16CREATIVE & INSPIRING FUNDRAISING STRATEGIESfrom NONPROFIT TRAILBLAZERS

16CREATIVE & INSPIRING FUNDRAISING STRATEGIESfrom NONPROFIT TRAILBLAZERS

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Fundraisers wear many hats. You’re the relationship manager, the entertainer, the technologist, the impact reporter, and more. In addition to make sure you can

raise more resources year after year, you have to keep up with a quickly changing industry and an evolving role.

Let’s jump in!

You’re expected to come up with relevant, creative and engaging campaigns to ensure you meet your fundraising goals. Yet, the technology and the avenues to get your mission’s message out are also becoming more complex.

INTRODUCTION

65% 75% 30%of donors would give more

money if they felt nonprofits knew their personal preferences

of volunteers would give more time

of millennials are learning about opportunities through social media, nearly triple the percentage of baby boomers

In this e-book, we’ll highlight organisations that have established innovative and informative fundraising strategies to rise above the noise. We’ll provide some important stats around the hottest fundraising strategies, how they worked, and how you can innovate at your organisation.

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STRATEGY 1

STRATEGY 2

STRATEGY 3

STRATEGY 4

STRATEGY 5

ContentsUse Personal Content to Turn Browsers into Donors Trócaire

Game On! Engage a New Demographic of DonorsWar Child

Prioritise Investment with Richer Impact Metrics Apprentis d’Auteuil

Take Donors on the Beneficiary Journey UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)

Go Multi-Channel and Harness Data to Reach Donors Barnardos

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1

KEEP IT PERSONAL TAILOR CONTENT TO TURN BROWSERS INTO DONORS WITH TRÓCAIRE

27% of donors say that email is the most influential communication platform to inspire a donation, and a whopping 69% of donors prefer to be thanked by email1 but how do you optimise email content to connect with more potential donors?

Leading Irish non-profit Trócaire is turning one-time donors into lifelong supporters. How you ask? With a communication strategy that harnesses the power of data.

Based in Ireland and backed by the Catholic Church, Trócaire helps tackle poverty and injustice around the world. From distributing humanitarian aid in disaster zones to encouraging sustainable agriculture, it helped 2.8 million people through 20 projects across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East in 2018.

Just sending emails asking for donations isn’t productive, so instead the charity takes donors on a personalised one-to-one journey. Using Marketing Cloud and Journey Builder, Trócaire tailors communications based on a donor’s device, location, gender, and age group.

Supporters get four emails on the journey to conversion. Always super-personalised, these emails are simple and to the point, because it knows that’s what supporters respond to best. And the results speak for themselves: Trócaire is now winning more life-long supporters, with emails generating an 19.1% open rate, 1.62% click through rate and 2,900 conversions.Learn more about how Trócaire is using Salesforce by reading their full story here.

Sources1. 2018 Global Trends in Giving Report.

STRATEGY 1

33%of mid-size and major donors (giving

between $1,001 and $10,000+) are most inspired to donate by email, compared to between 18-28% of

micro and small donors1

ST R AT E GY 1

While funding comes from a variety of sources, the Irish public contributes a considerable chunk of cash; they donated €22.8m between 2018-2019 and a more personalised email campaign is one of factors behind this success.

Email marketing prompts more than 10% of online donations (amounting to around 28,500 donations a year, worth an average €52). But faced with a multitude of one-off donors who log onto the site just once, often in response to one of its nine annual campaigns, Trócaire wanted to harness the power of data to improve its conversion rate.

Read the Trócaire story here.

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PLAY TO WIN FROM VIDEO GAMES TO LIVESTREAMING,

WAR CHILD ENGAGES A WHOLE NEW DEMOGRAPHIC OF DONORS

Video Gaming is big business: and UK charity War Child UK has been quick to recognise the platform’s potential, embedding video games and live streaming into its fundraising strategy. And its trailblazing approach has been a massive success, raising more than $4 million since gaming became a serious aspect of its fundraising strategies.

War Child was founded in 1993 by a pair of film-makers who were horrified by what they saw in war-torn countries and the long-lasting impact of violence on children. Together with its partners it works across 15 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo, helping to reunite displaced families, encourage children back into education, and improve the livelihoods of vulnerable people.

