grant and by their employing company) to further amplify your efforts.
And that’s what we recommend doing to celebrate Matching Gift Month!
Bonus: Make matching easy.
Our final idea for celebrating Matching Gift Month is one that will benefit your organization well beyond the 28 (or 29) days of February. A lot of our previous recommendations involve raising awareness of program opportunities in the first place. Now, we suggest going a few steps further and driving matches by simplifying the processes involved.
After all, donors love matching gifts. They love getting the opportunity to multiply their contribution impact. But even your most dedicated supporters might not follow through when the process is too complicated or time-consuming.
That’s why we recommend fundraising organizations employ matching gift software to streamline and simplify the process. For example, Double the Donation empowers nonprofits to:
Not only does this benefit your donors by making matching programs more accessible, but it also ensures more back-end efficiency for your internal team and results in matching gift revenue growth of more than 61%.
Inspiring Matching Gift Month Examples to Review
Drawing inspiration from other nonprofits’ Matching Gift Month efforts can be highly beneficial for organizations strategizing their own campaigns. Not only can successful examples provide invaluable ideas and insights, but they can also spark creativity among your team and establish a deeper understanding of what resonates with nonprofit audiences.
That said, take a look at these Match Month campaigns to aspire to.
Example #1: Matching Gift Month Social Media Post
This independent Massachusetts private school took to Facebook and other social media platforms to promote the corporate matching gift opportunity last Match Month.
This institution uses the post as a way to promote matching gifts and encourage unprecedented individual giving. Not to mention, it links to the school’s matching gifts page and company search tool. These resources can supply additional information and assist supporters in getting started!
Example #2: Matching Gifts Web Page
One university opts to use its matching gift web page as a way to increase awareness about Match Month celebrations.
The blurb, which is embedded in the web page, encourages users to research their companies’ matching gift programs and double their giving impact if they qualify. It also includes an informational matching gift video that uses animated graphics to visualize the institution’s matching gift efforts.
Example #3: Match Month Landing Page
This organization published a dedicated landing page on its website as a way to drive awareness of Matching Gift Month among its supporters.
The page begins with a flashy and eye-catching graphic, shares specific performance metrics that reiterate matching gift impact, and implements an embedded company search tool. It even includes a template supporters can use to advocate for matching gift efforts when their employers lack such programming.
Example #4: Matching Gift Month Blog Post
In order to encourage Match Month participation among its supporters, this nonprofit published an informational blog post on its website.
The article outlines the basics of Matching Gift Month, emphasizes the importance of matching gifts for the organization’s mission, and shares additional resources donors can use to pursue matching gift opportunities (such as a direct link to the dedicated Match Page and integrated search tool). Plus, it uses illustrated statistics to communicate the availability of employee gift-matching in a user-friendly way!
Looking for more matching gift success stories?
Wrapping Up
Matching gifts have the potential to elevate your organization’s fundraising, bringing your overall community impact to new heights. February’s celebrations can be a fantastic opportunity to jumpstart or scale up your efforts. But it’s certainly not the only time to pursue this funding source.
As you aim to drive awareness of (and participation in) the programs this month, remember that the value of a long-term matching gift strategy can boost your fundraising for years to come. Keep in mind that the practices outlined above—and powering your team with the right tools and resources—can help!
Looking for more helpful matching gift resources? Check out our other recommended blog posts to continue learning:
Complete Guide to Matching Gifts
Dive into the basics and beyond with this complete guide to corporate matching gift programs.
Find out everything from common guidelines and well-known programs to streamlining your efforts with matching gift software.
How to Encourage Matching Gifts
Not all match-eligible donors will complete their submission processes right away. Discover several impactful strategies for driving more matches to completion with this smart guide.
Then, incorporate these methods to raise more!
eBook: Matching Gift Marketing
Learn everything there is to know about marketing matching gift programs effectively with our free downloadable resource.
This guide covers top strategies for raising awareness and elevating matching gift fundraising with ease.
9 Best Alumni Websites & How to Drive Engagement with Yours
/in Donor communications, Learning Center, Fundraising Ideas /by Adam WeingerDouble Donations with These Raleigh, North Carolina Companies
/in Lists and Rankings, Learning Center /by Adam WeingerDouble the Donation receives requests from nonprofits across the country asking about corporate matching gifts in their area. We decided to create a list of some of those companies in the Raleigh, NC that offer these programs. Nonprofits can double their donations from donors who work for companies offering matching gifts.
List of Companies in Raleigh with Matching Gifts
State capitals are always certain have a large Fortune 500 presence, and many of these companies offer employee giving programs. It’s essential that nonprofits take advantage of these programs, while taking the time to educate their development staff on the benefits of matching gifts.
Check out these companies with a presence in Raleigh and be sure to inform your donors about the benefits of corporate matching gifts.
Caterpillar
Caterpillar Inc. will match donations up to $2,000 for every employee. Not all institutions are eligible, however.
Read more about the Caterpillar Inc. matching gift program.
John Deere
John Deere & Company will match employee gifts between $50 and $1,000. At one point the company only matched donations to institutions of higher education but since 2014 rolled out an enhanced matching gift program where John Deere will now match donations to a wide range of 501(c)(3) nonprofits including but not limited to:
Read more about the John Deere matching gift program.
Kellogg’s
Kellogg’s is a nationally recognized brand with employees across the country. The Kellogg company previously match donations on a .5:1 ratio up to $10,000 a year until the middle of 2013. At that time Kellogg’s ended its matching gift program and rolled out its Kellogg’s Cares program.
Through Kellogg’s Cares, the company provides volunteer grants to organizations where employees and retirees volunteer on a regular basis.
Kellogg provides a $100 donation to organizations where an employee or retiree volunteers a minimum of 10 hours during a 12-month period. Each individual is eligible to request up to $500 per year.
Read more about the Kellogg’s Company volunteer grant program.
LexisNexis
LexisNexis will match up to $250 a year to most charitable organizations. Part-time employees are eligible.
Read more about the LexisNexis employee giving program.
Mastering Donor Retention: How to Build a Stewardship Matrix
/in Donor communications, Marketing Strategies /by Adam WeingerNonprofits thrive on the generosity of committed donors, whose loyalty funds their mission-related work year after year. Not only do returning donors provide reliable support for nonprofits, but they also give 42% more than one-time donors on average.
But with retention rates hovering around 40% in recent years, your organization needs a clear plan for keeping your donors coming back. In this guide, we’ll explore how you can do just that by discussing a stewardship matrix in the following topics:
This means donor retention is not just a technique to raise more—it’s a necessity for fulfilling nonprofit missions! Let’s get started by defining a stewardship matrix.
What is a stewardship matrix?
A donor stewardship matrix is an outline of the method and cadence your nonprofit will use when reaching out to donors. This stewardship plan standardizes outreach by establishing a dedicated timeframe for engaging each donor.
