Don’t Let Them Get Away!

By Angela Bevacqua, Senior Communications Specialist

Now that I’ve got your attention, I’m referring to holding on to your donors. According to our survey, 92 percent of nonprofits reported at least one new donor from Colorado Gives Day*. So what are you doing to cultivate these brand-new supporters?

To share with you some tips and inspiration, we recently put on a webinar called Nurturing Long Lasting Relationship With Your Donors After Colorado Gives Day.

In it we talk about what can be unique about donors who first come to you on Colorado Gives Day. If they are people who didn’t already exist in your database, they probably didn’t hear about you directly from you.

So how did they hear about you?

Some possibilities include:

From a friend’s ColoradoGives Fundraising Page
By searching their favorite cause on ColoradoGives.org
From a Colorado Gives Day article, news or radio interview
Saw an ad with your logo on it
Via social media (Facebook, Twitter)

Keep on mind that these people may care about your cause, but know very little about your organization in particular. They are ripe to learn about you, so make a priority to keep and build their interest.

Build a Relationship

Donor support is so much more than monetary. People can help you by being an advocate, a volunteer, a networker or fundraiser through Fundraising Pages. They might even give you a major gift one day. And have you considered the cumulative impact a donor’s support can have over time?

Rather than segmenting your donors by the size of their donations, consider these categories:

Regular donor
First-Time donor
Lapsed donor

By segmenting in this way you can write special messages based on audience type. For a lapsed donor, how about, “Welcome back!” They will be thrilled you remembered them.

In our webinar we spell out basic and more advanced ways to hold on to your donors and provide a list of donor retention resources. Check it out!

*Based on 1,205 of 1,449 Colorado Gives Day nonprofit participants responding.

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