How to Acquire New Donors Online
Donor Churn is real and you should have effective ways to gain new individual donors on a continuous basis.
Every year, donors stop giving, choose to give to other organizations, or simply “age out.” These are just a few reasons why your organization needs a solid new donor acquisition strategy.
If you don’t replace churn donors with new ones, your organization could struggle. The need to acquire Gen X and Millennial donors is more apparent than ever before.
Thankfully, with effective tools, options for new donor acquisition are accessible and manageable these days.
In this post, we’ll cover three types of digital campaigns you can run to acquire new donors without a ton of skin in the game:
Facebook lead generation campaigns
Petition campaigns
Digital peer-to-peer campaigns
But first, lets see how ready you are for the goodies below - Read This
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Digital New Donor Acquisition Campaign Type 1: Facebook Lead Generation Campaigns
Facebook advertising can be a powerful tool for new donor acquisition. Here’s how it works:
Create a piece of content you your prospective donors would be interested in.
Create lead ads that ask Facebook users to provide their contact information in exchange for access to the content you created.
Target your lead ads at a “lookalike” audience that resembles your existing donor base, or at the new donor target profiles you developed in preparation for this campaign. Facebook allows you to target criteria like age, location, political affiliation, interest, household income and more.
As people provide their contact information in exchange for the content you created, you’ll get a list of their names, email addresses, and in some cases their mailing addresses. You could begin to solicit these leads right away, but I don’t recommend it. Instead, put this group in a unique segmented email campaign group to nurture and educate them about your organization and build up your case for support before you make any direct ask. You can create an automated email nurturing campaign using a tool like Mailchimp, Constant Contact or HubSpot.
After a new donor lead has been warmed up, you can start to send them the same appeal letters and other communications as the rest of your donor database. Just be sure to track them as new donor leads so you can better understand the return on your spend on Facebook lead ads.
Digital New Donor Acquisition Campaign Type 2: Petition Campaigns
Change.org, Care2 and other petition sites can be great places to start a new donor acquisition campaign. Any organization can create a petition on a site like Change.org for free. You’ll ask people to sign it in support of a cause you support, and then download the names, city, state and zip code of all signers.
Again, I don’t suggest jumping into an ask too soon. Instead, warm them up with a series of emails, engagement on social media, and other “light touches”.
Digital New Donor Acquisition Campaign Type 3: Digital Peer-to-Peer Campaigns
Peer-to-peer fundraising isn’t just for runs or walks you can leverage P2P for a ton of use cases.
Diversifying how you fundraise should be on the top of your list. 43% of millennials have given in a peer to peer campaign, and most of this giving is happening online. You can encourage your existing supporters to start campaigns in honor of an anniversary, in memoriam of a loved one, in celebration of the passage of new laws or policies, and more. The options are endless. Just make sure you have the proper tech in place to make it as easy as possible.
Whew you made it! Yes, new donor acquisition is a lot of work. But it’s absolutely doable and necessary for any organization that wants to ensure long-term sustainability.