It’s 2024, and the landscape for nonprofit fundraising presents challenges and opportunities for development teams. To set your nonprofit up for success and plan for potential unknowns to arise this year, organizations must embrace diversifying their fundraising strategies.
To help you diversify your fundraising, Giveffect Senior Client Success Account Manager Lorenzo Sabilia hosted the second workshop in our Kick-Start Your 2024 series, “Diversify Your 2024 Fundraising Strategy.” Lorenzo shares his top five fundraising channels with key insights, practical tips, and real-world examples. Lorenzo covers:
- Recurring giving and pledges
- Peer-to-peer and team fundraising
- Major gifts and non-cash giving
- Auctions
- Personalized appeals
This recording is your golden ticket to elevating your fundraising game. Not only will you gain a comprehensive overview of these strategies, but we’ve also got some extra highlights waiting for you below.
Still looking to wrap up your 2023? Be sure to check out our last workshop, Year-End: Customize Your Giving Statements & Tax Receipts.
Workshop Highlights:
Why It’s Important to Diversify Your Funding
By diversifying fundraising channels, your organization reduces reliance on a single source of funding, thereby minimizing financial risk and ensuring a more stable and sustainable income stream. This strategy allows organizations to reach a broader audience and adapt to changing donor preferences and economic climates.
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project Q3 Report reveals a decline in fundraising dollars, new donor participation, and overall donor retention in 2023. However, with the easing of inflation towards the end of 2023, a unique opportunity emerges to raise more with new revenue streams.
Whether you’re considering adding just one new avenue or exploring multiple strategies, the aim is to test at least one new fundraising channel this year. Now it’s time to set this year’s fundraising goals and determine the paths to achieve them. Embrace diversity in your fundraising efforts to not just meet objectives but also set the stage for a more resilient and successful future.
Strategies to Diversify Your 2024 Fundraising:
1. Monthly Giving and Pledges
Recurring giving is a donation type where donors automatically donate a specific amount with no set end date. The recurring frequency of these donations is entirely up to your team. These can be monthly, which is “Monthly Giving”, every 3-months, 6-months, or however your organization sees fit. A Pledge is a donation where a donor promises to give an organization a certain amount of money over a set period of time. A pledge has a set end date and a total value associated with it.
What are the benefits to each? Recurring or monthly giving is a reliable form of giving, and a very low-maintenance way to steadily acquire donations. Pledge-giving supporters are more likely to be loyal donors and become engaged with your organization in different ways.
How can you incorporate these strategies? Look for tools that integrate ‘recurring giving’ and ‘pledge’ options within your donation check-out pages. For example, Giveffect’s donation checkout page integrates both recurring gifts and pledge options that allow for your donors to select the amount that they would like to donate as well as the frequency of their donations.
2. Peer-to-Peer & Team Fundraising
Peer-to-peer fundraising is a strategy that empowers your individual supporters and groups to fundraise on your organization’s behalf. This can be done specifically by individuals or by groups, called ‘team fundraising’.
What are the benefits? Online peer-to-peer fundraising pages increase your organization’s fundraising reach and footprint by allowing individuals to easily share the fundraiser pages with their communities through social media.
How can you incorporate these strategies? Look for software that seamlessly integrates online fundraising campaign pages with the ability to create unique links for each team. For example, our client, Special Olympics Rhode Island’s, “Penguin Plunge” peer-to-peer team fundraising campaign showcases each team’s fundraising progress. Through friendly competition and the ease of sharing their fundraising pages, they surpassed their 100k fundraising goal.
3. Major Gifts and Non-Cash Assets
Major gifts are typically the largest donations from a single source that an organization receives over the course of a year. It is likely that major donors are invested in your organization already within your database! They could be high-net-worth individuals, and likely already within your database! Major donors are also likely to donate through non-cash assets such as stock, real estate, and cryptocurrency, to name a few.
With this in mind, implementing a strong major gifts program is a key step to a strong fundraising strategy in 2024. Look for software with a comprehensive major gifts tool and built-in tracking. For example, Giveffect’s native major gifts module includes all of the different subsections dedicated to the different stages of the major gift cultivation process. These tools allow you to add notes, tasks, and specify deadlines for major gifts, and add them to your organization’s office calendar.
4. Auctions
There are several types of auction styles: live, silent, online, and hybrid. Auctions can be the event itself or added to your events, galas, and other programming. Online auctions, in particular, are likely to increase the number of individuals bidding as well as the winning bid’s value and, therefore, your donation amount. While online auctions can be incredibly useful, they do require the right tools to successfully execute. For example, our Habitat for Humanity clients utilize Giveffect auctions to ensure that their re-store items have sold at maximum value.
5. Personalized Appeals
Personalized appeals, whether they are email appeals or direct mail appeals, make each individual feel valued and heard, thereby increasing the likelihood of receiving a donation or new supporter.
How can you incorporate this strategy? Look for technology that has the capability to segment your donors and utilize replacement variables in your communications. This ensures that your content is aligned with your donor’s giving history, capacity, interests, and preferences.
Final Thoughts:
There are many different ways that your organization can diversify your fundraising in 2024. This doesn’t mean that your organization has to adopt every strategy under the sun, but instead focus on increasing the number of fundraising channels your organization currently uses. Utilize the techniques that resonate with your organization’s unique goals, and make sure to select the right tech tools to help you along the way. As we implement these key strategies, we are poised to propel our nonprofits toward growth, engagement, and achievement in 2024 and beyond.
Ready to learn more about Giveffect and implement the strategies you’ve learned? Book Your Demo Here
Looking for more key insights for a successful 2024? Join us in our next webinar below:
Nonprofit Workshop 3: Your 2024 Winning Volunteer Management Strategy
