You know the old saying: “When the leaves turn brown, some serious fundraising’s about to go down.” OK, so maybe I just made that up; but that doesn’t make it any less true. The average nonprofit can expect to receive about half — or even more — of its fundraising revenue in the fourth quarter. And if you haven’t thought about your year-end giving plan before the pumpkin spice lattes hit the shelves, you might not be making the most out of this critical time of year for nonprofits.
At Click & Pledge, we definitely notice the giving spirit come out at this time of year. And while it might seem more appealing to wear a parka in a steambath than to create a year-end giving plan, it doesn’t have to be so stressful. In fact, we put together this guide (and a few simple worksheets) to help you knock out the basic components in just a couple of hours.
So, ditch the parka for a chair and a nice pumpkin spice latte, and let’s dive in.
1. Outline Your Objectives
A plan is only as good as its goals. That means you should look to accomplish something feasible, concrete, and measurable with your year-end giving plan. Start by considering these questions:
- How much fundraising revenue did you earn during last year’s campaign?
- What could be done differently to make this year’s campaign better?
- How much do you expect your budget to grow this year?
- What, if any, holes do you foresee with your programming budget that need to be addressed?
- Why is it important that we address these budgetary concerns with our year-end fundraising?
For something more concrete, try filling out this sentence:
“For this year-end giving plan, our organization’s priority is to insert specific result to insert specific organizational need(s) to address.”
There’s another important aspect here: timing. How long do you plan to run your year-end giving campaign? On one hand, your end-date should almost unanimously be at least January 1. That’s because every year, the most donations happen in the last week of December. You can even extend the deadline for those patrons participating in corporate matching gifts programs that usually implement a grace period.
Whether you choose to kick off your campaign with a Halloween Haunt, or a Giving Tuesday marathon, or a donation drive starting December 1 — it totally depends on your organization’s preparedness and donor base. Go back to your data from last year’s campaign to see when it was launched, and whether donations played a significant impact during a specific time frame.
2. Tell The Story
Most donors are driven by an organization’s mission, not necessarily the numbers. It’s a lot easier for people to digest your mission with your organization’s story, rather than plain statistics.
Stories create social bonding experiences, which cause your brain to release oxytocin, a chemical partly responsible for creating lasting memories and strong emotions. Even the most beautiful annual report infographic doesn’t compare if it’s flooded with statistics.
What are some of the stories that have popped up out of your organization over the last year? What’s the real-life, human story behind your fundraising goal? Instead of talking about X number of people you’ve served or plan to serve, focus on one person’s story.
There are endless ways to tell that story. Maybe it’s a mini-documentary, or a blog post, or a podcast, or a photo collage. It’s up to you to decide what’s both powerful and feasible for your organization. However you do it, there will be multiple ways to let donors know about that story. Which brings us to…
3. Define Your Communications Channels
So now that you have an idea of what you want to do, you’re going to need to find out how you’re going to accomplish it. At this point, it’s a good idea to look at how patrons interact with your organization. Who are they? What are their goals for your organization? What interests them the most? If you’ve never developed a donor persona before, it’s time to make like a high school biology student and dissect.
A good place to start is with traditional demographics like age, gender, and income; but don’t stop there. Get to the nitty-gritty, and you can even be a little imaginative. Is your typical donor a tennis enthusiast who checks her email between sets? Perhaps they’re really into drone-racing and watch how-to instructional videos. Whatever their thing may be, use those insights to carefully craft and deliver your message.
Also, try to create at least three donor personas. Your organization may have subsets of typical donors interested in different aspects of your organization.
Once you have these personas mapped out, that’s when you can start determining how you’re going to deliver your message. Make a list of all your communications channels. That might include social media, email, your website, direct mail, or more.
This is where your donor personas come in handy. Review these channels and see where each persona may spend most of their media time, and what channels are best received. From there, you can determine how often you’re going to reach your segmented audiences on what specific channels.
Try using the worksheet below to help you identify your donor personas.
4. Determine How You’ll Measure Results
Your year-end fundraising plan needs to be measurable, or else you won’t know how well you’re doing (or how to improve for next year). To measure your success, you’ll need to introduce Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, to your objectives and communications plan.
No two communications tactics will have the exact same KPIs. For example, you wouldn’t measure the success of your email sends via Facebook Likes. Rather, KPIs are measurements of end-goals you want your donors to take when interacting with that medium.
Go back to your goals and objectives and map them out next to your communications plan. Then, take each component of that plan and define your KPIs. Try to go beyond standard vanity metrics like email open rates or page views. Get specific.
Example
- If you have paid Facebook ads and your goal is for your social audience to donate to your website, one KPI would be to measure the number of donations that came through your website via social media referrals.
Use the handy-dandy worksheet below to map out your objectives, strategies, and KPIs to keep track of your year-end giving plan.
5. Set Your Budget & Determine Costs
So you’ve done the first half of your year-end giving plan. Now comes the part that many love to loathe: budgeting and timekeeping. This should be an estimate of everything you’ll need to pull of your campaign. That may include determining costs for:
- Staff time and salaries
- Tools and software usage
- Design and print materials
- Logistics (stamps, shipping, etc.)
The most important part here is determining your return on investment, or ROI. If you’re spending more to run your year-end campaign than you expect your goal to achieve, you’ll need to adjust your communications plan to be more practical.
