Good to Great: Growth Strategies for Up-and-Coming Nonprofits

By Joe Boland and  roz Lemieux And  Bernard Ross

10 Secrets to Acquire Donors Online via Digital Technology

It’s impossible for any nonprofit to remain at its present standing without continually acquiring new donors, as current donors lapse due to numerous circumstances including financial changes, relocation and, yes, even passing away.

It’s also no secret that online giving continues to rise. Yes, direct mail and other means are still workhorses for fundraising, but more and more donors are moving online. That presents a great opportunity for nonprofits to acquire donors via this channel, often in a relatively cost-effective way.

In his Fundraising Summit presentation earlier this year, consultant and CFRE Roy C. Jones laid out 10 secrets to acquiring donors online through digital technology. Here are those 10 keys.

1. Digital integration requires drivers. “Just because you have a great website does not mean people are going to automatically show up,” Jones said. “You have to drive people to your website. There’s right ways to do it and wrong ways to do it.”

You have to use these drivers—social media, website, mobile, email, direct mail, paid search, organic search, radio, television and banner ads—to get potential donors to your site.

2. The high-performance website. “You have to make sure that your website is fully optimized,” Jones said.

That means: focusing on user action; easy navigation; use of features, sub-features and news; functional utilities; “banner blindness”; a simple, easy, predictable donation process; relevant content with rich media to tell stories; and updated in real time.

3. Test site optimization before you rebuild it. “Right now, the technology exists where you can, through a widget, build a mirror of your current site, and you can serve up hits to your website,” Jones said. “And you can split them. Some go to your mirror site, and some go to your real site.”

With the mirror site, you can A/B test easily and look at results. When testing website optimization:

Start with a “quick and dirty” usability test to find the biggest opportunities.
If the site requires it, provide a site redesign or refresh.
Perform ongoing A/B site testing, which has a huge revenue impact.

4. Use search engine marketing to spike giving. Why are search engines important? Search engines are often the first place online users go to start the information-gathering/decision-making process. Google makes it easy to search a charity, and often supporters will use their search engines over clicking on hyperlinks.

“If you’re not playing the game in search engine marketing, you’re losing a lot of money,” Jones said. “You’ve got to get involved in bidding on specific keywords in your market that relate directly, sometimes indirectly, to your charity.”

Focus on those keywords.

Jones also said you should use both paid search and organic search.

5. Don’t ignore display advertising. Display advertising helps you target prospects, Jones said, which can lead to retargeting and remarketing efforts. Once a cookie is embedded on people’s devices, you can intensely focus advertising efforts.

Many donors don’t give the first time they search for you, Jones has found. It takes time to decide, which is why retargeting is so critical.

6. You must use retargeting. Jones says it’s wise to start retargeting within 12 days of a visit, usually starting around day 4. After two weeks, response rates go down pretty dramatically for retargeting.

With retargeting efforts, you can track the following: visitors, traffic sources, geographic performance, content, e-commerce, keywords and segments.

7. Use social media. Social media is uniquely suited for nonprofits if deployed correctly, particularly local organizations. It’s still more about brand and relationships than driving revenue, but it’s all connected … and as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge showed, there is a potential for fundraising.

It’s a good way to drive traffic by engaging with supporters and followers.

8. Get mobile fast! “When I say get mobile, I’m not talking about text-to-give. I’m talking about how your website formats,” Jones said.

Websites these days must be mobile-enabled, aka responsively designed. Make sure your site can include display ads on current mobile websites.

This is important because mobile search has shown massive growth as smartphone use has increased. More than 50 percent of local searches are done on mobile phones, and the emergence of fourth-generation networks has enabled rapid growth in the mobile channel.

9. Use Web analytics. “If you’re not using Google Analytics, the e-commerce version, you’re making a big mistake,” Jones said.

