8 Ways to Increase Your Fundraising Revenue Without Increasing Your Workload

Increasing fundraising revenue is a challenging task that requires a lot of work. Thankfully, helpful tools exist to make the process easier. 

You’re likely always looking for how to increase your revenue without increasing the amount of work placed on your team. By embracing automated marketing tools, as well as encouraging larger and long-term giving, you can help keep donors around and bring new ones in.

Let’s explore the ways in which you can increase your fundraising revenue without taking on a ton of extra work.

Recurring Donations Means More Sustainable Income

The best way to increase fundraising revenue is through recurring donations. If you unlock your recurring donations revenue, you’ll see a huge return without a huge workload.

Recurring giving will provide a solid foundation of reliable donations while also working to grow your donor base. Monthly donation programs encourage regular gifts.

They also provide a sense of belongingness and community, which entices others to join. When donors see how simple (and fun!) it is to belong to a community of folks who regularly give and keep in touch, they’ll feel compelled to join.

Adding a recurring donations feature to your donation form plugin can give your donors full control over how often they give or decide on preset time periods and amounts.

Fee Recovery Increases the Amount You Get on Each Donation

All credit card processors and payment gateways charge fees, depending on the platform. These fees cut into your online donations and mean less money goes to your cause. Your donors care about how you spend your funds.

They want to know that as much of their donation goes to your cause as possible. Why not ask them to donate a small extra amount to help buffer the costs of online credit card processing?

It’s important to remember that with fee recovery, gateway fees are not removed. Instead, you are asking the donor to give a little bit more to cover those processing fees.

The Fee Recovery Add-on allows you to give donors the choice to add that small extra amount so their total gift is not impacted by processing fees. You’ll benefit by increasing your total donated income.

Your donors benefit by knowing that 100% of what they wanted to give is going right to your cause.

Add Peer-to-Peer Fundraising for Volunteer Fundraisers

Peer to Peer fundraising with images of a P2P campaign

Peer-to-peer fundraisers are supporters who raise money on your behalf. It’s a wonderful way to expand reach and increase fundraising revenue through the power of word of mouth.

The Peer-to-Peer Fundraising add-on allows you to open up your donation forms to your supporters. Volunteers create profiles and join teams. Leaderboards create competition, and badges provide gamification.

Want to know more about Peer-to-peer? Here are some helpful resources:

Allow for Tribute Giving to Increase Donation Amounts

Red background with a candle element with the word tributes.

Research shows that almost half of all donors give because they are emotionally invested in the cause they are supporting. This usually translates to having a personal connection through witnessing a loved one’s triumph or struggle.

With tribute giving turned on, you can unlock this passive opportunity to gather more funds for your cause. It also allows donors to express their care and passion towards their honored tribute.

Tribute giving also works well combined with peer-to-peer. Folks in the community will be compelled to give with a campaign centered around an issue they’ve all been affected by.

Gamify Giving to Inspire Return Donors

Side by side images of PacMan, someone holding a video game controller, and a high score screen

Gamification is being used in fundraising to inspire, encourage, and promote more giving with your donors.

In a gamified system, users are motivated by the possibility of a reward. Whether it’s through a competition, progress bar, badge, or points, there are easy ways to increase revenue by adding in a small challenge or incentive.

Gamification can do more than increase revenue: you can infuse gaming elements in a way that educates and engages.

Most importantly, you can inspire folks to take action. Gamification elements are included in fundraising efforts like peer-to-peer. Or, there are many gamification plugins you can add to your giving form for more optionality.

Learn more about how challenges, leaderboards, and goal bars can lead to giving: Easy Fundraising Gamification Ideas to Inspire Giving Now

Build User-Generated Content Into Your Fundraising Strategy

Three side by side images. Left: a hashtag. Center: People recording a podcast or video. Right: a stack of stickers

User-generated content is anything that someone outside your marketing team creates for your nonprofit to use. Most commonly, user-generated content is solicited for social proof or for website testimonials. This content can include images, text, videos, audio, or social media stories or posts.

Asking for and using user-generated content for nonprofits adds little work on your end and can have a great impact. It’s another way to deliver your message to inspire your community.

It also shows the effort that’s already underway, which can convince folks that their dollars are at work.

Plus, when folks see their stories not only being acknowledged but promoted, it’ll motivate them. It’ll inspire others to share their story and get involved, knowing that the organization values it.

Automate Your Marketing to Make it Easier to Grow

Three side by side images. Left: a group of volunteers. Center: a mail icon with a "2" notification. Right: a group of volunteers releasing a fish.

There are many ways to automate fundraising marketing, but at least, you should be using email marketing automation along with an automation tool like Zapier to connect to marketing platforms.

All email marketing integrations should come standard with automation tools. Automations send emails when a user performs an action, such as making a donation. Use email automations to nurture donor leads, thank donors, and encourage recurring giving after a one-time donation.

You can also automate thank-you notes through a tool like Handwrytten to add a personal feeling that’s super inspiring for giving.

When your donor donates, Give sends the relevant data to Zapier, and Zapier processes that data in a way that will make sense to Handwrytten.

Once Handwrytten receives the correct information, it sends out your donor thank you letters without you needing to spend a long evening licking envelopes.

Use Text-to-Give for Print Campaigns

Three cellphones displaying different stages of a text-to-give fundraising campaign

Print is a perfect place for a text-to-give campaign. In print ads and direct mail marketing, text-to-give provides a quick way for inspired folks to act. Rather than directing people to a website, provide a phone number where folks can text their donation. This prevents users from having to navigate to type in a URL, go to your giving page, and enter payment information.

If you send annual appeals or impact letters to your donors via direct mail, it’s also a great place to implement SMS fundraising.

Increase Your Fundraising Revenue While You Sleep

With the above strategies in place, you can be sure you’re maximizing your potential for donations without taking on extra hassle.

If you’re ready to see how GiveWP’s powerful tools can help you fundraise, view a demo site or book a group demo today.

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