Nonprofit marketing 2.0: Outreach tips from your peers
- Tue, August 16 2011
- Filed under: Fundraising essentials
Yesterday, I posted the seven ways to be a great nonprofit marketer across channels.
Today, I’m going to talk about what other nonprofits say about their efforts in this area.
These posts are drawn from Convio and Edge Research, which have a new study out (available for free here) based on surveys from 123 nonprofit practitioners and 15 in-depth interviews.
Here were the key findings:
1. Nonprofit say they believe it’s best to put their donors at the center of their outreach efforts, coordinating various channels (online, direct mail, social media, mobile, etc.) around each donor, depending on the donors’ preferences and track record in giving.
2. They believe it’s important because: it saves money, raises more money and strengthens their brands.
3. Nearly half of respondents said they would call themselves beginners at this approach. Interestingly, some small organizations are pretty sophisticated at it, and some large ones are not. So size doesn’t necessarily matter!
4. The growth of online fundraising is what prompted many organizations to focus more on coordinating channels of outreach, but the amount raise online varies widely - from under 5% of total giving to 25%.
5. It is hard to transition from a siloed approach to fundraising, with direct mail, online and other departments all operating separately, to a nonprofit organized around the donor. You have to get leadership buy in, master organizational change and implement a bunch of business process changes. You may need new systems and technology. It hurts, but it’s worth it.
6. That said, it’s complex to track ROI (was it the Facebook post that inspired the direct mail gift, for example).
Here are some of the types of interactions organizations viewed as most valuable:
• Opens of each email appeal
• Responses / actions taken from appeals—both online and direct mail
• Website visits / website activity
• Duration from message to activity
• Cross-channel activity—to the extent they can track percentage of direct mail donors that made an online contribution via unique URL, online donors who mailed a check, etc.
7. Everyone’s still trying to figure out how social media fits into the picture—and mobile is uncharted territory.
For more, check out the full study (available for free here).
Comments
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