Web analytics: are often free, can capture real-time and actionable data about your current and potential donors, measure how users interact with your website and allow you to make adjustments based on that data, segment visitors by how they reached your site, track visitors all the way through conversion (revenue), use recorded Web activity in segmentation for appeals, and mail deeper if they’ve recently visited your site.

10. Use email benchmarks strategies. Email response rates are very low compared to direct mail response rates, Jones said, and there’s lots of reasons for that: People ignore hyperlinks, use search engines, activate SPAM folders, etc.

In order to optimize email, you must understand your own email audience. Do an email audit, and embark on email list-building and segmentation, Jones said.

Integrating email efforts with other channels is the optimal strategy. Every appeal you do should have an email companion, Jones said.

There are lots and lots of very good, very worthy nonprofit organizations out there. But how many truly "great" charities are there? You know, nonprofits that run efficient programs, maximize fundraising and operate as a unified, holistic organization?

Given the rapid rate of turnover in the nonprofit sector and donor retention rates that leave plenty to be desired, evidence suggests that there aren't too many nonprofit organizations that have reached their full potential.

There are myriad reasons why—lack of funding, stagnant leadership, more discerning and demanding donors, economic circumstances, and the list goes on. But one of the biggest reasons is that so many nonprofits are content with being good, happy with the status quo and continuing to do things "the way they've always been done." That type of thinking, while common and relatively reasonable on the surface, actually stifles innovation and suppresses growth. That is especially true today, when donors and the public demand more from the charities they support—more transparency, more reporting, more personal communication, more options, more everything.

That's why "good is the enemy of great," says Bernard Ross, director of the Management Centre (=mc), an international management consultancy for nonprofits. Ross took this notion from acclaimed author and leadership guru Jim Collins' book, "Good to Great." It's been the foundation of Ross's work, utilizing Collins' teachings to help nonprofit organizations go from "good" to "great."

As Collins relays in his book, a great organization is one "capable of making a significant difference and achieving sustainability."

So how does an organization get to that point? It certainly isn't easy, as Ross and =mc lay out.

Brutal honesty

In order to truly get to the next level, nonprofit leadership must take a good, hard look at the organization itself. It must assess where exactly the organization is at now, where it wants to go and what's needed to get there. This requires absolute, brutal honesty.

Each organization needs to ask if it is genuinely making advancements in its mission—addressing poverty, feeding the hungry, saving the environment, preserving history, etc. A nonprofit can only truly be considered great if it achieves its mission—actually reducing global warming, slowing disease, saving animals, etc.

While nearly all charities strive toward this, not all have been able to make the claim that their existence actually has stemmed the tide toward the missions. So ask yourself these questions about your own organization—if you really are making progress toward achieving your mission—and then make the "conscious choice" to go from where you are (good) to where you want to be (great).

3 stages to the next level

According to Collins, organizations can go from good to great through three practical stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action.

Disciplined people. Great nonprofits have leaders who are ambitious for the cause, the organization and the work, but not for themselves. They are selfless and have a fierce determination to do whatever it takes to deliver results with humility and will. So what separates these so-called "level 5" leaders from the growing sector of competent, professional nonprofit leaders?

It all comes down to building the right team. Nonprofit leaders need to ensure they have "the right people on the bus" in the organization and the wrong people "off the bus." Yes, it can be difficult and unpleasant to restructure a team and let people go, but these are the type of tough decisions leaders are there to make. And the best ones do just that, making the tough calls even when they don't want to.

Then, once the right people are on board, the leader must make sure the right people are in the key seats to steer change and growth. It's all about determining who first, then the what. You can't truly achieve your mission unless you have the right team in place to get the job done.

Disciplined thought. The best organizations and leaders are rooted in reality, including the harsh reality of their performance against the mission. Still, they don't allow the situation to prevent vision and focus, and they believe the organization will succeed. So you need to not only boast of success, but acknowledge failure and relay the truth—all of the truth—about your performance against mission.