As a nonprofit professional, you’re likely familiar with stewarding donors, or the process of building relationships with donors after they contribute to your organization. While there are plenty of tips available for nonprofit leaders about engaging donors more deeply, the only way to successfully master stewardship is with a comprehensive plan.
To prepare a donor stewardship matrix, your nonprofit will need to evaluate the following:
When taking these details into account, your nonprofit can create personalized and meaningful communications for specific audiences. Let’s take a closer look at how to develop a stewardship plan.
How to create a donor stewardship plan
Acknowledging the need to steward donors is just step one. To craft a stewardship plan that effectively engages donors and secures their long-term support, follow these steps.
Segment your donors.
Your nonprofit’s stewardship efforts are based on its donor composition, meaning you must learn about the individuals that make up your supporter base to cultivate meaningful relationships with them. Start with an overview of your supporter base by visualizing donors’ current engagement levels in a pyramid format.
Your donor pyramid will be unique to your organization, but it can generally include first-time, recurring, and major donors. Keep in mind that the goal of your donor stewardship plan is to move supporters from lower levels of the pyramid to higher levels.
Along with these categories of giving levels, identify shared characteristics among your donors and group them into donor segments accordingly. Donors’ preferences and interests can help you more accurately target your outreach to appeal to them individually. Some common determinants of donor segments include:
To create these segments, you’ll need thorough and accurate donor data. Collect information about your donors through surveys, donation forms, conversations at a fundraising event, or by hiring a data appending service. Then, implement a standardized process for inputting data into your nonprofit’s database. Ensure it stays up-to-date over time and free of errors or duplicate entries.
Determine communication types.
Using what you know about your donors, start developing ideas about how to best engage each group. You’ll need a well-rounded approach to successfully move donors up the pyramid. Consider including the following types of communication:
Your stewardship matrix will only be complete with several types of communication since a variety of messages are needed throughout the donor lifecycle to engage them in different phases of giving. Keep your donor segments in mind as you establish these communication types and determine which messaging each group would prefer to hear.
Brainstorm stewardship activities.
Narrow your stewardship strategy by getting specific with the actions you’ll take to send these messages. Within the above categories of communication types, create specific activities to deepen donors’ connections with your organization. Some highly engaging ideas include:
To make these activities even more engaging, plan messages outside of your typical donation request or follow-up. For example, a fun eCard on a donor’s birthday can show that you care about them as individuals, not just ATMs with legs.
Outline a donor stewardship matrix.
After establishing your donor segments and developing a list of activities to engage them, your nonprofit can officially create its donor stewardship matrix.
Break down your activities into the different types of communication we discussed earlier and create a timeline for when those communications will be sent out. While your donor stewardship plan will be unique to your nonprofit and its supporter base, you can use the following template and steps as a guide to organize your communications:
Remember that this donor stewardship plan will integrate with your organization’s overall communications strategy. Be careful not to overwhelm donors by ambushing their inboxes with thank-yous, donation appeals, and other communications.
The best way to organize your communications plan is to designate a specific stewardship committee within your marketing team. This way, those in charge of your stewardship plan will have an understanding of your overall communications and the resources to coordinate with your communications team so that the timing is well-planned.
Implement your donor stewardship plan.
After explicitly laying out your stewardship matrix, it’s time to put your plan into action! Immediately begin the process with newly-acquired donors and track your communications with them.
For existing supporters, use your newly created donor segments to launch stewardship efforts with them, as well. Be careful to track each communication and add special notes about interactions where relevant. This way, you’ll get to know your supporters even better and track their engagement with your organization over time.
Stewardship matrix best practices
Consider these additional tips for making the most of your stewardship matrix.
Regularly qualify your donors.
Imagine this: Sally, a senior in college, is a new donor who contributed to your nonprofit for the first time this year. You successfully steward her, and she continues to give frequently for the next five years.
A lot can change in five years, which is why you’ll need to re-evaluate your donor segments over time to ensure each donor is properly categorized. Sally, for example, might enter an entirely new segment after graduating college, getting a new job, and potentially going through other life changes, such as moving to a new city.
Donor qualification is the process of analyzing your donor segments and allows your nonprofit to keep an eye on its changing donor base. Ultimately, you’ll be able to uncover new stewardship opportunities by keeping track of donors’ life changes, not only by properly segmenting them but also by knowing them on a personal level.
Re-evaluate your plan over time.
Stewardship is a cycle in that as you learn more about donors through your donor stewardship plan, your activities and efforts should evolve. Regularly evaluate which areas can be improved and how you can strengthen relationships with your donors.
To do this, gather feedback from donors and your stewardship team. Donors can provide insight into how your current stewardship plan makes them feel, but your team’s feedback is similarly necessary for determining how their roles impact your plan and what areas for improvement they’ve identified.
Create giving societies.
Make it easy for donors to increase their engagement with clearly defined giving societies. Establish a donation amount required for membership (or an annual membership fee) to encourage donors to give more. In exchange, they’ll receive benefits associated with the membership, such as exclusive merchandise branded to your organization or access to VIP events.
By incorporating giving societies into your stewardship strategy, you’ll add an element of prestige to donating. Plus, this helps to cultivate a stronger community of supporters when members mingle at events and get to know each other better.
Tools for increased donor stewardship
While a thoughtful stewardship plan can significantly improve donor retention, the right tools can supplement your plan by streamlining your efforts.
Donor-facing technology
Whether your stewardship communications prompt donors to take a certain action or simply information, you’ll need to ensure they can receive your message and act on it easily. Consider the following donor-facing tools for your strategy:
In addition to making match requests a breeze, auto-submission tools can further show donors that you’re working to maximize their gifts and drive real impact with every contribution, especially when paired with background information about the significance of a matching gift program. For more information on how to leverage such a tool, watch the video below:
Data management tools
To create donor segments and ultimately plan communications for your unique supporter base, you’ll need organized data in an easily navigable platform. Consider investing in a constituent relationship management (CRM) solution to manage your donor data and details about their contributions.
Depending on the solution you choose, some CRMs even automate many of the stewardship processes for you, such as donor segmentation or sending communications. These tools can even compile reports to make it easier for your nonprofit to draw insights from your donor data.
Online giving software
Various giving tools can make online donating easier for your donors by creating donation forms, safely processing payments, and automating donation receipts. According to Getting Attention, these tools can also simplify donor data collection for your nonprofit by collecting contact information, giving preferences, and other important details.
Next steps for your donor stewardship plan
With a stewardship matrix, your nonprofit has a powerful and unique tool for donor retention. It unlocks your ability to deepen relationships with supporters and ultimately raise more, decreasing the chances of donors lapsing over time.
Be careful not to neglect this tool as your supporter base grows and evolves. To effectively steward donors, your plan must also grow and evolve. Use the right technology, leverage valuable donor data, and always look ahead to identify other opportunities for engagement.
