The True Secret of Fundraising Success

Remember that donor who made a first gift to your organization last year?  Odds are, it wasn’t a very big gift, and odds are also that you simply said thank you and moved on.  Here is a scary statistic:  Just 19% of First-Time Donors Give Again.  Think about that.  For every 10 new donors you got, not quite 2 of them gave again.  Eight decided that you weren’t worthy of their generosity.

Meanwhile, most nonprofits keep looking for new donors.  And, for every 10 they get, 8 will not give again.

Talk about a waste of time and effort.

Donors leave for all sorts of reasons.  Sometimes they die, or move away.  Some have a downturn in their life situation.  Occasionally they find another similar organization that sings more loudly to them.  But typically they move on because we haven’t shown them how important their gifts are and much we appreciate the impact they’ve had.  And because most first time gifts tend to be small, we think we don’t have to spend time thanking them and showing their impact.

And we are very, very wrong.

If that first time gift was something really substantial—say $5,000 or more—we would probably make an effort to show our appreciation.  But for $50?  Forget it.  Even though we have no idea what stands behind that $50.

During my fundraising years, there were so many donors who made small gifts-often times for years on end.  I always made it my business to reach out to those donors and find out what made them give to us—and why they didn’t give more.

It won’t surprise you that the main reason was that no one asked.  in fact, because their gift were small, no one reached out at all.  With very little effort on my part, these loyal donors always increased the size of their gifts sometimes very substantially.

First time donors, however, often don’t bother to hang around.  And since there probably aren’t a whole lot of them, there really is no excuse not to show them how important they are.

Start with something simple. Reach out to each and every one of them via email, mail, phone call (where you will probably have to leave a message!), saying “Just wanted to thank you again for the gift you gave us this (or last!) year.  Thanks to your generosity, we were able to…..”.  And note, this could be something as generic as “continue teaching children music,” or “again feed our hungry families,” whatever it is you do.

Then ping yourself and every 2-3 months remind them how important they are, and how they have made a difference.  These are not asks.  You are simply reminding them that they have made a difference.

Now that you’ve focused a bit on first time donors, do the same with lapsed donors.  Who gave to you last year but not this?  Two years ago but not since?  Create lists and send non-ask messages.  When you do that, you will undoubtedly get some of them back.  It may be a small percentage, but it will be a big boost to your fundraising efforts.