How To Plan A Powerful Giving Fundraiser Campaign

By Author: john dsouza
Total Articles: 1
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Nonprofit organizations have the daunting task of identifying potential donors and collecting funds for their cause. Any fundraiser campaign needs a solid foundation plan on which you build your campaign’s success.
Come what may, your fundraising efforts must go on. People are charitable by nature and they are willing to donate if your organization can make a difference. It’s up to you to explain the cause and how it’s impacting lives. Let’s see how to plan a powerful fundraiser campaign to maximize donations and achieve its objective.

Decide the goals of the fundraising campaign
Have a clear idea in mind of the goal you want to achieve with this fundraiser campaign. You can take any previous fundraising campaign results as the benchmark or set some KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to help you in planning and analysis.

Use the data available from previous campaigns to understand the challenges you may have to face. Don’t limit your goals just to finance. Instead, identify a wide variety of benchmarks or steps that will help you strive towards the success of your fundraiser campaign.

Make ...
... a chart of the goal and the challenges you may have to face. Jot down 2-3 plans to help you overcome these challenges. Remain open to changes or you plan to go haywire. You may discover a pressing challenge than originally intended, but be prepared to face any situation along the path to reaching the goal.

Schedule a budget and timeline
Since you are working on a fundraiser campaign, there are, obviously, going to be budget constraints. Further, if the cause needs money collection on an urgent basis, you are deprived of the time to collect funds. If you already have the resources and donor network, you can easily achieve your goal with minimal efforts within the timeline. But otherwise, staying on track with both budget and timeline is crucial.

In a way, the timeline is significant, because even the donors feel compelled to give immediately. If there is no timeline or fundraiser goal to be met, they will more likely put it off indefinitely.
A good idea to achieve the target in minimal time and budget is to plan it around the holiday season such as year’s end or any big annual event. People tend to donate more during religious festivals. Consult your team regarding the timeline and budget for you to get an idea of what best can be done.

Create a donor list
You need potential donors to raise funds for your campaign. Get all your supporters and the team together to make a chart of the probable donors. Make different tiers of donors like the major donors, mid-tier donors, and crowdfunds. This will give you a rough idea of the amount you can raise and the additional donors you need to contact to reach the goal.
Decide the type of fundraiser campaign
Hosting events such as parties, gala dinners, concerts, or marathons is pretty much out of question amidst the pandemic. But you can host virtual events for your fundraiser campaign. Another thing you have to decide is to go with crowdfunding or a peer-to-peer campaign. If you are hosting a crowdfunding campaign, you have to select an online fundraising platform to host the fundraiser.

Register on an online fundraising platform
Virtual fundraising campaigns are hugely popular in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak and the subsequent lockdowns and social distancing norms. A benefit of registering on an online fundraising platform is that they provide you with tools to design your campaign page or they have a readymade format that helps you to quickly create a campaign and share the link with your supporters or potential donors.

Gain information and feedback
Once you have initiated the fundraiser campaign, ask a few top donors how they feel about the campaign and what ideas they can give to make it a successful one. Reach out to the stakeholders such as community leaders and team members to gain feedback and information.
Be open to the results of the study and nurture the relationship with the donors. If you involve them in the process of improvement, they will feel like a part of the team and in turn, get you more donors.

Delegate tasks to the team
Your fundraiser campaign is teamwork. It’s crucial you delegate the tasks among your team members. Determine the tasks you will be allotting to each member based on their strengths and weaknesses. One may be good at writing compelling content while another may have networking as their strength. Make a hierarchy of the team so that you don’t need to micromanage the tasks every day.

Maintain a calendar
Keep a track of your daily fundraiser campaign. Organize all the activities of you and your team in it and set timelines for it. You can subscribe to any good online task management tool. There are some available for free too. Organize the activities and share them across the team so that each member knows their duties and responsibilities.
Understand the donor
People are generous and donate whole-heartedly when they know they can make a difference. Before starting the fundraiser campaign, ask yourself two questions-

Why will the people care about your cause?
How can you connect your story to them?
People perceive campaigns in different ways. Once you identify this, connect to them and convey the message in a way they understand. Sometimes, you need to tug on their heartstrings. For some, clear concise proof is enough.

Create impactful marketing materials
All your fundraiser campaign planning will go down the drain if you do not give a compelling reason for the donors to give funds. Be sure to create compelling content on the online fundraising platform which expresses actionable reasons as to why a donor should be convinced to give. The marketing content should be clear, concise, and impactful. It has to convey more in fewer words.

Bottom Line
Maybe you are planning a crowdfunding campaign or a community outreach fundraiser campaign for a cause. Either way, planning is quintessential, and even creating the campaign on a reliable online fundraising platform. It makes things easy while giving the required boost. GivingXcelerator is one such online fundraising platform that will ensure your fundraiser campaign is a success.

We built and support a powerful, easy, and practical online fundraising platform that is free for nonprofits and intuitively easy to use for donors.