Use a Maturity Model to Set a Vision for Fundraising Growth

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” may be your least favorite interview question. But when you look at the future of your fundraising organization, the same question is essential and should be at the top of your list of questions you must answer. This is especially true for senior leaders responsible for setting the vision for long-term growth.

Presumably, the answer to that question will include forecasts for growth in fundraising revenue. To explore that further, let’s start with a few crucial questions to ask yourself:

• Where will our fundraising revenue growth come from?
• What investments will we need to make to drive that growth?
• How can technology help accelerate growth?

The framework of this five-step maturity model for digital fundraising shows the traits and attributes of fundraising organizations at various levels of their maturity. The goal is to help nonprofit leaders identify their place on this continuum — what’s holding them back? What steps do they need to take to level up?

Most importantly, this maturity model can help identify strategies to drive growth, build new and retain current supporter relationships, and ultimately increase mission impact.

1. Reactive

You focus on keeping up with the status quo rather than driving growth.

You’re likely at the start of your digital transformation journey. You may be underinvested in resources, technology and organizational alignment. Thus, your leaders spend most of their time reacting to problems instead of creating solutions to drive growth.

You may be experiencing stagnation or even shrinking and falling further behind comparable programs. For example, you’ve experienced a significant decline in revenue and peer-to-peer events have shrunk in participation. COVID-19 seriously disrupted your community engagement because you lacked an effective way to virtualize these events. Now that events are back, participants have moved on and your organization has no way to recapture their attention.

To level up, invest in capabilities proven to drive fundraising growth including activity tracking, achievement badges, fundraising milestones and donor incentives set by the fundraiser. These gamification tactics can significantly expand the supporter base, create new communities and help participants exceed their fundraising goals.

2. Proactive

You implement a sound strategic plan that includes investment in tools and resources.

You’ve aligned your organization around a sound strategic plan, including investment in the tools and resources needed to drive growth. You’re seeking partnerships and welcome conversations with partners, consultants and technology solution providers who can help solve problems.

You may be working on developing business cases to support your investment requests but still lack internal buy-in and the supportive culture to get the funding you need to make a difference. Here’s where partners can help by providing data, proof points and relevant success stories to help fuel your business case and prove that legacy or home-built systems aren’t supporting your plans for growth.

For example, you realize your participant and donor bases are aging out and develop an online live streaming and gaming fundraising initiative to engage new demographics on the fundraiser and donor level. You need help from a partner to get internal buy-in, reach content creators unfamiliar with your cause and initiative, and execute the new program.

To level up, reach new audiences with compelling experiences including live stream fundraising and a strategy to reach high performing content creators and influencers. Invest in third-party technology with capabilities to power a compelling and experiential live stream fundraising event that will draw the attention of the online content creator community. These partners can go to bat alongside you, helping you create the business case, secure investment, and achieve ROI.

3. Collaborative

You lean on partners that can provide insights, benchmarks and data to support your long-range plan and vision. You’ve learned to lean on proven partners who provide insights, benchmarks, and data to support your long-range plan and vision. You’ve secured the internal commitment needed to invest in technology and third-party solutions to augment your internal expertise.

You experiment (cautiously) with innovation and have internal resources to implement and manage your new solutions.

For example, your organization struggled to engage your supporter communities over the last two years without in-person events. The decrease in revenue hit your organization hard, and you’re looking for ways to come back stronger than ever — reengaging your past fundraisers and donors and creating new supporter communities.

To level up, align with experienced partners who can help you improve and give strategic input to help you reach your growth goals.

Combine an investment in a peer-to-peer fundraising platform — outfitted with many of the key capabilities we already mentioned — and partnership with event production consultants with expertise in your chosen technology. Together, you can create a new program or reinvigorate a longstanding initiative.

Your event should include opportunities for in-person, virtual and hybrid supporters with engagement paths for each. This combination of technology and expert partnership creates high levels of community engagement and extends your supporter base.

4. Advancing

You become an early adopter of new technologies and processes. You’re early adopters of new technologies and processes and view these advancements as an investment rather than just numbers on a spreadsheet. You use new tools to accelerate fundraising growth, engage new supporter demographics and eliminate wasteful and outdated processes.

For example, you run a well-known event with broad reach and want to leverage your supporter base to drive more sustainer giving. You need a way to engage these donors in a more consistent and effective way to incentivize them to become monthly donors.

To level up, look for best-of-class technology with advanced integration capabilities versus trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution for customer relationship management (CRM), digital fundraising and marketing.

• Use technology and your wealth of data to identify, prioritize and reach out to past supporters. But building your tech stack doesn’t mean finding a one size-fits-all solution.
• Invest in best-of-class technology with advanced integration capabilities, so your software, tools and systems all speak and work together.
• The key to avoid settling for second-best is investing in integrations through exceptional partner management and project planning. The result is data integrity and knowing you have the best solutions working for you.

5. Forward-Looking

You work with partners to accelerate innovation and propose new solution ideas. You’re not only early adopters of new technologies; you actively work with partners to accelerate innovation. You propose new solution ideas and better workflow concepts, putting pressure on partners to keep up with your needs.

You’re actively involved in product discussions with your solution provider, participating in focus groups, usability testing and product ideation. You may even fund new projects knowing you’ll have early mover advantage with new solutions.

For example, you see an opportunity to encourage corporate partners to go beyond event sponsorships, employee payroll deduction programs, and ad hoc contributions to raise funds. You want to engage corporate partners’ employees to actively support your mission, tapping into new or existing corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

To level up, reach new audiences through a refined corporate partnership strategy, offering mutually beneficial employee engagement opportunities.

• Work with technology and service partners to develop programs that engage and motivate corporate employees to support your mission through activities and events rather than one-time campaigns or passive payroll deduction programs.
• Utilize the advanced technology solutions you’ve invested in to create in-person, virtual, and hybrid events. Think live-streamed entertainment shows, online video game competitions, cooking contests and other creative initiatives to facilitate giving while employees are actively engaged.
• Emphasize the ability to participate and give on their employees’ terms by offering flexible payment options, mobile app event participation, and physical and virtual participation options.

Now, it’s your turn. Where does your organization land on the maturity model? What can you do to level up and reach the next phase?