Work: Annual fund assessment; Development of “giving event” toolkit; execution of Giving Days, Giving Weeks, and Reunion Giving Days; email best practices training and implementation; optimization of online giving platform

Summary: Our initial assessment identified a high engagement but fragmented alumni base that was not responding to traditional appeals. We developed a standardized “giving event” toolkit that the client could apply at multiple levels of the organization (from individual departments, campuses, and reunion classes to the entire school). Thanks to these, alumni participation went from as low as 9% to as high as 34% for certain segments. The all-school Giving Week raised $253,000 and generated considerable positive donor energy and social media activity.

This highly-ranked graduate school in Washington, DC had a strong major gifts program but needed to increase broad-based support from alumni to meet its full potential. Alumni and friends were highly engaged with their individual programs and among themselves but this was not translating to increased giving.

The Assistant Dean for Development came to us for an assessment of the annual fund program and recommendations for growth opportunities. Based on the strength of our suggestions, the engagement was extended into the implementation phase.

Our initial research discovered that:

• Alumni were highly engaged at a micro-level: with their specific professor/s or functional program, but not so much with the school in itself or even the university.
• Board members were clamoring for increased alumni giving participation.
• Mail solicitation (managed by a central office) was not moving the needle. Alumni complained that it seemed tone-deaf to their areas of interest.
• A school-wide Giving Day did not seem like the best course of action due to questions on how many alumni related to the school as an entity.
• The school had just started a reunion program.

Action Plan

Based on our initial assessment, we communicated to the client the following growth opportunities:

Work with individual programs to educate staff and faculty on stewardship and donor relations best practices, eventually leading to holding several Giving Weeks for individual programs, a Giving Day for each of their milestone reunion years, a Giving Week for their international campus, and a school-wide Giving Week.

Optimize the use of the giving form. While this part of the infrastructure was managed centrally and there wasn’t much flexibility, we discovered ways to use it that were not widely known. This allowed us to implement previously overlooked best practices such as pre-selecting monthly gift options or pre-populating gift amounts in email asks.

Leverage a strong leadership annual giving society to celebrate their first school-wide Giving Week. We provided all the planning elements and assisted the in-house team in running the event: strategy sessions, volunteer engagement ideas, project management, best-practice email templates, copywriting, giving week webpage design and maintenance, and social media/phonathon calendars.

The Results

The Giving Week brought in 250+ new donors and raised over $250,000.

Beyond these results, it thrilled board and major gift donors who got caught up in the excitement. Several leadership society annual donors made stretch gifts and issued challenges during the week.

Alumni participation sky-rocketed in the groups where our strategies were applied going from as low as 9% to as high as 34%.

Faculty and staff were thrilled to understand and implement stewardship and solicitation best practices in their departmental communications which increased their appreciation of working with their Development staff.

What the Client Said

While working with the MarktLab team, at times it felt like we were jumping off a cliff because there were so many things that had simply never been done in our Development operation! Judging by the results, they obviously know what they are doing. Their work transformed our program.

Want results like this for your organization? Let’s talk.

Work: Online giving assessment and giving platform re-design, email best practices coaching, Day of Giving strategy and execution support

Summary: An in-depth assessment of current and needed online giving capabilities led to an 343% increase in online giving. We reviewed technical and copywriting best practices for email and led the design and execution of a wildly successful day of giving that added $134,000 to the bottom line.

Even as its national and international reputation sky-rocketed, this $20M performing arts organization struggled to remain financially solvent. With large deficits, high staff turnover, labor negotiations, and a dwindling donor base its future seemed in question.

They came to us looking for a breath of fresh air and new, cost-effective ideas for their broad-based fundraising efforts.

In our initial consultation call, it was evident that:

• The organization had strong engagement with its constituents.
• Donors were eager to be involved and to increase their philanthropic support but were frustrated with the online giving platform.
• Effectiveness of email communications was below industry standard.
• It was necessary to envision a campaign that would energize and excite the donor base.

Action Plan

Based on our initial assessment, we communicated to the client the following growth opportunities:

Re-design of web giving platform on a budget. We created a completely new online giving experience using existing tools that the organization already had. Previous vendors had quoted outrageous prices to fix the situation and no progress had been made in recent years.

The new online giving platform implemented conversion optimization best practices and allowed them to follow up with donors that started a gift but do not complete it!

This part of the work saw immediate and noticeable performance increases.

Email effectiveness coaching. We taught the in-house team how to build emails that drive results.

For the first time, the organization was able to track donations to individual emails. They vastly improved their deliverability (number of emails that make it to inboxes) as well as the number of people making gifts because of emails.

Fundraising chatbot implementation. Finally, we helped them implement state-of-the-art chatbot functionality on their website.

The chatbot was effective at recovering gifts that would have otherwise not have come through. It provided a conversational, relationship-building interface with donors right at the moment when they were making a gift.

From these conversations, we were able to determine questions that were holding people up in their donations and created an FAQ section to address them.

Day of Giving design and execution. With all these elements in place and performing at a high level, the client felt confident enough to celebrate its first ever Giving Day.

Again, this project needed to happen on a budget. We provided all the elements to help the in-house team rock this philanthropy marathon: a master plan, project management, email templates, copywriting consulting, giving day webpage design, telefundraising volunteer calling effort materials, and social media templates, among others.

The Results

The Day of Giving brought in over 150 new donors and $134,000 in 368 gifts.

Beyond these results, it engaged volunteers and matching gift donors in new ways so they were excited to support the organization even during otherwise challenging times.

As a result of the improvements we recommended in email, website, and chatbot online giving exploded by 343% vs. the previous year.

What the Client Said

It’s important to stay open when coming up with ideas. The MarktLab team are subject-matter experts and really nice to work with. The ideas we generated together saw incredible results almost from day one.

Want results like this for your non-profit? Let’s talk.