Finding new donors for your non-profit isn't easy. That's why donor retention and stewardship are so important: once you find a new donor, it is far easier to keep him or her giving year after year than it is to find a new donor to fill their shoes.
That being said, every non-profit, from brand new organizations to multi-million dollar international charities, needs to find a steady stream of new donors if it wants to continue to grow.
Many fundraisers (and board members!) think that they always need to be inventing new ways to find donors… but the truth is, there really is a science behind donor prospecting. And what the fundraising profession knows, after almost a century of professional fundraising practice, is that there really are only about 6 different ways to find new donors.
You Need to Know These 6 Strategies…
Everything “new” is really just a variation on one or more of these 6 strategies. That's not to knock new fundraising strategies. For example, I'm a huge fan of things like crowdfunding, which I think is the most significant new fundraising tactic to come along in the past twenty years, and one which I use constantly with non-profits. But when it comes to finding new donors, crowdfunding is really just a new (and exciting) way to combine online direct response marketing and donor referrals, two tried and true prospecting strategies.
If you want to find new donors for your non-profit, you need to understand the 6 essential ways to find new donor prospects. Once you know and understand this menu of options, you'll not only be able to implement them, but also combine them in new and interesting ways to raise more money than ever before for your non-profit.
Here are the 6 donor prospecting strategies that form the basis of all prospecting tactics, in no particular order:
#1 – Direct Mail Prospecting
Direct mail is the oldest form of direct response marketing and has been used to successfully find new donors for almost a century. Most large national and international non-profits use some form of direct mail prospecting, and many organizations exclusively use direct mail for their donor prospecting. The popularity of direct mail has waned over the past twenty years, but the data shows that it is still effective.
Pros
- Testable & scaleable
- Large body of data on what works and what doesn’t
- Successfully used by millions of organizations for almost a century
Cons
- Requires an emotional, action-oriented message that some non-profits are uncomfortable using
- Requires significant up-front investment that may not be recouped for several years
- Requires staff time for capacity screening and follow-up
#2 – Online Direct Response Prospecting
Many non-profits use online direct response funnels to successfully build prospect lists. These funnels are similar to the online marketing funnels built by for-profit companies. Generally, these involve purchasing social media and / or CPC ads online, directing people to a lead magnet that they can download in return for their e-mail address (and possibly other contact information). The prospect is then led through a communications funnel and ultimately asked for a small gift via an autoresponder e-mail sequence. The donor can then be wealth screened and cultivated for bigger gifts if they have significant giving capacity.
If you want to learn more about how to do this successfully, read How to Build an Effective Online Giving Funnel for Your Non-Profit.
Pros
- Testable & scaleable
- Large body of data on what works and what doesn’t
- Ability to build a huge e-mail list for your non-profit organization
- Messaging does not need to be as emotional or “red meat” as direct mail, though it still needs to be a “cutting” action-oriented message
Cons
- Requires an initial investment of time and money to build out a direct response funnel and autoresponder sequence
- Requires an ongoing investment into online advertising
- May require outside expertise
- Requires rapid iteration of messages and advertisements
- Requires staff time for capacity screening and follow-up
# 3 – Seeking Referrals
This strategy involves utilizing an organization’s board, donors, and other supporters to introduce the organization to new prospective donors, and then having the non-profit’s staff follow-up with those donors to cultivate them and solicit gifts. Generally, the donors you will ask to make referrals are major and mid-level donors, who will introduce you to other donors at a similar capacity to themselves.
To learn more about how to ask for referrals, read How to Build a Donor Referral System for Your Non-Profit.
Pros
- Referrals are the most effective way to quickly build warm relationships with new major and mid-level donor prospects
- This method also has a cultivation effect on current donors, who become closer to the organization through their referral activities
- Allows the slow cultivation of major and mid-level donors
Cons
- Slower method because it relies on organic growth and referrals, limited by the current size of the donor universe
- Requires an active board and donor base that is willing to make referrals
#4 – Non-Ask Events
Non-ask event prospecting involves holding events that attract prospective donors who may have an affinity for the organization’s mission. These events can run the gamut from 5 person events in a person’s home to 200 person events featuring speakers and roundtables.
Want to successfully implement this strategy at your non-profit? Check out Using the Non-Ask Event Strategy to Fill Your Donor Pipeline.
Pros
- Easy way to ask donors and board members for referrals
- Can provide a semi-warm introduction to the work of the organization
- Allows attendees to meet staff and see social proof of the efficacy of the non-profit
Cons
- Events can be expensive and time consuming
- Hard to accomplish this strategy at scale without a larger development team
- Requires current supporters to host or sponsor events by inviting their own networks (cold invitations don’t work well)
#5 – Networking Event Prospecting
This strategy involves sending development staff members to large conferences and events in an organization’s mission field with the goal of meeting new donors at the event. For example, a non-profit that is working to end homelessness may attend conferences, roundtables, and other events that attract donors who care about poverty and homelessness. The staff of the organization would seek to meet as many potential donors as possible at the conference, and then follow-up with each of those contacts after the event is over.
Pros
- Ability to get face time with significant donors that the organization has a difficult time connecting with
- Some organizations can gain extra traction at the event by serving as a sponsor, by placing staff on panels or as speakers at the event, or by hosting a table in the vendor area for the event
Cons
- Attendance at networking events can be expensive and time consuming, and sponsoring the events can be doubly expensive
- Hard to accomplish this strategy at scale without a larger development team
- May be difficult to find events that are a match for an organization's mission and attended by enough large donors to be worth the time and financial outlay
- Strategy generally has marginal success, even for accomplished fundraisers
#6 – Mass One-to-One Donor Prospecting (Cold Calls)
Mass one-to-one donor prospecting involves building larger lists of major and mid-level donors who have shown an affinity for the work and mission of a non-profit, and then reaching out to those donors at scale to try to set up meetings and calls.
This strategy generally involves ongoing research to generate prospect lists, the sending of introductory packets to new donor prospects, and then a significant amount of follow-up work to try to set up meetings with new major and mid-level donors, most of whom receive a large number of unsolicited meeting requests each month. Because of the amount of time involved, this strategy is generally only used for major and mid-level donors.
Pros
- May allow a non-profit to reach very large donors who otherwise would not be reachable by the organization because they are not part of the network of any current donor or board member
Cons
- This strategy takes a significant amount of time and a larger staff in order to be successful. Donor lists must be generated, contact information must be found, and anywhere between 4-7 contact attempts must be made for each prospect on the list, which will still only generate a single-digit response rate.
- Generally, fundraising professionals do not recommend using this method because of the high investment of time and energy and the extremely low response rate
Choose the Strategies that Will Work for Your Non-Profit
As you plan your non-profit's donor prospecting strategies, remember not to try everything at the same time. Instead, look at these 6 strategies, including the pros and cons of each. Then choose a few strategies that you think will work for you. Don't be afraid to be creative with the strategies you choose, and remember to test and iterate… if something isn't working, drop it, and try something new!
Photo Credit: FoodBankCENC.org
