They’re out there by the hundreds, maybe by the thousands. Your potential donors. These are people who are sure to be moved by your mission. They are certain to be compelled by your cause. 

 

But they might not even know you exist.

 

Even if they do, without a clear plan to bring them from the “awareness” stage to the point where they are ready to give, these potential donors will stay in the periphery, never moving forward and taking action. 

 

The path to individual philanthropy is, of course, individual. But in most cases, it is a long journey with many touch points. Not many donors will open their pocketbooks the first time they hear about your organization — especially not for a large donation.

 

Marketing automation software lets us nurture our audience members, sending them specific messages and prompting specific actions, depending on whatever criteria we determine. 

 

Below, we’ll walk through the strategy behind marketing automation so you can see how the right software platform can help you turn a potential donor into a true ambassador for your organization.

 

Your fundraising engagement strategy

The for-profit world has long used the image of a funnel to describe a customer’s journey. The top of the funnel, where it is widest, represents the full audience — everyone who has been reached by the brand’s marketing efforts. Of those, some will move down the funnel to become contacts. Some contacts will become leads. Some leads will move down to become customers.

 

Nonprofits can use a similar funnel analogy to plan their marketing and track their engagement.

 

Imagine it like this:

​​Each section of the funnel represents a different stage in a patron’s progress. At each stage, some opt out and some move forward.

 

And just like repeat customers in the for-profit world, your relationship with each donor doesn’t end with a single donation. Some donors become true ambassadors who donate regularly, volunteer their time, and rally others to the cause.

 

Remember that it’s called a funnel for a reason. Not everyone passes from one stage to the next. There are fewer prospects than there are visitors, for example. Fewer leads than there are prospects. And, although we’ve made the “advocates” and “ambassadors” stages bigger in the diagram, that’s because of their outsized influence, not their actual numbers. Of all the stages listed, you will have the fewest ambassadors — but they are of enormous importance.

Marketing automation will let you find new donors, volunteers, and clients – and more quickly and successfully move them to action. iMission’s Ultimate Guide to Marketing Automation for Nonprofits shows you, step-by-step, how your organization can take your fundraising to a whole new level.

But for now, let’s turn our attention to the very top of the funnel and examine how each group moves into the next.

 

Visitors

First off are called visitors, but don’t just think of them as visitors to your website. These can be people who come across your content anywhere. They might like your social media posts or watch your YouTube videos, or they might come to your actual website.

 

The idea behind your marketing should be to attract as large a number of visitors as possible — at least within reason — and invite them to take a low-stakes action (think: signing up for your newsletter) in exchange for their contact information. This way, you get them to engage with your organization in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming.

 

(However, be sure that you’re providing value and building trust from the earliest stages. Spamming an inbox or rushing them forward are certain to do more harm than good.)

 

Once you have a visitor’s contact information, you can track their behavior on your site, put them into email nurture campaigns, and keep them engaged with your organization. Once they’ve crossed this threshold, they become prospects.

 

Prospects

Some visitors will become prospects, and it’s up to your organization to determine what criteria differentiates one from the other.

 

In some cases, a visitor might opt in to becoming a prospect. Maybe they check a box saying they want to be contacted about a certain program. Maybe they download a specific resource.

 

In other cases, you can use lead scoring functions to evaluate when someone crosses over. Lead scoring works by assigning value to certain website-related actions. Once a visitor reaches a certain score, they pass from a visitor to a prospect in your contact list. For example, it might be because they visit a certain number of pages or return to your site a certain number of times.

 

Your prospects have shown that they may want to contribute to your cause, and you should communicate with them in a way that builds interest, confidence, and trust.

 

For example, if you’re a local land trust, you might send out information about a new property, or a recent trail clean-up effort. The right communication will build a strong relationship that allows the prospect to see your organization as trustworthy and vital. At this point, you’re “earning the right to ask” for them to take meaningful action in the future.

 

Leads

An engaged prospect can become a lead. A lead is someone you can compel to take a meaningful action — like making a first financial donation.