Ideally, your budget should be somewhere in between a rough estimate and hyper-precise. If you spend too much time and analysis estimating the project, you won’t have any wiggle-room if your plan needs to be more flexible. On the other hand, too rough of an estimate means your budget has too much room for margin of error.
Here’s another worksheet to help you determine your year-end campaign costs for each item. You can also revisit this worksheet later to review your year-end campaign’s revenues.
6. Compose Your Calendar
Once your budget’s in order, it’s time to map out your deliverables, or when each piece of your campaign will go into action. A couple of things to keep in mind:
- Schedule your campaign around key dates like Giving Tuesday, Christmas, or New Year’s Eve. These affect the timing of your creative materials and their efficacy.
- Work smarter, not harder. If you try to communicate too-much-too-often with only a handful of channels or creative materials, that may have the opposite effect of what your organization wants to achieve.
- Be flexible. There will likely be a point during your campaign where your plan isn’t going as expected. Make sure you monitor your results regularly and be ready to make changes if that’s the case.
You will also want to share your calendar with your team so everyone stays on the same page. Google Calendars are a great way to go. We also use HootSuite to map out and schedule our social media posts.
7. Visualize, Analyze, & Improve
You’ve executed every deliverable with ease, and you’ve made your schedule flexible enough to give a Cirque du Soleil acrobat a run for their money. But: did it work?
It’s easy to get lost in the planning and deliverables and forget that meeting your goal was the most important item. As with any major campaign, it’s crucial to follow up and review what worked and what didn’t.
There’s a number of ways to accomplish this. Go back to those KPIs you created at the beginning of your planning phase and see how well they stacked up. A good donor management and event management system will help you readily look up your transactions, and determine which avenues through which they came.
You can also run a post-mortem meeting with your team so everyone has the chance to review and make suggestions for next year. This piece comes highly recommended, because it brings the team together and serves double-duty as the official end of a project.
Whatever you decide to do, pat yourself on the back. Get excited for the upcoming year, because you have another 9-10 months before you do it all over again!
Rallybound Customers Drive Matching Gifts Integration with Double the Donation
/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerDouble the Donation is proud to announce our latest integration with Rallybound, a leading provider of online and mobile fundraising technology. With this integration, Rallybound clients can use 360MatchPro, Double the Donation’s most robust tool, to increase revenue raised in their Rallybound campaigns.
Rallybound customers were eager to utilize 360MatchPro’s incredible automation and Double the Donation’s signature streamlined search tool. Rallybound clients are now able to establish a direct link between their Rallybound accounts and their 360MatchPro platform.
All donations made to a Rallybound campaign flow directly into 360MatchPro. Immediately, donor email addresses are scanned for employer information and email follow-up is automatically triggered out to every donor.
“Double the Donation’s tools were built to narrow the gap between donors and matching gift information,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “There is $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue left on the table every year, and we are trying to help nonprofit organizations claim those funds.”
With the new 360MatchPro integration, Rallybound clients can revolutionize their matching gift efforts without lifting a figure. Rather than employ someone to manage matching gifts, this integration does all the heavy-lifting. 360MatchPro provides automated outreach and follow-up, offers actionable insights for enhancing matching gift efforts, and tracks the status of all matching gift opportunities.
Activate in Seconds and Start Raising More from Matching Gifts!
Rallybound already provides users with valuable tools to elevate their fundraising efforts. The 360MatchPro integration fits seamlessly into that system, and the setup is a breeze. Check out the steps below to harness the gift matching power of 360MatchPro alongside your favorite Rallybound resources.
Establish the connection between 360MatchPro and Rallybound by navigating to your 360MatchPro Integrations tab. This step automatically sets up donation data transfer from Rallybound to 360MatchPro, making sure you never miss out on a matching gift opportunity. Then, add the 360MatchPro company name search tool to your Rallybound donation forms to give donors the opportunity to select their company name during the matching gift process. Between these two easy setup steps, you’re ready to go!
The 360MatchPro integration tab gets you set up in seconds!
Now you can use employer gift matching tools to drive donations for the causes you care about. Your donation form will look the same with the exception of the employer search tool. This feature will allow the donors to quickly enter their employer’s information during the donation process. The search bar generates company suggestions so that the process is quick and efficient.
Donors simply type the name of their employer into the search bar to check gift matching eligibility.
Once a donor selects their employer, the system will assess gift matching eligibility by scanning an automated database. If a donor qualifies for a gift matching program, the system will send an email with company giving guidelines and steps to proceed.
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
Drive More Matching Gifts to Completion with 360MatchPro!
360MatchPro uses specialized features to drive gift matching revenue. These resources will help your organization make the most of their fundraising initiatives.
This software integration is designed to:
360MatchPro will help you complete gift matches easily and efficiently.
Interested in getting started? Check out the 360MatchPro demo page to schedule a personalized session and see this integration in action.
About Rallybound: Rallybound offers a modern social fundraising platform that is clean, fresh, powerful, and most importantly, easy to use for both event administrators and end users. Clients who join Rallybound consistently see an uptick in activity, including registrations, awareness and funds raised.The Rallybound fundraising platform is built for nonprofits of all sizes, and supports fundraising events of any size, from local walk-a-thons to global fundraising campaigns. To learn more visit: https://rallybound.com/
About Double the Donation: Automate your matching gift fundraising with the industry-leading solution from Double the Donation. The 360MatchPro platform provides nonprofits with tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights. 360MatchPro integrates directly into donation forms, CRMs, social fundraising software, and other nonprofit technology solutions to capture employment information and follow up appropriately with donors about matching gifts. To learn more visit https://360matchpro.com/demo-request/
Double the Donation Partners with Beracha for Matching Gifts
/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerAtlanta, GA (January 22, 2019) — Double the Donation is excited to announce a new partnership with Beracha, a leading provider of custom technology solutions.
