Do Your Donors Feel Like They Belong?

Engaged donors are easier to cultivate and they are anxious to help your nonprofit. Many nonprofits think that engaged donors are as rare as 10-carat diamonds. We agree that engaged donors are like valuable diamonds but we think you shape them rather than find them.

The starting point is someone who cares about your […]

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Questions for Donors

Donor cultivation must be customized for each donor. That is one of the reasons that one-on-one cultivation is important. It is time consuming, which is why it is difficult to justify it for every donor. However, it is hard to know which of your small-but-loyal donors have the capacity to be a significant donor. WIthout […]

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Think and Act Collaboratively

Successful fundraising depends on a partnership between your nonprofit and your donors. The partnership is created by your fundraisers. Your board also has a significant but indirect role to play in creating the partnership.

The success of any partnership depends on all sides cooperating. In the case of a nonprofit there are three key components […]

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Generous Donor = Engagement + Culture

Every nonprofit can have generous donors. The precursors are having engaged donors and a culture that supports the mission, encourages engagement, and recognizes the value of donors.

A low percentage of donors are engaged (typically less than half). Since engagement is an important precursor to generosity, increasing donor engagement has the potential to be beneficial […]

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Questions to Cultivate Donors with

Donor cultivation starts after you meet a prospective donor and are confident they want to know more about your nonprofit. This is the same model you use when cultivating a long-time donor.

Start with an open-ended question about your clients, mission, the last story in your newsletter, or something else related to your nonprofit, mission, […]

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In Pursuit of Engaged Donors

Here are five things you can do as part of your cultivation to increase donor engagement:

Clarity – Donor generosity depends on donors having a clear idea of what their gifts will do. If your donors are disappointed by what their gifts accomplish, there are two possibilities. One is to provide your donors with a […]

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Designated Gifts

Some donors prefer to make designated gifts because they want their gifts to help solve a specific problem. They regard overhead and other expenses to be unrelated to the problem or the solution. However, if every donor adopts that method of driving effectiveness, every nonprofit would be forced to close because of a lack of […]

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How Much Cultivation Is too Much?

Every donor and volunteer should be cultivated. However, some donors should be cultivated more than others.

Since 80% of the funds come from 20% of a nonprofit’s donors, it is tempting to think that 20% deserve 80% of the cultivation. When one of the 20% reaches their capacity to give, intense cultivation is unlikely to […]

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Brand Strength and Fundraising Ease

Is your mission’s brand the same as the brand your services create?

The strength of your nonprofit’s brand depends on two things. One is how well the promises of your mission statement are aligned with the solution your services deliver. The second is the robustness of your solution. The generosity, loyalty, engagement, and speed of […]

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Winning a Donor’s Heart and Mind

Winning a donor’s heart is relatively easy. A well told anecdote with strong emotional content and key points that engage the donor’s emotions is usually enough. That is almost a sure formula for obtaining a gift. However, it may only be a single token gift. It is a start but there must be much more […]

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