Building up a fundraising campaign can be rewarding, but once it’s finished, are your donors and volunteers actually continuing their support for your organization? Keeping supporters around can be vital for creating a strong fundraising foundation, but it’s not always easy to know where to begin.
We’ve compiled three simple and effective ways you can retain donors and volunteers. You just need to:
- Provide online engagement opportunities
- Encourage supporters to submit matching gift or volunteer grant requests
- Actively show gratitude for your supporters
Let’s get started!
Provide online engagement opportunities
Online engagement has become increasingly popular after the worldwide shift to virtual fundraising – but is your online presence actually retaining your supporters? It’s no secret that donors are constantly getting flooded with online content, so take a moment to consider how yours could stand out from the electronic crowd.
A great way to spice up your web content is to provide many opportunities for active engagement from constituents. This might include providing online games or cause-related trivia, prompting supporters to share their reasons for donating or volunteering, and making it easy for followers to share your content and further advocate for your cause. Once you begin garnering engagement you can even start publicly thanking supporters by replying or sharing their posts and expanding online touchpoints with your organization!
When you consider the supporter perspective, it’s easy to see why online engagement opportunities can lead to retention. Your donors and volunteers might be emotionally connected to your organization, but they are not always thinking of ways to make an impact. Remind them of their value with simple online engagement tricks and help them see why they should continue their support for your organization.
Encourage supporters to submit matching gift or volunteer grant requests
It’s great that donors and volunteers support your organization, but are they making the most of their contributions and efforts? Many of your supporters probably qualify for matching gift or volunteer grant programs through their employer – meaning your organization could be increasing their contributions without ever asking them for increased support.
Volunteer grant and matching gift programs are both forms of corporate philanthropy, and they are widespread. With well over half of Fortune 500 companies offering corporate philanthropy programs, it’s probable that many of your supporters qualify for these funds. Despite this, many organizations miss out on matching gifts and volunteer grants purely because their supporters don’t know about these programs and therefore don’t take steps to harness them.
Once you educate donors about their corporate philanthropy program, they are sure to be further engaged with your organization. In fact, mentioning matching gifts in fundraising appeals results in a 71% increase in response rate and a 51% increase in average donation amount. When you think about it, it all makes sense – your donors and volunteers are connected and committed to your organization – so why wouldn’t they want to increase their impact at no extra cost to themselves? Volunteer grant and matching gift programs are a great way to engage donors, share their impact and ultimately retain them as recurring supporters for your organization.
By simply educating your contributors, it’s easy to not only increase revenue, but also to show donors how their efforts can make a huge difference in your organization. Check out online matching gift and volunteer grant software to learn more about automating the matching gift process.
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Actively show gratitude for your supporters
Our final retention tip for today: actively show gratitude for your supporters. Everyone likes to feel appreciated, especially when they are using time or resources to help a cause they care about. Since your supporters mean so much to your organization, it’s important to show them how much you value their efforts.
For donors, you can easily use your donation receipt page as an opportunity to share your gratitude. With a wide open space that already captures your donors’ attention, you have the perfect opportunity to give thanks and increase donor retention. Try including a gratitude video or a description of how their recent gift will make a huge impact on your organization. These simple call-outs will leave your donors feeling appreciated – making them more likely to return and give again!
For your volunteers, it’s a similar process. You can include thank you page callouts once the volunteer registers for an event, or maybe send them thank-you cards by mail or email following their session. Regardless of how you choose to show your thanks, your supporters will be happy to know that their effort was not lost and that continued support will be appreciated.
Using these three strategies, your nonprofit is sure to keep supporters coming back to deepen their impact, again and again.
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Ready to launch your corporate philanthropy campaign, but not sure when you’ll find the time? Luckily, you can automate matching gift and volunteer grant best practices using the 360MatchPro and GiveWP integration. This solution identifies donors that qualify for matching gift and volunteer grant programs, and then provides actionable next steps following their donation process to drive more revenue for your organization. Learn more about this robust solution here.
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.
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