Beracha has integrated 360MatchPro, Double the Donation’s enterprise matching gifts platform, into nSpire, a social donations and donor portal engine. This integration will allow nSpire users to collect every possible corporate matching gift.
With 360MatchPro, nSpire users can present each donor with clear and simple information about their employer’s matching gift guidelines. These guidelines can be found on the donation confirmation page and through an email automatically sent after each donation is made.
When donations are made using a corporate email address, that company’s matching gift guidelines are presented to the donor automatically. If a personal email is used, the donor will be presented with a matching gift search tool where they can search for their employer.
“When we were looking for a matching gifts partner, 360MatchPro stood out as both the most comprehensive and the easiest platform to use,” said Dana Dunmyer, CEO and President of Beracha. “We want it to be easy for nSpire users to collect as many matching gifts as possible, and we know 360MatchPro will help them do that.”
Every year, $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue goes unclaimed because donors don’t know that they are eligible to claim it. With 360MatchPro, each donor is automatically emailed and encouraged to check their match-eligibility.
“Our mission is to help as many organizations as possible collect that unclaimed matching gift revenue, and we’re excited to be working with the great team at Beracha,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “nSpire is such a great platform, and we’re proud to offer matching gifts as a new enhancement.”
The 360MatchPro integration provides each user with a 360MatchPro portal. This portal stores every donation, tracks the match-eligibility of each donor and the outreach they are sent, and offers actionable insights that organizations can use to enhance their matching gift efforts.
Find out more about Beracha at https://beracha.org/.
ACD Direct Chooses Double the Donation for Matching Gifts Solution
/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerDouble the Donation, the leading provider of matching gift solutions for nonprofits, radio stations, and educational institutions, is proud to partner with ACD Direct. ACD Direct customers are now able to integrate matching gift functionality directly into their fundraising efforts.
With this partnership, ACD Direct customers can incorporate matching gifts directly into their call scripts and online donation forms. The integration provides radio stations the tools to easily implement gift matching into their greater fundraising strategy and includes access to Double the Donation’s extensive database of over 20,000 companies, subsidiaries, and spelling variations.
ACD Direct customers will be able to use Double the Donation to completely revolutionize their matching gift efforts. In the Double the Donation portal, users can see which donations are known to be match-eligible, track the progress of matched donations, and automate outreach to all donors about matching gifts.
The outreach automation is highly customizable so that every email is branded to match the organization. ACD Direct clients are also able to enter in customized text on the donation form, providing clearer guidance for donors as they move through the giving process. By automatically emailing every donor and providing a simple and clear breakdown of the donor’s employer’s matching gift program, Double the Donation solves the problem of lack of donor awareness and makes it easier for organizations to collect matching gifts.
“Every year, $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue is left on the table each year,” says Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “We look forward to helping ACD Direct customers claim some of that revenue so their stations can focus on providing quality broadcasting to their communities.”
Lack of donor awareness is the biggest hurdle to collecting matching gifts. Double the Donation solves this problem by automatically emailing every donor and providing a simple and clear breakdown of the donor’s employer’s matching gift program.
Thanks to the integration with Double the Donation, ACD Direct customers will be able to effortlessly drive more matching gifts to completion and increase their overall annual revenue.
Activate in Seconds and Start Raising More from Matching Gifts!
Activate your Double the Donation account in your ACD Direct platform in no time by entering your public API key. After configuring the search tool header text to your station’s branding, you’ll be ready to start matching gifts!
Donors can use the autocomplete search tool function to easily find their employer and identify if they are eligible for a matching gift right on the donation page! Stations can customize the text that follows that company selection with conditional messaging catered to the organization’s needs. Once the donation is submitted, donors are greeted with actionable next steps to get their donation matched.
Then, automated email streams help keep the momentum going and ensure all donors are able to take their matching gift next steps.
Send your donors automated emails to encourage a match!
These emails lead donors directly to their company’s gift matching request form, minimizing the steps a donor has to go through to get their gift matched. It allows stations to keep their focus on essential programs and operations without having to worry about following up on their supporters’ donations.
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
Drive More Matching Gifts to Completion with Double the Donation!
ACD Direct strives to create an environment of strong and positive connections between clients and their donors, and Double the Donation contributes to that mission by adding corporate philanthropy to that network of connections.
Interested in improving the giving experience for you and your donors? Request a demo today to get started.
About ACD Direct, Inc.: With over 15 years in the PBS/nonprofit industry, ACD continuously develops and delivers successful, proprietary, end-use products and solutions that align and support our clients’ goals and integrates seamlessly into business processes, platforms and systems. ACD works alongside each client on their most complex and business-critical matters. For more information, contact us at biz@acddirect.com or visit www.acddirect.com.
