Pragmatic Digital Approach to Fundraising
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Nonprofit and crowd-funding organisations need both on-line and on-line strategies for building giving programs from engagement up through donations, this requires a fresh look at strategies for engaging new supporters on-line, understanding the characteristics of loyal donors, developing personal relationships with one time giving prospects and exploring cultivation strategies that result in life time commitments. In Islamic societies where charitable donations are part of the muslim community's religious obligation, fund raising drivers should be based on Shariah compliant models such as Infaq and Waqf.
Traditionally, Islamic fundraising activities have been focused on a minimalist donor engagement approach which is predominantly o-line; based on peer based major giving programs.
This approach seems to hamper the natural fundraising progression up to a certain point. Moving forward, enhanced digital engagement and donor strategies need to be implemented.
It is important to assess the understanding of common denominators to a successful pragmatic approach in fundraising. Whilst there are substantial best practices information regarding on-line approaches, there is lacking of digital systems that are based on shariah contracts that would enhance both on-line and on-line fundraising activities.
It is imperative to the foundation and program/mission success for organisations to deploy/implement enterprise systems that are specifically designed for contracts like Waqf and Infaq, to enhance donor engagement, assess and manage risk, and to maintain an overall low cost per dollar raised.
This article briefly presents a fresh look towards development of effective and efficient non-profit fundraising programs.
Converting one-time donors into life long supporters
Organisations with strong trustee/ management support for each individual fundraising programs have more success than others. A cause can trigger a short term emotional decision from public called impulsive philanthropy. This emotional state is easily facilitated through technology like online payments and multimedia publicity (websites, facebook, and traditional print media). However, retention of these donors usually falls off after short period of time. This is to say a donor's connection to the organisation is tenuous as best until he/she becomes a repeat donors. Retaining new donors is not a trivial challenge. Effective donor retention strategies involve :-
1. Hands up approach
Always regard donors as caring, motivating and asking for guidance. A smart system educates, empowers, and encourages donors. Smart approaches focus on systems that provide customer support, timely assistance, and effective communications through web chats, voice or video calls as well as ease of registering for events and making requests.
2. Deployment of smart donor database management systems
Consistent data collection is imperative to having valid information for making strategic decisions. Traditional spreadsheet approach, given large amount of data, is difficult to manage and has not proved to be sustainable. A smart database system is linked to the core management system should be able to perform tasks like:
- System to automatically generate timely acknowledgement. Personalise the acknowledgement as much as possible (use donors name and reference the purpose to which the gift was given)
- Detects platform used by donors to make contributions (i.e. facebook page, donation page etc).
- Quickly record pledges and gifts
- Easily manage donor contact information Should provide strategic donor analytics which allows understanding the impact of campaigns and missions through easy to use reporting functionality
- Provide population segmentation based on gift size, household income etc, immediately suggesting strategies of allocating resources
- Data mining capabilities to discover characteristics of best existing donors
-Pinpointing hot spots though geo-marking capabilities
3. Customized seamless digital experience
An effective engagement approach allows donors to feel connected to the cause, and in turn allowing donors to become advocates for that cause and have sense of belonging. This can be achieved through systems that allow donors to:
- Make secure and seamless donation using computers, mobile phones, tablets etc
- To view their contribution transactions securely and seamlessly using any device (computers, smart devices)
- Share thoughts and provide feedback
- Access information on who has benefited though their contribution
- Register as volunteers, having personalised page which allows donors to choose activities of their preference
- To have access to personalised platform for personalised group campaign for donors choice of listed causes
- Link donor's social media profiles in order to interact with other donors and social media friends
4. Standardised Tracking and reporting
Due to the nature of fundraising campaign and activities, it is vital that organisations adopt a transparent and standarised reporting approach to monitor the success of the campaigns. The management system should generate minimum standard monitoring matrices to measure progress and performance of the programs. The monitoring process should include:
- System generated monthly/weekly reports to monitor data integrity and to respond to the needs of the participants. Such analysis will aid in future forecasting
- Track the engagement level of the participants (donations received, goals achieved, number of emails sent)
5. Publications
Publication is vital for volunteers, participants and donors to feel good and have sense of achievement. A quarterly magazine or weekly e-newsletter discussing where pressing causes, foundation activities, highlighting milestone achievements, impact of donations towards previous and ongoing causes be highlighted.
Conclusion
Typically, nonprofit organisations do not have resources to manually monitor and effectively manage mass advertising, or hold events in every communities across the nation. Digital systems can effectively enhance donor engagement, reduce over-spending, and build stronger, more loyal supporters. Digital systems offer organisations the opportunity to raise funds at a relatively low cost of fundraising, providing deeper level of engagement through its donor analytics capabilities, creating trust through transparency.