.Org 2.0 – Growing a Non-Profit in a Digital Age

Running a non-profit can be a tremendous challenge. Those who are deep in the planning and execution of campaigns understand the magnitude of their efforts – and the consequences of poor execution. Day in and day out, organizations are struggling to move the mission forward, encouraging their volunteers to raise donations and bring in more support. It’s an uphill battle, as evidenced by the steady decline in charitable giving since 2015, per the Blackbaud Index. Growing an organization in our digital age, when contributions are down, is a challenge that requires a more tactical approach than just marketing. It requires a complete audit of operational processes, while also looking at ways to streamline donor outreach. Because so much of what you do relies on volunteers, there will always be reliability issues that stunt the growth of your programs. It’s a challenge faced by even the most well-funded organizations. With a little guidance, a few tools, and the right people, you can correct those operational and outreach issues and continue focusing on growth.

Tackle the Major Obstacles First – Resource Management and Operations

Budgetary issues, in addition to a fatigued, disparate workforce, can tap what little resources you have available. They can stunt the growth and momentum your organization may have already achieved. Aging processes can also create operational bottlenecks that make it virtually impossible to set time aside for donor outreach. It’s not easy to direct teams and oversee operations when you’re constantly managing broken processes and disengaged staff. Image Source Here are the key areas that you’ll need to address.

1. Finding the Right Tools for the Task

Volunteers aren’t necessarily working out of a central office anymore. In a digital age, your team is spread out and (likely) spread thin, working remotely to balance life, work, and volunteer obligations. With the right tools you can create a cohesive team that is easier to lead. You’re likely already utilizing some kind of a customer relationship management tool (CRM) for maintaining and cataloging donors. Thankfully, many of the tools you’ll use work with virtually every popular CRM. Here’s how the right tools can be used to solve common bottlenecks in your organization:

Managing and Executing New Projects

It’s a bit like trying to manage an orchestra, isn’t it? With all the individual projects and tasks spread across volunteers, it’s a chore to make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be, and doing what they’re supposed to be doing. A project management system can bring everything into one place so you can assign and track tasks and monitor campaign progress. Smartsheet is a great choice because it’s easy to customize, and even easier to learn. Image Source

Team Communication

A lot of organizations communicate with volunteers and team leaders via email and by phone or text. As conversations travel back and forth, critical information can get buried in email threads. The original message can also be miscommunicated as it’s passed along through phone and text paraphrasing. Using a communication tool, you can bring all the dialogue into one place for timely, accurate discussions. Slack is a terrific communication tool for keeping your team in the loop. Have one large group discussion, or create channels where individual teams can talk. Messages are never lost, so it’s a great way to keep track of every discussion. Image Source

Reliability and Accountability

Even with a project management system, it can be a challenge to keep up on tasks floating across volunteer groups – especially when multiple parties are involved and tasks or projects change hands. Using a process management tool like Tallyfy, you can easily create approval workflows for your team. When a task moves to the next step or changes hands, the individual accountable receives a notification. If approval is required for a task to move forward, a team leader or administrator can be notified. This automation creates more accountability and ensures that tasks aren’t easily forgotten or missed. Image Source You can get the most out of these web-based resources by working with a virtual assistant. Smaller tasks, team updates, and resource management can be taken off your plate to give you more time to focus on operations and growth.

2. Legal Compliance

With changing regulations and online operations extending across state lines, legal compliance can be a major issue – and a costly one.  There’s a lot to keep track of in order to stay compliant, including:

1. Maintaining records and minutes
2. Filing 990 returns on time
3. Following bylaws and guidelines for conducting board meetings
4. Generating and adhering to policies, such as conflict-of-interest policies