About Double the Donation: Automate your matching gift fundraising with the industry-leading solution from Double the Donation. The Double the Donation platform provides nonprofits with tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights. Double the Donation integrates directly into donation forms, CRMs, social fundraising software, and other nonprofit technology solutions to capture employment information and follow up appropriately with donors about matching gifts. To learn more about Double the Donation, visit https://doublethedonation.com and request a demo at https://doublethedonation.com/get-a-demo/.
Double the Donation Partners with NeonCRM for Matching Gifts
/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerDouble the Donation is excited to announce to announce a new partnership with NeonCRM, a cloud-based software suite providing invaluable tools to nonprofit organizations.
NeonCRM can be fully integrated into Double the Donation’s most robust matching gifts tool. By simply inputting an organization’s NeonCRM Organization ID and API Key into their Double the Donation account, donations begin to flow automatically from NeonCRM into Double the Donation.
Double the Donation provides donors with company-specific matching gift information. This information is presented simply and clearly so that each and every donor understands what they qualify for and how to claim it.
“There is $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue left on the table every year, and our goal is to help as many organizations claim as many of those dollars as possible,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “We are very excited to see that number go down as NeonCRM users begin claiming more and more of that revenue.”
The biggest hurdle to collecting matching gifts is a lack of donor awareness. By automatically following up with donors and encouraging them to check their match-eligibility, Double the Donation and NeonCRM are narrowing that gap.
Activate in Seconds and Start Raising More from Matching Gifts!
Activating Double the Donation with NeonCRM is a great way to increase donations without increasing your workload. The set up is simple and automated so you can start driving more matching gift request submissions as soon as possible.
To get started, simply enter your NeonCRM Organization ID and your NeonCRM API Key into the “Integrations” tab under “Settings” on your Double the Donation dashboard. Once you have completed this step, the activation will be complete. All donations and donor information will now flow automatically from your NeonCRM account into your Double the Donation account.
Enter your NeonCRM credentials on the Double the Donation integrations page for an easy activation.
As these donations flow into Double the Donation, email automation will begin instantly. Each donor will automatically receive a follow-up email encouraging them to check their match-eligibility. Donors will then be able to report the submission of their matching gift request back to the organization.
Donation information will be imported from your NeonCRM to Double the Donation. These insights include the donor’s name, donation amount, email address, phone number and campaign (if applicable).
The Double the Donation portal will then track insights from this process such as email deliveries and open rates. These insights will help you plan gift matching communication efforts for future outreach initiatives.
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
Drive More Matching Gifts to Completion with Double the Donation!
Double the Donation features excellent tools for a successful gift matching experience.
This integration will provide more revenue and less work because it can:
To check out this integration in action, visit the Double the Donation demo page. This resource will allow you to schedule a personalized session to discuss your organization’s goals, functionality options and more.
About NeonCRM: Neon provides technology with a purpose to further your mission. Their nonprofit tech solutions help grow communities, inspire audiences, and scale impact. Since 2004, NeonCRM has helped thousands of organizations reach their full potential, raising millions of dollars for great causes along the way. If you are interested in learning more, check out their website at https://www.neoncrm.com/
About Double the Donation: Automate your matching gift fundraising with the industry-leading solution from Double the Donation. The Double the Donation platform provides nonprofits with tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights. Double the Donation integrates directly into donation forms, CRMs, social fundraising software, and other nonprofit technology solutions to capture employment information and follow up appropriately with donors about matching gifts. To learn more visit https://doublethedonation.com/get-a-demo/
Virtuous Partners with Double the Donation for Matching Gifts
/in Company Updates /by Adam WeingerDouble the Donation is proud to announce a new integration between Virtuous Software and 360MatchPro, an industry-leading provider of software solutions for nonprofits. This partnership provides a seamless integration that features enhanced gift matching tools. These tools enable nonprofits to grow giving with employer gift matching.
Virtuous is a modern nonprofit CRM, marketing, and donation platform that is purpose-built to personalize donor communications and increase impact. By offering gift matching tools, Virtuous expands the functionality available to their customers and provides an opportunity to exponentially increase revenue. Through this partnership, organizations could capitalize on the $4-7 billion in matching gift funds that go unclaimed each year.
360MatchPro, Double the Donation’s most robust tool, is an enterprise platform that automates outreach, offers actionable insights on how to improve matching gift efforts, and collects and stores donor information. Employment information is collected through self-identification and email domain capture on the donation form.
“We are so excited to provide the virtuous customer base with the tools they need to increase their matching gift revenue,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “There is $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue left on the table each year, and we’re happy to help these organizations claim some of that revenue to further their work.”
Through this seamless integration, your organization can capture even more match-eligible donors and drive their matching gift requests to completion. The automated outreach provided by 360MatchPro sends customized messaging to donors based on their match-eligibility. These communications can be used to help organizations track the status of all match-eligible donations by encouraging the donors to report when they’ve submitted their matching gift requests.
Activate in Seconds and Start Raising More from Matching Gifts!
360MatchPro integrates easily into your Virtuous platform, providing a simple set up process. Once you activate the software integration, 360MatchPro will be activated globally to your CRM. You can then add 360MatchPro to your giving forms. Simply look for the “Plugins” section when creating a donation form, and then select the Double the Donation field. Drag this option anywhere on the page.
Navigate to the “Manage Double the Donation” tab to activate this integration.
Once this field is added, you can harness all of the power of 360MatchPro! The 360MatchPro streamlined search feature allows donors to discover their matching gift eligibility and then navigate directly to their matching gift submission page from the confirmation screen – making it easier than ever for your supporters to double their donations.