For more ideas and expert tips on stewardship strategies, check out these additional resources:
What Is a Donor Experience Officer? The Ultimate Guide
/in Donor communications /by Adam WeingerIf you’re a nonprofit professional, you know how important it is to retain your donors from year to year. While you’ll sometimes need to acquire new donors for growth, donor retention is more cost-effective and builds a reliable support base for your mission.
However, in the nonprofit sector, the average donor retention rate is less than 35%. To break the mold, your organization needs to provide such a good donor experience that supporters will be happy to come back year after year. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by creating a dedicated donor experience officer position at your nonprofit.
In this guide, you’ll learn all you need to know about donor experience officers, including:
Whether you’re considering bringing on a brand-new staff member or moving an existing employee into this position, a donor experience officer can take your engagement and retention efforts to the next level. Let’s get started by defining exactly what this role entails.
What is a donor experience officer?
A donor experience officer is a nonprofit professional whose job is to ensure supporters have a positive, meaningful experience when contributing to your organization. Their role combines donor relations with aspects of fundraising and marketing.
The most important qualities of a good donor experience officer include:
Donor experience officers often serve as leaders at their organizations, so they should also have prior experience with nonprofit fundraising and/or communications that they can bring to the role.
Benefits of Hiring a Donor Experience Officer
Of all the nonprofits out there, the ones that are most likely to consider hiring a donor experience officer would be mid-sized organizations planning for growth in the near future. Large nonprofits often have whole teams dedicated to donor engagement, while small organizations may not yet have the budget to hire this type of professional or complex enough needs to warrant one.
If your organization is in the right place to think about hiring its first donor experience officer, here are the main advantages to doing so:
Stronger Donor Relationships
When donors have a good experience giving to your organization, they’re more likely to deepen their support over time. Their memories of your nonprofit will be favorable thanks to your donor experience officer’s engagement strategies and stewardship efforts.
Plus, your donor experience officer can get to know donors on an individual level and then make tailored recommendations to help them get more involved. For instance, if a recurring donor mentions to the officer that they enjoy running, your nonprofit could send that donor a personalized invitation to your upcoming 5K fundraising event so they can engage in a new way that matches their interests.
Increased Supporter Satisfaction
Some donors will remember their experience giving to your organization positively because everything went smoothly thanks to your donor experience officer’s efforts. However, if an issue comes up in the process, the supporter might still leave with a good impression of your organization if it’s resolved effectively.
Let’s say a supporter alerted your donor experience officer that your online donation form wasn’t loading properly. The officer quickly elevated the concern to your nonprofit’s technology specialist to fix the issue and emailed the supporter individually to notify them that the form was working again and apologize for the inconvenience. Despite the issue, the donor may still remember their experience positively because the officer took such care to solve the problem.
Expanded Fundraising Capabilities
With their nonprofit background and strong understanding of your donor base, your donor experience officer can work closely with your organization’s fundraising team to:
For example, let’s say your fundraising team decided to add corporate matching gifts to your nonprofit’s revenue generation model, and your donor experience officer backed this idea because they knew of many donors who worked for companies with matching gift programs. However, your organization found that donation matching rates were still low after the revenue stream had been in place for six months.
To investigate the problem, the donor experience officer could send out a supporter feedback survey on matching gifts. If multiple respondents expressed that they didn’t know about the opportunity, the officer might suggest marketing matching gifts more strategically to spread awareness and boost your organization’s revenue totals.
Responsibilities of a Donor Experience Officer
Your donor experience officer’s day-to-day tasks will depend on your nonprofit’s priorities. These professionals might work on a wide variety of donor communication and fundraising tasks at some organizations, while at others, they’re much more dedicated to specific projects like building a monthly giving program or stewarding mid-level donors.
However, there are five categories of duties that donor experience officers are most commonly responsible for at nonprofits, which we’ll discuss in more detail in the following sections.
Donor Relations
The term “donor relations” refers to all of the efforts your nonprofit makes to cultivate relationships with supporters. Because the kind of donor experience your organization provides is a key factor in your ability to form lasting connections, your donor experience officer will be at the forefront of donor relations. For instance, they might:
For many supporters, your donor experience officer will become the face of your organization, which is why it’s so critical for them to be passionate about your mission and demonstrate good customer service skills.
Donor Recognition & Stewardship
Sometimes grouped with donor relations, donor stewardship is specifically concerned with encouraging continued support by expressing gratitude for contributions to your nonprofit. To do this, your donor experience officer may employ a variety of recognition strategies, such as:
Appreciation is a vital part of the donor experience because it shows supporters that your organization sees them as individuals, not just sources of revenue. When donors feel valued in this way, they’re more likely to remain invested in your nonprofit’s success.
Database Management
Your nonprofit likely collects a lot of data on its donors and stores it using a database or constituent relationship management (CRM) solution. However, this data is only useful for donor cultivation if it’s properly managed. To accomplish this, your donor experience officer should:
While some of these activities will require assistance from technical specialists (either on your team, from the software company, or through third-party providers like data append services), your donor experience officer should know their way around your database well enough to maintain it day to day.
Reporting & Analytics
From the information in your nonprofit’s database, your donor experience officer should be able to configure and analyze reports to draw actionable insights from them. For example, these reports might cover:
Not only do these reports help your donor experience officer in their supporter engagement work, but they can also inform other team members’ decision-making in their roles.
Interdepartmental Collaboration
To effectively complete all of the activities outlined above, your donor experience officer will likely work closely with the following staff members at your organization:
Although it’s useful to have one person take the lead on creating a positive donor experience at your organization, it takes a whole team to fully engage nonprofit supporters. Working collaboratively is essential to make the most of having a donor experience officer on your team.
Essential Tools for Donor Experience Officers
In addition to hiring a donor experience officer with the right qualities and providing support through collaboration, your organization should set this individual up for success with the right tools. Here are a few software platforms you should have in your tech stack:
To help your officer provide an even better donor experience, look for a matching gifts platform with auto-submission capabilities. This way, instead of having to fill out a separate form to get their employer to match their donation, donors can just enter their work email address to automatically submit the request. Check out the video below to learn more about auto-submission:
Wrapping Up: Additional Donor Experience Resources
Donor experience officers can improve a wide range of supporter-related processes at your organization, from outreach to stewardship to data analysis. With a dedicated individual working to make your donors’ experience as positive and fulfilling as possible, you’ll be well on your way to seeing more and more donors come back every year.
For more information on improving the donor experience at your nonprofit, check out these resources:
Unlock Fundraising’s Hidden Gem: Recurring Giving Programs
/in About Double the Donation /by Adam WeingerTwo of the most common challenges nonprofits face include operating under unfavorable economic conditions and combatting staff burnout and low retention. Funding—or a lack thereof—is one of the main culprits. Particularly, a lack of diverse and reliable funding sources can have negative effects on nonprofit operations and burden staff with more work. If your development team is always chasing the next donation, staff members could suffer from stress and burnout.
