Lessons from the DMA Nonprofit Breakthrough Fundraising Conference

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the DMA Nonprofit Breakthrough Fundraising Conference.  I wanted to better understand the key issues that nonprofits outside of higher education are facing and what they are doing to tackle those issues.  I thought everyone might like to hear about a few of the consistent themes from the conference.

Testing, Testing, Testing

For those in higher ed fundraising, if you think you want to “test something” this year, know that your nonprofit colleagues are testing all the time.  Whether you consider testing gift arrays (look out for our white paper in the next couple weeks), letter package design or changes to your online giving page, there is great value in testing to learn more about your constituents and what inspires them to give with the goal of optimizing your results.

Get Ready for the Holidays

While every year it seems our favorite stores start stocking holiday items earlier and earlier, fundraisers should take heed.  August is the time to start reviewing your direct mail results from last year, formulating your timelines, developing your copy and design, and setting your plans in motion.  It’s also time to think about how your phonathon can help “break through the noise” during the holidays when direct mail and email volumes are peaking.

MC Integration

My beliefs and observations from the higher ed market were confirmed in session after session.  There is no perfect integrated plan, everyone wants to move toward integration to improve results and better communicate with their audience, but everyone struggles with how to do it.  Understanding channel influence and the need to look at your results holistically were key points with multiple illustrations on how a solicitation via one channel can drive revenue toward another.  Drawing conclusions by analyzing the response rate or ROI for individual appeals can be misleading at best.

Regular Giving

The idea of regular or recurring gifts was one that gained a lot of attention, with several nonprofits sharing how they are using all their channels to convert donors to give on a recurring basis.  We all understand some of the challenges with recurring giving, but the bottom line is that there is a lot of opportunity and much that can be learned from nonprofits that have been promoting this for years.

I would encourage all of you to start thinking about the topics above and ask your staff the following questions:

1) What meaningful tests are we conducting this year, and how we will measure the results?

2) Do we fully understand how our holiday appeals performed last year and how all our channels are working together to maximize year end giving?

3) Have we analyzed how our channels are influencing each other?

4) How could regular giving positively impact our fundraising efforts?

P.S. Be on the lookout for additional blog posts and white papers on these topics over the next couple months.