The 360MatchPro streamlined search tool helps donors quickly select their employer.
360MatchPro can also automate customizable matching gift outreach. These messages are designed to capture even more donors and provide them with easy steps to submit matching gift requests. With this additional touchpoint and easy data tracking in the 360MatchPro portal, your organization can easily automate the matching gift process to increase donations without any extra effort!
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
Drive More Matching Gifts to Completion with 360MatchPro!
360MatchPro provides many features to ensure that you have an easy and effective fundraising experience. These tools are sure to increase contributions without extra effort.
Check out some of the 360MatchPro features below:
Drive donations using the 360MatchPro automated software!
Interested in learning more? Schedule a personalized demo with Double the Donation to discuss gift matching, functionality and more.
About Virtuous: Virtuous is a Nonprofit Marketing, CRM and Donation Platform helping charities grow giving and build better relationships with donors. This all-in-one nonprofit growth platform allows donor management software to meet modern marketing technology. Virtuous software is feature-rich enough to meet all of your complex fundraising needs and help you create personal connections with your constituents. Interested in learning more? Check out Virtuous features at https://www.virtuouscrm.com/
About Double the Donation: Automate your matching gift fundraising with the industry-leading solution from Double the Donation. The 360MatchPro platform provides nonprofits with tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights. 360MatchPro integrates directly into donation forms, CRMs, social fundraising software, and other nonprofit technology solutions to capture employment information and follow up appropriately with donors about matching gifts. To learn more visit https://360matchpro.com/demo-request/
Revv Partners with Double the Donation for Matching Gifts
/in Company Updates /by Adam WeingerAtlanta, GA (November 13, 2018) – Double the Donation is excited to announce a new partnership with Revv, an advanced donation and fundraising platform. With this partnership, all Revv customers are now able to activate Double the Donation, Double the Donation’s most robust matching gift tool.
With Double the Donation, users are able to fully automate their matching gift marketing and follow-up outreach with donors.
“We are so excited to offer our customers the opportunity to significantly increase their matching gift revenue with Double the Donation,” said Carl Sceusa, CEO of Revv. “Our partnership with Double the Donation offers our nonprofit customers the most extensive database of matching gift programs with the most user-friendly platform designed to make a typically cumbersome process extremely simple.”
Organizations using Double the Donation are able to capture donor information through email domain screening, self-identification, and bulk uploads. In addition, Double the Donation offers fully automated, highly customizable email outreach to see those potential matches through to completion.
It’s easy to turn on Double the Donationfunctionality on Revv forms. Simply edit any donation page and add the Double the Donation upsell, configuring the text however you want it to appear on your form.
Ready to get started with the Double the Donation-Revv integration? Check out our integration guide.
“Revv does great work, and we can’t wait to see what their customers will do with all of the additional revenue matching gifts can bring,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “With $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue left on the table each year, we are happy to offer organizations the opportunity to claim some of it.”
Double the Donationmakes it simple for donors to follow through on submitting matching gift requests to their employers. The biggest hurdle to collecting matching gift revenue is lack of donor awareness, so by incorporating the search tool right onto the Revv donation form and again on the confirmation page, Double the Donation encourages donors to find out if they are match-eligible.
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
Plus, Double the Donation presents a clear and simple breakdown of the specific program a donor may be eligible for, making it easy for the donor to submit a match request and increase their impact.
Teaming up with Revv presents an exciting opportunity for all of their customers to increase their annual revenue by utilizing this advanced matching gift automation software.
To learn more about Revv, visit https://revv.co/. More about Double the Donation can be found at https://doublethedonation.com/.
Double the Donation and Classy Announce Enhanced Matching Gifts Integration for Nonprofits
/in Company Updates /by Adam WeingerThe partnership brings enhanced matching gift functionality to Classy’s nonprofit customers, allowing them to raise more and accelerate their organization’s impact
Double the Donation announces an enhanced matching gifts partnership with Classy, creator of world-class online fundraising software for nonprofits. The partnership brings enhanced matching gift functionality to Classy customers through native integration with the industry-leading matching gifts automation platform, Double the Donationby Double the Donation.
The Classy-Double the Donation integration provides a quick and simple matching gift process for donors. Through Double the Donation’s database of corporate matching gift programs, donors are able to confidently submit their matching gift requests. The enhanced capabilities of the new release identify more matching opportunities, drive the opportunities to completion, and ultimately result in more revenue for the nonprofit.
“We are committed to providing nonprofits and their donors with the most accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date information about corporate matching gift programs,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “The Double the Donation database is updated multiple times a day by the Double the Donation database team to ensure that all instructions, links, and program details delivered to donors actually result in increased revenue for nonprofits — not frustration at outdated information and broken links.”
Activate in Seconds and Start Raising More from Matching Gifts!
Getting started with the new Double the Donation integration takes less than a minute. Nonprofits with a Double the Donation account can simply navigate to the Double the Donation App in “Apps & Extensions” within their Classy account to connect the two services.
Activate Double the Donation from within Classy Manager.
No Double the Donation Account? No problem! Fill out the contact form, and a member of the Double the Donation team will be right with you to get you set up.
Once the integration has been set up, Double the Donation will automatically add the appropriate company-matching gift workflow to all Classy donation forms. That workflow is simple, streamlined, and highly valuable.
