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Most fundraisers are in favor of these activities and understand the need for them. But in a busy development office with limited resources, engagement efforts can seem out of reach and fall to the bottom of the priority list.

However, consider an experiment conducted by the NextAfter Institute in which they aimed to show the direct monetary impact of engagement efforts. An organization launched a series of informational emails before a large campaign to a test audience. They emails simply spoke to the impact of the organization and how donations helped fuel the mission. At campaign time, they saw a 197% increase in donations with this test group and these donors were three times more likely to donate at year end over the audience who did not receive the emails.

My own experience, and perhaps yours too, bears witness to these findings. In 2022, I made small donations to 10 different organizations. I received receipts from six of them, thank-you letters from three of them, and only one consistently stayed in touch with me in the months following. However, by the next November, I started receiving solicitations from many I had not heard from the entire year. Who was more likely to receive another donation? Certainly, the organization who stayed in touch and perhaps the ones who sent a thank you letter. The rest were eliminated from my donation list.

Thus, let’s ensure that the rosy-glow and feelings of endearment from our year-end donors continue. Now is the time to establish essential engagement elements and develop an annual strategy that will lead to greater donor loyalty and a positive outlook for future campaigns.

Foundational Engagement Elements

Before getting started on a structured engagement plan, there are a few essential and foundational communication elements that organizations must have in place to engage, cultivate, and steward their donors. As mentioned above, sending a receipt and a thank-you letter is critical. A first-time donor welcome series is ideal. Consider setting up an automated anniversary email to trigger one year after the donor’s first gift. And don’t forget your email subscribers! They are valuable prospects. Create a welcome series for this audience to share all of the wonderful content they will start receiving. Include impact statements, testimonials, and opportunities to volunteer or attend events.

Developing the Engagement Strategy

An engagement strategy can be created in three simple steps: identifying your available tools and resources, creating a calendar to reveal gaps and opportunities, and finally, utilizing this information to craft an overall strategy and implementation plan.

Step 1: Identify Tools and Resources

There are four categories of elements that can be utilized for engagement efforts. Evaluate these tools and make an inventory of which ones align with your internal resources. In other words, what can you or your team support and implement? If you don’t have a texting service, cross that off the list for now. But if you have the technology to create surveys or polls, add it. This list will serve as the inventory from which to choose as you work through crafting the annual plan.

Communications
Tools that offer direct communication or touchpoints: email and automations, social media, livestreaming, podcasts, texting, and phone calls.

Interactivity
These elements require action or response from the audience. They include surveys, polls, quizzes, trivia, events, or classes.

Incentives
Elements that encourage participation through rewards and benefits. Prizes, thank-you gifts, downloadable content, even goals and deadlines can be incentives for participation.

Promotion
Marketing and publicity tactics for program activities. Online or print ads, TV or radio spots, website popups, postcards, billboards, buckslips in thank you letters, blogs and ambassador engagement fall into this category.

Step 2: Create a Calendar

Next, create an annual calendar that maps all of your fundraising initiatives throughout the year, if one does not exist already. This includes direct mail campaigns, online efforts such as Giving Tuesday and Year-End, fundraising events or galas. Once these are documented, look for gaps in between. These are excellent spaces to fill with engagement efforts, as well as considering how to maximize the existing campaigns with segmented communications to further recognize and acknowledge current donors, volunteers, and board members.

Step 3: Develop the Plan

Finally, pair your available resources with the inventory of engagement tools and build the plan utilizing the calendar gaps. These can include additional donor touchpoints throughout the year, evergreen communications, or defined engagement initiatives. For example:

• An organization decides to elevate communication with donors by incorporating quarterly thank you calls (with board member or ambassador help), a quarterly donor thank you email from the Development Director with an update on activities and a few trivia questions, an online annual report with a donor feedback survey, and an annual donor virtual townhall with the CEO.
• They prioritize email signups for growth and conversion. A new subscriber welcome series is created and they incorporate consistent promotion including online ads (such the Google Ad Grant ads), ongoing social media posts, buckslips in thank-you letters, and flyers with QR codes for volunteers and on-site visitors.
• With no other activities in the month of May, they create a defined engagement initiative over a four-week period. It includes a series of four emails, weekly trivia related to spring flowers with the chance to win a Spring Essentials prize box. Two virtual events are hosted by a birdwatching guide and a local florist. Ads are targeted to audiences interested in these topics with an incentive to download an online booklet featuring recipes and crafts.

Taking the time to craft a thoughtful engagement strategy is an investment in the stability and future growth of your organization. These efforts fuel the donor pipeline. New subscribers will have a higher likelihood of converting to donors. They will be more likely give longer and at higher amounts. With this increased loyalty, retention rates and lifetime value improves.

Don’t miss this critical opportunity to create an engagement plan that will have swift and immediate impact on your bottom line. Your constituents are waiting!