Retaining a lawyer can be a costly expense for a non-profit, especially given all the documentation required for various activities, along with federal and state regulations. If you’re not familiar with those regulations, you could inadvertently overstep and face fines – potentially having your non-profit status revoked. To control costs and remain compliant in order to maintain non-profit status, use a legal resource center like Rocket Lawyer. A Full Team at Your Disposal – The primary benefit of a service like Rocket Lawyer is a flat monthly subscription fee. At a fraction of the cost of retaining a single lawyer, your organization still gets the benefit of a complete law firm. Rather than consulting with a single lawyer on retainer, you can post questions when you need legal advice and they will be viewed by a bank of lawyers. Responses come back quickly, so you won’t be left waiting for an answer. You’ll hear from lawyers in your area, familiar with local as well as federal requirements specific to your non-profit. Reduce Costs with Legal Templates – Working with a lawyer can be costly every time you need documents drafted. Rocket Lawyer helps by providing a resource library with more than three million templates. Take a prebuilt document that fits your specific legal need, populate it with your information, and you’re done. You can even have a lawyer review the completed document to ensure its accuracy. Keep Everyone Covered – Business plans are available that can provide representation for you and any of the volunteers or staff supporting your organization. Using a tool like this, you’ll be drawing on reduced-cost legal advice to ensure you’re completely covered in operating your non-profit within the established boundaries of the law, and that all of the necessary paperwork is filed accurately and in a timely manner.

3. Donor Communication

The growth of an organization relies strongly on communication – specifically, communication with donors. Improving communication and producing more effective outreach starts with having the right tools.

Step 1: Organize Donors

A CRM for managing critical donor information makes it easy for volunteers to leverage the personal data of donors and encourage support. The more information that is stored, the easier it is for volunteers to make a personal connection with donors. Donor information can be imported from spreadsheets to populate a CRM, and many online donation platforms can automatically upload donor information into a CRM once donations are made. Image Source A CRM will also make it easy to track donations historically per donor, and sort them through reports to create targeted contact lists.

Step 2: Create a Communication Plan

A plan for communication with donors doesn’t need to be complex. It just needs to include a few key items:

1. How often does donor outreach take place?
2. Who is responsible for contacting donors?
3. What methods of contact are used?
4. How often does follow up take place?
5. How are donors segmented for a contact campaign (frequency of donation, size of donation, date since last donation, etc.)?

Your plan can act as a basic schedule for the teams responsible for contacting donors directly. Once initial contact is made, your team can use your CRM to set tasks for a follow-up call if necessary. If you don’t use a CRM for task tracking, Google Keep is a free platform that can help you, your team, and your VA track notes and reminders on donor outreach.

Step 3: Create Talking Points

The most effective outreach will happen when volunteers are all on the same page and they know what to say to donors when they connect. You shouldn’t create a script, but you still want to offer enough guidance so that volunteers are comfortable when talking to donors. Create a list of three to five bullet points that speak to the mission and values of your organization, along with the value proposition. The value proposition basically answers the question “Why should I donate or support your cause?” Image Source To supplement those bullet points, create a short list of the most frequently-asked questions from donors, along with the recommended answer. This information makes outreach more fluid, and volunteers will be less likely to try getting out of making calls when they have supportive information to work with.

Step 4: Always Follow Up

No matter the outcome of an interaction with a donor, always follow up within 24 hours and send a sincere “thank you.” Email is a sufficient means to follow up. If you use a CRM, you can create automated workflows that trigger after contact is made, so an email is automatically generated. If you have difficulty finding volunteers to communicate with donors, or have had less than desirable results in the past from unreliable volunteers, a VA may be a smart investment. With a good communication plan in place, a virtual assistant can plug in and start making contact immediately using the tools you have in place.

4. Balancing costs

Image Source Managing the finances while balancing the costs of a non-profit is no small feat. Growth relies on compliance and utilizing funds in a way that ensures that expenses are covered, and funds are available for growth programs, mission support, and marketing and advertising. Rather than trying to manage the organization’s funds in-house, which either takes significant time and attention or requires a dedicated treasurer/chief financial officer, your organization should outsource. Tasking a remote accountant or outsourced chief financial officer removes the burden of financial compliance and balance sheets from your team. You’ll also reduce the overall cost of managing and balancing finances.