 

This is an important touchpoint, and you don’t want to get it wrong. Asking for a donation too early can destroy trust, asking too late can mean you miss your window. The key is making it easy for leads to donate on their own terms, whether they want anonymity or recognition, whether they prefer Venmo or dropping a check in the mail.

 

Engaged contacts

A single action is nice, but that’s a one-time thing. A second action means so much more.

 

Once someone donates a second time, they’ve crossed into different territory. We call these engaged contacts because they are engaged with the mission of your organization. Likely, they see your values aligning with their own, and, if you nurture the relationship, they could give repeatedly over the course of their lifetime.

 

Engaged contacts deserve an elevated level of attention.

 

With the right strategy, you can turn someone at this stage into a true advocate for your organization who spreads word-of-mouth endorsements to family and friends.

 

Advocates

Engaged contacts transform to advocates when they eagerly search for new ways to support your organization. Think of a donor becoming a volunteer, or a volunteer becoming an organizer.

 

Savvy organizations help advocates find ways to be a part of the effort.

 

Ambassadors

At this point, the relationship has reached its zenith. True ambassadors are deeply committed to your organization — spreading goodwill and rallying their networks to your mission. In many cases, they see your cause as a movement that’s deeply personal to them. 

 

Your ambassadors are your superstars. They will proudly represent you and your organization, and they are vital to your long-term growth. Remember, no marketing in the world is as powerful as word-of-mouth, and a single engaged ambassador can bring in more prospects than dozens, even hundreds of ads. 

 

With these details spelled out, let’s take another look at that funnel diagram, this time with explainer text included. 

It’s easy to think of marketing as a broad-based approach designed to spread the word about your organization. And it is, but if you only focus on top-of-the-funnel content, you’ll spread awareness while ignoring the needs of other stages of the giver’s journey. 

 

As you’re planning your marketing, use this diagram to develop nurture campaigns, social media content, reengagement efforts, and other approaches to grow your nonprofit.

 

With all that said, there are real opportunities that exist beyond and outside this funnel, as we’ve conceived it. 

 

It’s important to think creatively about how to reach that broad audience of potential donors. 

 

The promise of potential donors 

Think of those potential donors out there who have never heard of you or what you do. They are unaware of you — but you are equally unaware of them. At this point, there is no relationship. 

 

In almost all cases, the donors will learn that you exist long before you learn that they exist. This is an important, but often frustrating, point. It means despite all the data offered by digital platforms, you’ll still struggle to accurately track your reach. 

 

For this reason, it is imperative that you invest in outreach and marketing to continually put yourself in front of would-be givers.  

 

An emphasis on multi-channel marketing

To reach a diverse, multi-generational audience, you’ll need to invest in multi-channel marketing that puts your message in front of the right people in the places where they spend time. 

 

Sure, there are paid media type spots like social media and search ads, but that’s just scratching the surface. Modern nonprofit marketing is more akin to PR — organic social content, appearances on podcasts and other programs, press and media coverage, user-generated content, and more. 

 

Diverse marketing has a wide reach — and authentic marketing builds trust and fills the funnel. As you plan your strategy, think creatively about the ways a person can learn about your cause.

 

The importance of discovery platforms (i.e. social media)

When you type a question into Google, you have some idea of what you are looking for, even if it’s vague. You have some need that’s brought you there.

 

When you are on social media, you’re in a different headspace. Social media, broadly defined, is about discovery, not about searching. 

 

You’re there to scroll through and see what you find, based on your likes, your demographics, and the accounts you’ve connected with. That means you get served up a feed that includes organic content, recommended content, and ads.

 

It could be a video of your sister’s vacation, a political donation request, and pictures of a humanitarian crisis, all back to back. But that’s what you expect because you’re in a mindset to discover.

 

Marketers call social media sites discovery platforms.

 

Content that lives on discovery platforms can reach people who are in a different mindset from the search engine user. 

 

They’re pre-awareness.

 

This makes social media a goldmine for connecting to those potential donors who have no idea your organization exists.

 

The right social content can fill the top of the funnel with those elusive potential donors who have the potential to become your next ambassadors — once they learn you exist.

