This document provides guidance on developing a donor strategy and outreach plan for a 24-hour giving campaign called "Do More 24". It discusses segmenting donors into groups like board members, top donors, mid-level donors, and prospects. For each segment, it recommends strategies like leveraging board leadership gifts, scheduling face-to-face donor meetings, and implementing an ambassador program. The document also provides a sample outreach calendar counting down to and following the giving day, with multiple reminder emails and social media updates. The goal is to engage each donor segment through personalized outreach and motivate them to participate in and help spread awareness of the campaign.
3. • WHAT = the SMART goal (session #1)
• WHO = the UNIVERSE (session #2)
• HOW = how you’re going to engage them (sessions #2-3)
• WHY = their motivation for funding the goal (session #3)
Donor strategy and outreach
4. • WHO = the UNIVERSE
• Segments:
1. Board of Directors
Current and former
2. Top donors
High gift of $10,000 and up
3. Mid-level donors
High gift of $1,000 to $9,999
Donor strategy and outreach
5. • Segments: (continued)
4. Annual fund level
High gift is less than $1,000
5. Prospects/Non-donors
Volunteers, vendors, people served, and staff who
have never made a contribution
6. Institutional partners
Current or past funders – foundations,
corporations, churches, local governments, other
nonprofits
Donor strategy and outreach
6. • HOW = getting to your goal:
• Part 1 (last session) = tie strategy into your goals
• Part 2 (today) = review technical details and
outreach
Donor strategy and outreach
7. Strategy for Board and Top Donor segments
• Leverage with leadership funds and matching funds:
• It may require a top-down coalition
• Start with organizational leadership and Board Chair
• Is there support for a leadership gift from the Board? Can you get
on the Board agenda to discuss your goal and how the Board can
play a role?
• If so, make the pitch to the entire Board – but make sure the
Chair and a few others will voice their support and their
pledges so others will join the fun
Donor strategy and outreach
8. Strategy for Board and Top Donor segments
• Technical details:
• Aim for 100% Board giving
• As with gift chart examples, leadership funds are used as your kick-off
and as leverage to encourage giving by others. It shows the investment
of leadership and that you are well on your way to achieving your
victory (people rarely want to be the first donor)
• Work with leadership to gather the commitments from Board
members, they can pay on Do More 24 or give you a credit card to
handle it for them
Donor strategy and outreach
9. Strategy for Board and Top Donor segments
• Step down to top-donors for matching funds offers
• Could be matching funds or leadership funds, whichever works better.
• Schedule those F2F meetings
• Donor’s wishes…
• When leveraging – once pledged you can share it with mid-level
donors for them to use as leverage and you can share in all outreach
to annual fund and non-donors
Donor strategy and outreach
10. Broader Strategy for All Segments
• The Give and Get
• You want every donor for Do More 24 to do this.
• Every ask is a “give and get”
• With Board, top donor, mid-level you need to make this the standard ask
• With annual fund and non-donors, make it a part of most outreach and use it
as follow up to their gifts on Do More 24.
• Use it frequently in social media posts.
• Difference between give and get and being an ambassador?
• AMB is a more formal program where people are recruiter and asked to
reach out to more people while G&G is on the go for annual fund and
non-donors – you want to catch them while they are excited about giving
you money.
Donor strategy and outreach
11. Broader Strategy for All Segments
• Ambassador Program - Overview
• Formal program for recruiting, stewarding, tracking, and soliciting
your most committed constituents.
• Endless ways to structure it and to track it.
• Your reward…more donors and donations, but usually with small gifts.
• Their reward…consider prizes and make it fun for top Ambassadors.
Donor strategy and outreach
12. Broader Strategy for All Segments
• Ambassador Program – Technical Details
• The ask:
• Determine a logical number of Ambassadors you can recruit – do you
have volunteers and/or annual fund donors from where you can recruit?
• Ask them all to give and recruit X peers to give too. Ask them to focus on
their networks outside of your organization’s radius (you’ll handle this).
• Equip them well – with email and ask language, sample social media posts.
• Give them unique and special updates they can share.
• Steward them well – reward them and thank them, they are doing a lot of
work on your behalf and sharing their love of your mission.
• Start recruiting about two months out and communicate with them often
Donor strategy and outreach
13. General Outreach Calendar
• “People will give me money because it’s Do More 24.”
• “Sending one letter or email leads to victory.”
• One month out:
• Send a “save the date” via letter, postcard, email, social media
• Segment data based on address and email address
• Keep having the conversations that you need to have
• Two weeks out:
• The first ask for give and get
• Send via letter, phone, email, social media
• What can you send that “sticks”?
• Leverage those leadership funds and matching funds
Donor strategy and outreach
14. General Outreach Calendar (con’t)
• One week out:
• Last chance for a postcard or letter if you want to send it
• The second ask for give and get
• Send via email, social media, calls, and mail if you have the
budget
• Share the excitement, again with leadership and matching funds.
What’s the outcome of achieving your goal going to be?
Donor strategy and outreach
15. General Outreach Calendar (con’t)
• Two days before:
• Reminder that Do More 24 is almost here and that you would be
honored to have them make a contribution and share the
opportunity to invest with their friends, family, neighbors, and
colleagues
• Keep it fun and straightforward, highlight any matching funds
• One day before:
• Send one email and share with everyone a rough draft of your
email schedule and a note to be patient as we try to achieve our
goal (reiterate it) and that things will return to normal the day
after.
Donor strategy and outreach
16. General Outreach Calendar (con’t)
• The Big Day – June 8, 2017
• Midnight email announcing that giving has commenced along with your
goal, leadership funds, and matching funds.