Step 1: Agency or Accountant?

When outsourcing, you have your choice between working with an individual freelance accountant or outsourcing to an agency. There are benefits to each and it really boils down to the scale of your organization and the kind of relationship you’re looking for. A freelance accountant will give you a more personalized experience, and in time will become very familiar with how you operate. They’ll also have a vested personal interest in your success, as individual accountants can only handle so many clients. Depending on the volume of work and commitment you require, your account could be a significant portion of their income. For smaller organizations, working with an individual might be a favorable cost-saving choice. Image Source The only real con of working with an individual is that same limitation on time. They’re likely to have other clients and are less likely to be available in off-hours. If you have an urgent matter, it might be difficult to reach them, or get something turned around quickly. For larger organizations, it may be best to outsource to an agency that employs a bank of accountants. While an accountant is typically assigned to a client, if they become unavailable for any reason the agency will have another accountant take over. You may get faster turnarounds with an agency, but you’re less likely to get that personalized touch of working with an individual who is self-employed.

Step 2: Set Expectations

When you decide to outsource, you need to establish your expectations up front. This is easier to do with an agency because they typically offer a set range of services in a subscription model. Your initial agreement and expectations should include:

1. The services or blocks of hours you’re paying for each month, and how much it will cost
2. The responsibilities of the accountant and scope of their duties
3. How documents are shared
4. Communication expectations, including frequency of reporting

You’ll also want to discuss your organizational structure with your accountant in regards to your status as a non-profit. Because there are legal obligations regarding such things as report filing with the IRS, it’s important to know that your accountant understands how to handle bookkeeping for a non-profit.

Step 3: Gather the Data and Review

Before you can tackle cost balancing, you’ll need to go through an onboarding process. Meet with your accountant to provide historical records, income reports, and receipts and expenses, as well as programs, tools, software, and other services that have recurring fees. You’ll also want to provide budget information for your organization. Your accountant will use this information, along with anything else they may require, to audit your bookkeeping and create a plan moving forward. Image Source

Step 4: Make Cuts and Revise Budgets

Once the accountant has a firm understanding of your organization’s financial position, they can provide you with a complete report of income from donations and charitable support, outbound payments around your organization’s cause, and other operational costs and expenses. With this information, you can review costs with your team leaders, as well as the board, to determine where costs and unnecessary expenses can be reduced. Streamlining and balancing costs lets you put more money into programs that support your cause. It’s also an opportunity to shift funds to programs or departments that may need a revised budget in order to have a greater impact.

5. Accountability in Processes

Image Source Every organization – large and small – suffers from the same problem: missed opportunities and forgotten tasks. The more volunteers on a project and the more complex the task, the more likely something is to slip through the cracks or have a follow up get missed. Those issues, and even bottlenecks in processes, all interrupt and inhibit communication with donors. The simplest error can create a ripple effect that has a significant impact on growth. Approval workflows and better process tracking can add accountability and ensure that every project, no matter the scale, is taken through to completion. Refining your processes to add that accountability is simple:

Step 1: Identify Problem Processes

Everything you and your team do within your organization is part of a process. Over time, as a non-profit grows, processes can become cumbersome and may not scale with your organization. If you’re struggling with growth, look to the various processes to see where changes should be made. Start with the processes that have the most impact on generating donations, as well as those that can impact the support of programs around your cause.

Step 2: Review and Audit Your Processes

After identifying and prioritizing processes, examine them from end to end. Look at where the process starts and how it progresses. This could include:

1. How communications are sent and tracked
2. The work involved and who does the work
3. Who is responsible for the outcome
4. What the expected outcome is vs. what occurs
5. How much time should be spent vs. how much time is being spent
6. What software or hardware is involved
7. How the process feeds into other processes

When you review an individual process in this manner, you’ll be able to see where bottlenecks occur that can inhibit volunteer activity or generate waste (wasted time or lost money).