 

The long journey of the future ambassador

Imagine a large park in the full splendor of summer. The air carries laughter and birdsong. Huge trees dot the grassy landscape, offering shade for picnics. Those grand old trees are precious, yet they’re vulnerable to storms and insect damage.

 

If you lose that massive spreading oak tree, the park will never be the same. It will take a hundred years to grow another just as big.

 

The wise park ranger knows this — and knows that you always need to be planting new trees so that the ones to replace the big ones are not so far behind. A healthy park is full of trees, some big, some small. As one park ranger once put it, only one-quarter of your park’s trees should be in the last quarter of their lives. The rest need to be younger so that when one dies, whether big or small, its loss is not so significant. The park remains. If a park is full of late-stage trees and nothing else, the park is in peril.

 

A nonprofit with an older base of ambassadors is equally perilous. 

 

Your donor base, like the park, requires constant effort.

 

At all times, you must be working to spread awareness to the masses, bringing them into the fold. At the same time, you need to build trust with the top-of-the-funnel audience, inspire action among your prospects and leads, and guide your advocates and ambassadors to make meaningful contributions. 

 

That ambassador whose patronage is so critical to your success was once a person who had never heard of you. 

 

The right marketing plan shepherds future ambassadors through all stages of the giver’s journey, just as the park ranger plants trees today that will not offer shade for decades. 

 

Want to learn more about how marketing automation can help your nonprofit? Contact us! Or visit the link here.

About the Sponsor

iMission is a social sector marketing agency and a nonprofit technology consulting firm. We offer marketing and technology strategy consulting as well as campaign and technology implementation services. Our clients include nonprofit organizations, health and human service providers, schools, municipalities, and social enterprises.

Top Nonprofit Hashtags of 2023

In today’s digitally connected world, hashtags have become more than just a trend. They can act as a tool to amplify the impact of nonprofits on social media platforms. 

Nonprofits can add hashtags to their social media strategies as a way to enhance their visibility, expand reach, and engage with a wider and more diverse audience. 

Hashtags categorize social media posts, making it easier for users to discover and connect with causes they care about. 

By utilizing relevant and popular hashtags, nonprofits can tap into ongoing conversations and trends and increase the likelihood of their content being seen and shared.

A few things to remember about nonprofit hashtags 

Before you go adding 50 new hashtags to all of your social media posts, there are a few things you should take into account: 

• To utilize hashtags, your social media account must be public. 
• More is not always better. Limit the amount the amount to 5 to 10 per post. If you add too many, it can come across as spammy.
• While using already created hashtags is helpful, you should also make your own unique ones for your organization or fundraising event.
• Don’t always pick the top hashtags. If you consistently only add hashtags that are used over a million times, there is a good chance that your post will get buried and not easily seen. Use a mix of top nonprofit hashtags and some that are more specific and used under 100k times. 

Top Nonprofit Hashtag List

You can use this list as a guide and inspiration for hashtags to include in your social media posts. The data below is pulled from Instagram in August 2023. 

