Right Tactics Will Bolster Fundraising If Economy Gets Rocky
Although economic growth and jobs data are strong at the start of the year, many AccuList® fundraising clients express anxiety about the impact on charitable giving of higher inflation or even recession later in 2023.
Here’s the advice from nonprofit veterans: Stay the course and avoid the temptation to cut back on direct mail or digital marketing. When fundraisers reduce the channels and frequency of donor requests, they cut opportunities for giving and erode long-term connections.
A better way to offset economic drags is to increase the efficiency of donor acquisition and retention programs. For direct mailings, tactics such as modified package size and pre-sorting can reduce costs. Greater mailing list efficiency is key as well. Using the best-performing vertical lists and modeled data can boost donor prospecting ROI, for example. Meanwhile, house donor lists can select out lower-value or lower-response segments.
In tougher times, nonprofits also can’t afford the waste of bad data. OneCause, a provider of event and online fundraising technology, found that only 18% of nonprofits reported having enough data and insights for cost-effective decision-making in 2022! So fundraisers should prioritize clean data—de-duped, complete, consistent, deliverable and actionable—for cost-effective targeting.
Fundraisers can take better advantage of the fact that today’s donors are multichannel responders by coordinating direct mail with boosted social media, online and mobile giving. In-person fundraising events are expected to make a comeback in 2023, too. OneCause reports 83% of organizations plan to hold at least one in-person event in 2023.
Data supports investments in event and online efforts. Over half of surveyed nonprofits reported generating 21% of operating budget from event and online fundraising in 2022, per OneCause.
For help with donor acquisition, multichannel fundraising and data management, see https://www.acculist.com/fundraising/