Step 3: Involve Volunteers and Staff

You’ll have a different perspective looking at processes from the outside, so it can be helpful to bring in your team when reviewing processes. They perform the tasks regularly, and they’ll have the best insight into what’s not working, or what’s creating frustrations and slowdowns in their work. They may even be able to offer solutions to improve the process. Image Source To keep things running smoothly, consider giving your team some measure of autonomy. If they have the ability to manage and refine processes when bottlenecks start to occur, they can quickly make adjustments and revise processes to keep the workflow efficient. Autonomy also helps with accountability. People take pride in owning a solution that works, so if they helped improve the processes they’ll be more likely to work more efficiently and reliably going forward.

Step 4: Add Tools for Accountability

If accountability is still a concern and you want to make sure that operations run smoothly, you can use a tool like Tallyfy or Process Street to create approval processes. This will create accountability at every step, as approvals are required for tasks and processes to progress. Improving processes and accountability issues could be as simple as finding the right person for a specific task, or it could be more complex, like finding and purchasing software to replace out-of-date programs. Or it could mean scrapping processes entirely and starting from scratch. Once you’ve made the necessary adjustments, schedule follow-ups to review the updated processes within a week. Set a schedule going forward to regularly review processes every quarter, and encourage volunteers to speak up if they encounter bottlenecks. This way you can be proactive and tackle process issues before they become a major problem.

Improving Outreach – How to Attract and Engage Donors and Supporters

Image Source Fundraising is the lifeblood of any non-profit. Unfortunately, it also takes a significant amount of time and volunteer effort to make outbound calls and knock on doors. Since most of your volunteers aren’t professionally-trained fundraising experts, it can be difficult to solicit donations and support. Traditional channels for fundraising are also less effective than they once were. You’ll need to pivot and try new avenues to gain donor support in a digital age.

1.  Content Marketing

Today, much of the marketing and advertising done by major brands and successful nonprofits is based on content. Content marketing takes a variety of forms, and for the nonprofit it offers a great way to share the organization’s story and mission. As that content spreads and is shared by supporters on social media, visibility will increase and new donors can find their way to you. The greatest benefit of content marketing for the nonprofit is the low cost. If you have the time, or have volunteers with the right skills, you can produce the content in-house with no cost other than the time you put into it. Even outsourcing content production can be relatively cheap compared to more expensive traditional marketing channels. A well-written article for $200 that delivers tens of thousands of global visits over the life of the content is a bargain compared to a $5,000 radio spot that might only last 30 days with limited geographic reach. Content marketing should be part of your overall strategy because your audience is out there on the web, searching for content related to their special interests. The more content you produce and distribute, the better the chances are that those potential donors will find you. Here’s how to create a content strategy that will attract those donors and supporters to your cause.

Step 1: Know Your Audience

The most successful marketers are able to connect with their audience because they have a strong understanding of who they are. They created a persona that represents their ideal customer using hard data combined with a little assumption. You need to create one or more personas that represent your ideal donors. If you’ve done any fundraising in the past, and you have customer data stored, use this to create audience segments. For creating content, you’re most interested in:

1. What donors are passionate about
2. What gets them excited or fired up, specifically around your cause
3. Where they spend their time online (social channels, groups, forums)
4. What kind of content they’re most interested in (articles, videos, images)
5. What other organizations or causes they follow

Any other information you gather is still useful, and all of it can be used to inform your strategy and content.

Step 2: Choose the Right Content Formats

Content comes in many forms on the web, and not every type of content will be effective with your audience. Some people prefer to read blogs, articles, and ebooks, while others would rather watch a short video or documentary, listen to a podcast, or browse image galleries. Image Source The most common content types include:

1. Blog posts on your site
2. Articles posted to other sites
3. Infographics rich with data
4. Videos (long videos on YouTube or short videos on Instagram or Facebook)
5. Images
6. Slide decks
7. Podcasts
8. Interactive content (quizzes, polls, and surveys)

Rather than focusing on a single type of content, select a few that are most likely to draw engagement from your audience.

