Discover How to Best Engage Your Donors—Through Technology

         Advancements in innovation provide myriad ways for charities, schools, hospitals, and other non-profit/not-for-profit organizations (NPOs) to improve their fundraising operations. This is especially true when it comes to pursuing small-dollar donations, which are often the life’s blood of such groups.

Recently the organization Nonprofit Tech for Good, a news and resource website founded by Heather Mansfield in 2005, surveyed more than 1,700 nonprofit professionals to better understand how their groups employ technology for digital marketing and fundraising purposes. The results not only provide insights into how NPO fundraising managers can up their game but reveal glaring deficiencies in many operations that these managers may not even be aware of.

         As reported by The NonProfit Times, highlights of the Nonprofit Tech for Good Report survey include:

• Most managers consider their websites to be their most important marketing and fundraising tool (84%), followed by social media (65%) and newsletters (64%).
• While repetition is known to be vital when soliciting donations, 68% of respondents send emails only once a month—if that—and more than a third (38%) fail to periodically prune their mailing lists for bad addresses.
• Just over half of respondents (53%) say they invest in social media advertising, even though most recognize that such platforms can be essential to attracting small donors, especially young people. Most of the remaining 47 percent still use the “free” postings available on social media but have no way of tracking referrals or conversions.
• More than a quarter of respondents (27%) have been the target of cyber attacks over the last few years, and two thirds (67%) have some kind of online security program in place to protect against such intrusions.
• Nearly all respondents (97%) have optimized their websites for mobile browsing.
• Most, but not all, of respondents (91%) accept online donations. (Surprisingly, almost 10 percent do not!) Only a little over half (53%) accept payments via PayPal and 45% percent take ACH bank transfers. Fewer than 10 percent are set up to accept other alternate forms of payment, such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, Zelle, Amazon Pay, or cryptocurrencies.
• Only a little more than half of respondents (54%) engage in peer-to-peer fundraising. 46% have hosted online fundraising events, and 29% use some form of crowdfunding, such as Kickstarter.
• Only 15% of respondents use artificial intelligence (AI) for donor prospecting, “such as predicting what time of year a donor is most likely to give as well as how much they are likely to give.”

This last finding is particularly telling, as AI has become one of the most powerful and cost-effective tools for donor identification, outreach, and conversion. For example, Ai from DonorSearch uses advanced artificial intelligence to identify and target potential donors based on factors that go beyond mere net worth.

Analyzing donor behavior along a number of axes, DonorSearch Ai is able to find people whose likelihood of making large donations far exceeds what one might suspect based on their past behavior alone. It can even identify donors who have a strong personal affinity for a particular cause in general or a specific organization in particular and then predict how that individual is likely to respond to a range of solicitations. What’s more, it can also pinpoint nonprofit trustees and directors who have influence over donors and who also recognize the importance of philanthropic giving.

By targeting messages and pairing such communications with each recipient’s individual sympathies/loyalties, DonorSearch makes acquiring tomorrow’s donations far more efficient, effective, and cost-effective.

Specifically, DonorSearch helps NPOs in the following ways:

• Identify those donors who have a capacity to give as well as possess an affinity for a particular cause.
• Expand potential donor lists with our philanthropy-focused prospect search database.
• Predict a prospect’s giving capacity with more accurate, secure giving intelligence data.

Founded in 2007, DonorSearch has gone on to help thousands of worthy organizations make the most of their marketing dollars. Our many clients include local and national charities, private and public colleges and universities, public TV stations, museums, hospitals, performing arts organizations, and other NGOs. For nonprofits seeking to do good despite a difficult economy, possessing the right intel can make all the difference in fundraising.

As DonorSearch Executive Vice President and Co-Owner Sarah TeDesco explains, “The role of nonprofits cannot be overstated, especially in an era in which monies seem to be drying up, especially due to inflation. Due to so much belt-tightening, it becomes ever clearer that NPOs require a key resource to help them reach those essential donors who can make their dreams a reality. This is where our organization really provides value to our many clients.”

In the meantime, DonorSearch is continually updating our donor information to keep it accurate and current. We are also emphatic about cybersecurity so that our client data remains secure from outside interlopers. To find out more about how you can reach out to even more donors eager to hear your message, please contact our team of experts to arrange your demo of DonorSearch Ai today.