During the donation process itself, donors can select their company name from an easy-to-navigate autocomplete search box. Donors simply begin typing their company name and select it once it is suggested by the smart autocomplete functionality.
Double the Donationmakes it easy for your donors to search for their company name on your Classy form.
This search functionality allows donors to move quickly and confidently through the Classy donation form without stopping, which protects conversion rates while identifying opportunities for higher matching gift revenue at the same time.
Once Double the Donationknows where a donor works, it provides the immediate next steps the donor needs to take to get their gift matched directly in the donor’s inbox.
Double the Donation sends matching gift information directly to your donors.
Of course, all the features from the previous version of the Double the Donation-Classy integration are still included in the newly enhanced release. Double the Donationstill sends configurable follow-up emails to all donors to check their matching gift eligibility, even if they skipped the company name search field on the donation form, to capture every last opportunity for matching gifts.
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
Drive More Matching Gifts to Completion with Double the Donation and Classy!
Double the Donation enhances the Classy donation experience by raising your organization more money from corporate matching gifts.
To get started on your matching gift journey with Classy and Double the Donation, schedule a private demo of Double the Donation today.
About Classy: Classy is a social enterprise that creates world-class online fundraising software for nonprofits, modernizing the giving experience to accelerate social impact around the world. Based in San Diego, CA, Classy is trusted by organizations of all sizes, from the fastest-growing nonprofits like Team Rubicon and The Trevor Project, to some of the world’s largest social organizations, such as The Salvation Army, Robin Hood Foundation, and Shriners Hospitals for Children. Classy also hosts the Collaborative conference, a three-day immersive experience designed exclusively for nonprofit professionals and social impact leaders to learn, share, and get inspired. For more information, visit www.classy.org or follow Classy on Twitter @Classy.
About Double the Donation: Automate your matching gift fundraising with the industry-leading solution from Double the Donation. The Double the Donation platform provides nonprofits with tools to identify match-eligible donors, drive matches to completion, and gain actionable insights. Double the Donation integrates directly into donation forms, CRMs, social fundraising software, and other nonprofit technology solutions to capture employment information and follow up appropriately with donors about matching gifts. To learn more about Double the Donation, visit https://doublethedonation.com and request a demo at https://doublethedonation.com/get-a-demo/
Luminate Online Matching Gift Integration Guide
/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerIf you are one of the many Luminate customers looking to equip your website with matching gift functionality, you’ve come to the right place! Integrating Double the Donation into your Luminate pages will revolutionize your matching gift revenue, and we’re going to tell you all about it.
In this article you will find:
Read on to start raising that matching gift revenue!
The basics of matching gifts
In order to understand exactly how Double the Donation will revolutionize your matching gift revenue, you’ll first need to know exactly what matching gifts are. Matching gifts is a type of corporate philanthropy program often offered as an employee benefit.
When an employee makes a contribution to their favorite nonprofit or educational institution, sometimes their employer will also make a donation to the same nonprofit. Those donations made by employers are known as matching gifts.
Every company’s specific matching gift guidelines are different, but every program includes a standard set of elements:
Though each company outlines their own eligibility guidelines, the process for claiming matching gifts is always the same:
The most common breakdown in this process occurs at the second step. Unfortunately, a nonprofit can not request a matching gift, the original donor has to do it. Because the donor must do it, making sure that every donor knows about the matching gifts should be a number one priority for every nonprofit and educational institution.
Double the Donation: an overview
Double the Donation is a matching gifts super-platform. Double the Donation Matching provides automated outreach, actionable insights, and instantaneous donor information capture to drive more matching gifts to completion. This platform almost entirely removes the need for a matching gifts agent within an organization at all.
The Double the Donation dashboard offers actionable insights into your organization’s matching gift efforts. By presenting the figures of your matching gifts in plain figures as well as on an illustrated graph, it is easy to see where and how your matching gift efforts can be enhanced.
When using their tools, you are able to insert Double the Donation’s matching gift search tool straight on to your donation page. Plus, you can use the same embed code to place the search tool on your confirmation page as well as any other pages where you may want to incorporate matching gifts.
Donor employer information is immediately captured through two avenues: self-identification (donor entering their employer in the designated field) and email domain screening. Whenever a donor donates using their corporate email address, that information is stored along with the rest of their information in Double the Donation.
From there, a donor is automatically sorted into one of the highly customized email streams setup within Double the Donation. These emails are triggered based on donor eligibility and can be set for any amount of time after their donation is made.
For example, a match-eligible donor will automatically receive an email from the organization they donated to one hour after donating. This email will encourage them to submit their match request forms, with their company-specific forms linked directly. Then it will encourage the donor to report the submission of their matching gift request. This allows the nonprofit to stay on top of their match-eligible donations and the submitted match requests without lifting a finger.
With Double the Donation, your organization no longer needs to dedicate time to collecting employment information, sorting through donors searching for match-eligibility, or following up with match-eligible donors. All of that is taken care of instantly and automatically the moment a donation is made.
To learn more about Double the Donation, check out a demo!
Integrating Double the Donation into your Luminate Online pages: a step-by-step guide
Double the Donation can be integrated into your Luminate pages. Double the Donation has put together a step-by-step guide (complete with pictures!) to help Luminate users get their matching gift programs in gear!
What we’re going to walk through here is how to get the Double the Donation search tool onto your Luminate donation pages. If you need help creating the Double the Donation element, which will be incorporated onto your page, check out this full technical integration guide.