Step 3: Create Content Consistently

Once you’ve settled on the content formats you want to create, start scheduling content production. Take a look at the content commonly being shared around your cause, and brainstorm topics using that content as inspiration. A virtual assistant can help you schedule those topics using a simple calendar or spreadsheet so you’re producing multiple pieces of content each week. Be sure to stick to your dates and maintain consistency. The more frequent and consistent the content, the better the results. If you find it difficult to get content published, that’s OK. Use your own experience to craft content outlines, then pass them on to a ghost writer or virtual assistant. A VA is there to do the heavy lifting and help keep you on schedule.

Step 4: Guest Post

While you’re creating posts for your own site, you’ll also want to create articles that are hosted elsewhere. This is a great way to start generating more traffic to your website or blog and to raise awareness for your cause. Find Relevant Opportunities – There are countless blogs out there in virtually every industry that are happy to accept guest posts, and they often advertise that fact on their websites. To find those opportunities, do some quick Google searches such as:

1. Top X blogs (where X is your topic or industry)
2. X guest post
3. X guest blogger
4. X writers needed
5. X blog for us

Those searches should return plenty of opportunities. Check the Guidelines – Every site is different, and will have its own set of guidelines for guest posts and sending over a pitch. Review the guidelines and make sure you can meet the criteria for a submission. Some may want an entire post written, while others are fine with being pitched one or more topics, or just receiving an outline. Image Source If you can’t find guidelines on the site, but it looks like there have been guest authors in the past, use the contact form or find an email address to reach out directly. Ask if the site has any guidelines, and what the preferred process for pitching a topic on the blog is. Guests posts cost you nothing but the time it takes to produce them, or the minimal cost of having a freelance writer create the content for you.

Step 5: Promote Your Content

Simply creating the content isn’t enough. You need to promote your content to get it in front of a much larger audience. There are lots of ways to promote content, including:

1. Content promotion tools and platforms like Quuu, Buzzstream, Google Amp, and Outbrain
2. Social pushes through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other relevant channels
3. Tools like ContentMarketer that help you find influencers and connect for shout-outs and targeted promotions
4. Sharing within specific groups and communities
5. Paid social with sponsored or boosted posts
6. Email lists
7. Cross-promoting with influencers and other organizations

Try to create a promotional strategy for various content formats that you can easily follow when new content is published either on your site or online.

Step 6: Repurpose and Distribute

Distribution goes along with promotion to a certain extent, but it involves a little more work. Rather than reposting the same duplicate content on other platforms or channels, you should repurpose the content. Repurposing is simply the act of taking one piece of content and changing it into a different format without necessarily rewriting it (much.) For example: Blogs – You could take a blog post and turn it into a video, talk about the highlights on a podcast, or create a series of engaging images using big data or facts from the blog as captions. Reports – Research reports and industry data can be pulled to create an engaging and easy-to-read infographic, slide deck, or presentation, or fleshed out into a blog post. Blog Series – If you have a number of posts around related topics, the information can be combined into a comprehensive ebook to give away to supporters and donors. Videos and Images – Any video from events can be chopped into screen grabs and used to create memes, image carousels, slide decks, or galleries on social channels. Once you’ve repurposed the content, you can find other platforms where you can post that new content and get it in front of a larger audience. Common platforms for distributing content include (but aren’t limited to):

1. Medium
2. LinkedIn Pulse
3. SlideShare
4. Flickr
5. YouTube, Vimeo, and other video hosting platforms
6. Reddit

Repeat the process of creating, promoting, and distributing your content across various channels to maximize its reach. While content creation is best handled by your team or outsourced to a freelancer with the right skills, a virtual assistant can largely handle the promotion and distribution of your content.

