Moves management is second nature. You use it all the time to “move” donors from occasional givers to passionate core contributors. But how can a new digital process help you be more effective?
Right now, donor development professionals learn as much about the prospective donor as possible while uncovering motivations, goals and desired outcomes.
Prospect information is stored in a database that enables fundraising professionals to focus, plan and execute against that database.
The existing moves management system and tools work well for the existing database. But what about all the potential donors who are not yet in your database? The people you don’t know about but should?
What if I told you that there is a process and tools to attract these new donor prospects into your moves cycle 24/7? There is — it’s digital moves management.
How digital moves management can help
Digital moves management leverages the fact that donors today are constantly searching for information about causes and organizations that align with their values. This state of search is called the Donor’s Journey and it gives you the ability to connect values-aligned content with prospective donors at a time and on a device of their choice.
It’s a powerful concept that requires a shift in the way you approach the following areas of your development and communication efforts:
Audience
Your best prospect may be a 75-year-old widow with $5 million in assets. But that definition won’t give you the insight to understand what motivates her to give. You need to develop personas. A persona is a fictionalized representation of a real person. Personas help you go deep in understanding what motivates your best prospects to give.
Database
In most organizations, the marketing and communications team uses one database (like Constant Contact or MailChimp) to manage marketing activities while the donor development team uses a completely different database (DonorPerfect, Raiser’s Edge etc) to manage donor data. The databases contain many of the same names, however, they don’t exchange or share data. This duplication of time and resources is wasteful,inefficient and deprives organizations of valuable data.
Content
Leveraging the Donor’s Journey requires nonprofits to think like publishers. Publishers create content about topics that attract and build a specific audience. The content your organization creates must connect to your persona’s passion and appeal to their desire to solve a problem.
Your organization is already creating a large amount of content. Your website is loaded with content — and you’re creating mail pieces, blogs, tweets, facebook and instagram posts, newsletters, press releases, brochures, ads and event materials. Make sure all that work pays off by addressing your persona’s motivations.
Technology
Advances in technology have altered the philanthropic landscape. New, easy-to-use and integrate technologies provide a seamless blend of email marketing, analytics and marketing automation that enable nonprofits to build deeper relationships with prospects based on actions taken on your website or social channels.
Imagine how powerful it would be if the donor development team was automatically informed when a new prospect visited the website and tracked what content a prospect was interested in? This new breed of technology rates prospects according to their interest levels, and sends timely alerts to the donor relations team about prospects with a high level of interest. It’s not hard to understand how this can make your efforts more effective.
Focus on these four areas, and you’ll be on you way to creating a digital moves management program that drives results.
Want to learn more about the digital moves management process? Download the free eBook: Connective Impact: Accelerating donor support by uniting development and communications
