9 Ways to Increase Individual Giving this Year
Chapter Leadership Brief 8.23.24
by Gary Weinberg, President
DM Pros
As the summer winds down and we approach the Giving Season, now is the critical time to review your fundraising plan.
Joshua Meyer, VP of Market Engagement for Bloomerang reports that, according to the Giving USA report on 2023, total charitable giving is up, but hasn’t kept up with inflation. Individual giving actually declined by 2.4% in current dollars.
Luckily, there are steps can you take now to keep ahead of this curve.
1. Bring your teams together. Review your messaging to ensure that your direct mail, E-Mail, online, social media and events teams are properly coordinated. Scrutinize your calendar to avoid conflicts such as a direct mail appeal mailed at the same time as a gala invite. Ensure consistency of message and mission across all channels.
2. Define and quantify your fundraising goals. While you may target a specific increase in funds raised overall, this does not result from doing one big thing, but from doing many small things. Identify tactics in each channel that can add up to achieve that goal.
3. Acquire new donors. Whether you have a formal acquisition program renting outside mailing lists or not, you may already have untapped opportunities at your fingertips. People are more likely to donate to a known charity or cause than to one that’s unfamiliar. Try sending your appeal letters to volunteers, event attendees (galas, golf outings, etc.), and other in-house lists as part of your program.
4. Improve your donor retention. We appreciate first-time donors. However, you can’t consider them committed donors until you receive their second gift. This is where stewardship and your onboarding process come in. Mail your thank you letter promptly. That letter should be more than a tax receipt. It should be a sincere expression of gratitude. Go even further to spell out the impact that gift will make on your mission. Follow up with your latest newsletter and other information about all of the important things their donation helps support.
5. Reactivate lapsed donors. While it’s expected that reaching out to donors who haven’t given in 5-10 years (or more) will yield a relatively low response rate, those that do return could be of great value. Test including this group in your mailing audience and evaluate the results to see how often you should reach out, and how far back lapsed you should go on future mailings.
6. Expand your monthly giving program. Even during the pandemic, sustainers continued to provide ongoing donations. In fact, Giving USA reports that monthly giving rose 6% accounting for 31% of online giving in 2023! Take proactive steps to maintain communication with your sustainers. Include them with your newsletter mailing. Include them in your appeal program. Start by thanking them and acknowledge them for being monthly supporters in your messaging so they do not think, “don’t you know I already give monthly?” And, annually (perhaps in the Winter) ask them to upgrade their monthly gift. Erica Waasdorp, President of A Direct Solution and author of Monthly Giving Made Easy has lots of resources and FREE TOOLS for monthly giving available for download.
7. Remember planned giving. A while back I was talking to a Planned Giving Officer. She said that along the way she stopped receiving planned giving leads from the person who processed donation payments. She followed up to find the check-box option that said “Contact me about including [Our Org] in my will,” had been deleted from the direct mail reply slips! Doing outreach that focuses specifically on legacy giving will also help to grow your program. These steps together will help to plant the seed for long-term donor support.
8. Consider DAFS and other ways to give. Offering donors multiple ways to support cause that are meaningful to them while also taking advantage of tax breaks can help strengthen donor support. A donor-advised fund could be referenced in a post-script on a fundraising letter, on a reply slip, insert, or as a newsletter segment. You could also include information on in-kind gifts, gifts of stock, and donations made digitally or with cryptocurrenty in these avenues as well. By making it as easy as possible for donors to give, you can advance more supporters.
9. Evaluate your results. I started off detailing the importance of coordinating your fundraising teams’ efforts across all of your fundraising channels. That is just as important in your post-end-of-year review. Compile a response analysis report combined across all media.
Your returned direct mail reply slips, E-Mail click-throughs, and some of your social media will be easy to attribute directly to what prompted your supporter to give. Other “white” mail (checks in an envelope without a reply slip) and donations through your website are harder to attribute. You can do a “match back” to see what donations came online from a donor who received a mail appeal in the last 1-2 months prior. You can then reasonably attribute this to the mailing.
Your final report can detail all of the donations you can attribute directly to each channel (mail, E-Mail, etc.) and those that came unsolicited online or in white mail. This information will help you build your plan for next year.
The past few years have been a fundraising rollercoaster for everyone. The pandemic brought our industry a charitable giving boom in 2020. We then saw a 2-year decline (but still better than 2019!) as the pandemic subsided. While not sufficient to overcome inflation, in 2023 we saw donors starting to rebound. Taking small yet meaningful steps to improve your individual giving tactics in the upcoming Giving Season will together add up to larger returns and help you meet – and hopefully exceed – your fundraising goals.
Gary is a specialist in individual giving. He has been a leader in direct mail and direct response fundraising communications for over 35 years. He takes a holistic approach, focusing on the complete giving cycle from direct mail and digital solicitation, through acknowledgment and stewardship activities.
He currently serves on the AFP-NYC Board of Directors, Chairs the Government Relations Committee providing advocacy for charitable giving issues in NYS and on The Hill in DC, and is active in the Professional Advancement Committee that organizes the Chapter’s regular seminars. In addition, serves as Vice Chair on the Board of the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx.