However, they don’t need to be separate entities! Nonprofit advocacy can fit into and advance your fundraising strategy. It can help your nonprofit to: 

1. Further your mission. 
2. Engage your supporters. 
3. Acquire new donors.

When you incorporate advocacy into a well-rounded, more strategic approach for your nonprofit, you’ll find that your fundraising improves, your volunteer network expands, and your organization is able to grow. 

However, you’ll first need that well-thought-out approach as well as a system to store all of the fundraising and advocacy data collected by your nonprofit. But first, let’s dive a little deeper into how you can incorporate advocacy into your fundraising strategy. 

1. Furthering your mission

Advocacy furthers your organization’s mission. There’s no doubt about that. When you have the power to influence the decision-makers in your community, you can encourage them to enact legislation or make resolutions that will positively reinforce your cause. 

When you reinforce your mission and publicly support the policies that impact your cause, it provides an additional platform to discuss your organization with potential supporters. It can help open up additional conversations and networking opportunities that also support your mission.

Essentially, advocacy campaigns can further your mission, which, in turn, gives your organization additional authority. The more authority your organization has with the community, the more likely people are to support your mission. 

It’s all cyclical. 

Some of the people you can reach out to as a part of advocacy campaigns in order to build clout for your organization: 

• Congressmen. When most people think about advocacy campaigns, they immediately think about appealing to your representatives in Congress. This is a great way to make sure your Congressman is listening to their constituents.

• Local CEOs. If local businesses are making decisions that may impact your mission, target them in your advocacy efforts. You may ask them to stop something in their policies that is actively harming your mission or to incorporate a new policy that would help. For example, you might ask that a local chemical company stop polluting a river. 

• County or City Managers. Your city and local officials have the most direct influence on your organization. Therefore, contacting them about local issues is a great way to further your mission by getting governmental attention. 
• State Officials. While larger than local officials, state officials aren’t quite as big-picture as your congressmen. Therefore, they’ll likely be more responsive to your campaign than federal officials while having more influence than local. It’s a perfect balance!

When you have the support of your local, federal, and private community decision-makers, your organization will appear more legitimate and authoritative for prospective donors. It’s a similar concept as seen in influencer marketing with the decision-maker as the influencer. 

Therefore, when your advocacy campaigns change the perspective of an official or influence policy change, be sure to celebrate! Tell the world about your success and the support that the decision-maker provided for your organization. 

2. Engaging supporters

Nonprofits have a bad habit of only reaching out to their supporters when the organization needs funding for a project or initiative. This can make your supporters feel a bit like ATMs, which is not a great feeling. 

While you’re using various platforms to create your multi-channel fundraising campaigns, consider how you can also use those channels to promote your engagement strategies. These strategies should include both fundraising and activities for which your supporters never need to pull out their wallets, like advocacy campaigns.

Advocacy campaigns provide a way for your supporters to get involved with your mission without donating money. 

You can use these additional engagement strategies intermittently with your fundraising asks to show supporters that you’re interested in building a relationship with them, not just emptying their pockets. This relationship-building experience will help your organization retain more donors over time.

Some of the different advocacy campaigns you might choose to host in order to boost the engagement of your supporters include: 

• Advocacy events. Encourage your supporters to sign up for events that will support your cause. Don’t forget that you’re not limited to in-person events for advocacy campaigns! With the right tools, you can host virtual events for fundraising, advocacy, and stewardship. 

• Click-to-call campaigns. Blow up your decision-makers’ phone lines with a click-to-call advocacy campaign. This allows your supporters to call and advocate on behalf of your mission. You can provide them a script or outline points for them to follow to be sure they hit the important bullet points on these calls. 

• Online petitions. Online petitions are one of the most common forms of advocacy campaigns. It requires the least amount of time and energy from your supporters because all they need to do is sign their name! Show your representatives the extensive backing you have for your mission with a petition supported by your community. 
• Targeted messaging. Encourage your supporters to send a message via online platforms to targeted decision-makers. You may choose to use platforms such as social media (like Twitter or Facebook) to publicly call them out. Or, you may use a more direct message approach like email. It’s up to you! Be sure to include a standard message, but encourage your supporters to personalize it. 

Don’t forget to ensure you’re using both engagement strategies such as advocacy campaigns and your fundraising campaigns intermittently to provide multiple opportunities to support your organization.

3. Acquiring new donors

One of the great things about advocacy campaigns is that it allows your organization to reach new audiences in a low-risk way. Supporters who feel strongly about your mission, but may not be willing or able to give right now will jump at the opportunity to provide value for your cause by contributing time rather than funds. 

Therefore, with the right marketing strategies, you can spread the word about this opportunity far and wide to encourage the acquisition of new support. Without the barrier of money holding back the process of acquisition, your organization will have greater access to a market of supporters who care deeply about your mission. After they’ve engaged with your organization, you can steward these individuals and turn them into donors down the line. 

However, in order to make the best use of your advocacy efforts as an acquisition strategy, you’ll need access to the best advocacy software. According to this guide, the best advocacy software will have features like: 

• Data licensing. Pay attention to how your advocacy software solution handles licensing. A great solution will have certain data sets already available with more unique options available a la carte. 

• Outreach platforms. Look for a solution with built-in marketing tools that your organization can use to spread the word about your advocacy campaign with your supporters. For example, email tools, text capabilities, and stored phone numbers are all helpful marketing resources to look for. 

• Bill-tracking. Track the progress of the legislative bill your organization has taken interest in with comprehensive bill-tracking technology. Then, report on its progress to your hard-working advocates.
• Automated reporting. You shouldn’t get frustrated or take a lot of time preparing reports to see how your campaign is doing. Rather, you should have access to an automated reporting system that sends updates and reports for you to view. This will help you make sure your advocacy campaign is effective and will help identify weaknesses to improve upon for next time. 

When you’re set up with the best software solution, your nonprofit will have no trouble spreading the word about your organization’s campaign. You can tell new supporters about how they can get involved without ever spending a dime. 

This can be a very tempting opportunity to make a difference for many people. Then, when they fill out their information to sign your petition, email their representative, etc., you’ll end up with a list of new individuals with a vested interest in your cause. 

Advocacy is an incredibly valuable strategy for nonprofits to use for their fundraising strategies. While you rarely directly fundraise as a part of an advocacy campaign, by hosting one of these campaigns, you can indirectly strengthen various aspects of your well-rounded strategy. 

The post How Advocacy Fits Into Your Nonprofit’s Fundraising Strategy appeared first on Nonprofit Hub.

An admirable mission alone is not enough to drive donor engagement and retention. A good webpage explains your mission, but a great webpage can make the difference between a passive supporter and an active, dependable donor.

When donors find a page slow, untrustworthy, and difficult to use, they’ll abandon their donation, leaving you without the funds your organization needs to function. The internet has made us all impatient when it comes to website performance, so don’t risk losing your audience before you’ve had a chance to really engage with them!

Viewers’ engagement will reflect the effectiveness of your website, so you should aim for a high-quality design that anticipates their needs and makes it easy to get involved. Let’s jump right into how to make the most of your webpage with these 5 smarter design tips:

1. Make navigation easier.
2. Standardize your branding.
3. Feature your donation page.
4. Make use of visuals.
5. Ensure website security.

Nonprofits can only function and thrive because of their supporters’ generous contributions, so you’ll want to have an effectively designed page to drive more giving. The online market is a crowded, competitive place, so use these tips to make a webpage that stands out to potential donors.

Making your site easier to navigate means making it easy to understand and access. When visitors get frustrated navigating your site, they’ll likely leave. Follow these best practices:

• You’ll want to include a navigation bar that’s visible on every page of your website except the donation form. This makes traveling between all your content easier, but limit the navigation choices to the essentials. If you give users too many options to choose from, they might overlook your more important pages like your donation form.
• Page titles should be concise. So concise, in fact, that they’re only 2-3 words. These few keywords should tell exactly what the page is about. Keeping titles this short keeps visitors’ attention while also minimizing the space they take up.

Don’t forget about streamlining how your own staff navigates your site’s backend and data management tools! For the best results, integrate other programs like your donor database and your fundraising software with your website for better navigation and data flow throughout all your systems.

In addition to these ways to simplify the donors’ experiences and helping your staff make the most of your site, you should pay particular attention to your site’s load times and mobile usability.

Minimize load times.

Each element on a page loads individually, which increases the time it takes your site to load. Visitors want the information they’re searching for within seconds, not minutes. When they don’t get this information quickly, they’ll often leave your site, so minimize load times by:

• Resizing and compressing images.
• Minimizing plugins and fonts used.
• Choosing HTML and CSS over Flash Player.

Online donations are often made when a donor is spontaneously feeling generous. Make sure your online donation tools allow you to customize the donor experience and offer a simple, quick process. Forcing them to wait while your clunky site loads might make them reconsider their generosity or cause them to get distracted and not follow through.

Optimize for mobile users.

The next level of navigation is making content usable for mobile users. According to Double the Donation, mobile users make up roughly half of all nonprofit website traffic. 25% of donors complete their donations on mobile devices, so you don’t want to miss out on this market!

Most website builders use a responsive design framework that automatically translates well for mobile users. However, you should still keep the following tips in mind:

• Keep layouts vertical.
• Use larger fonts.
• Don’t cram the page with unnecessary elements.

When you finish designing your page, you can always check your own smartphone to make sure it’s optimized for mobile users. Some website builders even offer a mobile preview tool where you can see your site the way a mobile user would as you go along!

When you carefully brand your website to your organization, you create a cleaner, more fluid look that conveys your brand. Use your logo as a starting point.

Before diving into formatting your site, make a style guide that defines what look you want. Consider a few elements such as:

• Colors. Pick 2-3 colors to use throughout your page based on your logo. Take it a step further by defining which elements will be styled in which colors. For example, you may want navy blue buttons with white icons and black on-page text.
• Font. Select one font and don’t differ from it. Choose one that’s legible but still conveys your brand.
• Images. Determine what look you want your images to have as well as formatting and sourcing. 

When you create guidelines beforehand, you make physically formatting your site a breeze after finishing content creation. On top of an easier formatting process, standardizing your branding ensures your visitors feel secure when browsing your site.

This is because consistent formatting throughout each of your pages instills trustworthiness. If readers are jumping to pages that don’t look like they came from you, they’ll likely think they’ve ended up on someone else’s website. They want to engage with you and won’t trust unbranded pages that look like they belong to a different organization, especially if they’re trusting you with their payment information.

Strong, consistent branding gives supporters a stronger image of your organization in their minds, making you more memorable and recognizable. 

As a nonprofit, your goal is to get passionate people on board with your cause. You want them to donate time and money in order to make your mission possible, so your donation page should be featured prominently and should be easily accessible from every page with a donation button.

The donation button should be located in your navigation bar at the top of your site so that it appears on every single one of your pages. Your donation page should be designed with just as much care as the rest of your site. Consider these tools to boost donations:

• Add a recurring donation option. Encourage donors to continue giving and provide them with the option to select the duration of their recurring donations. Include the total donation amount, because transparency will earn their trust!
• Include suggested giving amounts. When a new donor sees a suggested giving amount, they have a reference for how much they should give. They may also be influenced to give more if they think others are giving more than them.
• Add a matching gift tool. By doing this, you ensure donors know about potentially increasing their contributions through their employers and make it easier for them to search for their companies’ matching gift programs.

When your donation page is easily accessible, donors can easily get to it the second they decide to give, and providing them with extra tools like a recurring donation button can increase your donations and create long-term relationships.

Choosing the right visuals can add an extra layer to your site that attracts visitors. Not only should your page draw in visitors, but it also needs to communicate your nonprofit’s identity.

When designing your donation page, consider the following:

• Feature your logo prominently. Readers should instantly associate the donation page with your nonprofit, and incorporating your logo is a great way to accomplish this. Make sure to also include it at the top of your “Thank You” message when supporters donate.
• Incorporate branded colors. Just like the rest of your website, your donation page should be customized with your organization’s color scheme. 
• Place impactful photos. The images that create the largest impact are those you’ve taken or created yourself. Make sure to include emotionally-charged photos of those you serve, photos of your staff and supporters, and infographics that explain key concepts.

Not a graphic designer? No worries! You can always use intuitive website builders or well-designed fundraising tools that provide a good donor-facing experience. Alternatively, try working with a web design consultant with experience in nonprofits. fundraising consultant to help you design an enticing donation page. 

Supporters won’t want to give to your organization if they don’t feel like their private payment information will be properly protected. There are a few steps you should take to ensure donors’ security. Consider these security basics:

• A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate authenticates the website, allowing the webserver to initiate secure sessions with users. It’s indicated in the URL as ‘https’ rather than ‘http’. In order to collect donations through your website, you’ll need an SSL. Since you’ll most likely receive sensitive information like street addresses and phone numbers from your donors, you should use Extend Validation (EV) SSL certificates to protect their data. Your browser will provide special visual cues like a green padlock to indicate that your site is protected.
• Encrypt and use tokenization to protect your donors’ credentials. Encryption will protect donors’ private data by making it unreadable by unauthorized users. Tokenization will keep this data secure for post-authorization transactions like recurring donations. For more information on the importance of token-based authentication, visit this guide.

Taking these basic security steps can protect your nonprofit from a security breach. When you feel confident in your website’s security, you should then go further to implement even more advanced and secure protocols! These extra safety steps will protect you and your donors’ information.

In closing…

Websites are an investment. While every nonprofit should invest in a quality website, not every nonprofit can shell out the necessary funds. If your organization is on a tight budget, consider these low-cost website options. Dependence on technology is growing. In fact, 54% of donors worldwide prefer to give online, so it’s more important than ever to have an effective, well-designed page. Don’t just throw your nonprofit’s site together. For additional ideas on designing your nonprofit’s website, click here.

The post 5 Effective Design Tips to Increase Donor Giving appeared first on Nonprofit Hub.