The data tells a story. The question is what lessons we can learn from it.
Global Giving Trends
The biennial Global Trends in Giving Report (produced by Nonprofit Tech For Good and sponsored by Funraise) is chock full of important data for your organization to review and learn from. They look at a plethora of data points for each continent so that no matter where you live, you have data to work with.
Over the next two weeks I’m going to look at 6 data points which affect every nonprofit and what we can learn from each one.
Giving Preference
55% of donors globally prefer to donate via a credit/debit card online. In Australia and New Zealand, it’s 64%. In North America, it’s very similar and sits at 63%.
Donors also like to give via check, Paypal, bank transfer and other methods. Which means your organization needs to provide donors various options for giving. Limiting it to just one does not meet the donor where they are. Just because you have a preference for Paypal doesn’t mean your donors do.
Learning Tip I: On average, more than half of donors globally prefer to donate to an organization via credit card online. This means that your online giving page has to be optimized to maximize conversions. That includes not only the design but also what the page includes: A reminder of why giving is important, a simple form (no extra unnecessary fields!), an opt in to subscribe to your e-newsletter and more.
Learning Tip II: Provide different giving options and let the donor choose the method they wish to use to donate.
Does Email Inspire Donors?
Your organization spends a lot of time copywriting and finding just the right words and phrases to inspire donors to take action. Emails, social media posts, direct mail, annual reports, website and more.
As more and more organizations up their email marketing game, I was curious to see whether donors felt that email inspires them to give. Globally 26% said email accomplishes that, while social media was a close second at 25%. What was interesting was the disparities between continents: In North America 33% of donors were inspired by email while in Latin America and the Caribbean, only 17% were (while a very high 41% said social media did the trick).
Learning Tip I: Know your donors! You have to segment your donors and know which channel/s inspire them to give. Only using direct mail when donors are inspired from social media posts will obviously not help you raise maximum donations.
Learning Tip II: Globally, ¼ of donors are inspired by email marketing. Yes, you need to know what works for your donors but the fact is that email marketing should be a part of your fundraising portfolio. The same goes for social media. As year-end fundraising approaches, look at your strategy and figure out how to use these two platforms to maximize donations.
Workplace Giving
As I mentioned above, every organization should have a diversified fundraising portfolio. Relying heavily on just one form of fundraising- for example, a gala event- can end up being disastrous for your nonprofit. See: Coronaworld.
One fundraising opportunity that not enough nonprofits take advantage of is workplace giving. Globally, only 9% of donors reported being enrolled in a workplace giving program. In Europe that number was even lower (7%) while Asian donors were almost double the average (16%). Those numbers may look small to you but think about it: If an employer offers a matching gift program and 10% of your donors could be enrolled in such a program, isn’t your organization leaving a lot of money on the table?
Learning Tip I: Diversify! Incorporate workplace giving into your fundraising portfolio.
Learning Tip II: Ask! Ask donors if their employer offers some type of workplace giving program. You lose nothing by asking but have everything to gain. Whether it’s a matching gift or other, corporate giving can be a wonderful source of donations for your organization.
In part 2 of my review of the report, I’ll be focusing on trust, volunteers and recurring giving.
Year-end fundraising campaign time approaches. Is your website content prepared? Email marketing strategy ready to be implemented? Social media posts planned out? If your nonprofit wants to strengthen relationships with donors and raise more money, then your website, email and social media need to be in sync and ready to go when your campaign commences.
Not sure how to pull it all together? Contact me and let’s plan a successful year-end campaign together!