This is why it’s so important for nonprofits to set up programs that inspire donors to give regularly. In this guide, we’ll discuss recurring giving and how your organization can set up a program to diversify your funding sources:
Did you know that 40% of Millennial donors are enrolled in a monthly giving opportunity, while 49% of Gen X and Baby Boomer donors participate as well? According to Nonprofit Source, that stacks up to approximately 45% of donors currently enrolled in a recurring donation program.
Consistent, monthly funding from recurring giving programs can enable you to pay for more projects and help more beneficiaries. But before you can get there, it’s key to understand what these programs are and how to set one up. Let’s get started!
What is recurring giving?
Recurring giving occurs when a donor opts to make regular donations to a nonprofit each month, making it a great way for nonprofits to fundraise. These recurring payments can be automated to make participating more convenient for the donor.
There are a variety of ways to implement recurring giving at your organization. In a basic monthly giving program, donors simply agree to donate a certain amount each month, often via automated payments. Another option is to create an exclusive club or membership program for monthly donors and offer some kind of incentive to join (e.g., branded merchandise or early access to event tickets).
What are the benefits of recurring giving?
A robust recurring giving program can be a game-changer for your organization and supporters. Specifically, these benefits include:
Recurring giving programs can also be more cost-effective. Your nonprofit won’t need to spend as much time and resources on marketing initiatives to secure donations—in other words, your cost per gift will decrease.
Additionally, donors could end up contributing more to your nonprofit in the long run. For example, a donor might only remember to donate $100 twice a year, giving a total of $200. However, they may join your monthly giving program, commit to donating $25 each month, and give a total of $300 that year.
How can your nonprofit start a monthly giving program?
Starting one of these programs won’t cost your nonprofit much beyond your time and a little hard work. However, there are some preparations you’ll need to make to ensure the program runs smoothly.
Before you launch a program, make sure you have:
Next, you’re ready to start developing the program. Here are the basic steps to follow:
Identify your target audience.
To recruit recurring donors, you can look both internally at your current donors and externally at potential supporters. Because you already have an established relationship with them, however, current donors are more likely to participate in the program.
Whether they’re an existing or prospective donor, those willing to join your recurring giving program must have the right:
The way your supporters show their dedication to your cause depends on the involvement opportunities you offer. However, in most organizations, the ideal target audience for a recurring giving program will be made up of your most loyal, dedicated supporters. This could include those who’ve been donors for multiple years and those who donate often.
Additionally, remember to look for donors who get involved in other ways like volunteering or serving on a committee. Volunteers are 66% more likely to contribute financially and they’re showing a deep commitment to your cause by spending their time furthering your mission.
Segment your supporters.
Once you’ve identified the donors who are most likely to participate in a recurring giving program, look out for patterns and shared traits among them. While everyone in this audience may be interested in donating monthly, they won’t all resonate with the same messages.
This is why it’s important to segment your donors based on specific traits. By creating these groups, you can craft personalized, targeted appeals that speak to their interests and reach them on the right communication channels.
For example, let’s say you run an animal shelter and are ready to start your recurring giving program. Here’s how you can segment your audience and tailor communication strategies to each group’s preferences:
After you get your program up and running, you may need to refine your strategies and add or remove segments. Remember to frequently check key performance indicators (KPIs) such as email open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to determine whether your messaging resonates with each group.
Promote the program.
Now, you’re ready to start promoting the program to your selected audience. To get started, you need to craft a compelling, overarching message for the campaign. In other words, why should your supporters want to become recurring donors?
This message will be different for each nonprofit, and you’ll need to tweak it for each of your audience segments. To get you started, here are some of the main reasons why donors may be inspired to donate on a regular basis:
Once you’ve crafted a unique appeal to prospective recurring donors, you’ll need to share it across multiple channels. Consider creating educational content about the program for your website. For example, you might write a blog post announcing the program and build a dedicated landing page that lays out the process of joining, how funds are used, any incentives you offer, and an FAQ section.
Then, share your message across your donors’ preferred communication channels. Make sure to tailor the format to the channel you’re using. While emails can be as long as 400 words, Instagram graphics should only contain a few lines of text at most. Additionally, prioritize eye-catching graphics for fast-paced channels like social media to ensure donors notice and engage with the content.
Create a donor retention strategy.
Once you’ve recruited donors into your recurring giving program, you might feel like your work is over. While you won’t need to secure each donation they make, you will need to make an effort to keep them enrolled in the program.
To retain donors, make sure to implement stewardship strategies such as:
The donors engaged in your recurring giving program are your most passionate, dedicated supporters. Avoid taking this loyal support for granted by frequently showing your gratitude for their ongoing support.
Do recurring gifts qualify for company matching?
Although every company ultimately makes its own rules and criteria that define its program eligibility, the good news is that recurring donations generally do qualify for corporate matching. However, there are a few possible routes that recurring donors can choose from when it comes to requesting their matches.
These include the following methods:
😔 A recurring gift donor submits a match request for the expected annual total at the time of initial commitment.
😐 A recurring gift donor submits a separate matching gift request each month (or another cadence, depending on the frequency of their contribution).
😊 Donors wait and submit aggregate donations once per quarter or year, depending on their employer’s matching gift guidelines.
Of the options, the third (batching donation requests) is the most efficient for all parties involved in the process: including your fundraising team, the initial donor, and the donor’s employing company. Meanwhile, the second (separate match requests for each gift) is generally an accepted practice, though it can require a bit of additional effort to process. The first option, however, is typically not approved by matching gift companies that aim to match funds contributed rather than simply pledged.
As more recurring givers secure more matches on your organization’s behalf, your impact will continue to multiply. Just remember: whether submitting the expected yearly total, making monthly match requests, or aggregating contributions for a single request, donors play a pivotal role in facilitating matching gift requests. Make sure your audience is well aware of corporate match opportunities and how they can get involved—regardless of whether they contribute a one-time donation or pledge a generous monthly gift.
What are some examples from other nonprofits?
If your nonprofit has never had a monthly giving program before, you may not know the best ways to promote it to your supporters. Here are a few examples from top nonprofits to inspire you:
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital funds research for childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
One of the ways that St. Jude promotes its monthly giving program is by adding a “Monthly” button to their donation form. This makes joining the program extremely quick and easy for donors. Additionally, it makes anyone donating aware that St. Jude’s has a monthly giving program without requiring them to sift through their website or seek out a sign-up page.
National Wildlife Federation
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is an American conservation organization that fights for conservation values and seeks to give wildlife a voice.
This organization provides two excellent examples of ways to inspire donors to join a recurring giving program. First, it offers members-only benefits to those who give $15 or more each month. The page includes images of the items members will receive throughout the year and breaks down all of the perks of the program, such as discounts on merchandise.
