The 3 Best Tips to Persuade and Engage New Donors
Persuasion is all about helping a person understand where you’re coming from. This makes persuasion an essential activity and skill for any organization. However, many nonprofits still struggle when it comes to persuading people to see the value of their work and make that first donation. If you find yourself in a similar position, these tips to engage new donors will help you break the ice and keep the ball rolling.
#1 Make Your Mission and Passion Obvious
If a person doesn’t believe in your organization’s work, they will not donate to support it. Likewise, even if they believe in your mission statement, they will still not donate if they are not convinced that your organization is pursuing that mission with a blazing passion. That’s why the best piece of advice you can follow when trying to persuade new donors is this: Rather than focusing on collecting donations, focus on doing the work you need the donations for. Working to improve your leadership skills can do wonders in this regard.
Fulfilling your organization’s mission statement should be your number one priority, and when people see that you are working on doing just that has hard as you possibly can, they will donate with incredible ease. The hard part is showing people the work you’re doing and convincing them of your passion for it. As such, you need a full-fledged content and communication strategy to really conquer this first hurdle.
When it comes to getting your mission (and passion for that mission) across to people, especially to those who are entirely new to your organization, you need to adopt a multi-faceted strategy that might even include video interviews with those you’ve impacted, blog posts about your most recent endeavors, and continuous social media posts recognizing your staff and volunteers for the hard work donors are enabling them to do.
#2 Follow The Three Cs
So you started to shift your focus so that the spotlight remains on your mission and passion. After this, you need to consider another piece of advice on communicating your mission and passion to others. When it comes to any form of communication, you should always follow the three Cs. These are clear, concise, and calming messaging.
When considering how you communicate more in-depth, you also need to think about your brand’s voice. Every organization should have an established brand that they are looking to build. That requires a lot of planning in itself, but once you have a brand voice in mind, you need to remember that consistency is key. Whenever you’re writing a social media post, sending out a newsletter, or even writing a handwritten appreciation note, you need to keep your brand’s voice in mind.
Donors should begin to recognize the voice your organization uses, and it should preferably be one that focuses on impact. Donors should be the center of attention, not your organization. When speaking of your organization’s accomplishments, you need to frame it in a way that doesn’t say “Look what we did!” but instead says, “Look what you helped happen!” Your tone should be one of donor empowerment.
#3 Think Long-Term Activity, Not One-Off Event
The final tip you should take to heart when working to engage new donors involves a mindset shift. Many organizations see collection as a one-time event. Once they receive a donation from a donor, they suddenly stop paying attention to them to a large degree. In other words, many organizations put the majority of the time and energy into getting that first donation. Unfortunately, they never put as much focus on converted donors as they should.
The Truth of the Matter
The truth is, donor engagement is an on-going activity, not a one-off event. Once you recognize this, you will see your donor retention rates and overall engagement go through the roof. The trick is to implement a solid donor engagement strategy. It must keep donors active and involved with your organization. This must occur before their first donation all the way to the point where they are wholeheartedly committed to supporting your work. Your strategy may include email lists, mailed newsletters, events, and even text messaging.
Commit Yourself
This takes a great deal of commitment. Fortunately, the time you spend following up with and engaging active donors will pay off. Aside from keeping them on as recurring donors, it will also help you take the donor relationship to the next level, helping you to convert donors from more than just monetary givers and into individuals who give their time to volunteer work and also advocate for your nonprofit whenever they get the chance, acting as recruiters on your behalf because they believe that passionately in your efforts.
When you reach the point where donors are finding new donors for you, you know you’re doing things right. This all begins with getting back to your organization’s core values and shifting the focus to the work that you do. And when you focus on the work donors engage in, you can continue pursuing the mission statement that started it all.
Engage Your Donors With DonorWERX
Your communication strategy and giving software should be tied together at every turn. If they’re not, your organization is going to suffer in the form of poor donor engagement and lower engagement. With DonorWERX, you can help address this disconnection. You can also enable your giving software and communication plan to work together. This will help you better engage the people who make up your organization. Click here to learn more.