2. Social Media

Image Source Social media is an area where many .orgs come up short. In fact, it’s common for a lot of businesses to stumble with social media outreach. A new organization might have a handle on its social media campaigns, but as its audience grows, social media transforms into something that requires more time and attention. Organizations often make the mistake of assigning social media to a volunteer or staff member already burdened with other tasks, and they don’t take the time to make posts geared toward the right audience.. Another common mistake is to split the duties across multiple volunteers. This can be effective, but only if you have a very precise and defined workflow, and a team with strong internal communication. Finding the people with the right skill set is just as important as finding people who are interested in helping. Volunteers that aren’t interested in social promotion and would prefer to be helping somewhere else can have a negative impact on your social outreach. Here’s how you can streamline your social media to make it easier to manage, improve engagement, grow your donor network, and garner more support from followers.

Step 1: Build Out a Content Calendar

Most organizations don’t have any real plan in place for posting content to their social profiles. Posts are made on the fly when someone sends off an email and says, “We should make a post about…” When posts are made, they generally involve updates about events, donor support, and media relations for the organization. They typically don’t provide additional value, and tend to be reactionary. Image Source A content calendar is a great way to plan the bulk of your content for the coming weeks and months. At a glance you can see what posts are coming up, and everyone in the organization with access – like your marketing team and leadership – can stay in the loop. Creating a content calendar is extremely easy; a simple calendar template in a spreadsheet is sufficient. Using a Google Calendar shared with your team is also a great option. What Goes in the Calendar? Setting up your calendar each month is easy:

1. Decide how often you’re going to make posts
2. Decide which channels you’re going to use
3. Brainstorm a list of topics to be covered
4. Build relevant holidays in your content schedule
5. Split those topics across various channels
6. Each day you post, make an entry that lists the channel, topic, and the time for the post

As you complete and publish posts, mark them off on your calendar with a strikethrough. The greatest benefit of a content calendar is that you have a consistent, set schedule for when content goes live. The calendar includes the gist of every social post, and relevant links. That means that anyone can step in to make sure you’re producing regular, engaging content. If you want to unburden your volunteers, a virtual assistant can be brought on to handle getting content live. The goal is to streamline content distribution to improve engagement while freeing up your staff. Deployment can even take place in stages, where your team sources and loads topics while an assistant handles the content posts. In time, your VA will learn to identify relevant content and can source topics to assist with populating your content calendar.

Step 2: Integration With the Right Tools

Using a calendar to plan content can save you a lot of scrambling in the future, but if you want to preload any content, you have to do it manually channel by channel. This can be incredibly time consuming. Curating content that provides value to your audience can also eat up a great deal of time, but it’s necessary to share things outside of what you create. Thankfully, there are a number of tools you can use to help further streamline the sourcing, management, and scheduling of your social content. Buffer – Buffer is a terrific tool that allows you to schedule content to be posted at a later time across major social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can create the posts or curate links, set the date and time, and that’s it. Once the scheduled time hits, the content is pushed to your social channels. Image Source Buffer also has a browser extension. If you find a terrific article, video, or image you want to share with your audience, you can add it to your queue with a single click. Hootsuite – Hootsuite has long been a popular application for managing multiple accounts. While Buffer is geared towards scheduling content, Hootsuite allows you to monitor, post, and respond to all of your social channels through a single interface. This is incredibly helpful if you’re working with multiple social accounts and need to get posts out to each multiple times a day, while also responding to followers. The mobile application provides the same flexibility, so if you’re on the road or at an event, you can still maintain full and efficient control over your social channels. Image Source Quuu – Quuu is a great tool you can use to fill the gaps in your content calendar and eliminate the extra time spent on sourcing and curating content. You can mark categories that are most relevant to your audience, and Quuu will hand-pick high-quality articles for you. The best part is that Quuu integrates with Buffer, so it will automatically load content into a queue to be scheduled for publication. Here’s the cherry on top: while each of these services has a premium version, they’re all completely free to use. You can integrate them into your social strategy to see how they streamline your social outreach, and upgrade if you feel the value is there. Because of the mobile nature of each of these tools, a virtual assistant can fully manage the integration. That includes queue monitoring and keeping hours trimmed by using a platform like Hootsuite to reduce the amount of time spent monitoring, posting, and responding. Image Source