Gaming is a highly interactive medium that presents a great opportunity for meaningful engagement with a new demographic of potential donors. After several years working with the industry, in 2018, War Child launched a Gaming Partnerships team, which is responsible for its award-winning Armistice campaign. The campaign encourages peaceful gameplay during the month of November in support of children affected by war, and has raised more than €345,000 in conjunction with top gaming companies since 2016.

By engaging with gamers on the platform they love the most, War Child’s message is hitting home. Gamers can also use the live-streaming platform Twitch – which has 2.2 million broadcasters every month and 15 million active users each day – to raise funds as they play.

But gaming is just one part of War Child’s diversified fundraising strategies. In addition to building more personal relationships with donors and using data held in Salesforce to unlock greater transparency about how money is spent, it has an army of fundraisers raising money and awareness.

By equipping people with a handy fundraising pack that can be downloaded from the website, War Child has empowered individuals to raise funds across multiple channels. From bike rides to treks, and school bake sales to fundraising birthday parties, the charity’s flexible approach makes the most of every opportunity.

STRATEGY 2

ST R AT E GY 2

2.25 million 15 million gamers have engaged

with the Armistice campaign since 2016

people use Twitch every day, opening up a huge pool

of potential supporters

Read the War Child story here.

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SHOWCASE SUCCESS DISCOVER HOW TRACKING METRICS HELPS APPRENTIS D’AUTEUIL

PRIORITISE ITS INVESTMENT IN FUNDRAISING ACTIVITIES

With the number of registered charities reaching its highest level in almost ten years, competition for donations is getting tougher. Innovative fundraising strategies can really help to reach new donors and also enable charities to stand out from the crowd. But getting creative can result in costly mistakes. New strategies and campaigns need to be tested and measured to ensure impact and investment remain balanced.

French foundation Apprentis d’Auteuil has a fundraising team of around 50 people – and lots of new ideas. By carefully managing and tracking the impact of different activities, it can try new things without wasting resources.

Apprentis d’Auteuil supports around 30,000 vulnerable young people every year with a range of services aimed at preventing exclusion through education. From training programmes to collaborating with schools and families, Apprentis d’Auteuil has a 150-year track record in helping young people to grow and progress.

The foundation also has a 150-year track record in fundraising. During this time, securing financial aid has become more difficult as more charities compete for the same donations. But this hasn’t put a stop to the incredible efforts of Apprentis d’Auteuil. In 2018, it raised around €38 million in the form of corporate and individual donations.

With around one fifth of young people in France living in poverty – an increase of 200% over the last ten years – it’s more important than ever for Apprentis d’Auteuil to maximise fundraising potential and its reach.

Apprentis d’Auteuil measures the impact of new ideas, such as trying to reach a younger donor group, and campaigns over a three-year period to assess the long-term results. These metrics not only help to identify what works best, but can also be used to strengthen applications for funding from public authorities and private trusts to demonstrate that funds are used to achieve maximum benefit for those served by the organisation.

Running compelling campaigns, like the charity’s recent ‘In the eyes of others’ TV campaign, is just one way to boost fundraising; charities also need to communicate effectively and regularly with key donors. And Apprentis d’Auteuil has got this down to a fine art.

STRATEGY 3

ST R AT E GY 3

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72% of regular donors include charitable giving in their will

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Every member of its patronage team, which engages with family foundations, businesses, and major individual donors, has a fundraising portfolio that they manage in Salesforce. This enables them to schedule follow-up communications, identify synergies and track fundraising targets.

Centralised visibility of donor interactions and fundraising efforts also helps Apprentis d’Auteuil to retain and share knowledge as its team evolves without impacting the relationship with the patron.

As competition for donations continues to increase, nurturing personal relationships, measuring campaign results, and boosting efficiency can all help to maximise not only fundraising but also a charity’s impact.

STRATEGY 3

€70m donated via legacies

to Apprentis d’Auteuil every year

New activities are tracked from proposal through to live programmes. Funding for the activity is assigned in Salesforce, so the team can track impact against investment as well as any financial shortfall.

Empowering its fundraising team to work faster and smarter helps to ensure both financial and human resources are maximised. The patronage team, which is spread across the foundation’s Paris headquarters and regional offices, use Salesforce to co-ordinate their outreach to donors, which prevents duplication of effort.

