August of 2021 marks the one-year anniversary of launching the Donor Participation Project. From those initial sessions with just a handful of participants to over 1,000 fundraisers today, the amount of learning has been incredible.
What is the Donor Participation Project?
The Donor Participation Project (DPP) convenes fundraising professionals who are concerned about the nationwide decline in donor participation (20 million US households lost between 2000-2016).
We believe this can be solved by changing our fundraising practices and want to learn from peers who are moving the participation needle.
Lessons Learned from the DPP
All of our sessions are recorded and available in the donor participation project resource library.
Community
Our very first speaker, Angie Thurston presented on the importance of “deep community” for organizations that want to attract and keep millennials.
I believe her findings apply to all age groups. People seek community. Activities that create community have these characteristics:
- They are recurring and happen with some frequency
- They are participatory
- They have a clear purpose. Ideally, that purpose is aligned with your organization’s.
- And, because you can’t do it all, they often require volunteer leaders
These types of activities are also a great environment to create vulnerability loops, which is the fastest way to create trust. Trust is a requirement for any type of significant giving. So strengthening your nonprofit’s communities makes business sense.
Nonprofit Communications
Dr. Bill Donohue from Michigan State shared how poorly nonprofits are communicating in the new world of social media. Nonprofits should communicate in ways that generate feelings of trust and authenticity. They often achieve the opposite effect.
Here were his recommendations. Nonprofit communications must be:
- Frequent. As in weekly or even daily depending on the channel. The annual report is a thing of the past.
- Mission-focused. Every single piece of communication must breathe your nonprofit’s purpose.
- Authentic. Forget highly produced fluff pieces. Think of something you could record on your camera.
- Responsive. People will comment and have thoughts. Some of them will be negative! Modern nonprofits will be able to constructively engage with everyone.
Adam Platzer’s presentation on the path that leads from engagement to major gifts also emphasized how important it is that you respond in a timely manner. Timely as in within 24 hours! His motto?
Shock Them with Your Follow-up!
Adam Platzer
Another way to ensure timely communication and stewardship is through marketing automation. We organized a study group to explore this topic over several weeks.
To build trust, your nonprofit must be perceived as:
- Competent. This is why timely responses are so important. Timeliness signals competency.
- Honest. Are you telling the truth?
- Benevolent. Do you have my best interests in mind? Or are you self-serving?
- Open to feedback. Do you respond well to suggestions for improvement and other ideas?
Case Studies
Part of our group’s mandate is to learn from those who are successfully moving the donor participation needle. We were honored to have a chance to chat and learn from leaders at these institutions:
- William & Mary’s Successful Giving Participation Strategy
- The University of TN’s Donor Participation Growth
- Engagement to Major Gift: Lessons from Case Studies with Adam Platzer, RIT
New Ways of Giving
The DPP also brought leading experts in these emerging areas:
- Gaming and eSports Fundraising: A New Frontier with Diego Scharifker, USO
- Monthly Giving: All or Nothing with Nicole Stern
Nicole Stern generously shared her game plan for automatically recurring gifts AKA monthly gifts.
Donors that give this way have much higher retention and give more lifetime. What is not to love?
Well, successfully building a monthly giving program involves reworking your business to make it “monthly giving-first.” It won’t work as a simple add-on to existing giving methods.
Leading with Engagement
Sustainable philanthropic success requires looking holistically at your fundraising operations.
We were fortunate to have a conversation with one of the leading proponents of an integrated, human approach to transformative philanthropy: Live Q&A with Jim Langley, Langley Innovations
Design thinking is a discipline that is especially good at helping us reenvision existing problems and find new solutions. In Donor Experience Mapping with Emily Taylor, teenyBIG, we actually got to collaboratively build a donor engagement map for a fictitious organization: teenyBIG University!