Nonprofits are facing a unique situation where their services are in high demand but the ways they can fundraise must evolve to accommodate the current pandemic. Fully transitioning to virtual or digital fundraising is necessary due to restrictions on face-to-face interaction but it’s easier said than done for many nonprofits. This pivot can seem daunting for teams that haven’t facilitated digital fundraising in the past and don’t have the technology to organize, conduct and track efforts that virtual and digitally promote and process donations.
Salesfore.org recently released their 3rd Nonprofit Trends Report which gathered information from over 850 nonprofit professionals across 6 different countries. The report showed that nonprofits with a higher level of “Digital Maturity”, or a strong ability to leverage data to make revenue impacting decisions, were able to better adapt to digital fundraising strategies. According to the report “35% of organizations with high digital maturity strongly agreed that they were able to move their programs online”. So, how do you build digital maturity and utilize Salesforce to successfully fundraise digitally? Glad you asked!
Embrace digital fundraising while building donor relationships
There are many apps that connect directly to Salesforce allowing you to maximize digital fundraising and provide easy to create, user friendly giving pages. Salesforce allows you to easily see information about your donors, both new and existing, and meaningfully connect with these donors. After all, digital fundraising is still all about the relationships and the donor experience.
Provide your team with real time data
This is where Digital Maturity is key. Salesforce.org defines Digital Maturity as “as an organization’s ability to leverage data to inform decision-making, reach new audiences, personalize communications, and forecast fundraising income”. Salesforce.org can provide real time data because all constituent information and activity is in one easily accessible place. With connected digital fundraising your philanthropy team can track donations coming into Salesforce in real time and your leadership team can quickly allocate those funds. This information can be displayed in a dashboard that contains metrics from a few reports all on one page. These reports and dashboards can even be automatically emailed so that your leadership team, board members and philanthropy team can stay informed.
Connect with donors through activism and long term impacts
From our experience working with nonprofits, we know that donors are typically not one-time contributors because they are activists for the cause and strive to be part of something bigger, even in times of a pandemic. Salesforce.org’s Nonprofit Trends report found that “nearly 60% of survey respondents said their organizations had seen an increase in interest from volunteers to participate in their organization’s work”. Relationship-centered fundraising is and will continue to be critical to find the constituents that not only want to contribute but will maintain a focus on your cause.
With the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack you can use Salesforce campaigns to plan and track virtual events and the donors who are participating. Additionally, with Volunteers for Salesforce you can connect your donors to meaningful volunteer opportunities with your organization.
Streamline communication
Activity tracking in Salesforce allows everyone on the team to see when you sent a thank you note, called, or last emailed a donor. Salesforce provides a centralized repository where you can see details about these interactions. For example, who interacted with the donor, the date it occurred and notes pertaining to the interaction. Salesforce allows your philanthropy team to easily collaborate all while working from home during covid. Acknowledgement emails can be effortlessly sent out with just a few clicks and the donation is automatically marked that an acknowledgement was sent and the day it was sent. It is very simple to pull reports for donors you have not contacted in awhile or donors who have not yet been sent an acknowledgement email.
Close the loop with donors and set the next step
Communication and interaction with donors shouldn’t stop once a transaction is complete. With Salesforce.org, your team can ensure that donors receive tailored communication after they’ve made a donation. Salesforce allows you to group donors into different categories so that you can tailor your mass communications. Through that communication, you can provide donors with the tools to become advocates for your cause. Make it easier for them to share your information, interact with you via social media, become a volunteer, and stay up to date on your organization’s initiatives.
