It’s no secret that nonprofits thrive on strong fundraising plans. However, how frequently does your organization evaluate its donor stewardship communications strategies? Are you effectively transforming one-time donors into recurring contributors? Do events provide a temporary boost, only for donations to decline over time?
If you answered “rarely, never, and yes,” you are not alone. Many nonprofit teams juggle multiple responsibilities, and donor stewardship often takes a back seat or lacks a concrete plan for building longevity and referrals. However, with the right donor engagement strategies, nonprofits can enhance fundraising success, ensuring a sustainable impact.
The Importance of Donor Stewardship & Engagement
Great donor stewardship and engagement stand as paramount objectives for most nonprofits, yet often they can seem elusive and challenging to achieve. We hear time and again that there are many roadblocks to fully stepping into this “donor dream goal” including:
- Time & Prioritization: Not just having enough, but knowing how to prioritize the outreach activities with everything else on the plate, especially for smaller teams.
- Right Tools: Knowing the best platforms to use to easily segment donor lists and communications.
- Donor Segmentation: Not just ensuring lists are segmented by types and size of donors, but having the ability to speak to their unique attributes or engagement with the organization.
- Plan: Not having one so activities feel sporadic and with no true strategy behind them.
By prioritizing authentic relationships and demonstrating the tangible impact of contributions, organizations can transform this seemingly unattainable goal into a rewarding journey. Building genuine connections with donors requires a strategic and heartfelt approach, ensuring that supporters feel valued and integral to the mission’s success.
Merriam-Webster defines stewardship as, “The careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.” Think about that. We are entrusted with our donors. It certainly shifts our perspective on stewardship, doesn’t it? It encourages us to view it not simply as management of resources but as a heartfelt commitment to building meaningful and lasting relationships. This mindset fosters an environment where donors feel genuinely appreciated, fostering loyalty and inspiring others to engage and invest in the mission while providing you with the seat of responsibility with an understanding that your organization has something the community needs and an obligation to share it.
How can you make sure your organization is stewarding donors well and creating engagement opportunities?
It starts with a plan.
It’s Time for a Refresh
Every organization should annually evaluate and update its donor communications strategy and plan. This practice is essential for multiple reasons:
- Refreshing Goals & Objectives: Success hinges on annually reassessing and realigning the organization’s most vital priorities. By thoughtfully reviewing and updating goals and objectives, and examining their impact on donor strategy and planning, organizations can ensure alignment and foster intentional growth.
- Staying Relevant: Donor preferences and communication channels evolve. Regular reviews ensure your strategy aligns with current trends and donor expectations.
- Identifying Opportunities: By assessing what works and what doesn’t, you can refine your approach, maximize positive outcomes, and mitigate inefficiencies.
- Strengthening Relationships: Consistent communication fosters trust and transparency, which are essential for long-term donor relationships.
We’ve outlined four actionable strategies to help you get started.
Key Strategies for Effective Donor Stewardship
1. Understand Your Audience
Knowing who your donors are is the foundation of any effective communication strategy. This step drives everything else that you do—strategies, action steps, priorities, and communications tactics. Defining your audience personas and being able to take it to your team and your board is organizational “life-changing” because it provides clarity on who you are speaking to and who you are trying to reach. Tools and tactics will not get you the results you are looking for if you don’t have audience personas defined.
Great personas provide demographic information like age, income, location, and gender, but also define audience psychographics such as wants, needs, desires, and challenges. Personas can also outline where the individual can be “found” defining communication preferences such as places they may frequent or media channels they are commonly using. They can also outline ways the organization can engage with them and things they may be most interested in contributing to the organization.
Donor surveys are a great way to start learning about your donor groups.
Each donor will have varying motivations, preferences, and engagement levels. Personas help you to segment your donor base into categories based on these factors and begin to tailor your messaging accordingly.
Considerations:
- Create Donor Personas: Develop detailed profiles for each donor segment to guide your messaging and outreach efforts.
- Utilize Data: Analyze past donation patterns, event participation, and engagement metrics to inform your personas
- Surveys: Create and distribute a survey to learn more about your current donor groups.
2. Create Connection
Now that you know WHO you are talking to, you can further mine for stories. Capturing and leveraging stories is one of the most impactful ways to connect with your donor audiences and attract new donors. Having the ability to understand and feature answers to questions, such as, “Why do you give to the organization? What is your personal connection to the mission?”, creates an emotional tie by providing reminders to the donor of why the mission is so important to them.
Having these connection points and utilizing them in your communications also helps to expand your donor pool.
Let’s take a moment to walk through a visualization exercise.
