fundraising

What I learned from 2 days in Congress – Report from the Canadian Annual Giving Congress 2015

Joshua RobertsonOctober 28, 2015

Last week I had the opportunity to speak in front of Congress and learn from some of the brightest minds in North America.  I’m referring to the Canadian Annual Giving Congress and in this post I’ll share some of the annual giving insights and ideas gleaned from the sessions in Toronto that will hopefully inspire you to achieve more this fall.

Are you social enough?

Are you engaging with your donors on social media and having a conversation? Perhaps the thought of that is a bit scary, as they might tell you something publicly you don’t want the masses to hear.  For a lot of institutions this fear prevents us from using social media to enhance the relationship with donors and create a group of engaged listeners.  During a session on Digital/Social Media in Annual Giving, the speakers shared some great examples like the Instagram one above that was used during a giving day to post personalized social media messages on Instagram accounts of their donors.

Of course you need technology to truly manage social media campaigns effectively and tools like SproutSocial, Nuzzel, Canva, and Social Toaster are finally being adopted at higher ed institutions to build and utilize a base of superfans, plan and publish posts seamlessly, and monitor your institution’s social media activity.

If you are unconvinced of the power of social media or its staying power, just watch this video.  It’s well worth the 2 minutes and 19 seconds.

View the video on YouTube

Recurring giving: “The Holy Grail of Annual Giving”

According to David Kravinchuk, Chief Advice Dispenser at Fundraising Pharmacy, recurring giving is indeed the holy grail of annual giving.  If 20-25 percent of your donors are already giving monthly, then give yourself a pat on the back and skip to the next section of this post.  For many of you, I imagine 10 percent of your donors on monthly recurring giving programs might seem like a pipe dream.  Here are a few tips David shared on how to build and retain a base of recurring giving donors.

  • Convert new donors early: Use stewardship opportunities after the first gift to encourage new donors to become monthly givers.  Don’t wait 6 months to make a recurring giving ask, think about how you can offer new donors the opportunity to make an ongoing impact by becoming monthly donors. In higher education fundraising in the U.S., we worry about asking again too soon after a gift is made. For nonprofit organizations, they aim to transition one-time donors to monthly donors within a couple months of that initial gift.
  • Gift processing, the relationship manager?: This isn’t a slight against gift processors, it simply means that once someone commits a recurring gift, the gift processor shouldn’t now be their sole touch point for these donors.  Make sure there is a communication plan to steward and upgrade these donors (and make sure that it covers multiple channels–many of our partners follow this plan).  Also think about who on the annual giving team should be handling some of the items listed in the donor care and reactivation plan.
  • Donor care and reactivation plan: There’s nothing worse than leaky bucket syndrome in annual giving.  While recurring giving stems much of that annual attrition, institutions that want to grow their base of recurring donors need to take the time to develop a plan to address issues surrounding expiring credit cards, credit card declines, upgrades and many other logistical details that need to be defined prior to promoting your recurring giving program.

Connecting with donors on Thankful Thursday

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday—or shop, shop, give as I like to refer to the trinity of days—is now just around the corner.  Last year Giving Tuesday realized an estimated 470 percent increase in online donations since it first launched in 2012 with over 32.7 million Twitter impressions. While there is charitable competition on this day, there is also heightened philanthropic awareness that institutions can leverage to attract lapsed and new donors.

During one of the sessions at the CAG, I heard how after achieving their Giving Tuesday goal, one institution immediately shifted focus to what they now call Thankful Thursday.  Two days after Giving Tuesday, they conducted thank you calls on Thankful Thursday to every donor who gave earlier that week, regardless of the channel they used to make their gift.  Of course they also sent out a thank you email highlighting the success and combined results.  Last year one of our colleagues recommended a similar approach in his Giving Tuesday blog post.  While there is always the fear that we can’t lose fundraising steam as the calendar year end looms, I believe we can’t afford not to take the time to thank donors who were inspired to give on a day when they could have easily given their support to countless other charities.  Many of them might have also given to other institutions on that same day.  Your stewardship or lack thereof may set the tone for their long-term philanthropic journey with your institution.

A special thanks to CCAE, the Canadian Annual Giving Congress and my fellow speakers for the opportunity to present and learn from some of the brightest minds in the business.

If you have any questions about how you can engage your donors through social media, strategic campaigns, or any day of the week, please email me or leave a comment below.


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