Step #1: Navigate to the form where you’d like to include a matching gifts field. For this example, we’re going to put it on the donation page.
Step #2: Click on “Design Donor Screens” in the menu on the left side of your screen. Then click “Edit” on the donation form, as illustrated below.
Step #3: In the editor, look at the column on the top left labeled “Select data elements to include in this form:” and click on the custom element “Double the Donation Company ID.” Then click “Add >”, one of the buttons between the columns, to move this element onto your form. Placement on the form doesn’t matter here, just make sure the element is in the column on the right.
Before moving on, make sure that the box next to “Yes, this field is visible” is unchecked.
Step #4: Add an “HTML Caption” to your form following the same steps you took to add Double the Donation. Then click “Components” and add your Double the Donation widget reusable page. Place this field where you want the streamlined search to appear on your form. We recommend including it somewhere in the billing section.
Note: For step-by-step instructions on setting up your reusable page, check out our full technical integration guide.
See the image below for a walk-through:
Step #5: Save the page and preview it. Make sure that the plugin appears on your form. If it does not, contact support at support@doublethedonation.com.
And that’s all there is to it! Now you’re ready to start raking in that matching gift revenue with Double the Donation!
Implementation of Double the Donation
Obviously, the first implementation option is for your organization to follow the steps outlined above (and in our full integration guide) and integrate Double the Donation into your Luminate pages on your own.
However, for those of us who are not so tech savvy, there is another way. At Double the Donation, we work with several technical consultants who are specifically trained in all things Luminate.
With the help of these tech consultants, your organization won’t need to lift a finger. You can leave it to the experts to get Double the Donation up and running as you sit back and watch the matching gifts roll in.
To learn more about Double the Donation and how it can revolutionize your matching gift revenue, check out this demo!
Now that you are an expert on matching gifts and Double the Donation, it’s time to get out there and start claiming some of the $4-7 billion in matching gift revenue that’s left unclaimed every year! Now all that’s left to do is inform every single donor you can about matching gifts and watch the revenue start rolling in.
3 Super Handy Worksheets For Year-End Giving
/in Learning Center /by Adam WeingerYou know the old saying: “When the leaves turn brown, some serious fundraising’s about to go down.” OK, so maybe I just made that up; but that doesn’t make it any less true. The average nonprofit can expect to receive about half — or even more — of its fundraising revenue in the fourth quarter. And if you haven’t thought about your year-end giving plan before the pumpkin spice lattes hit the shelves, you might not be making the most out of this critical time of year for nonprofits.
At Click & Pledge, we definitely notice the giving spirit come out at this time of year. And while it might seem more appealing to wear a parka in a steambath than to create a year-end giving plan, it doesn’t have to be so stressful. In fact, we put together this guide (and a few simple worksheets) to help you knock out the basic components in just a couple of hours.
So, ditch the parka for a chair and a nice pumpkin spice latte, and let’s dive in.
1. Outline Your Objectives
A plan is only as good as its goals. That means you should look to accomplish something feasible, concrete, and measurable with your year-end giving plan. Start by considering these questions:
For something more concrete, try filling out this sentence:
“For this year-end giving plan, our organization’s priority is to insert specific result to insert specific organizational need(s) to address.”
There’s another important aspect here: timing. How long do you plan to run your year-end giving campaign? On one hand, your end-date should almost unanimously be at least January 1. That’s because every year, the most donations happen in the last week of December. You can even extend the deadline for those patrons participating in corporate matching gifts programs that usually implement a grace period.
Whether you choose to kick off your campaign with a Halloween Haunt, or a Giving Tuesday marathon, or a donation drive starting December 1 — it totally depends on your organization’s preparedness and donor base. Go back to your data from last year’s campaign to see when it was launched, and whether donations played a significant impact during a specific time frame.
2. Tell The Story
Most donors are driven by an organization’s mission, not necessarily the numbers. It’s a lot easier for people to digest your mission with your organization’s story, rather than plain statistics.
Stories create social bonding experiences, which cause your brain to release oxytocin, a chemical partly responsible for creating lasting memories and strong emotions. Even the most beautiful annual report infographic doesn’t compare if it’s flooded with statistics.
What are some of the stories that have popped up out of your organization over the last year? What’s the real-life, human story behind your fundraising goal? Instead of talking about X number of people you’ve served or plan to serve, focus on one person’s story.
There are endless ways to tell that story. Maybe it’s a mini-documentary, or a blog post, or a podcast, or a photo collage. It’s up to you to decide what’s both powerful and feasible for your organization. However you do it, there will be multiple ways to let donors know about that story. Which brings us to…
3. Define Your Communications Channels
So now that you have an idea of what you want to do, you’re going to need to find out how you’re going to accomplish it. At this point, it’s a good idea to look at how patrons interact with your organization. Who are they? What are their goals for your organization? What interests them the most? If you’ve never developed a donor persona before, it’s time to make like a high school biology student and dissect.
A good place to start is with traditional demographics like age, gender, and income; but don’t stop there. Get to the nitty-gritty, and you can even be a little imaginative. Is your typical donor a tennis enthusiast who checks her email between sets? Perhaps they’re really into drone-racing and watch how-to instructional videos. Whatever their thing may be, use those insights to carefully craft and deliver your message.
