The start of a new year is a great time to weigh up your membership program’s strengths and challenges and set a course for new and improved direct response strategies.
But just like resolutions that people make, it’s all too easy for nonprofits to set unrealistic goals and, worse, neglect to build the necessary foundation for achieving those goals. It’s great to want to raise more money online, for example, but unfortunately good intentions alone aren’t enough. You need a plan.
When making resolutions for your new and improved direct response program, the key to success is choosing things that a) can really make a difference for your bottom line and b) you can implement. That means stay away from vague resolutions with unpredictable impact (e.g “let’s do something online that goes viral”). Focus instead on specific, implementable opportunities for building donor relationships and raising more funds for your organization’s important work.
Here are 5 practical resolutions that can help make a big difference in your program in 2013:
1. Ask for money less often relative to the number of times you communicate with your supporters. What? Ask for money less? Of course not. But DO communicate more. If you want to strengthen your fundraising program, you have to strengthen your communications program. Take a hard look at your fundraising to issue-based communications ratio and resolve to improve it in 2013. Ideally, for every one fundraising communication, you should be generating at least three to four issue-based communications. In addition to helping build stronger relationships with your constituents, more communications online will give your organization a bigger online footprint and drive more traffic to your organization’s website.
2. Build a better home page. Take a long, hard look at your home page. Is it a welcoming living room or a no-touch museum? If you want to build a better foundation for fundraising, resolve to renovate your home page this year to better welcome and engage your visitors. Among the many purposes your website should serve, signup and giving should be top priorities in the design of your home page. Be sure your home page offers clear and varied opportunities for visitors to sign up for your communications, give and get more information. And after you hone your communications and home page strategies over the next 11 months, be ready to leverage your increased web traffic in December with a lightbox and year-end ask on your home page, like this one on the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center‘s home page:
3. Make time in your calendar and budget for key fundraising conferences. For ideas, information and case studies for improving your direct response program in 2013, get up from your desk and get out to the conferences. I still think the best information and ideas can be found at the NTEN, Bridge and DMA conferences, and are well worth the time and budget. And if you are short on budget, the DMFA has just launched an excellent scholarship program that might be able to help offset or even completely cover your costs of attending these or other excellent educational opportunities.
4. Start a monthly giving program. In an era of higher new donor acquisition costs and shrinking donor prospecting universes, it’s important to tend your relationships with existing donors even more carefully. Monthly giving is one highly effective way of curbing attrition and increasing long-term value of donors – and an increasingly important component of a successful direct response membership program. For specifics on launching or improving your own monthly giving program, stop by Eliza Slone’s session at 3:45pm on February 7 at the DMA DC Nonprofit Conference. (And don’t worry if you can’t make it – check back here after the conference for a recap.)
5. Make data analysis a priority. To make meaningful strategic resolutions that will move the dial for your program, you first need to understand your donor file and trends. Roll up your sleeves and look closely at your data. Are you losing donors at a faster rate than you’re gaining them? Are fewer donors giving more or vice versa? Get a strong grasp on what’s going on with your file to set meaningful goals for how to improve results – and don’t forget to measure your results to see if your strategies worked.
No matter what your organization’s unique fundraising resolutions may be for 2013, keep them bottom-line oriented and realistic and you’ll be sure to make an impact. Here’s to your fundraising success in the year ahead!