General 

#Nonprofit – 8.5 mil 

#Dogood – 3.2 mil

#Philanthropy – 1.9 mil

#Nonprofitorganization – 1.7 mil 

#Socialgood – 1.5 mil

#Causes – 661k 

#Changemaker – 581k

#Notforprofit – 460k

#NonprofitsofInstagram – 336k 

#Nonprofitlife – 283k 

#Supportnonprofits – 138k

#Nonprofitorganizations – 106k 

Regional 

#ChicagoNonprofit – 33.2k

#HoustonNonprofit – 26.1k

#DallasNonprofit – 20.7k

#NYCNonprofit – 19.1k

#ColoradoNonprofit – 15.1k 

#AZNonprofit – 14.2k

#MiamiNonprofit – 12.3k

#DCNonprofit – 11.5k 

#NashvilleNonprofit – 11.4k

#ATLNonprofit – 10.7k

#SeattleNonprofit – 10.6k

Donation/Fundraising

#Donate – 8 mil 

#Fundraiser – 4.9 mil

#Giving – 2.5 mil

#GivingTuesday – 2.3 mil 

#CharityEvent – 1.2 mil

#DonateToday – 487k

#CharityFundraiser – 225k

#Fundraisers – 194k

#GivingTuesdayNow – 155k

#CharityAuction – 121k

#GivingSeason 130k

#FundraiserEvent – 118k

Volunteering 

#Volunteer – 9 mil

#GiveBack – 5.7 mil 

#Activism – 2.2 mil

#DoSomething – 824k

#CharityWork – 431k 

#GivingBackToTheCommunity 327k

#VolunteerWork – 313k 

#Volunteerism – 257k

#SocialActivism – 233k 

#AnimalActivism – 154k

#EnvironmentalActivism – 46.2k

*Volunteers (I would avoid this one, especially in the fall. It is often tagged with the Tennessee Volunteers Football team and has nothing to do with nonprofits.)

By thoughtfully adding these nonprofit hashtags, your organization can harness the full potential of social media to drive awareness, mobilize resources, and ultimately make a more significant and lasting difference in the world.

 

Positive EOY staff morale + Strong organization leadership = New Year Success

Let’s face it, the last few months of 2022 are a vital time for organizations! You’re trying to reach new goals, set new initiatives, and plan for the incoming year. During this planning, your staff can feel burned out. Consider your staff’s workload, scrambling to make year-end goals, and let’s not forget: their personal lives going into the holiday season.

Don’t fret; we’ll be going through some initiatives to take to stay productive and refocus for a New Year.

How to Stay Productive

Throw a Holiday Party

It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It just needs to be fun. Throw a party that your staff will look forward to. Long work days are a little more bearable when a party is on the horizon. You can host a luncheon during office hours or have your party at a restaurant on a Friday night so your employees can bring their spouses. Either way, make it special. Decide on a couple of games or maybe even a white elephant gift exchange. Whatever you do, make it worth the hard work they put in all year.

Plan Out Holiday Social Media Campaigns

Social media can be fun for your target audience as well as your employees. Have them brainstorm a special giveaway or a fundraising campaign. Be sure to make it holiday-themed to keep your staff and audience interested. If you struggle to keep your social media channels active, scheduling out your posts in advance can help you stay on track.

Maybe you can partner up with a local coffee shop or restaurant and give away a coupon or gift card to anyone who comments on a photo or likes a post on Facebook. You could also have your donors match the number of likes a certain post gets by the time New Year’s Day comes. Have your employees run with the idea and let them have a good time with it. It’s something that’s a little different and special during the holiday season, but it still maintains productivity.

Show appreciation

Your staff works hard all year, so be sure to recognize them. Hand-write thank you notes with a gift card inside or offer a Christmas bonus. If you can’t afford to be financially generous, that’s okay. Just let them know they are appreciated. It will keep them motivated to do their best when they’re feeling burnt out. Expressing gratitude for your support network is a priority, bump it to the top of your list. If you know this is a priority but seems like a daunting task, get creative. Gratitude can be displayed in several ways and there are plenty of tools that can help including automations and integrations that build deeper, more personal relationships with your donors, staff, and support network.

Set goals

Set some end-of-the-year goals for yourself, your organization, and your staff. Having one common goal to work toward will keep you and your staff productive as the year draws to a close. Make the goal visible in your office so everyone can see it and be reminded of why they do what they do.

Give them a reason to be productive

Make sure your organization is having some small successes along the way. Try partnering up with a for-profit organization. Maybe for every $20 made, a for-profit company will donate a percentage to your organization, or something similar. Don’t worry about burdening the company. They have the resources to carry out orders and produce merchandise, even though this is their busy time of year, too. 20 percent of annual retail sales occur between November and December, so your organization might benefit from that.

When your staff sees that your organization is doing well and making a difference, they will be on board and ready to work until the holiday comes.

Work with them

It’s difficult to come to a balance between working your employees hard until the holidays come and letting the lack of motivation get the better of them. Stay somewhere in the middle, though. Be sure to allow the time off they need, but ensure you are staffed enough to continue their work. Understand their busy schedules and stressful lives, and they will appreciate you more.