Step 3: Create Amazing Content

One of the areas where a lot of organizations botch their outreach is by creating content that is too promotional. When all you’re doing is asking for the sale, requesting donations, and trying to push people to take action, your audience will begin to shut it out, much the same way we tune out interruptive marketing like commercials and banner ads online. If you want more engagement from your supporters, and to grow your following, then you have to take a more creative and value-oriented approach to the content you post. Typically, businesses follow the 80/20 rule with social media: 80% of your content should focus on providing value and be informative or educational with zero ties to promotion. Special offers, sales, etc. should be limited to the remaining 20% of content. For a non-profit, the approach is a little different. Your approach should follow the Rule of Thirds:

1. 1/3 Appreciation
2. 1/3 Advocacy
3. 1/3 Appeals

Appreciation: sharing valuable, informative content with fans and showing appreciation for their support and donations Advocacy: sharing valuable content around the mission of the non-profit Appeals: requesting donations and donor outreach, including leveraging influencers and utilizing storytelling to sink the message If you work with a virtual assistant who has prior skills in managing social campaigns, you’ll be able to move away from too-frequent event posts and solicitations to create more variety in your content. When you focus on providing more value, you’ll see more engagement and more donor support in return.

Step 4: Start Engaging

Posting content isn’t enough, and only makes up a small portion of the time spent on social media. The meat of it will be in the direct engagement that happens with your followers. Responding to comments, as well as engaging other pages and influencers, not only keeps your current fans engaged but helps draw new supporters and donors to your cause. Here’s what you should do:

1. Take time each day, a few times a day, to respond to comments from followers
2. Post to other pages as your .org page; focus on the ones with some relevancy to your cause
3. Find and engage influencers in social; respond to their posts and share their content with your followers

Image Source Make sure you stay active every day and respond to everyone. If your followers feel like you’re not engaging them, they’ll eventually lose interest and stop commenting and reacting to your content. When social media is managed effectively and efficiently, using the steps above, it can be a very productive and low-cost means for acquiring donors and support. The only real cost is the time it takes to create your strategy, and the resources you commit to its execution.

3. Email Marketing

The acquisition of new donors is important, but you can’t neglect past donors and the support they bring. While the retention rate of first-year donors is only 23.7%, the retention rate of multi-year donors jumps to just over 58%. Build a relationship with those supporters and keep them engaged outside of fundraising. That will keep your retention rates up and they’ll be more likely to respond when you call on them. Email marketing is a great, non-invasive, and non-interruptive way to stay in front of supporters while also providing value. Even better, the ROI is significant. As your list grows, a single email to your supporters could trigger an influx of donations, greatly reducing the time it takes to hit fundraising targets. Here’s how develop and grow your list to boost support from subscribers:

Step 1: Set Up An Email Marketing Software Account

If you don’t have a list already established, a platform like MailChimp or Constant Contact is easy to set up and a worthwhile investment. Many of these platforms offer a completely free version (up to a certain number of subscribers) to get you started. For example, MailChimp is free up to 2,000 subscribers; after that, the pricing starts at just $10/month. Once you have created an account, you can import the names and emails of your past donors and supporters to get a headstart before starting any promotions to gain new subscribers.