4,000 accounts created in

Salesforce

As competition for donations continues to increase, nurturing personal relationships and measuring campaign results can help to maximise not only

fundraising but also a charity’s impact.

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Once a prospect makes his/her first donation, they’re put on a seven-part journey to help donors understand the story and struggles of a real-life refugee family fleeing from Syria. Donors are welcomed and register for the virtual refugee camp, which is something every refugee must do. They continue to receive targeted and personalized emails to help donors understand the impact they’re having. These emails on average have an open rate of 33-60% (well above the industry average of 25%).

The emails focus on shelter, water, education, medicine and food – all topics relevant to refugee survival. Throughout this process, donors receive badges as they engage with certain aspects of the donor journey. At the end donors are surveyed and asked if they would like to upgrade to being a monthly donor.

This strategy allows donors to understand the overall impact of UNHCR and truly understand the impact they’re having in on the refugee crisis, because donors get to go through an experience that’re personalising the recipients’ stories.

TAKE DONORS ON THE BENEFICIARY JOURNEYWITH THE UN REFUGEE AGENCY (UNHCR)

90% of donors want to know how their donations are impacting the causes they support, which means that reporting on your impact is more important than ever. A step further is helping donors understand who their money is going to, and the journey a beneficiary goes through.

How do you ensure that this happens?

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) creates a unique email journey to all donors to understand the refugee journey.

The UNHCR protects and assists refugees around the world and they began as a global effort after World War II. They are the fastest-growing mobile fundraising organisation in the world, funding programs that help over 65 million displaced people and refugees around the globe. A single campaign in 2015 raised $2 million in just one week! In addition to running successful email campaigns, UNHCR thinks holistically around marketing campaigns, and mirrors their email journeys with an immersive, 3D experience of being a refugee using their website to turn one time donors into recurring donors.

STRATEGY 4

90%of donors want to know how their donations are

impacting the causes they support

ST R AT E GY 4

Watch the full UNHCR story from Dreamforce here.

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GO MULTI-CHANNEL AND HARNESS DATA TO REACH DONORS

WITH BARNARDOS

75% of volunteers said they would be willing to volunteer more hours per year if they felt their nonprofits really knew them, while 70% of donors report that text messages are a good way for nonprofits to get their attention. How do you effectively engage donors?

Barnardo’s understands the importance of harnessing big data and providing donors the information they want, through the avenue they desire. Let’s take a look at how they do it.

Barnardo’s believes in children. To transform the lives of the most vulnerable children and young people in the UK, it wants to tackle the challenges that families face before they disrupt lives. To have the greatest impact on a child’s future, Barnardo’s needs long-term strategies to stay connected with them as they grow into adulthood.

“To meet our targets, we need to double our income over the next ten years,” says Rohan Putter, Deputy Director of Fundraising, at Barnardo’s. “That means fundraising needs to play a more important role, and we really need to make our resources go as far as possible.”

To meet these goals, Barnardo’s uses standard fundraising strategies including campaign management, taking one-off donations, and recruiting long-term donors. “To get more funding, we need to attract more supporters at scale,” explained Putter. “This year we’re aiming to bring another 25,000 regular donors on-board, and we need them to feel like part of the Barnardo’s family.”

To do this, Barnardo’s is making donor interactions more personal by offering increasingly tailored communications which is has allowed open rates, and donor engagement to go up. The team has found that SMS is becoming a big force in supporter engagement – people often don’t open an email, but they’ll always read a text. When they sign up, Barnardos sends an SMS to prompt donors to tell Barnardos more about themselves, and they use that information to tailor how they interact with them.” And operational dashboards allow them to understand if the fundraising strategies are working.

STRATEGY 5

75% 70%of volunteers would

volunteer more hours if their nonprofits really

knew them

of donors report that text messages are a

good way for nonprofits to get their attention

ST R AT E GY 5

See how Barnardos is using Salesforce and read their story here.

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Our nonprofit trailblazers have developed extremely creative and fun fundraising strategies, to influence, engage and inspire donors every step of the way.

CONCLUSION

How Salesforce can help?

We have a suite of products to help you be more innovative and implement these creative strategies. From tracking donor relationships to engaging on social media, Salesforce for Nonprofits can help you advance your mission.

Find out more here.