Most of all, make sure you get the rest you need this holiday season, too, while preparing for the busy year to come.

Refocus for a New Year

Don’t Drop the Ball

Let’s fast forward, congratulations on your successful end-of-year fundraising campaign! After all the hard work put into the final fundraising push of the year, you deserve the extra plate at Christmas dinner and the extra drink (or drinks) on New Year’s Eve—cheers. But now that the year is over and the ball has dropped, it’s time to make sure you’re not dropping the ball. Here are a few things you can focus on in the first few months of the new year to ensure success for your nonprofit.

Follow up

Just because your holiday giving campaign ended doesn’t mean its success has to be stuck in the past too. Use the leftover momentum to start the year off on the right foot.

Start by following up with new donors who showed interest during your campaign. Obviously, thank-yous are a must—your donors will love ’em and your mom will be proud—but consider some other ways to follow up too. For example, you could send a short survey to donors. Ask them why they donated and what other causes they support, and don’t be afraid to ask a question to get some more specific information that will help you improve your future fundraising efforts. If you rely on volunteers, ask these new donors if they want to get a little more hands-on and take things to the next level by joining your team of volunteers.

Wrap it Up

Have some fun in documenting the memories, performance, and achievements from the previous year. An annual report is a common publication of nonprofit organizations, an annual report should be a distinct piece of your communications and marketing assets. Since annual reports are big projects, it’s okay to expect more of this signature piece. This signature piece should provide clarity and accountability, inspire conversation, honor supporters, give readers something easy to remember and hard to forget, and showcases your nonprofit in all it’s glory. So get out there and show off a bit. Wrap up your previous year in a beautiful annual report.

Don’t get overwhelmed. An annual report is a complex beast of a project…or is it? A lot of meetings, stress, and far too many words are often put into these temporary snapshots of a nonprofit’s work. This guide breaks down these reports into an easy-to-follow outline while using the “5 W’s”: Who, What, When, Where, and Why.

Plan for next year

I’m sure the last thing you want to do in January is a plan for November and December. But the sooner you get in the film room and review the game tape, so to speak, the fresher it will be in your mind once the game day arrives. Take some time to identify your nonprofit’s successes and shortcomings you noticed during the holiday giving season and put pen to paper.

Don’t overthink it. Start with some open-ended ideas on what went well and what can be improved and thank yourself later because these notes will be helpful when the time comes to start planning. Be sure to get the final donor numbers down in writing and compare them to your expectations and previous years’ efforts.

Fight the post-holiday slowdown

The way to combat this is to do a great job of telling your story and pushing your brand to its constituents. Use social media to tell people what you’re up to. Put together some numbers that illustrate your successes during the last calendar year and make them available to your stakeholders and the community – show people where their donations went and how they helped. Use any interview requests or press opportunities to further your organization’s narrative. If journalists aren’t knocking down your door, go to them by pitching your story ideas to the media and posting unique and relevant blog posts. As always, the more you’re in front of your constituents and your community, the better. Putting even more focus on fundraising now will go a long way in preventing a slowdown in contributions later.

When a sports team ends its season, they get an off-season; time to recover, and a chance to reflect on the past year before starting again. But do you think those athletes are propped up on a beach with a cold one in hand the entire time? They’re using that time to hone their craft and improve themselves, they’re in the gym and the film room, doing whatever it takes to be better than the competition. And don’t kid yourself, you have several worthy competitors of your own in your community for a donor or volunteer to consider working with. There’s no offseason for nonprofit professionals. We have to reflect on past efforts and plan for the future while continually putting our best foot forward each and every day. 

About the Authors: Kayla Matthews and Randy Hawthorne. As the former Executive Director and Editor for Nonprofit Hub and a Professional Certified Marketer, Randy shares his passions of marketing and education with nonprofits to help them implement marketing and organizational leadership principles so they can grow their organizations. Randy lends his marketing and organizational leadership expertise to a number of nonprofits in his community. Outside the office, Randy works with high school and college students and mentors young professionals to develop their leadership and entrepreneurial skills.

Originally published 12.28.15—Updated 11.17.22