Step 2: Grow Your Subscribers

Now that you have an email or newsletter created, you want to let your supporters know about it. Create opt-in forms for your website, and integrate your opt-in with Facebook to make it easy for fans to join. If you use any donation platforms or online forms for donations, make sure you’re collecting email addresses as part of the donation process. Tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact make it very easy to integrate with platforms like that, so donor emails are automatically imported. If there’s no integration with a specific platform you use, it’s just as easy to upload a spreadsheet containing name and email address to add those donors to your email subscription lists. Organizations that sell products in a physical store or at events can collect emails as part of the checkout process. Using an app for credit card sales or order processing will often grab an email address to send receipts. While these apps may not integrate with your email service, you can pull customer reports and manually import contact information into your email platform. An online e-commerce store like Shopify or BigCommerce collects emails during the checkout process, and can integrate with tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact to automatically update your subscriber lists whenever someone makes a purchase. One thing to keep in mind: never purchase email leads. They are rarely targeted, often cold, and will only drive up unsubscribe rates and spam reports. Grow your list naturally through promotion.

Step 3: Create an Autoresponder

Email platforms let you send emails to your subscribers any time you like. The emails you send for donor support are likely to be fairly spaced out, so you want to fill the gaps in between with value-oriented content. This way you’re not hitting donors constantly with donation requests, and the emails keep you front-of-mind. Image Source Your emails can contain anything that provides value. You can:

1. Highlight other donors
2. Share stories of your cause and victories you’ve had
3. Share blog posts you’ve written
4. Schedule content curated from other sources
5. Write emails with tips for supporting the cause (non-transactional)

Schedule your emails several days apart, and start loading in content. This gap gives you room to send other emails manually when important things pop up, or when you want to promote your content.

Step 4: Create a Calendar

With everything going on, you don’t want any opportunities for donor support slipping by. Create a calendar that tracks holidays and special events important to your organization and cause. If you already have a calendar for your content or social media, you can combine those together here. For any holidays or events, designate and produce your outreach emails ahead of time. This way, when those events get close you can trigger the emails or a series of emails to promote events or solicit donations. This is another way a virtual assistant can be helpful. With an established calendar you can provide an outline or bullet points about what to include in an email, and your VA can write those emails for you. Once you approve them, they can load the emails as drafts and have them sitting at the ready. A good calendar is a content marketer’s best friend, and will do you a world of good in maintaining engagement and donor support.

Step 5: Segment Your Donors

Your donors can likely be broken into different segments based on things like frequency of donations, geographic region, special interests and affiliations, and more. List segments like this make it easy to create more customized email campaigns. For example, if there was an event in Michigan supporting your cause, you wouldn’t necessarily email your entire list. With list segments you could send an email, invitation, or registration offer to just the supporters in the Great Lakes region. Image Source You can update and create new list segments any time you like, so be sure to revisit them often to see if updates are necessary before new campaigns go out.

Step 6: Plan Special Campaigns

It’s a good practice to develop a strategy for special campaigns. These are campaigns that don’t necessarily fit a specific audience segment and aren’t a fit for your entire list. For example, you could create targeted emails in advance for donors who haven’t been active for a certain amount of time. While it’s not a regular campaign you would run, having the email ready makes it easy to schedule a campaign like that every quarter. You just pull new donor information, generate a special subscriber segment, and send it off. Once your campaigns are structured, much of your email can be run on autopilot or turned over to a virtual assistant who can manage deployment using the template emails you’ve created. It’s one of the most cost-efficient ways to keep donors engaged while generating a high rate of financial support for your cause.

Conclusion

Raising funds for your organization isn’t easy. While digital platforms and technology make it much easier to reach larger audiences and provide countless opportunities to engage donor groups, it takes a tremendous amount of work to keep everything humming, keep volunteers on task, and manage all the digital properties while growing your organization. Even the best, most well-funded organizations rely on volunteers. While those volunteers are certainly devoted, they have to balance their time. Some may bring very limited skills that don’t include digital outreach and donor engagement. To maintain consistent growth, you need a reliable solution. Virtual assistants are a cost-effective way to get consistent, reliable help with managing processes. When you need to hit fundraising goals, a VA can get you there, and for less than the cost of buying lunch for your volunteer team.