This organization also breaks down the impact that various donation amounts will have and divides the total monthly contribution into daily gifts. This highlights how a small, daily sacrifice adds up to a significant total impact.
PAN Foundation
The PAN Foundation offers financial assistance to those with serious medical issues, helping them afford treatment.
To encourage monthly donations, the PAN Foundation created an exclusive community of recurring donors known as the PAN GEMs. GEM stands for “Give Every Month,” and these donors receive exclusive newsletters, invitations to virtual meetings, recognition in PAN publications, and opportunities to share feedback and personal stories.
To educate donors about the GEM community, the PAN Foundation created a dedicated landing page that explains what a GEM is, features calls to action, lists the benefits of being a member, features stories and testimonials, and notes that a monthly gift of just $50 covers treatment costs for an entire year.
Wrapping Up
Recurring giving programs deliver exactly what your nonprofit needs: consistent funding. Not only do these programs help lighten your staff’s workload and help you raise more money throughout the year, but they’re also more convenient and rewarding for donors who want to make a difference.
As you get more comfortable running your recurring giving program, consider branching out to other funding sources to boost your revenue. With CSR initiatives like matching gift programs, for example, donors’ employers will match donations they make to your nonprofit. This can double the donations you receive from donors without them needing to contribute each month.
For more help improving your nonprofit’s recurring giving program and maximizing revenue, check out these resources:
9 Proven Healthcare Fundraising Strategies For Better Care
/in Healthcare fundraising /by Adam WeingerYour healthcare facility works hard to give your patients the best care possible, so it’s only fair that you get some of that love and devotion in return — with fundraising!
Healthcare fundraising is instrumental for securing the necessary staff, equipment, and facility renovations your organization needs to function at maximum capacity. However, many hospital fundraising teams are in the dark about how best to organize their efforts, rally their supporters, and jumpstart a steady flow of donations.
We know how busy your schedule is, so we’ll make this brief: below, you’ll find everything you need to know about healthcare fundraising, including top strategies that no medical institution can do without!
First, we’ll review the basics of healthcare fundraising. Then, we’ll take a closer look at each of these strategies:
These essential fundraising tactics can save your healthcare facility time, energy, and money so that you can get back to doing what you do best: saving lives. Take a breather from your daily duties and follow along with us; we promise to make it worthwhile!
Healthcare & Hospital Fundraising at a Glance
Before diving into strategizing a new fundraising program or reaching out to donors or sponsors, a refresher may be in order. If you’re new to healthcare fundraising in general or have been delegated fundraising responsibilities for the first time, understanding the broader environment will be invaluable.
We recommend exploring Graham-Pelton’s complete introduction to healthcare fundraising, which answers these questions and provides valuable context for newcomers:
Graham-Pelton’s guide explains the importance of fundraising like this: “Healthcare fundraising […] enables growth, allowing institutions to expand access, fund research, secure life-saving equipment, and more.”
For context, while payment for services makes up a majority of revenue for many (but not all) healthcare institutions, it rarely covers all expenses. The operating margins of many US hospitals are quite tight, making the growth of operations, services, and programs extremely difficult without sustained increases in funding, as well. Smart healthcare fundraising strategies that deliver strong ROIs can go very far in building an institution’s capacity.
For hospitals and other institutions, fundraising is just one of many revenue streams. According to the guide linked above, they break down into five general categories:
Everything besides payment for medical services could be considered fundraising revenue. Within that category, grants, donations, and investment income are generally considered part of healthcare development, a more specific form of revenue generation. The exact structure can vary greatly based on a range of factors, for instance, if a hospital is a research institution. It’s important to note that most fundraising activities are conducted by an associated hospital foundation rather than directly by the institution itself.
This diversity and the complexity of healthcare fundraising mean that many institutions turn to experts to help develop new and improved fundraising or development strategies. Healthcare fundraising consultants are often the right (and safer and more efficient) choice for these organizations. It’s highly recommended to consider hiring external, objective, and compliance-minded partners to help your institution improve its fundraising.
With this context in mind, let’s take a look at some of the specific healthcare fundraising strategies to keep in mind as you audit your current efforts, lay out a strategy, or begin defining your consulting needs.
1. Overcome Common Healthcare Fundraising Challenges.
In the realm of healthcare fundraising, the journey to securing vital funds is often fraught with unique challenges. While the overarching goal is to gather resources for better health services and research, hurdles can impede the process. Understanding these common challenges is crucial for developing effective strategies to overcome them:
In addressing these challenges, healthcare fundraising professionals must adopt a multifaceted approach, combining sensitivity, adherence to regulations, and strategic communication. Recognizing and tackling these issues is key to building a robust, ethical fundraising framework.
2. Maintain A Clean CRM For Your Healthcare Fundraising.
A customer relationship management (CRM) system is the backbone of any fundraising operation. In healthcare fundraising, where relationships and data sensitivity are paramount, the importance of a clean and well-maintained CRM cannot be overstated.
You’ll want to develop robust prospect profiles within your CRM, making it easier to get to know your donors. For each individual, you’ll want to gather data such as:
You can affiliate each donor with a particular donor persona, too. Creating donor personas involves researching and identifying common characteristics among potential donors, such as demographics, motivations, and giving history. For instance, potential major donors may have given large donations to similar organizations or have real estate holdings. Meanwhile, a potential legacy donor may consistently give to your organization and have a high giving capacity.
By creating robust profiles and affiliating them with common donor personas, you can tailor your outreach and focus your efforts on areas likely to drive impact. After building constituents’ profiles, regularly update and clean your CRM to ensure the data is accurate, so you can engage donors with relevant fundraising appeals.
3. Incorporate Corporate Philanthropy Into Your Healthcare Fundraising.
Corporate philanthropy has been trending like crazy in recent years. Not only does it benefit organizations in the healthcare, nonprofit, and education fields, but it also generates positive publicity and employee engagement within active companies.
That’s why to get a leg up in your healthcare fundraising feats, it’s always smart to seek partnerships with corporations known for their philanthropic history and variety of giving initiatives.
For healthcare organizations, corporations can give you philanthropic support by:
As our favorite healthcare fundraising strategy, offering matching gifts is a reliable way to tap into corporate philanthropy and diversify your revenue streams. Watch this video for some tips for elevating your approach to corporate giving:
When approaching a corporation with a sponsorship proposal, remember to sell its team on a specific cause connected to the business. For instance, a company could screen employees to see if a large percentage are affected by a particular health concern or take an employee poll on a medical cause they would be interested in supporting. Essentially, the more you frame your pitch to highlight the corporate benefits of your healthcare fundraising partnership, the faster you’ll have them on board and committed.
4. Develop a Top Grateful Patients Program.
Although many hospitals already solicit donations from grateful patients, organizing a program around that specific purpose can do wonders for your healthcare fundraising. Grateful patient programs allow patients to express their thanks to a physician or facility that played a meaningful role in their treatment.
