Building Core Donors: Beyond the Single Transaction
Practical Information to Help You Raise the Money You Need to Build the Community You Believe In. Campaigns and events that leverage your supporters’ networks by enlisting active supporters to speak out on your behalf can be incredibly effective. However, the issue is how to keep these “friends of friends” involved with your cause after they’ve made their initial donation.
Effective Steps to Inspire Your Donors
Without careful stewardship, it’s unlikely that many of these “friends of friends” will stick around for the long run.
They donate for various reasons, perhaps with only a passing thought of supporting your particular charity.
However, once they contribute, many of them are thrust into a communication stream from your organization that makes too many unwarranted assumptions, namely that they are aware of you and care about your problem, and that omits the crucial small talk to establishing any kind of relationship.
A strong introduction can be your only chance to persuade someone you don’t know to stay around, learn more about you, and—you hope—decide they want to keep their relationship with you.
There are many factors to take into account when introducing new people to your organization, but for now, let’s concentrate on how you should warmly welcome these new donors to your list.
Naturally, the first step is to confirm that you will be able to get in touch with these new donors.
You may not be able to reply to these new donors using all online tools and/or settings.
Make sure your new donors can opt-in to receive your messages, whether you’re starting up a campaign using Causes on Facebook or hosting an offline event using the toolset of your ASP
You’ll need to think outside the box if you don’t have a mechanism for new donors to sign up to hear from you.
First, create a strong but timely argument for them to subscribe to your list, and then push it anywhere your toolkit enables it—on the donation confirmation page or in an automated message.
The Honeymoon Series
Once you’ve decided how to get in touch with these potential donors, carefully plan how you’ll add them to your email list and give them an introduction to your organization in your own words.
One technique to immediately engage new list members when they’re most likely to be responsive is by sending them a series of “welcome” or “honeymoon” emails.
If your tools enable it, these email messages should be prepared in advance and sent out automatically as you go. If not, they should be sent in batches every week.
A honeymoon series typically aims to raise listeners up the engagement ladder by turning list members into activists, activists into donors, donors into recurrent contributors, and so on.
Consider a welcome series with a twist for friends-of-friends contributors in this situation; you’re trying to persuade someone to continue engaging with your organization after already moving up the engagement ladder by making a donation.
You could contend that these recent donations haven’t shown genuine interest in you yet, but they have contributed, which is how the majority of organizations prefer their supporters to demonstrate their support.
However, most of them acted more for their pals than for you.
The first email
Welcome these new donors in the first email of your honeymoon series while mentioning how the initial “introduction” was made.
Consider how you typically tell someone you met through another person how you met them: “Hi, Amanda introduced us the other day because she knew we had some interests in common.”
When creating the donation confirmation email that this new contributor will receive from you, keep this memory-jogger in mind (which will ideally be generated automatically after the donor makes their gift).
Take advantage of this chance to begin with a communication that mirrors how the person was introduced to your organization rather than providing the standard confirmation receipt.
Even while you might not be aware of the specific details of what their friend said to this donor about you, it’s likely that your organization has already offered copy and talking points for emails or conversations pertaining to your campaign; have a look at those when composing your email.
Focus on one of the most compelling—yet genuine—aspects of how your organization changes the world in order to engage the person you’ve just met.
The second email
Within two weeks of a new donor’s gift, send the second email in your series. The goal of this email should be to engage the donor a little differently.
Be affable and private. Reiterate the introduction, and if you can, mention the name of the person who first introduced them to you.
Tell a success story about your organization, such as how one of your efforts impacted a person, how you improved a community, or how you met someone who described how your efforts caused them to change their perspective.
Think about incorporating a few additional, succinct highlights about your internet presence, at least one of which provides a method for the prospective donor to get involved right now—link to your website’s most compelling and recent articles or your most popular online activity.
After the Honeymoon
You have a few alternatives for carrying on the conversation after sending the honeymoon series.
Consider exploring both solutions and monitoring how well they work for your organization if you have the means and resources to do so.
Simply adding your new donors to your communication stream and treating them similarly to the rest of your list is one way.
However, although this method is the simplest, it also may be the least successful at converting new contributors into engaged subscribers, depending on the frequency and type of your emails (and your new donors’ levels of interest).
Maintaining these “friends-of-friends” donors as a separate segment, limiting the number of emails you send to them, and only sending them your most compelling content (at least once a month) until their behavior suggests they’re interested in hearing more from you is a more involved and time-consuming alternative, but ultimately much more effective.
Even if a honeymoon series is unlikely to convert all of your friends’ friends into core donors and activists, it will help create a connection with these donors beyond a single transaction.
Learn more by attending the July 25 Campaigning to Potential II – Sustainability on Monday from 5:30 to 9:30 pm
Source: https://nonprofitquarterly.org/welcoming-your-friends-friends/ – Author: NzingaKoné-Miller – Nonprofit Quarterly
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