Online Fundraising for Busy People

Last week, at the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention, Camille Schenkkan of Arts for LA gave an unusually lucid summary of online tools for donor development and management.

Those of us who work in online fundraising for a living — especially those of us who work mostly with large organizations that have a dozen people in the marketing department and a technical staff to handle the donor database — sometimes forget how mystifying all of this stuff is to a lot of people.

If you’re doing three jobs at once, in an environment where there’s never any extra money lying around, and have a board of directors (or a major donor, city council, etc.) breathing down your neck — sound familiar? — you don’t want a bunch of platitudes about the “next generation” and the “new normal.” You want someone to tell you the dozen or so things you need to know, and the half-dozen or so things you should try to do this month or this quarter.

Camille’s presentation was the closest thing to this that I’ve seen in quite a while. I won’t try to reproduce it here, but I will abstract some of the important points. These largely overlap with what we at Blue State Digital are regularly preaching, so if you know us, you won’t see surprises here, but maybe it’ll be more accessible in Camille’s words (and what I’m presenting here is mostly adapted from things she said).

#1: Find a CRM

CRM, or “customer/constituent relationship management,” refers to some sort of software program where you keep track of your donors — who they are, what they’ve given to you and when, and (ideally) when and how you’ve reached out to them. You use this information to understand who’s responding, what tactics are working best, and what you should do more of.

Right now you might be keeping this information in Excel, or even on paper. But CRM tools are easier and more versatile.

#2: Manage Your Email

Every organization needs some sort of outbound email tool, so that you can keep in touch with donors and prospective donors. These range from the cheap and basic to the slightly more expensive and fantastically sophisticated.

Don’t overthink this (especially if you have a tiny organization) — but even a tiny organization should think at least in general terms about audience segmentation (who are the different groups of people who support your organization, and do you need to speak to them differently?).

#3: Accept Online Donations

You need to be able to accept donations online. Even if all you do is set yourself up to accept Paypal donations, you’re taking a step in the right direction. But obviously (plug plug plug!), if you use a toolset like the BSD Tools, you have credit card donations, and the ability to set up different donation forms for different promotions or events, built right in.

#4: Use Social Media

In Camille’s words: “If you hate a social media tool, don’t use it.” If you hate Twitter, and everyone in your organization who could possibly be tweeting hates Twitter, don’t use Twitter! Find the tools that you can use organically, in a way that seems authentic to your organization, and use those. Maybe it’ll just be email for now. If that’s where you are, that’s okay.

Once you know your tools, it's important to plan a successful social media program. In this context, planning doesn’t mean “write a telephone-book-sized strategic memorandum”; it means thinking about questions like these:

• What do we want this social media campaign to achieve for our organization?
• What actions are we going to ask people to take (give money, share links with their friends, buy tickets, come to a show…)?
• What voices will speak on behalf of the organization?
• How will we schedule our social media posts and activities? (Example: On Day 1, send an email; on day 2, update Facebook with a reminder; on day 3, have staff members send supporting tweets in their own words…)

Scheduling is important. You don’t want to bombard people, especially your supporters; you want a steady drumbeat of messaging over a period of time so that all the messages reinforce each other and encourage the people who love you to take actions that support you.

Anything to Add?

Do you have any tips to add about CRM, email tools, social media, or online donations? Share them in the comments below.

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