Not to mention, grateful patient programs can bolster your hospital’s reputation for patient care and attention, leading to more major donations. For example, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta offers an exemplary Grateful Families program that allows patients and their families to honor caregivers with a financial gift, share their testimonials, and engage in peer-to-peer fundraising. In addition, the Boston Children’s Hospital encourages families to honor loved ones with memorials and planned giving opportunities.
While assembling your grateful patient program, answer the following questions:
To spread the word about your program, publish the opportunity on your website and create easily accessible materials like brochures around your hospital.
Finally, remember to treat your patients as people first and donors second by respecting their healthcare information privacy. Always handle your solicitations tactfully by consulting the HIPAA guidelines for getting a patient’s written consent on using their medical data for fundraising or promotional purposes.
Keep in mind that these are uniquely complex fundraising programs. They require careful messaging, extensive data compliance, and more steps that often don’t come onto your radar in other fundraising contexts. The healthcare fundraising experts at Graham-Pelton identify these key components of effective grateful patient programs:
According to Graham-Pelton, institutions (not just development departments) need to master the relational, analytical, and operational domains of these programs—i.e. their programs should be holistic, cross-departmental, organized, compliant, and patient-first. It’s highly recommended that hospitals partner with fundraising experts to develop, improve, or audit their grateful patient programs.
Overall, curating a powerful grateful patient program can help your hospital efficiently manage prospects and boost healthcare donations.
5. Host Healthcare Fundraising Meetings About Your Hospital Foundation.
When it comes to healthcare fundraising, hospital foundations are your medical institution’s advocates, go-getters, and best friends all rolled into one.
For those unfamiliar with the role of a hospital foundation, these nonprofits act independently to generate support for local hospital needs. As an isolated entity, these organizations usually have their own fundraising agenda and board of directors separate from the medical facilities they assist.
Hospital foundations commonly:
It’s your obligation as part of your fundraising strategy to give your hospital foundation a hand by hosting informative meetings to showcase their brilliant efforts.
With these meetings or luncheons, your hospital can clarify fundraising options and meet face-to-face with interested prospects. In return, donors learn how to channel their gratitude toward the medical programs that they’re most passionate about.
From these interactions, hospitals can also determine areas of interest for constructing effective fundraising campaigns or events like charity auctions that address specific healthcare concerns.
6. Send Targeted Healthcare Fundraising Communications.
Once your medical institution lands a generous donation, your healthcare fundraising team should prioritize donor stewardship. You can grow donor relationships by initiating personal healthcare communications.
Your fundraising team can strengthen outreach and send valuable information by segmenting donors within your donor management software.
For example, donors should receive frequent updates on how their gifts have helped staff and patients, while prospects should receive news about programs that match their areas of interest. For instance, a former breast cancer patient may be particularly interested in supporting a fundraiser for the cancer ward. Furthermore, inform former patients when their medical team is honored for fundraising contributions.
Get the most out of your donor communications by doing the following:
Throughout all communications, focus on connecting donors with your fundraising efforts and, more importantly, emphasizing their value to your organization.
7. Create A Stellar Healthcare Fundraising Online Donation Form.
When was the last time your healthcare institution revamped its online donation form? If it’s been a while, it’s imperative that you understand how much this tool can make or break your healthcare fundraising.
For starters, online donation forms accomplish a variety of tasks that make your healthcare fundraising efforts outrageously easier like:
In addition, your online donation form can be key to accepting annual fund gifts or capital campaign gifts via a fundraising webpage.
How to Design a Donor-Ready Online Donation Form
When crafting an outstanding online donation form, it’s best to keep the design details as simple as possible to attract and retain donors, such as:
A cluttered or unresponsive layout can deter donors from following through with a donation. By offering an easy-to-navigate platform and more giving options to fit individual needs, your healthcare institution can make online giving a rewarding experience.
Then, embed the online donation form into foundation materials like digital brochures, e-newsletters, emails, and more with the URL link.
How to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy With Your Online Donation Form
Tap into corporate philanthropy by including a matching gift search tool on your online donation form!
If your healthcare fundraising team is unfamiliar with matching gift search tools, let’s look at our matching gift widget on Mercy Corps. Here’s how the process works:
Even better, you can leverage auto-submission to cut out a few of these steps. When a company uses CSR software that integrates with Double the Donation, their employees can let our software submit their match requests on their behalf.
In essence, make the most of your online donation form with a killer design and matching gift search tool to provide donors the luxury of multiple giving options to your medical institution.
8. Teach Donors About Legacy Giving.
Legacy giving, also known as planned giving, enables donors to make a lasting impact on healthcare organizations. Your organization should educate donors about the benefits and processes of legacy giving, ensuring their generosity continues to support vital healthcare services and research for future generations.
Legacy giving involves donors committing to contribute a major gift, often from their estate or financial planning. It provides long-term financial stability, enabling healthcare entities to plan and execute future projects with confidence.
Common forms of legacy gifts include bequests in a will, life insurance policies, trusts, and retirement plan assets. Each method offers different benefits and considerations, and here’s how you can educate donors on these opportunities:
By providing clear and inspiring guidance, healthcare organizations can communicate the profound impact each donor’s legacy can have. This not only secures long-term funding but also ensures that the donor’s philanthropic vision is honored and fulfilled.
9. Check In With Donors and Recognize Generosity.
In healthcare fundraising, actively engaging with and recognizing donors’ generosity is essential for long-lasting relationships. Regular updates on the organization’s progress, upcoming events, and how their contributions make a difference keep donors connected and engaged.
eCards, in particular, offer a flexible, cost-effective way to express gratitude and acknowledge contributions. eCardWidget’s guide to charity eCards explains that they can be easily customized to reflect your healthcare organization’s brand and the donor’s impact, and their digital nature allows for immediate and environmentally friendly recognition.
Using an eCard site, send cards when someone gives a sizeable donation or when someone is celebrating a birthday or other milestone. Recognizing milestones in donors’ lives or their history with the organization adds a personal touch to these communications. When possible, include updates on your organization’s achievements and the direct impact of their donations.
Beyond eCards, organizing appreciation events and offering public acknowledgment (with the donor’s consent) in newsletters or on social media can further celebrate and appreciate their support.
However you approach it, combining regular, personalized contact with thoughtful recognition initiatives will empower your healthcare organization to foster ongoing engagement with donors, encouraging continued support.
Additional Resources For Better Healthcare Fundraising
There’s no doubt that healthcare fundraising is a group effort that requires a lot of sweat, creativity, and grit. However, with the right fundraising strategies up your sleeve, it can also be fun and rewarding for both your hospital and donors. Have a blast with your healthcare fundraising by aiming for even bigger donation goals with these powerful tactics!
