How to Make the Most Out of Digital Fundraising

In the aftermath of the pandemic, when many organisations switched successfully to online methods of fundraising, many nonprofits are wondering whether a greater emphasis on the digital landscape is needed in their fundraising strategy. Digital fundraising is a catch-all term that can refer a wide variety of giving infrastructure, from something as simple a website donation page to an integrated digital strategy encompassing multi-platform ad campaigns and automated donor journeys. 

If you’re thinking of investing in digital fundraising, consider the following: 

1.  Do a diagnostic of your current digital giving infrastructure 

A crucial first step will be to see how “digital-ready” is your organisation. While you might already be receiving donations through social media platforms or a giving page on their website, do you do enough work on collating this donor data? Is this manually inputted across platforms? Digital fundraising can be conceived as a sub-set of direct marketing fundraising strategies – where generating leads, following up with the right segmented and timed asks, and bringing prospects through a donor journey are key to maximising income streams. Ideally, having integration across your social media platforms, CRM or donor management software, and mailing system will allow you to automatically populate your database of prospect and donor information, as well as send timely follow-up communications to those who do engage. While this may involve some investment of time to get right initially, over the long run it will enable you to maximise your return on investment. 

2.  Consider your online advertising budget and strategy 

The digital space is characterised by the “attention economy”, and online advertising can be harnessed to reach your prospective donors and convey your mission more effectively. Keep in mind, however, that different types of advertising campaigns and levels of spending are needed depending on your objective – are you trying to build awareness, acquire donors or solicit donations from a wider audience? The initial investment in an advertising campaign is only “worth” it if you have incorporated fundraising fundamentals into the online space. Taking the time to trial your messaging and create processes to follow-up on leads and keep your new audience invested will be crucial. Vice versa, keep in mind that a threshold of minimum spending exists; a lower cost-per-acquisition is not necessarily cost-effective if it means a greater volume of leads will be unlikely to convert to a donation. 

3.  Utilise data insights to improve your strategies 

With the right configuration, the digital fundraising landscape can offer you a vast array of insights to continuously improve your fundraising strategy. Free tools like Google Analytics or insights from social media platforms like Facebook can be very beneficial for tracking hit rates, conversion rates and seeing a detailed breakdown of the effectiveness of your campaigning. Similarly, this can allow you to target your campaigns with more specificity; for instance, by controlling how many times and when a prospect sees your campaign. Fundamentally, having the skill and staff levels to appropriately respond to insights and utilise these systems will be key. Depending on how mature your digital fundraising is, you may also want to look at other tools – GivePanel, for instance, improves upon Facebook’s existing data analytics, while donor platforms can offer a holistic platform for managing donor pages, social media, communications, and advertising all in the one space.