Picture a packed NFL football stadium. As you look around, you see thousands of people. Each person in this packed stadium has a story and a lived experience. And that story has an opportunity for a connection point. Each person with a passion inside or we could say a fire inside to impact others who are walking a similar story. To give back of their time, talent, and yes treasure to help others navigate certain experiences based on wisdom gained. People WANT to give. We just need to make sure to boldly share our missional impact to create those opportunities.
Many nonprofit leaders worry about appearing boastful in their donor communications, often saying, “We’re just afraid of looking like we’re bragging.” It’s crucial not to let personal hesitations cloud missional messaging. Each of us is drawn to a certain cause and mission based on lived experience—divorce, job loss, mental health, pregnancy, the need for basic resources, loss of a child, aging parents, access to healthcare, and the list goes on and on. When we step into the mindset that our organizations have something that solves a problem or challenge we begin to approach communications differently. Your organization has something the community desperately needs.
Let’s give those seated in that stadium an opportunity to step into something that allows them to give back.
Considerations:
- Collect Stories: Each donor has a story and a reason why they contribute. Initiate ways to collect these powerful stories through an email invite to donors with instructions on how to share their stories through written and video media.
- Share Them: Input donor impact stories into your tactical editorial calendar with uses in email marketing, social media posts, advertising features, event materials, and invitations to participate in live event speaking opportunities.
- Surveys & Polls: Gather insights and opinions from your donors to improve your strategies and offerings.
- Volunteer Opportunities: Invite donors to volunteer and engage with your organization beyond donations.
3. Create the Plan
Think of your donor communication strategy and plan as a series of activities, with deadlines, dates, and assignments. Structuring activities in a clear and actionable 12-month plan.
Marketing communications plans should not be separate from donor stewardship and engagement plans. They should be combined into a comprehensive plan so that marketing initiatives support the needs of development and so development can have awareness of planned marketing communications activities. Marrying these will lead to greater success in meeting goals for expanded donor growth. Plus, it gives development more awareness of volunteer and program participant impact stories to utilize in donor communications and vice versa.
Considerations:
- Outline Digital Approaches: Define your social media platform approaches, narrow them to a manageable number of platforms, and ensure your messaging is relevant to the platform. For example, Instagram is great for connection and impact (showing reels, imagery, impact statements, and featuring the culture of your organization) while LinkedIn is more business-focused with leaders present. (sharing stories of impact, donor stories, and reaching potential partners is a great LinkedIn strategy).
- Consider Paid Opportunities: To expand the reach and into audiences, paid strategies should be considered. Organic content is great, but can take longer to meet your goals. Ensure you leverage your Google Ad Grant and consider other paid social media opportunities.
- Get Personal: Outline planned personal meetings. Whether that is taking larger partners and contributors to coffee annually or organizing video calls with segments of your donor population, creating personalized connection points matters. This allows the organization to share milestones toward fundraising goals, provide an opportunity for donors to share a personal story of impact, raise and ask for referrals, and simply ensure donors feel gratitude.
4. Train Organizational Advocates
Believe it or not, every individual connected to your organization holds the potential to be a fundraiser and steward of your mission. We simply need to guide them on how to fulfill these roles effectively. Internal staff, volunteers, board members, committee members, current donors, and program participants are all advocates for your organization. Each person can generate referrals, recruit new donors, and steward existing relationships. They play a crucial part in expanding the organization’s mission.
It’s essential to empower everyone, not just the board or leadership, to inspire growth. This empowerment comes through opportunities for story collection, assisting in donor engagement activities such as making thank-you calls, writing heartfelt notes, or sharing impactful anecdotes during major donor gatherings. Current donors can contribute to this effort, transforming into champions for your cause.
The beautiful part is that they are already connected and are engaged. It just has to be part of the plan so that activities are taught and intentional.
Considerations:
- Prepare Scripts: Prepare tips on how each group can assist the organization in meeting specific goals. Outline key messaging or the “elevator pitch” they can use in conversation. Include a script they can easily use in conversations covering answers to questions such as, Why they contribute and how. What the organization does. What the organization needs. Ways they can lead into an ask. For example, “I currently volunteer for Dress For Success. I remember when I could have used mentorship for job interviews and navigating workplace dynamics. The organization provides this plus so many resources including outfits for interviews and more. You should come with me to the next Toast and Tour event!”
- Host Practice Sessions: Pull together groups throughout the year to remind them how they can help the organization and how. Use it as an opportunity to talk about HOW to talk about the organization.
Conclusion
Effective donor stewardship and engagement go beyond asking for funds. It’s about building meaningful relationships and creating a community of advocates for your cause. By implementing these strategies, you can enhance your donor stewardship efforts, ensure fundraising success, and create lasting impact.
Are you ready to transform your donor communications strategy? Email us at hello@bloomcommunications.com to start crafting a custom plan that will elevate your fundraising success.