5 Ways to Weave Digital Into End-of-Year Giving

Salesforce.org Elevate is in the process of being retired, and will no longer be sold as of April 3, 2023. See more information in our communication, or find one of our many partners on the AppExchange if you are searching for a digital fundraising solution.

For existing customers, Elevate will be supported through the end of existing contracts.

The fundraising strategy you’re putting into place right now will have a huge effect on your end of year giving metrics.  If you are looking to maximize the biggest season for nonprofit fundraising and ensure some solid performance metrics,  now is the time to ensure your data, systems, and marketing campaigns are set up correctly, giving yourself plenty of time to test and iterate for success.In this post, we outline five digital strategies that can be applied to your end-of-year fundraising campaigns.

1. Convert Direct Mail to Digital

Direct Mail is a staple of most nonprofit marketing and end-of-year fundraising programs. And for good reason – it is personable, cost-effective, and persuasive. This year, consider combining direct mail tactics with the power of digital to convert donors to a lower-cost channel, especially as many people are becoming increasingly digital savvy. 

The QR code. The biggest comeback story of the last decade (where is a dancing QR code emoji when you need one?!). By adding a QR code to your direct mail, your constituents are able to scan the code with their phone and are instantly brought to your giving page to make donations online and become sustaining donors.  They will also get a thank you note immediately following their donation, and their donation is instantly tracked in Marketing Cloud Engagement or Account Engagement. This will allow your organization to further engage with donors based on their previous giving history, and meet them where they are.

Read how Spark*SF Public Schools implemented a modern giving experience with Salesforce to support a surge in online giving during COVID-19, as community members gave to support free meals and technology needs. Over a few short months, Spark* went from a handful of online donations to more than 1,500. They used Elevate* from Salesforce as part of their implementation. 

In this little video, our friend Brandon Westmoreland, demonstrates how to integrate your direct mail and digital strategies. For this demo, Brandon is using Nonprofit Fundraising solutions from Salesforce. If you like details, the products he is showcasing are:

• NPSP to give you a single view of your supporters
• Insights Platform Data Integrity for clean supporter data 
• Elevate to collect payment 
• Marketing Cloud Account Engagement to increase engagement Watch Brandon, senior solution engineer and former campaign architect at St. Jude’s hospital, in the demo below.

2. Create Hybrid Event Experiences

If your organization relied on revenue and constituent engagement from live events, the pandemic taught us that hybrid events can have a space in our events strategy. In the last few years, you may have worked overtime to figure out how to pivot away from in–person gatherings due to the COVID-19 pandemic and now how to safely pivot back. All of this has created more opportunities to engage with donors and supporters, regardless of zip code.

Listen to Heeyeon Park as she shows you how to create online events in the demo below. For this demo, Heeyon is using Salesforce for Nonprofits. If you like details, the products she is using are: 

• NPSP for campaign management
• Elevate for payment capture
• Marketing Cloud Account Engagement to segment donors 
• with Traction Gather to run your virtual event

3. Smarter Major Donor Cultivation

Digital strategies have made it much easier for fundraising teams to segment their donors and constituents. This is especially critical for major gift teams. While smaller giving amounts require communications through marketing systems, major donors need additional tools to better build relationships and hand-hold more closely. Major gift teams are rethinking how they build and track relationships with their major donors in a digital environment. 

Teams have access to a major giving dashboard, allowing them to see their pipeline of major gifts and track notes from meetings for each donor. You can also connect to wealth screening apps that look at publicly available information to determine likelihood of giving and at what amount. 

Want to know more about how to cultivate major donors using digital strategy? Watch this demo video from our friend Nicole Adair. She uses Salesforce for Nonprofits for this demo and the products she uses are:  

• NPSP for pipeline tracking, campaign management and team collaboration
• Salesforce Inbox for Gmail or Outlook integration
• with iWave for wealth screening, helping you make an ask at the right amount

4. Scale with Self-Service

Increasing your digital capability also means empowering your donors and constituents in a way that wasn’t possible before. Many nonprofits have dedicated staff focused on responding to donor requests, receipts, or changing contact information. Using Experience Cloud, organizations can streamline back office operations and also give constituents a better way to access their very own information update on their own, ensuring your nonprofit has clean and accurate data. 

Watch the demo below from Jessica Romig, as she uses: 

• NPSP as a single source of truth
• Experience Cloud for digital self service
• Einstein Bots for donor self service

5. Glean Insights with Reports & Analytics

Do you have access to real-time fundraising data that you can share across your organization? Building reports and dashboards is easier than you think. With Salesforce for Nonprofits, you have access to pre-built nonprofit fundraising dashboards, so you can easily get a high-level view of the health of your fundraising organization, and have the ability to drill down into the underlying details. With Tableau, you can gain deeper insights with funnel charts, pie charts, time graphs, and more. 

Real-time transparency across your organization is critical to well-run operations, revenue prediction, and more — especially as dispersed and remote teams become more common. Hear from our friend, Dan Tajbl, who uses NPSP and Tableau to show you how to create a data visualization.

It’s never too early to plan for, strategize about, and refine your end-of-year giving campaigns. If you have feedback or comments, drop me a line on LinkedIn.