The best nonprofits identify their core competencies and strive to be the best in those—even if that means being the best local hospice charity in your city, for example. Greatness comes about by consistently applying a simple, coherent idea—what =mc calls the "Hedgehog Concept."

The hedgehog concept involves three intersecting circles: what you can be the best at, what you're passionate about and what drives your resource engine. Too many people spend too much time pursuing the new rather than focusing on core competencies. Make sure your organization spends most of its resources on the intersection of what you're the best at, what you're passionate about and what drives your resource engine—while investing remaining time on the new and innovative.

Disciplined action. Disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and take disciplined action are the cornerstones of a greatness culture. In this culture, people work in a systemic way and operate with freedom in a framework of responsibilities. This helps foster innovation and accountability—workers are given responsibilities and can go about achieving those responsibilities in a way that works best for both them and the organization.

This helps lead to adopting innovative approaches that build long-term success—not short-term wins such a direct mail test or new database. It's about finding new ways to deliver services, build new partnerships, and meeting the need and new demands in society. It's incumbent upon leadership to find and invest in the techniques and technologies that will transform the way the organization operates. Then the nonprofit must build momentum with these new changes to show progress and change the mind-set of being satisfied with good in order to achieve greatness.

Only then can a nonprofit truly begin to grow. For up-and-coming organizations, these steps are vital.

From there, a nonprofit must shift its focus to its supporters and constituents to truly engage them for sustained growth.

Growth strategies

Acquiring donors for nonprofits is no easy task—entire departments exist around attracting new donors via social media, email, on-the-ground organizing and direct mail. The challenge, however, is to engage and maintain these donors over time so they both provide recurring gifts and love the organization enough to tell their friends and family about it.

According to the Blackbaud 2014 Charitable Giving Report, online giving over the last year grew a formidable 8.9 percent, a strong indicator that more people are willing to give online than ever before. Once these donors are acquired, it would be a shame to let them go!

Stewardship is the most important strategy when engaging a donor year-round. There are a few obvious pieces of communication to start with: Does the organization send a thank-you email and email welcome series? Is the content compelling—would the writer open it? Does the organization ever talk to this donor again?

Newer methods of stewardship include social media engagement and can go a long way in making a donor feel appreciated. This includes following back donors on Twitter and publicly thanking them for their support. Through a social listening tool, an organization can see if those supporters are talking about related issues and favorite, retweet or respond as necessary.

Maybe an organization wants to engage with donors on topics they are already talking about. Social data allows a communications team to track popular keywords, or social mentions, that are most important to their supporters. With this information, the organization can capture this energy and put out a donation ask that acknowledges how important a particular issue is to them at the moment. Perhaps there is even a single keyword that can prompt a donation ask. Automated emails based on these social mentions can allow organizations to send messages within hours of when a supporter was talking about it. Automations and triggering of relevant donation asks free up time to draft new content, find new donors or refuel on coffee.

In addition to communicating with donors based on social mentions, think about leveraging your influencers for fundraising. By using data such as a supporter's Klout score, an organization can easily identify a variety of celebrities, professionals, bloggers or prolific tweeters who can spread a message further than ever before. Across a survey of 90 Attentive.ly nonprofit clients, it was found that the top 5 percent of an organization's influencers can reach more than 470 times more people than everyone in the nonprofit's CRM. Sending a personalized message to these influencers is the first step in building a relationship in which they may be interested in spreading the story of why they themselves are recurring donors. This can help attract new donors and remind existing donors why they provide support in the first place.

The tools are here to capture what supporters and donors are talking about. The magic is in how an organization decides to use them. Engaging with people when they're interested in an issue, prompting them with a timely donation ask around topics important to them and having an influencer help tell the organization's story are all different ways nonprofits can easily communicate with supporters and fight back against donor drop-off.

Roz Lemieux is CEO and co-founder of Attentive.ly. Reach her at hello@attentive.ly

Bernard Ross is director of the Management Centre (=mc). Reach him at b.ross@managementcentre.co.uk