By John Killoran

One of the most important assets of a nonprofit is its donors. Donors are crucial to the growth of your nonprofit, so it is key to both attract new donors while also keeping up relationships with previous donors. Nonprofits are constantly looking for new ways to raise money and having a wide network of donors and supporters can help create sustainable fundraising revenue.

In the end, nonprofits should have an effective and organized platform to attract new donors, and a qualified communications and research team to support relationships with existing donors. 

With this in mind, there are certain questions that nonprofits should ask themselves in order to strengthen relationships and improve communication with their donors:

1. What kind of fundraising software should I choose?
2. What kind of communication team do I need?
3. How can I learn more about my donors?
4. How can I create the perfect donation page?
5. How can I keep up with donor communication?

Ready to improve your donor communication? Let’s dive into the answers to these top questions. 

1. What kind of software should I choose?

In this day and age, it makes sense to assume that most of your donors are going to be coming from the same place—the internet. That is why it is extremely important for your nonprofit to have the most effective software tools at your disposal. The donor’s interaction with your online presence is crucial.

Having effective software for your nonprofit can make your interactions with donors more streamlined and efficient. It makes things both easier for the donor and yourself, leading the way to stronger communication and a more positive relationship. Having the perfect software should be one of the first things you find when you are starting your nonprofit organization. 

With the right communication software, your nonprofit can:

• Organize your donors. Some software helps compile a database for your donors so you have an easy way to find the information you need. It can look for key traits like donor location, donor amount, and more! This can help you communicate with your donors.
• Have an easy payment experience. Certain software can improve the donation process, for both the donor and the nonprofit. They can provide options like online donation pages to text-to-give tools. 
• Improve fundraising planning. Planning for a fundraiser is always hard, but with the right software, you can easily plan a walkathon or a t-shirt drive for your nonprofit.

For more information, check out Snowball’s extensive list of the best nonprofit software.

2. What kind of communication team do I need?

While having the right software in order to keep up your online presence is important, you shouldn’t be reluctant to do things like sending letters or meeting your donors in person.

Having the right communication strategy and team is important because different methods work with different types of people. Your grandpa probably wouldn’t respond to a text asking him to donate, but a millennial donor might.

It’s important to make your message stand out. The more effectively you communicate with your donors, the more likely they will donate. And then donate again.

Depending on your nonprofit’s goals, different strategies will work best. Make sure you focus on one main need in your message so you don’t bombard possible donors with too much information. No one wants to read about a fundraising event, volunteering, and donating all in one email.

The right medium will help. Often people will let unread emails pile up in their inbox, so it’s good to consider what kind of donor you are dealing with. Also, don’t forget about direct mail! You might think it outdated, but most people at least look at their physical mail as opposed to clearing unread email and phone notifications.

You can hire a nonprofit fundraising consultant. If you want some outside help or just a professional’s opinion, it makes sense to talk to a fundraising consultant. Make sure to look at consultants whose focus lines up with your nonprofit’s. For help picking the right consultant, Averill Fundraising Solutions has a guide of the top nonprofit fundraising consultants.

Having the right strategy will be a big help with your donor communication. The wrong type of communication can end even the strongest donor relationship. For more on common donor communication problems check out this list. 

3. How can I learn more about my donors?

Having the right communications strategy all depends on how much we know our donors. Gaining a few pieces of information about them can help you improve our relationship with them. 

Why do they want to donate? This can vary from having a personal connection to just wanting to contribute to any good cause. Knowing why they want to donate can help you count on them for future donations. One way you can find this out is with surveys. Keep these short and to the point. Many people won’t fill these out if they take up more than 5 minutes of their time.

How do they donate? Knowing their preferred method of donation is helpful. This way you won’t pester donors by email if you know they like doing donations over text instead. Various nonprofit software can help you track this information.

How much do they donate? If your donor gives a huge amount, you will be more inclined to see if they want to give in the future. Look into your CRM to review their donor history. This way, you’ll pose the right asks to the right donors.

Using these methods you can improve communication with your donors as well as make your organization’s marketing more efficient and effective. Once you have the right information on your donors, you can segment them into different groups with their own marketing strategy. This personalization will definitely improve donor communication.

4. How to create the perfect donation page?

Now is when you should start thinking about the page that donors are most often at⁠—your donation page. Your donation page is the beginning of your relationship with your donors. 

There are two things that your donation page should do, avoid incomplete donations and encourage future donations.

Avoid incomplete donations

Often, when potential donors attempt to start a transaction they give up. They don’t finish the donation, much like a trend among online shoppers called shopping cart abandonment. This could be for many reasons, but having the right donation page can help prevent it. Make sure that your page is: 

• Customized to your cause. When a donation page looks and feels like a seamless part of your brand, donors are more likely to feel inspired to complete their gift.

• Easy to use. Your donation page is navigable and not too complicated. The harder it is to donate the less likely someone will.

• Make it fast. Don’t have a string of links for the donor to press. The longer the process takes the more time the donor has to change their mind.
• It has to work. In the end, the most important thing about your donation page is that it actually works. If your page is broken or takes forever to load, it signals to your possible donors that this isn’t an established nonprofit. 

Encourage future donations

We all want that golden donation. Golden donations are the second donation that a donor can make. This is what your donor page should encourage. And when a donor gives twice, there is a 63% chance that they will do it again!

To help retain more donors and get that golden donation you can:

• Have a recurring donations option. This makes it an easy option for your donor when they make that first contribution!
• Establish a personalized relationship with the donor. Make your donor feel special, like their donation is essential. And their donation is essential! You just have to let them know that. More on this later on in the next section.

Having the perfect donation page is important because this is where your donor ultimately decides if contributing is worth their time. This can improve donor communication because it simplifies the process of donating and encourages future donations.

For more tips on creating a donation page, click here.

5. How can I keep up with donor communication?

In the end, it seems that one of the most important, if not the most important, goals for your nonprofit is to retain your donors. You want to keep them! You want them to keep coming back to you! It makes sense that when you have an established relationship with a donor, it will take less time (and effort) to steward them for another contribution. 

So you have the right software, communications strategy, donation page, and vital information on your donors. How do we strive for that golden donation? 

It all comes back to your communication with your donors. You need to keep this relationship strong no matter what. If you don’t, your donor may think their contribution is not important and ultimately forget about you.

Don’t ignore your donors! Remember to keep up donor communication throughout the year with updates or newsletters. Tie in current events to make them feel connected. 

Remember to thank them! Give them some love. Whether it is with a simple card or a more elaborate gift for a larger donation. Show them how their past contribution made a difference. Make sure they know that their donation is appreciated. 

Relationship building should be a part of your fundraising campaign. Donors will be more likely to respond to a fundraising campaign if they have a personal connection to it. Ann Green has some great tips on how to build relationships with your donors. 

Building the right relationship with your donors is key to improving communication! We all have questions about how to go about this, but with this guide, your team should feel confident enough to move forward. Good luck!

John Killoran is an inventor, entrepreneur, and the Chairman of Clover Leaf Solutions, a national lab services company. He currently leads Clover Leaf’s investment in Snowball Fundraising, an online fundraising platform for nonprofit organizations. 

Snowball was one of John’s first public innovations; it’s a fundraising platform that offers text-to-give, online giving, events, and peer-to-peer fundraising tools for nonprofits. By making giving simple, Snowball increases the donations that these organizations can raise online. The Snowball effect is real! John founded Snowball in 2011. Now, it serves over 7,000 nonprofits and is the #1 nonprofit fundraising platform.