• Early morning emails (6-9 am to catch people arriving at work)
• Mid-morning update (10:30am)
• Lunch time update (noonish to catch people on lunch break)
• Mid-afternoon update (3:30)
• Drive-time update (5:30)
• Evening update (8:00 to catch people winding down)
• Final push (11:00-midnight for the final rounds)
Donor strategy and outreach
17. General Outreach Calendar (con’t)
• Follow up to Do More 24
• Remember: Do More 24 does not end on June 8th – you need to properly
thank and steward your donors immediately after the event
• Thank everyone – an email to everyone on your list announcing your
victory and, if needed, a thank you for enduring the flood
• Start merging and printing a thank you letter to sign and mail to each
donor
• Personal outreach (phone call, email, etc.) to Board members and top
donors who participated
• In your thank you email, give people the immediate option to opt out of
your list
Donor strategy and outreach
19. • Donor Strategy
• It’s a donor engagement day, not a social media day
• Use segmentation to better manage your donors and data.
• Define your segments according to what makes sense for your
organization and your universe of donors
• Consider the “Ladder of Communications” when planning
outreach and engagement for each segment
• Next class: Thursday, February 9, 2017 – Social Media, Part 1
Summary and next steps
Notes de l'éditeur
15 minutes
Preview of the day
-Any questions before we start?
Review of last session and breakdown for today and next session in January.
USER DEFiNED
You should be working differently with $25 donors than you are with $1,000 donors than you are with your non-donors.
All are important, make them feel VIP, but the outreach changes.
Leverage point – lower $ donors should be able to get more small gifts than a high $ donor can get in major gifts.
AF = great people, lots of them, can’t make it too personal.
Hence the importance of segmenting…ease of outreach.
AF is one of your most important segments for DM24…can access the most people for you as Ambassadors.
Why do we classify prospects/non-donors in their own segment?
Leadership gift from Board can be used as a match too, or just as a kick off. Make DM24 part of your overall strategy for leadership funds, which are great for every appeal.
There’s nothing wrong with asking.
Leadership gift shows that your Board and leadership is highly invested in winning and will be a huge encouragement to others.
Ideally, you want leadership gift from Board and matching funds to offer from top donors.
EX: $10k in leadership funds that encourages giving. Then $5k in matching funds to encourage giving.
Donor’s wishes – you need to work with them to determine when and how to process it. Is the gift a portion of what they would normally give, which could be leveraged for prize money. Or, is the gift new money on top of normal giving, which increases your bottom line and could also be leveraged for prize money. Or, they could opt to only offer matching funds to people in their network – EX: John.
Leadership gift from Board can be used as a match too, or just as a kick off.
There’s nothing wrong with asking.
Leadership gift shows that your Board and leadership is highly invested in winning and will be a huge encouragement to others.
Ideally, you want leadership gift from Board and matching funds to offer from top donors.
EX: $10k in leadership funds that encourages giving. Then $5k in matching funds to encourage giving.
Donor’s wishes – you need to work with them to determine when and how to process it. Is the gift a portion of what they would normally give, which could be leveraged for prize money. Or, is the gift new money on top of normal giving, which increases your bottom line and could also be leveraged for prize money. Or, they could opt to only offer matching funds to people in their network – EX: John.
Leadership gift from Board can be used as a match too, or just as a kick off.
There’s nothing wrong with asking.
Leadership gift shows that your Board and leadership is highly invested in winning and will be a huge encouragement to others.
Ideally, you want leadership gift from Board and matching funds to offer from top donors.
EX: $10k in leadership funds that encourages giving. Then $5k in matching funds to encourage giving.
Donor’s wishes – you need to work with them to determine when and how to process it. Is the gift a portion of what they would normally give, which could be leveraged for prize money. Or, is the gift new money on top of normal giving, which increases your bottom line and could also be leveraged for prize money. Or, they could opt to only offer matching funds to people in their network – EX: John.
AF and ND on day of: have a standard email thanking them for their gift and asking them to share their gift on social media and among their friends, family, co-workers and other peers. Make it easy and give them sample language and suggestions for how to email or post it to social media.
Download the gift file and send from your last cut off point.
Structure: keep your capacity in mind…LL example of how I over structured.
ASSUMPTION – doesn’t work like that. If you want to make more money and hit your goals, you need to get the message out there a lot, over and over, to the same people.
This is general outreach, not to Board, TD, Mid, Ambassadors, or Institutional.
ONE MONTH OUT: - goal is to make people aware (you’ve already asked all the right people for your leadership funds, matching funds, and have lined up your larger gifts, right?)
Think back to our ladder of effective communications – it’ll be a balance of what works the best and what costs the most. From our short list, it goes from most effective to least effective and from most expensive to least expensive.
Reach people without email addresses too.
ONE WEEK OUT: - goal is to remind people to be thinking about who to ask and how much they can give, to get them excited
Think of your budget, itf you can only mail once – now’s the time!
What’s exciting? Are you hosting an event? What about those matching funds?
TWO DAYS OUT: - goal is to remind them to give and get. To keep them excited and engaged.
DAY BEFORE: - goal is to prep them for what’s to come
Let them know there’s a flood of emails coming, share a rough draft of the email agenda.
Ask them to bare with you, it’s going to be a busy day with lots of emails and social media posts and announcements and that you hope they’ll overlook the flood while enjoying being a part of your victory.
1. THE BIG DAY –
Develop a schedule that works for you and that ties into your goals for prizes throughout the day. Take some away and add others.
Try to keep people updated and keep a good flow of emails to remind them to give and get – without sounding needy (we don’t say need…) or without drowning them.