Also, try to create at least three donor personas. Your organization may have subsets of typical donors interested in different aspects of your organization.
Once you have these personas mapped out, that’s when you can start determining how you’re going to deliver your message. Make a list of all your communications channels. That might include social media, email, your website, direct mail, or more.
This is where your donor personas come in handy. Review these channels and see where each persona may spend most of their media time, and what channels are best received. From there, you can determine how often you’re going to reach your segmented audiences on what specific channels.
Try using the worksheet below to help you identify your donor personas.
4. Determine How You’ll Measure Results
Your year-end fundraising plan needs to be measurable, or else you won’t know how well you’re doing (or how to improve for next year). To measure your success, you’ll need to introduce Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, to your objectives and communications plan.
No two communications tactics will have the exact same KPIs. For example, you wouldn’t measure the success of your email sends via Facebook Likes. Rather, KPIs are measurements of end-goals you want your donors to take when interacting with that medium.
Go back to your goals and objectives and map them out next to your communications plan. Then, take each component of that plan and define your KPIs. Try to go beyond standard vanity metrics like email open rates or page views. Get specific.
Example
Use the handy-dandy worksheet below to map out your objectives, strategies, and KPIs to keep track of your year-end giving plan.
5. Set Your Budget & Determine Costs
So you’ve done the first half of your year-end giving plan. Now comes the part that many love to loathe: budgeting and timekeeping. This should be an estimate of everything you’ll need to pull of your campaign. That may include determining costs for:
The most important part here is determining your return on investment, or ROI. If you’re spending more to run your year-end campaign than you expect your goal to achieve, you’ll need to adjust your communications plan to be more practical.
Ideally, your budget should be somewhere in between a rough estimate and hyper-precise. If you spend too much time and analysis estimating the project, you won’t have any wiggle-room if your plan needs to be more flexible. On the other hand, too rough of an estimate means your budget has too much room for margin of error.
Here’s another worksheet to help you determine your year-end campaign costs for each item. You can also revisit this worksheet later to review your year-end campaign’s revenues.
6. Compose Your Calendar
Once your budget’s in order, it’s time to map out your deliverables, or when each piece of your campaign will go into action. A couple of things to keep in mind:
You will also want to share your calendar with your team so everyone stays on the same page. Google Calendars are a great way to go. We also use HootSuite to map out and schedule our social media posts.
7. Visualize, Analyze, & Improve
You’ve executed every deliverable with ease, and you’ve made your schedule flexible enough to give a Cirque du Soleil acrobat a run for their money. But: did it work?
It’s easy to get lost in the planning and deliverables and forget that meeting your goal was the most important item. As with any major campaign, it’s crucial to follow up and review what worked and what didn’t.
There’s a number of ways to accomplish this. Go back to those KPIs you created at the beginning of your planning phase and see how well they stacked up. A good donor management and event management system will help you readily look up your transactions, and determine which avenues through which they came.
You can also run a post-mortem meeting with your team so everyone has the chance to review and make suggestions for next year. This piece comes highly recommended, because it brings the team together and serves double-duty as the official end of a project.
Whatever you decide to do, pat yourself on the back. Get excited for the upcoming year, because you have another 9-10 months before you do it all over again!
Fundly Integrates Double the Donation Matching Gift Tools
/in Learning Center, Company Updates /by Adam WeingerAtlanta, GA (October 17, 2018) — Double the Donation is proud to announce a new integration with NonProfitEasy’s Fundly CRM. This Double the Donation integration into Fundly CRM will provide users with industry-leading matching gift functionality. Fundly is used by nonprofits to revolutionize the way they serve their communities.
This integration allows Fundly CRM users to fully automate the matching gift process, exponentially increasing their matching gift revenue while reducing time spent on collecting matching gifts. With this integration, Fundly users can turn on this functionality directly through their Fundly CRM account.
Looking to learn more? Check out our in-depth integration guide to get started!
“In deciding which matching gift tools to offer our customers, we found Double the Donation’s matching module to be the most comprehensive and easy-to-use platform,” said Lomesh Shah, President and Co-Founder of NonProfitEasy. “We are so excited to offer our users the opportunity to double their donations with ease, efficiency, and accuracy.”
Double the Donation allows users to automatically track the match-eligibility of their donors, the status of those potential matches, and the revenue raised in matching gifts. Most importantly, Double the Donation’s automated and customizable email follow-up vastly increases the amount of matching gift requests successfully driven to completion.
The biggest hindrance to matching gifts is lack of donor awareness. With Double the Donation, Fundly CRM users are able to automatically identify match-eligible donors through email domain capture as well as self-identification directly on their donation forms.
“We are so excited to see that Fundly has integrated our matching gift tools into their CRM, offering all of their users a chance to enhance their matching gift programs,” said Adam Weinger, President of Double the Donation. “There are 15 million people in America who are eligible for matching gifts, and we’re looking forward to seeing how Fundly CRM users connect with those donors.”
Double the Donation has the most extensive database of existing matching gift programs, including more than 20,000 companies, subsidiaries, and spelling variations. Use of this database affords organizations the opportunity to follow through on every possible corporate matching gift donation.
Match-eligible donors are presented with simple, streamlined information about the matching gift program that they qualify for. They are also presented with direct links to the appropriate online forms or downloadable PDFs required to submit their matching gift requests.
Find out more about Fundly CRM at https://www.fundlycrm.com/.