As a fundraiser, you’ve certainly run into obstacles throughout fundraising campaigns earlier than. Possibly you’re nonetheless just a few hundred {dollars} away out of your aim throughout your most essential fundraiser of the yr, nevertheless it feels such as you’ve completely run out of donor opportunities. Or, maybe your workers and volunteers are carrying far too many duties and battle to finish all of their duties.

Points like these could make it really feel just like the sky is falling, however investing in the correct software program resolution can assist you overcome them. For example, you may already use a advertising and marketing software to schedule posts and emails upfront or have a CRM to trace donor relationships to unencumber your staff’s bandwidth. Specialised fundraising instruments play an analogous position in your campaigns, streamlining the method and serving to you increase extra in your trigger.

Moreover, these instruments have advantages (like elevated effectivity) to supply any social good group, whether or not you’re raising funds for children to entry books or to preserve land of historic and ecological significance in your neighborhood. To get began, we’ll concentrate on one of the widespread—and irritating—fundraising challenges: an absence of attain and disengaged donors.

Hurdle 1: Restricted Attain and Engagement

Whereas it’s essential to have a core group of passionate supporters who’re dialed into every of your fundraisers, it’s important to persistently attain and recruit new supporters to develop your group.

Nevertheless, it may be tough to search out methods to develop past this core group or to succeed in these outdoors your native space. Digital fundraisers supported by fundraising software program provide a low-lift, cost-effective method to domesticate new supporter bases, lengthen your attain, and have interaction your current supporters extra deeply.

Listed below are just a few easy digital fundraising strategies you may pair along with your theme or concept of selection:

• Peer-to-peer. Bloomerang’s peer-to-peer fundraising guide describes this technique as “a fundraising technique the place people manage private campaigns to boost cash on behalf of a nonprofit group.” The pledge fundraising mannequin, by which supporters contribute pledged donations which are delivered after the fundraiser, can simply match into this technique. For instance, you may manage a enjoyable run, have individuals acquire $5 pledges from their friends per mile they run, and acquire donations through on-line channels.
• Digital challenges. These challenges happen totally on social media, they usually urge supporters to participate in a problem (which may be humorous, tough, and so on.). Suppose again to the Ice Bucket Problem of 2014 which raised $115 million for the ALS Association. Design a problem your viewers is prone to be fascinated by, doesn’t have a excessive barrier to entry, and aligns along with your group’s id and mission.
• Textual content-to-give. Textual content-based fundraisers are extraordinarily sharable and make it so simple as attainable in your supporters to donate. Usually, you’ll want to make use of a particular software program resolution to facilitate the method of making the cellphone quantity and codes that supporters will use to donate. Then, all it’s good to do is write a compelling request, promote the problem on-line, and urge supporters to share the marketing campaign with their family and friends.

Every of those strategies empowers individuals to make the fundraiser an enormous success. For instance, in case your marching band is holding a peer-to-peer fundraiser, college students and their households will really feel motivated to submit about their particular person donation pages so as to generate sufficient income to succeed in the fundraising aim.

This sense of shared accountability to your trigger will encourage individuals to interact extra deeply along with your group and work to share concerning the trigger with their networks.

Hurdle 2: Overworked Workers and Volunteers

Best campaigns depend on assist out of your group’s help system, whether or not that be workers members, volunteers, members of your PTA, or different supporters. However with out the correct tech to take recurring administrative duties off your plate, you would rapidly find yourself with an excessive amount of work to go round.

Fundraising software program can carry the burden of repetitive administrative duties off your group’s shoulders. This fashion, workers and supporters can allocate their time towards extra productive duties, like getting ready decorations in your upcoming fundraiser occasion or scheduling conferences with main donors.

Listed below are a number of the duties fundraising software program can do for you:

• Arrange staff, particular person, or organization-wide donation pages
• Monitor and log every donation made
• Ship automated donation receipts and thank-you messages
• Will let you ship mass messages to individuals and donors in just some clicks
• Gather and consolidate knowledge, making the method paperless
• Course of funds for you, rapidly delivering the overall funds raised to your account

As a result of your workers could have extra time to dedicate towards different duties, take into account making an effort to recruit extra volunteers to assist out with offline duties, like occasion setup and tear down. In spite of everything, not your whole communications must be about financial support—as a substitute, ask supporters in the event that they’d like to assist out by donating their time.

Hurdle 3: Problem Monitoring Donations

Intently monitoring donations is essential to make sure that your group can precisely report the income it made on tax types, keep transparency with donors, measure profitability for campaigns, and proceed to fund its work. Guaranteeing that you’re assembly fundraising targets and minimizing prices is extra essential than ever because the U.S. begins to see a dip in donations.

Nevertheless, should you’re monitoring donations with out software program, the method can get messy. That is notably difficult in terms of pledged donations as a result of they’re accomplished after the fundraiser wraps up.

Fairly than battle to maintain up with the inflow of donations, make sure that to spend money on software program that routinely tracks presents and processes funds as we mentioned within the earlier part. If you happen to select a technique like a pledge drive fundraiser, it may be useful to discover a resolution with options like automated cost reminders to immediate donors to honor their pledged presents. And to make giving as handy as attainable, 99Pledges recommends selecting a software program resolution that accepts and tracks well-liked cost strategies resembling main bank cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

Whereas these are a number of the commonest fundraising challenges, your group may face different obstacles that software program can help with. For instance, fundraising software program can help donor retention efforts by sending automated thank-you emails when a donation is made. When highly effective tech is paired with professional nonprofit administration strategies, your group will have the ability to attain and retain new audiences, automate duties, and precisely observe knowledge.

In regards to the Writer

Brad Dowhaniuk

Brad Dowhaniuk is the co-founder of 99Pledges, which offers faculties and groups with an easy-to-use, web-based fundraising resolution to handle and drive success in Enjoyable Runs, jog-a-thons, baseball hit-a-thons, and rather more.