What Makes Fundraising “Sticky” to Drive Donor Loyalty?

Donor loyalty is always a hot topic with fundraisers. We want to engage donors to truly adopt our cause, stay with us, and give more over time. That’s the basis of a robust donor pipeline as well as the path to greater meaning and purpose for donors.

Fundraisers want philanthropic giving to be more “sticky.” We want donors to make giving to us part of their lifestyle and to keep giving. Here are three key ways to do that:

• Make giving mission and impact-driven. You can no longer expect your donors to give because you’re an established charity or because it’s “tradition.” That’s not how donors choose now, especially the younger generations of givers. You have to lead with your mission and what the actual impact of giving is. Share your mission boldy along with stories and numbers that describe the impact of gifts large and small. A key rule of thumb in 21st-century fundraising: put your impact first, your logo second.
• Make giving social. As humans, we are just more likely to keep doing things that we do socially. Feeling part of something is crucial in the giving experience. That’s why matching challenges, donor walls, volunteer ambassador outreach, and social media giving campaigns work. Use all these tools to bring greater social connection to the giving experience.
• Make it easy to give. If it takes more than a minute to give to your charity online, you’re doing it wrong. Reduce friction to make it easy to give, especially for new donors. Interestingly, to make giving ‘sticky,’ it needs to be effortless or ‘slick.’ That means accepting all payment methods, with the ease of a Face ID on a mobile device. It’s also crucial to embrace rising giving vehicles, like donor advised funds and family foundations, providing easy instructions and great stewardship for donors who choose these strategic giving methods.

These are three ways to supercharge your donors on the path to greater cause adoption. The result: a better giving experience. One that is likely to become more “sticky.”

It’s about providing greater joy to donors. After all, that’s why we’re really here as fundraisers. And when giving becomes an easy, connected, and impact-driven experience, you’ll find that your donor pipeline accelerates rapidly. That means more reliable annual revenue and more major givers over time.

So, fundraisers, I encourage you today to pick one of these three areas, and ask: how can we do it better? Start one step at a time, and I’ll bet you see immediate success.

I’ll be talking about these and other key aspect of cause-driven engagement in a webinar soon with some great experts. Please join us, or register to get the recording after, and put your fundraising on a path to more sticky, fulfilled donors.