Members Only Teleconference
November 19, 2009
11:00 am Central Time

Lori will spend the hour answering any fundraising questions that are pre-submitted.

To participate become a member of LoriJacobwith.com

Tip 2: Successful individual donor campaigns are supported and managed by at least one staff.

For a smaller organization, the staff person supporting development might be the executive director. The truth is, in the early stages of developing an individual fundraising program, effective executive directors enlist and encourage board members, new donors, and community volunteers to help until they can hire someone.

Having a paid fund development staff member is one of the first things I recommend for organizations wanting to increase their individual fundraising. Just as clients must have someone managing and delivering the programs that make an organization so amazing, so must donors  have a person designated to keep them informed, engaged and clear about what is needed. 

Whether you are a small shop or a fully staffed development team, figuring out what to say in communication with donors is often a challenge. But when an organization shares only messages about the good they are doing there is no reason for others to get involved or help in anyway.  

I often see organizations who have an amazing, passionate leader, but they are limited in their fundraising skills. And so they focus their energy, time and financial resources on program development. The leader feels as though they can “handle it all” themselves or doesn’t want anyone to know they don’t know HOW to go about getting more donors involved. So what suffers is the relationship with donors is not tended as carefully as the relationships being tended with clients.  The problem with that is clear: 

No funds coming in = no new programs going out.

It’s tempting during economic downtimes to reduce or cut funding staff altogether. I say just don’t do it.

I worked with a small choral group with amazing musical programming that helped children with autism. The organization was run and founded by Martin, one of those, “I can do it all” kind of people.

With a budget of less than $50,000 a year that barely covered expenses and no salaries, Martin continued to get by with small grants from a few foundations and a handful of contributions from less than 50 individuals.

I was brought in to develop a system that would generate funds for a salary for Martin and funds to hire a part-time staff person to help with communication and fundraising. We also worked on shifting the communication to share specifics about the tiny budget and per performance costs.

Martin who had “done it all” before began, slowly, to understand what things cost and started to share that with others. He didn’t say yes to every request and began to ask for help from the board and others in the community. Not surprisingly he found people really were willing to do specific things: draft and send out messages in print and via email, help with budgeting and submitting grant proposals. People began to learn more about the true financial needs of this small but mighty organization.

Success:

Over the last three years the annual budget has increased from less than $50,000 to nearly $250,000 from individual donors. The organization now has more than 300 new donors & over 100 volunteers

The difference:

      1.  Hiring someone with the skills to manage the communication
           and fundraising.
      2. Talking about finances and money in a clear way.

People now see ways to help, a place to make a difference, and Martin doesn’t have to “do it all.” Hmmmm. Is there any of your organization in this story?   

(Except from 9 Tips for Successful Individual Donor Campaigns)

“I wish I could clone my best donors!”  With database modeling you can!

How does it work?  Step one is to identify a trusted vendor who specializes in data modeling services, and send them the donor list.  These services are offered both online and typically by local vendors.  Since existing donor information is extremely sensitive, interested parties should always ask for several references before engaging a vendor.

What can I expect in return?

Reports: Reports aggregate commonalities in the existing donor list-so why is this important?  Because a savvy fundraiser can use information about donor backgrounds, interests and passions to craft better appeal letters or to create an event that fits the interest of their donors.

Additional data about specific members of the original mailing list:  This is extremely useful for executing a fundraising campaign that resonates with a specific subset of your audience. 

Example 1: A group of specific donors could be targeted to launch a new children’s program or add a children’s exhibit.  Members of the existing donor audience who were flagged with the “presence of children” would certainly be more interested in these kid-oriented projects.  Grandparents can often be identified when lists are analyzed, and they are another huge source of support for campaigns that benefit children. 

Example 2: Age could be used as a variable to send a special solicitation about legacy giving and estate planning. 

There are many other valuable pieces of information that can be compiled from an existing donor list including marital status, income, assessed property value, favorite pastimes, etc.  Knowledge is power and this information can be used to further segment donors, and to craft campaigns that resonate with the appropriate segments.

Other mailing lists that match the profile of the list that was supplied:  One of the best ways to leverage information from a donor list is to have a modeled list created.  A modeled list is a new list of prospect donors who share characteristics with members of an existing donor list.  This is as close to “cloning” existing donors as possible, and is widely recognized as one of the most effective ways to grow a donor base of passionate supporters.

What are the additional benefits?  You get to “clean up” your list. Donors on the existing list who have relocated or passed away are identified. Relocation information can be used to either update address information in the main donor database, or to remove donors from a list completely for charities with strictly locally based missions.

In any mailing campaign, the database is by far the most critical indicator of success.  In fact, research from Mal Warwick’s book Revolution in the Mailbox: Your Guide to Successful Direct Mail Fundraising indicates that 50% of the success of a mailing campaign is based on the mailing list.  Use this information to assure the profitability of future fundraising & acquisition campaigns.

Blase Ciabaton
http://www.thedirectmailman.com/
Please think of Blase as your nonprofit Direct Mail, Mailing List, and Printing Guru.

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