Here's how social impact organizations can make the most of giving season

By Josh M. Carney

Nearly nine in 10 nonprofit leaders are concerned they won’t hit their organization’s annual fundraising goals this year, according to a recent LinkedIn survey. Donor fatigue following overwhelming need during the coronavirus pandemic and an uncertain economic outlook are forcing workers across the industry to rethink their growth tactics. At the same time, one in three nonprofit professionals say skills gaps among industry workers — particularly a lack of marketing and social media engagement skills — pose a significant challenge for organizations trying to expand the visibility of their work.

At the outset of the giving season, we spoke with social impact leaders on their best advice for advancing causes, making stronger donor connections and investing in core skills needed to push the industry forward.

Below are their takeaways. Share your own in the comments.

Leverage partnerships and technology to scale your impact

Growing a philanthropic business that can help solve problems at scale requires “setting ambition at a high level,” says Rajiv J. Shah, the president of The Rockefeller Foundation — and forging partnerships is often “central” for sparking collective action around those ambitious goals.

“The partnerships that work are usually across unlikely partners where each side brings something that’s unique,” Shah says. He references Rockefeller’s work in bringing together small companies and entrepreneurs with large power generators in Africa to deliver renewable energy solutions to a large population with limited access to electricity. The integrated approach has led to a quicker, more cost-effective electrification process, while addressing two complex causes: climate change and energy access.

Shah also touches on the importance of leveraging technology as a way to scale efforts more quickly — and how making the opportunity to get involved as frictionless as possible can lead to broader impact. For example, when Haiti was devastated by an earthquake in 2010, USAID created a platform for people to text their donation to support relief efforts. The campaign raised more than $11 million, which was hailed as a “mobile-giving record” at the time. As the former administrator of USAID, Shah says that the platform helped donors “have confidence that those resources will make a difference” because they could connect directly with the campaign in the palm of their hands.

“We’ve never had as many tools as we have in our toolkit to address issues of inequity,” Shah says, “and helping people really see those solutions is a big part of solving problems.”

👉 Check out more of Rajiv J. Shah’s insights on how to drive large-scale change.

Listen to your most important stakeholders — and use that feedback to sustain momentum

Unlike the top-down nature of most corporations, nonprofits have “coequal partners with different roles to play,” says  Feeding America CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot — so telling others what to do and how to do it is "often not the most effective."

“You have to ask people what they think, listen deeply to what they share and then act like you heard them,” says Babineaux-Fontenot. And that involves a critical stakeholder: the people you’re trying to serve.

“The most powerful weapon in our arsenal in this movement would be people actually experiencing hunger,” she says. “We often refer to it as ‘lived expertise.’” Leaning into the learnings from the people impacted by Feeding America's work is helping them authentically share their success stories. The organization publishes an annual report, Elevating Voices in Hunger, to highlight how they’ve acted on the ‘lived expertise’ from stakeholders and cultivate a “cycle of feedback” within the organization, which Babineaux-Fontenot says is fundamental to their work. “We go back to people who are accessing the resources that we’re trying to provide and we ask them ‘how are we doing?’”

Demonstrating the organization’s impact through thoughtful communication has also helped Feeding America sustain momentum through key moments such as Hunger Action Day. So when it comes to maintaining the engagement surrounding major moments, such as Giving Tuesday, Babineaux-Fontenot recommends “being alarmingly consistent” in your activation strategy by showing how your work has a tangible impact: “The most powerful way to continue to have the public care about the work is when you lift up the voices of the people who are being impacted by the work that you do.”

👉 Check out more of Claire Babineaux-Fontenot’s insights on elevating the voices of stakeholders.

Build a workforce equipped with skills for effective organizing

Showing how your organization is uniquely suited to make an impact — and how individuals can play a part in driving that impact — is the type of “pragmatic inspiration” that’s essential for bringing more people into your cause, says Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson.

Finding concrete ways for individuals to connect to your mission begins with giving impact-driven teams and frontline advocates the license to innovate, Robinson says. For leaders, functioning as a “coach” who helps align resources and makes sure everyone is “moving in the same direction” can be an effective approach for growing the reach of your organization. She references how HRC’s various equality indices — which help to identify the most inclusive companies, towns and healthcare facilities for LGBTQIA+ individuals — rely on motivated organizers around the country to drive equity initiatives, while the broader organization focuses on supporting and guiding these efforts.

“Organizing is not just a job, it’s a vocation,” Robinson says. “It's about engaging in the practice of believing that we are more powerful together than we are alone.” As a frontline organizer herself, Robinson learned how to connect with the right individuals, foster community-centric relationships and ultimately drive measurable impact — skills she’s continued to hone as she’s risen through the ranks of impact-driven organizations. Organizing skills “are life skills,” she says, which come down to building an “ethos of community connection.” 

👉 Check out more of Kelley Robinson’s insights on organizing. 

Use generative AI to personalize donor outreach and drive long-term commitments

Building a resilient funding strategy begins with investing in stronger donor relationships, says Adam Martel, the founder of a digital fundraising platform. The most impactful way that can be done is shifting  from a reactive model, in which past donors are asked to give again, to a proactive model, where they’re solicited based on specific interests, he says: “The more personalized that solicitation can be, the more personalized cultivation and relationship building can be.”

Tailor-made solicitation is “going to be core” for getting donors to make transformational commitments, Martel says, such as multi-year giving agreements that enable nonprofits to rely on a retained pool of supporters. Those types of agreements can help free up time for frontline fundraisers to go after net-new supporters, which is why Martel believes it's “the biggest change we’re seeing in the fundraising space right now.”

At the forefront of the movement is “technology that can personalize the first, second and third step of relationship building,” Martel says, since every nonprofit organization wants more frontline fundraisers. In 2016, Martel himself co-founded a company that used generative artificial intelligence to develop personalized fundraising outreach emails at scale. While he notes that “fundraising is a humanistic job,” the objective was to “help an organization narrow a list down from 100 donors to five, 10 or 15 that frontline fundraisers should spend their time on.”

“We don’t want generative AI to inspire donors to make major commitments,” Martel says, “we want generative AI to get our very best relationship builders in a position where they can advocate for our organizations.”

👉 Check out more of Adam Martel’s insights on using AI for fundraising.

Learn more about LinkedIn's resources for nonprofit professionals this giving season — and beyond.

About this article

This article features social impact leaders from LinkedIn's Top Voices program sharing their advice on how to build resilient mission-driven organizations. Top Voices is an invitation-only program featuring a global group of experts on LinkedIn covering a range of topics across the professional world, helping members uncover valuable knowledge relevant to them. You can learn more here.

Who is eligible to be a Top Voice

LinkedIn members who meet high trust standards, are consistently active on the platform and share valuable expertise are eligible to be a Top Voice, with the exception of members who have violated LinkedIn’s User Agreement — including our Professional Community Policies.

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