Three Ways That Fundraisers Should Think Differently About Donor Engagement

We are at an exciting and stressful time for fundraising. Nationally, donor counts and retention are down while consumer sentiment is rising and a massive wealth transfer fuels mega gifts. Donors have changed, including the channels they respond to. Today’s contributors are embracing low-friction, social, impact-driven giving opportunities. Fundraisers need to change with them.

Here are three ways to think differently about your donor outreach if you want to succeed in today’s giving environment.

Data-driven fundraising isn’t just smart, it’s more personal and engaging

We’ve been talking about data-driven fundraising for years. It started with a conversation about using your budget wisely. Today, it’s also about the donor experience. Smart fundraising shops today will:

• Use data to focus on potential donors who are engaging right now, not just who you think has money. (think: email opens, text replies, event attendance, survey responses, volunteering)
• Personalize the donor experience using a profile of real donor interests, based on what donors are reading, clicking on, and watching. Artificial intelligence can help you do this at scale.
• Ask donors real questions, retain the data, and create data-driven personas that drive donor journeys to groups of donors based on their unique perspectives and needs.

We’ve seen strategies like this do incredible things like rocket email open rates to 62 percent. It also helped institutions set records for young alumni giving. This type of data-driven outreach operates on us all every day, from Netflix and Spotify to the optimized coupons your grocery store offers you. It’s time for fundraisers to get in the tech-driven personalization game.

Young donors aren’t just our future: they are philanthropic innovators today.

We often talk about younger donors or young alumni as a group we need to invest in for the future. While that’s still true, we also need to realize that young donors are giving right now, and big.

Millennial giving has made the quickest rebound of any generation following the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wealth in this generation has doubled over the past 10 years, driven primarily by real estate values. When liquidity opens up in the coming years, donors under 40 will explode even further into philanthropic influence.

Millennial and Gen Z donors have been shown in research to be more geared toward impact-driven giving (as opposed to loyalty-driven) and influenced by peers. Younger donors also demand a friction-free giving experience. That means making sure they can give via mobile device in less than a minute.

For the most part, advancement shops are trained to approach older, less diverse gift prospects. We need to make a shift to more inclusive, purposeful outreach, and in the language of younger givers. If your fundraising is geared for older donors, you’ll soon be in real trouble.

We need to change our thinking. Millennials are in the C-Suite achieving tremendous professional success and acquiring wealth. Your younger donor group is now filled with savvy philanthropic investors. It’s time for us to approach younger donors as social, strategic givers with an impact-first message.”

Greta Daniels, Senior Vice President RNL

Changing the business model of advancement is the path to a more inclusive, sustainable future.

Here’s a common scenario: passionate organization leaders come up with great ideas for a campaign, making a list of giving opportunities that will propel the mission forward. That includes capital giving for facilities, startup funds for new programs, and even endowments to sustain them. Then, leadership calls in the fundraisers and says, “We know you can raise money for this campaign, it’s awesome.”

That’s not how today’s donors work. Trust in institutions has massively declined. Donors are much more entrepreneurial in their thinking, Givers expect to be involved and to collaborate. That means that both advancement leadership and actual donors should be more involved early. You will not be accepting big checks, just taking donors out for a nice dinner and then moving on to the next whale. Big donors are going to stay with you and be involved. Think of donors as impact investors.

No, you don’t need to let donors run your organization. But if you think you can continue to craft campaigns without them and just expect donors to show up, you’re dreaming. It’s about changing the business model of advancement. The organizations that engage donors in the formative stages and give fundraisers a seat at the leadership table early will have the best chance at success.

It’s time to think differently about donor engagement

These strategies and more are outlined in our full white paper, Sustainable Fundraising, just released. The key message is about making real, game-changing transformation, and thinking differently about donor engagement.

As you give it a read, and something sparks your creativity, drop me a line. We’re organizing regular fundraiser round tables so you can workshop ideas with peers. We’re also working with hundreds of organizations to adopt game-changing strategy like this. I’ll connect you with passionate RNL leaders who have been in your shoes, and are ready to make real change. It’s time to start on the path to engaging an inclusive, purposeful donor base. It’s time for fundraising to change. Let’s make it happen, together.