For more game-changing resources, dive into these additional resources:
How to Raise More: The Truth About Leadership Annual Giving
/in Fundraising Ideas /by Adam WeingerLarger donations play important roles in fundraising success, especially since major gifts of more than $1,000 account for 85% of the average nonprofit’s revenue. The challenge here, though, is that many nonprofits don’t (or can’t) consistently pursue major gifts while juggling many other day-to-day needs and goals.
But there’s a surefire way to consistently secure larger contributions: a leadership annual giving program.
Leadership annual giving unlocks fundraising security with recurring and substantial donations to your nonprofit. This guide explains everything you need to know, broken down into the following sections:
Before you can tap into this powerful fundraising source, you’ll need a thorough understanding of what it is. With that in mind, let’s define leadership annual giving.
What is leadership annual giving?
Leadership annual giving refers to a nonprofit’s largest repeating gifts, typically falling between $500 and $10,000. These leading annual gifts tend to fall in an organization’s mid-level range but largely depend on the giving levels of your organization’s donors. Consider the example to the left of how these donation levels might be categorized.
Leadership annual gifts not only guarantee substantial and sustained support for your organization, but they open the gateway to request larger gifts in the future when you properly steward your relationships with these loyal donors. Plus, there are numerous other benefits of incorporating these gifts into your fundraising strategy.
Why launch a leadership annual giving program?
You may already know that donor retention is more cost-effective than acquisition, but the value of strong retention goes far beyond just the cost of obtaining their support.
Around 60% of repeat donors will give again, meaning those who subsequently give to your organization may be a reliable source of support for the long term. Once you’ve already captured a donor’s attention and gained their affinity for your cause, it will be much easier to ask for increased gift amounts or consistent donation frequencies.
To communicate the need for mid-level giving, however, your nonprofit must develop an organized approach to leadership annual giving. An overwhelming majority of donors give less than $500, with the breakdown of donations falling into the following categories according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project:
With such a low percentage of donors engaging in mid-level giving, a standardized approach to leadership annual giving is vital to moving donors into this category. Let’s explore the practical steps your organization can take to acquire mid-level gifts.
How to start mid-level fundraising
Thousands of guides exist about securing smaller gifts or chasing major donations. But this advice skips a critical middle step, which is to target leadership annual giving in your fundraising appeals for more sustainable fundraising.
Similar to gifts of other sizes, leadership annual giving requires donor cultivation. Follow these steps to engage supporters in mid-level giving.
1. Identify mid-level giving prospects.
As with many aspects of your fundraising strategy, leadership annual giving starts with your donor data. To narrow your fundraising appeals, you must first identify supporters who might be willing and able to give at this level and frequency. Some data points to guide your prospect research include:
To streamline your data collection, organization, and analysis, consider using a data appending service. Appending data helps ensure your database is accurate and complete, giving you the best possible overview of your prospects.
2. Cultivate donor relationships.
Once you’ve identified mid-level giving prospects, it’s time to form relationships with each of them. This involves educating potential donors about your nonprofit, but also getting to know more about each supporter to build a connection between your organization and the individual.
Develop a donor engagement plan for prospective donors that includes:
Data is still important in the stewardship phase since you’ll constantly learn more about your supporters and use this information to strengthen relationships with them. By cultivating relationships with potential mid-level donors, your nonprofit will also build a trustworthy and impactful reputation in the community. This way, you’ll have a better chance of attracting donors when the leadership annual giving cycle restarts.
3. Make your mid-level fundraising appeals.
Your direct ask for donations must be specifically targeted to leadership annual giving. Whether you reach out via email, design a dedicated donation page, or make your appeal on any other channel, be sure to include the following:
While your fundraising appeals should take a multi-channel approach, your best bet is to segment donors based on their communication preferences to reach out to each donor on the channel they prefer. Other shared characteristics, like donors’ interests or occupations, can be used to further segment donors and send messages that are as personalized as possible.
4. Steward mid-level donors.
Because a central component of leadership annual giving is recurring gifts, your nonprofit’s continual stewardship of these donor relationships is crucial to securing continued support. A few ways you can continuously engage donors, even after they give, include:
Stewardship solidifies these relationships to ensure long-term support, but may also enable your nonprofit to upgrade these donors over time. This is how you build an organic major giving pipeline, which is extremely important for nonprofits but difficult to do. For example, you might transition a leadership annual giving donor into a major gift donor after establishing a relationship with that supporter.
Leadership annual giving tactics
If you’re ready to increase your leadership annual giving, there are a few best practices you can follow to develop the process.
1. Offer matching gifts.
A classic way to double the amount your nonprofit raises, matching gifts can increase both your mid-level revenue and the likelihood that a donor will give to your leadership annual giving campaign. Here’s how:
Simply let donors know about the opportunity when they donate so they can find out if they’re eligible through their employer. A tool that offers auto-submission, like Double the Donation, can further simplify the process by enabling donors to automatically submit a match request to their employer. For more information on this tool, check out the video below:
Be sure to check donors’ eligibility before reaching out to mid-level or major donors about matching gifts. After all, donors can’t donate matched gifts if their employers don’t offer the program. Even if their employers offer matching as part of their CSR initiatives, donors may be restricted to donation maximums.
2. Launch a giving society.
Providing specific giving amounts is a surefire way to simplify the donation process for any level of giving. However, it can also incentivize leadership annual giving by adding an element of prestige to the donation.
For example, establish 4-5 tiers based on giving amounts, such as one tier for $500-$1,000 gifts and another for $1,001-$2,000 gifts. Then, assign names to each tier and promote the benefits for each, such as invite-only events or tours of your nonprofit’s facilities.
This reward system incentivizes donors to give specific amounts in exchange for achieving a status and receiving the benefits.
3. Track your progress.
Analyze the efficiency of your leadership annual giving campaign by using fundraising data and setting incremental goals. For example, you might set a goal number of prospects to convert into mid-level donors or a specific amount to raise by a deadline.
Marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) are similarly important to track, such as website traffic and cost per conversion. This can help you identify your most successful marketing tactics to convert prospects into donors.
4. Offer non-cash giving options.
97% to 99% of all wealth in the United States is held in assets like stocks and real estate, meaning your donors may not have cash to contribute to your leadership annual giving program. To make this level of giving accessible to as many donors as possible, encourage donors to give non-cash gifts, such as:
In addition to being more accessible to donors, non-cash gifts also encourage generosity since they aren’t part of a donor’s liquid, day-to-day funds. In other words, donors can give a significant gift to your organization and still have the spending power needed for their own expenses.
Final thoughts on leadership annual giving
Tapping into leadership annual giving can provide your nonprofit with the support it needs to achieve its goals. If you’re interested in other ways to maximize donations for your cause, check out the following resources:
Corporate Volunteer Programs: 7 Key Questions Answered
/in Volunteer Grant Companies /by Adam WeingerCorporate social responsibility (CSR) is a hot topic in the business world, especially when it comes to engaging employees. There’s a growing sentiment among the Millennial and Gen Z workforce that employers should provide ways for employees to give back, and the research supports this, with companies seeing a 52% reduction in turnover for new employees who participate in CSR initiatives, like corporate volunteer programs.
