You want to make your donor engagement more effective. What tools do you need?

Donor engagement is the process of building and maintaining relationships with your supporters, and it is crucial for your nonprofit's success. You want to make your donor engagement more effective, but what tools do you need? In this article, we will explore some of the essential tools that can help you communicate, track, and optimize your donor engagement strategy.

1 Email marketing

One of the most common and effective tools for donor engagement is email marketing. Email marketing allows you to send personalized and targeted messages to your donors, based on their interests, preferences, and behavior. You can use email marketing to thank your donors, update them on your impact, invite them to events, solicit feedback, and ask for support. To make your email marketing more effective, you need a tool that can help you segment your audience, design attractive and responsive emails, automate your campaigns, and measure your results.

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Joanne Oppelt, MHA, CNE, CDE, CNC

Nonprofit MoneyMaker, Author, Trainer, and Growth Consultant
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In my experience, email is a very poor donor engagement tool. Email is done at arms length, is impersonal, gets lost in everyday noise, and is often lost in the myriad of other emails. Email doesn’t build strong relationships. If you want to raise the big bucks, you must invest your time in face-to-face, one-on-one interactions with your donors.

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2 CRM system

Another essential tool for donor engagement is a CRM system. A CRM system is a database that stores and organizes all the information about your donors, such as their contact details, donation history, preferences, interactions, and feedback. A CRM system helps you manage your donor relationships, track your donor journey, and identify your donor segments. You can use a CRM system to create donor profiles, segment your audience, schedule tasks and reminders, generate reports, and integrate with other tools.

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Joanne Oppelt, MHA, CNE, CDE, CNC

Nonprofit MoneyMaker, Author, Trainer, and Growth Consultant
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Donor databases are a must! If you are a full-time fundraiser, you need a good record keeping system to manage your 100-125 personal donor relationships if you are a CEO, you will have about 40 relationships to shepherd. You cannot realistically keep the details of so many relationships in your head and an excel system becomes too cumbersome.

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3 Online fundraising

Online fundraising is a tool that enables you to collect donations from your donors through various channels, such as your website, social media, email, or mobile. Online fundraising helps you increase your reach, convenience, and efficiency, as well as reduce your costs and risks. You can use online fundraising to create and launch compelling campaigns, accept different payment methods, offer recurring donations, and acknowledge your donors. To make your online fundraising more effective, you need a tool that can help you create and customize your donation pages, embed them on your website, integrate with your CRM system, and track your performance.

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Joanne Oppelt, MHA, CNE, CDE, CNC

Nonprofit MoneyMaker, Author, Trainer, and Growth Consultant
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Online fundraising is not as profitable or efficient as major gift fundraising. The donation amounts are generally small so you need thousands of them to raise significant money. Then you have all those relationships to manage, which will drain your time, be surface relationships that only yield small donations, or both. Either way, you’re better off spending your time engaging and cultivating a fewer number of prospective donors who are capable of giving large gifts

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4 Social media

Social media is a tool that allows you to connect and interact with your donors on various platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Social media helps you increase your visibility, awareness, and engagement, as well as build trust and loyalty. You can use social media to share your stories, impact, and values, invite your donors to join your community, encourage user-generated content, and respond to comments and questions. To make your social media more effective, you need a tool that can help you plan and schedule your posts, monitor and manage your conversations, analyze your metrics, and optimize your strategy.

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Joanne Oppelt, MHA, CNE, CDE, CNC

Nonprofit MoneyMaker, Author, Trainer, and Growth Consultant
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If you use social media to raise funds, your return is generally low. Like online and email fundraising, donation amounts are small, meaning you have to spend a lot of time attracting tons of people. You are better off using social media as a marketing and branding tool instead of a fundraising tool.

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5 Survey and feedback

Survey and feedback is a tool that enables you to collect and analyze data from your donors about their satisfaction, preferences, expectations, and opinions. Survey and feedback helps you improve your donor experience, retention, and loyalty, as well as identify your strengths and weaknesses. You can use survey and feedback to ask your donors for their input, suggestions, testimonials, and referrals, as well as measure your impact and outcomes. To make your survey and feedback more effective, you need a tool that can help you create and distribute your surveys, collect and store your responses, and generate and visualize your insights.

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Joanne Oppelt, MHA, CNE, CDE, CNC

Nonprofit MoneyMaker, Author, Trainer, and Growth Consultant
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Surveys are a great way to engage your donors - if you design and implement them properly. You also need to listen to what they tell you and not dismiss the feedback. Then let people know what you did with their feedback and how it helped improve the human condition in the area your nonprofit addresses. Not how it improved your agency or fundraising efforts but how it improved lives. Let your donors be the heroes of your cause.

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6 Analytics and reporting

Analytics and reporting is a tool that helps you measure and evaluate your donor engagement performance, such as your reach, conversion, retention, and revenue. Analytics and reporting helps you understand your donor behavior, trends, and patterns, as well as optimize your donor engagement strategy. You can use analytics and reporting to track and compare your key indicators, such as your open rate, click rate, response rate, donation rate, and retention rate, as well as test and experiment with different variables, such as your content, design, timing, and frequency. To make your analytics and reporting more effective, you need a tool that can help you collect and integrate your data, display and filter your reports, and provide and interpret your recommendations.

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7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Morgan Carpenter

Helping nonprofits amplify their impact, advance equity, and make the world a better place
(edited)
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Effective donor engagement is more about relationships than anything else. As Susan Howlett points out in “Boards on Fire,” donors want three things: • To feel seen, heard, known, and valued. • To see how their support makes a difference. • To feel like part of something bigger than themselves. Treat your donors like more than just a checkbook. Involve them in your work – check in regularly (without asking for money), forward an internal email about a recent success with a note about how their support contributed, and invite them to participate in tasks that support your mission, like serving on advisory committees, strategic planning, writing content for your newsletter, or meeting with funders or elected officials to show their support.

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You want to make your donor engagement more effective. What tools do you need?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1 Email marketing

2 CRM system

3 Online fundraising

4 Social media

5 Survey and feedback

6 Analytics and reporting

7 Here’s what else to consider

Philanthropy

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You want to make your donor engagement more effective. What tools do you need?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

1 Email marketing

2 CRM system

3 Online fundraising

4 Social media

5 Survey and feedback

6 Analytics and reporting

7 Here’s what else to consider

Philanthropy

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

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