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Many organizations are considering launching a campaign in 2022. Is your organization one of them?

An important undertaking like a campaign shouldn’t be entered into lightly. How do you know if your organization is truly ready to take this important step to fund the future aspirations of your nonprofit? Here are some key steps to be thinking about as you are moving into campaign planning.

It’s helpful to assess both your internal readiness as an organization to successfully execute a campaign and externally the receptiveness of the potential donor base to your campaign. Both aspects are critical to the success of the campaign. The goal in your planning phase is to ensure the internal readiness and external capacity are in alignment or you have a clear line of site on what needs to be addressed as campaign planning and the early phases of the campaign move forward.

Major gifts are crucial for driving your nonprofit’s mission forward. With the help of these generous donors, you can launch large initiatives, expand your team, or even build new facilities. However, identifying potential major donors is a significant challenge facing nonprofits. So how can you improve your identification process and begin forming connections with major supporters?

The answer: prospect research.

By using publicly available information, prospect research can help you determine who in your constituency may be willing and able to give major gifts to your nonprofit. Commonly considered data points include both wealth indicators and previous philanthropic behavior. With smarter prospect research strategies, your major gifts officer has a better chance of securing those all-important donations with maximum efficiency.

While we need to work to engage all of our donors, many nonprofits have experienced the benefit of an influx of new donors in response to the pandemic’s challenges. What can you do to engage and retain these new donors as well as deepen your relationships with your existing donor pool?

Donor Engagement

While we are operating in unusual times, you do not want to throw out your tried-and-true ways of engaging and stewarding your donors. But, you might consider adding the following strategies as well.

As we begin to feel the warmer breezes of Spring and the sense of renewal it brings with it, it seems a great time to reflect on what we learned—and not just say “Good riddance!” to a most unusual year. We may just find that there are some lessons we learned as we pivoted during the pandemic which we can carry forward to help boost relationships, efficiency, and even fundraising results.

As we search for positive outcomes from the COVID-19 pandemic, we might note that our tech skills have improved, or maybe we’ve mastered a new way to do second-grade math. But certainly, other lessons learned could have a longer shelf life, like unexpected opportunities with donors and prospects or adaptations on the fly that actually seem to work!

It is important to reflect on what ideas and practices have risen to the top as necessity forced us to try different ways to communicate and connect with one another. One thing is sure, large doses of flexibility and understanding were needed—and still are—to navigate the situations that seem to change by the minute in our professional and personal lives in the times we are in.

I recently hosted a webinar with Melanie Harmon, Senior VP of Advancement at Manchester College, focused on Frontline Fundraising and Events Go Virtual: A Look at Donor Engagement Techniques that explored some takeaways from the past few months for our work with donors. Here is an overview of some of those lessons and ideas on incorporating them into our work in the months and years to come.

Data plays a vital role in the world of nonprofits. It is a critical tool that helps you make smarter decisions, and it can play a key role in supporting future investment in your efforts.

Your data tells a story that can help you identify key trends as you think towards the future. Sometimes determining what that story says can be a challenge, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by too much data. But with the right guidance, you can quickly gain clarity that can make decision making much easier. For more information on how others are using data in fundraising to achieve results, download our content collection,  How to Use Data to Improve Your Fundraising, produced by Chronicle Intelligence, a division of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, in partnership with JGA.

Successful organizations know that it’s important to use the data you have to guide decisions that will help you build stronger and deeper relationships with your donors and friends in the most efficient and effective way possible. Many are using that data to guide future investments in fundraising.

Though personal visits are the gold standard to engage and cultivate major gift donors, they can be costly and labor intensive if you are not seeing the right prospects. But how can you ensure you are connecting with the best prospects?

Your database holds the answer. Big data is a buzz word we’re hearing more and more about, particularly for its ability to organize large volumes of data to uncover hidden trends and its ability to make organizations more efficient through predictive analytics. This emerging trend involves utilizing historical data to find patterns and correlations to build assumptions and develop potential scenarios. So how do we take those concepts and put them into practice with our nonprofit organizations?

Nonprofit organizations across the country utilize campaigns to rally key constituents around programs and projects that move the organization forward. Fundraising campaigns provide a great platform to share the vision of the organization, serve as the catalyst to engage volunteers in hands-on fundraising activities, and significantly increase philanthropic resources to the organization. When done properly, campaigns can significantly enhance an organization’s impact and improve operations, however, much planning and preparation are required before moving into a campaign.

The role of planned gifts in a campaign is one area that must be discussed early. Planned gifts are funding as much as 40 percent of some comprehensive campaign goals, so it is crucial to establish a clear policy for these types of donations before beginning to solicit gifts for a campaign.

Have you ever considered raising philanthropic funds to reduce or eliminate your organization’s debt?

Raising funds for debt relief is good in theory, but requires a specific approach to gain support from donors. A key to fundraising is aligning the needs of the organization with the philanthropic goals of your donors. Yet, paying off debt is not often high on a donor’s list of projects they want to support.