Among CSR programs, corporate volunteerism stands out since it enables employees to take a hands-on approach to giving back. However, volunteer initiatives fall short in number when compared to other employee giving programs, like matching gifts and donation drives.
These other initiatives are certainly helpful and often run themselves, but your business shouldn’t hesitate to offer a volunteer program. To help your business go the extra mile and provide a program your employees will love, we’ll provide a crash course on corporate volunteerism by answering seven burning questions business leaders commonly have about these programs.
Let’s get started.
1. What are corporate volunteer programs?
Part of the reason why businesses tend to have questions about corporate volunteer programs is because there are so many of them. Just like there’s a wide range of corporate philanthropy and CSR initiatives your business can invest in, there are many ways to host an employee volunteer program.
To provide a straightforward definition, corporate volunteer programs are volunteer initiatives for a business’s employees that the business arranges or supports. For instance, three popular types of volunteer programs include:
When choosing what volunteer program to offer, consider your CSR and employee engagement goals. If you want to support the causes your employees care about, offer volunteer grants. To encourage more volunteering and community involvement in general, consider offering volunteer time off. Or, build teamwork and camaraderie by hosting a team volunteer day.
2. What are the benefits of a corporate volunteer program?
Employee volunteer programs are an investment, whether it’s of your employees’ time or profits spent on volunteer grants. As with any program, business leaders must weigh whether the benefits make up for the resources that will be expended.
For corporate volunteer programs, the primary two benefits are:
To access these benefits, your business needs to promote its employee volunteer program. Employees and customers alike will only appreciate your corporate volunteer program if they’re aware of it.
Feature details about your volunteer program in key places related to your CSR initiatives, like your employee handbook, CSR employee software portal, and website.
For customers and other third parties share what your volunteer efforts have accomplished on your website. For instance, you might have a CSR or “Impact” page that discusses your CSR goals and ongoing programs. Highlight how many hours employees have volunteered, how much you’ve given through volunteer grants, or even just one successful volunteer day you organized.
3. What nonprofits should my company partner with?
As part of your corporate volunteer program, you will likely work with specific nonprofits. This might be organizations you arrange formal volunteer days with or nonprofits you promote to your employees to volunteer at on their own.
There is a wide range of worthy causes out there, and no business has the capacity to support all of them. Make you choose organizations that will benefit your business and you can make an impact at by taking the following steps:
Outside of corporate volunteer programs, businesses should still follow these steps for other types of nonprofit partnerships, such as choosing what types of organizations are eligible for your matching gift program.
4. How widespread are corporate volunteer programs?
When launching a corporate volunteer program, know you’re not alone. Employee volunteer programs are rising in popularity among businesses of all sizes.
For a more specific breakdown of these programs’ popularity, let’s take a look at the research:
This research emphasizes the importance of offering a volunteer program and ensuring your business’s culture supports employee participation. These things may seem like they go hand-in-hand, but at large corporations, it’s common for leadership to support the idea of volunteerism but middle managers to hesitate to approve volunteer time off requests and other volunteer initiatives.
If you have concerns about your business encountering problems like this, make plans to address it, such as stressing the importance of supporting your employee volunteer program at all-hands meetings or providing bonuses for participating. This might be a gift as simple as a company t-shirt, an appreciation eCard, or a more public award such as taking the department with the most accumulative volunteer hours out to lunch.
5. What tools does my company need to run an employee volunteer program?
Corporate volunteer programs are easier to manage when software does the heavy lifting for administrative tasks. To run your employee volunteer program or any other type of workplace giving initiative, you need CSR software.
Look for CSR software with features that support corporate volunteerism, such as the ability to:
When investing in a CSR platform, consider what other CSR initiatives you’re interested in launching. For example, if you also want to host a matching gift program, consider a CSR vendor that enables matching gift auto-submission, an innovative feature that massively streamlines the matching gift application process.
6. How can my business increase participation in my volunteer program?
Why should an employee volunteer through your business rather than volunteering on their own? Does your program entice employees who don’t regularly volunteer to change their minds? How can I sustain participation in my volunteer program long-term?
These are the types of questions you should ask yourself to make your program appealing to employees and increase participation. While everyone volunteers for different reasons, three ways you can get employees involved include:
Ultimately, the best way to get employees involved depends on your business. Talk to employees to understand how they feel about volunteering, how they want to volunteer, and what you can do to support them.
7. What are some examples of employee volunteer programs?
Corporate volunteer programs come in all shapes and sizes, so let’s explore some aspirational examples of real-world employee volunteer programs. These examples are from larger companies, but it’s possible for your business, no matter its size, to create similar initiatives at your own scale.
Salesforce
Software giant Salesforce encourages employees to volunteer by creating a milestone system. Each employee is given seven days of volunteer time off each year and is challenged to complete various goals related to volunteering, such as:
While not every employee will hit these milestones, those who do get entered into a lottery where the winner receives a grant for the nonprofit of their choice. Since the program’s inception, over 13,000 employees have been entered into this lottery.
Focusing on volunteering has also led Salesforce to form new nonprofit partnerships. For instance, Salesforce leadership noticed many employees volunteering with The Marcy Lab School, a nonprofit that provides high school graduates with job training to become software engineers.
This connection built a relationship between Salesforce and The Marcy Lab School, resulting in a $100,000 donation to The March Lab School through Salesforce’s grant program for emerging nonprofits. The prior years of employee volunteering helped Salesforce learn about the Marcy Lab School and build trust in their organization.
Microsoft
Microsoft is an international technology company that needs little introduction. However, their generous volunteer grant program is likely less known.
Microsoft launched their volunteer grant program in 2005, promising to donate $25 per hour employees volunteered. With almost 5,000 employees volunteering 430,000+ cumulative hours, Microsoft has donated over $10 million to nonprofits through their grant program alone in just one fiscal year.
Henkel
Henkel is a parent company that owns several brands related to cleaning products and adhesive technology. Across their brands, Henkel has instituted the Make an Impact Tomorrow (MIT) program. This initiative has been running for over 20 years, funding the volunteer efforts of both current and former Henkel employees.
In 2022 alone, MIT supported 80 charitable organizations, serving over 110,000 beneficiaries. These organizations included nonprofits such as the Special Olympics, Habitat for Humanity, and Feeding America.
Corporate Volunteer Programs: More Resources
Is a corporate volunteer program right for your business? If so, your next steps are to assess your corporate philanthropic goals, talk with your team, and invest in the right tools. Explore CSR software options and how they can elevate your future program.
Of course, another important step is to continue learning about and getting inspired by corporate volunteerism. Jumpstart your research with these resources: