Donor-Centered Online Fundraising

Nancy Appel, CFRE Coastal Conservation League

Session description

• Join in to hear one organization’s experience in online fundraising and share your stories of success and challenge. We will talk about the pros and cons of online fundraising within a “normal” fundraising program, what messages can be successful (and when), and how segmenting can help.

Nancy Appel

• Nearly four years as Director of Development at the Coastal Conservation League

• 20 years of fundraising experience • Smallish team – four staff: grants manager,

events coordinator, development associate

This session

• About the Conservation League and why we launched this effort to dramatically increase giving using email

• What we’ve done• Appeal examples from 2017• Small groups

The mission of the Coastal Conservation League is to protect the threatened

resources of the South Carolina coastal plain - its natural landscapes, abundant

wildlife, clean water, and quality of life - by working with citizens and government on

proactive, comprehensive solutions to environmental challenges.

History

Charleston Metro Area in 1973(45,000 acres)

Charleston Metropolitan Area: 1994160,222 acres

The nature of our work

• Advocacy– Engagement on and off line

• Fundraising– Online and offline

• Synergy?

Charleston Metropolitan Area: 2030555,520 acres

Charleston Metro Area2016

Sustainable Agriculture

Referendum?

P H O T O F R O M W E B

The Growing TogetherCampaign

Our starting place

Our goal

TOOLS FOR GROWTH

– Facebook: Ads for our five issue areas, testing to see what works best– Care2: An online tool that uses petitions to find supporters– Fluent: A company that uses web display ads with a model to target who we

are looking for– Organic growth: Linking acquisition to routine social media, tabling

Facebook Digital Ads

242424

Transportation Food & Ag Land + Community

Fluent Digital Ads

252525

Care2 Digital Ads

262626

FACEBOOK REACH

Subject Avg Reach

Offshore 18,387Endangered Species 12,911GrowFood 9,698Plastics 9,314I-73 8,669

Where Does Our New List Live?

282828

New Acquisitions by Zip Code

Open, click and conversion data

• The donation email open rate increased 3.3% from 19.25% in 2016 to 19.89% in 2017.• The donation email click rate decreased from

1.21% in 2016 to 1.1% in 2017.• The donation email conversion rate increased

by a very small amount from 32% in 2016 to 32.3% in 2017.

Email List Growth

• More than 50,000 email addresses

• Approximately 35,000 subscribed

• Approximately 20,000 active

EMAIL LIST

CONSTITUENT ACQUISITION

Now that we have the list, how do we get them to give?

General

• Authenticity and honesty: People who read email want to be treated on email lists the way they’d be treated over the phone or in a real-life conversation -- with an authentic tone that’s honest about goals and needs.

General

• Clarity of message and theory of change: What's the point of each email you send? Why should someone care about it? Why should someone stop what they are doing, take out their credit card, and donate to the email, not later, but right now? Ask these questions before each send.

General

• Personalize emails, zombies and toppers– Toppers are especially effective with closer

donors – they think it’s not a mass email

• Set dollar goals • Set new types of goals for online giving– increased new donors– recaptured long-lapsed donors

Nondonors

• Respond to urgency, matches, challenges, etc.• Include daisy chain asks after all action emails

– offer many opportunities to give• Move these people up the ladder of

engagement• Do research/screening to find people with

capacity

Ladder of engagement

Returning donors

• Most normally give offline but may give online for convenience– Very few people who say they only want online

appeals actually respond in the same way as they did when they received mail

– More research that online giving is a method, not a donor segment

• Donor behavior is likely to continue to change

Examples

• 2017 Spring Appeal

• 2017 EOY Appeal

2017 Spring Appeal

• Stories about wonderful members followed by requests for support

• Two-week roll out

Timeline

$669

$104

$664

$176

$28,

373

1 2 3 4 O F F S H O R E

DONATION TOTALS: SPRING APPEAL EMAIL

2017 End of Year Appeal• EOY Launch • EOY Zombie• EOY Holiday Graphic• EOY Match Announcement • EOY Thank you from Dana with video• January Thank you from Nancy

Online fundraising growth

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Number of gifts

Where are we now?

• Still learning• Fewer, better segments• Donors are changing their online giving

behavior • Better at delivering online messages in a

more personal way

Continued…

• We have increased the width of our donor pyramid

• Online is not the magic bullet to increasing fundraising results overall

Caution

• Right-size the time you and your whole team puts into online giving – It’s important and goes to a lot of people, but …

Dollars raised 2017

Offline Online

Small groups

– What have you found has worked the best for increasing your number of email addresses?

– What has worked for increasing online gifts?– What has worked for integrating online and

offline giving?

Questions?

anca

coastalconservationleague.org

anca

nancya@scccl.org