The main fundraising-related goal of all nonprofit organizations should be to create a great giving experience for donors.
To achieve that positive giving experience, fundraisers must meet five key elements:
- Create a sense of belonging in your donors, so they feel they’re recognized for their contributions, both immediately and in future interactions;
- build trust, so donors know at any time and with confidence that their gifts were received;
- provide instant gratification by showing donors how their gifts specifically helped the organization come one step closer to achieving its mission;
- foster a sense of social impact; and
- allow for emotional release, for example, when a donor feels so strongly about a cause or event that the act of helping evokes passion, whether it’s a sense of relief, sadness or accomplishment.
The best way to provide a rewarding giving experience is to implement a social constituent-relationship-management system within your nonprofit. A social CRM system enables you to drive meaningful interactions and relationships with donors. It extends beyond the simple collection and analysis of critical information, becoming a knowledge platform to be shared and utilized across departments, chapters and the whole organization. The platform enables organizations to understand the value of every supporter’s complete relationship and serves as a launching point for
more meaningful communications and interactions.
Using a social CRM knowledge platform for information about your supporters, such as interests and personal contacts, helps you create a positive giving experience for donors, better target them with personalized communications and improve your fundraising efforts. A social CRM system also must provide organizations with interactive and engaging communications; real-time data analytics; role-specific, data-driven workflow automation; and social wallet capabilities. Following are suggestions for how to use your social CRM system.
Work from a knowledge platform
A highly flexible and feature-rich database should be at the core of your nonprofit’s CRM system. This will help you centrally record and manage the most important aspects of your relationships with your contacts, thus providing better giving experiences for them. Integrating input from nonprofit staff, volunteers and supporters, a social CRM database allows your nonprofit to build more complete contact profiles, automatically record online interactions, track offline activities, manage donor financial transactions and segment your constituency. Wealth-screening tools also are part of the knowledge platform, and work to identify and cultivate your organization’s best donor prospects. Having this type of information at your disposal will tell you which prospects to focus on and what an appropriate
Hitting the Email Inbox
Hitting the Email Inbox
Email Marketing that Works (2nd Edition)
