7-Step Fundraising Cultivation Plan After a NEW Donor Gives Online

Fundraising Data Reveals Major Gaps in Nonprofit Responses to New Donors

Image by GraphicMama-team from Pixabay

It’s a big deal when a new donor gives to your nonprofit. This is true no matter how the gift comes in – through your website, through direct mail, at a fundraising event, or through other means. How you respond to and cultivate that first gift is absolutely critical, because turning new donors into repeat donors, monthly donors, and mid-level and major gift donors is how your nonprofit sustains itself.

You need a fundraising cultivation plan that is specifically structured to respond to new donors. And this plan needs to be different for each type of donor, based on where their donation comes from. What follows is a 7-step donor cultivation plan for new online donors – people who give through your website. You’ll want a different cultivation plan for first-time donors who give through direct mail.

For social media, it can be harder because some social platforms allow people to give without sharing any of their personal information. While the donation is still appreciated, that makes follow-up a lot harder. That’s why, whenever possible, you want to encourage your online donors to give through portals that you control.

Why New Donor Fundraising Cultivation Is Important

Getting a new donor means your message has connected with this person enough to motivate them to part with their money and support your mission.

But many first-time donors never become second-time donors.

According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, about 55% of donors continued to give  to a nonprofit organization after their first gift. However, the study also found that every $100 gained in donations was offset by $96 in losses, either from lapsed donors or lower gift amounts.

In other words – growth is hard, and if you’re holding steady on revenue, you’re doing well.

But you can’t rest there. With so much attrition, you must continue to cultivate new donors to motivate that second gift. In fact, the second gift is the most decisive factor in determining long term donor retention.

The good news is, another study found that 19% of new donors give again within just three months of their first gift! Of course, that number will drop to near zero if you don’t ask them!

So – you can do this! You can nurture and cultivate first-time donors and turn them into repeat donors and monthly donors.

For new online donors, use the following 7-step fundraising cultivation plan. All data comes from the NextAfter study, The State of Multi-Channel Donor Communications, a PDF well worth the read that you can get here.

1. Send a Thank You Email – Immediately After the Donation

There is no reason to wait to thank a new donor, and this is the easiest item on this list. You can automate this using your email delivery platform. Pre-write the email and set it to go out the moment a donation comes in.

For special campaigns, you should write a special thank you email for that campaign.

And, the thank you email should be separate from the gift acknowledgment email. That email is the one with the giving receipt, for tax purposes. In other words, it’s boring and is filled with charts and numbers.

Image by Herbanu Tri Sasongko from Pixabay

The thank you email is personal, heartfelt, sincere, and human.

2. Send a Thank You Card

Yes, you should do both. For one, not everyone will see or open your thank you email. But nearly everyone will open and read a handwritten thank you card. It is a far more effective way to connect with a new donor.

According to NextAfter, simply sending a single thank you postcard increased future donations by 204%.

Don’t miss out on the power of a sincere thank you card.

3. Send a Direct Mail Appeal within Four Months

For smaller nonprofits, you might extend this to six months, but the motivation is clear – a multichannel fundraising approach results in far greater giving. This was the primary focus of the NextAfter study. Much more data on the effectiveness of multi-channel fundraising can be found here.

Only 55% of nonprofits in the study communicated with their new online donors using both email and direct mail. If you look at the data in the study on how much more money donors give when they receive communication through multiple channels, you will see how huge of a loss this represents for the 45% not doing this.

So, it doesn’t matter if the direct mail appeal itself doesn’t get a huge response. What the numbers show is that it is the act of communicating through multiple channels that results in a higher response. The online donor who receives a direct mail fundraising letter may well still go online to make a donation.

But the mailed letter played a role in that decision. We know this because of the data – multichannel donors give about three times as much money as donors who only receive email communication.

Want to 3X your revenue? Then start communicating through both online and offline channels. Begin by sending a direct mail fundraising letter to new donors within four months of their first gift.

4. Send 10-20 Follow Up Emails to New Donors

If you are communicating regularly with your donors and email subscribers already, you should be able to create an effective new donor email cultivation plan relatively easily. But if you have the resources for it, you should attempt to create a separate email plan for new donors, at least for the first few months.

The reason is because you want to get that all-important second gift. By targeting your communication to new donors only, you can speak to them in specific terms, using phrases like “Your first gift made such an impact and we are so grateful.”

By continually referring to their first gift, the new donors will feel like you are speaking to them personally, not to a mass email list.

The good news is, you can automate this as well. You can create a 10 or 20-email sequence, spread out over 4-6 months, and re-use it indefinitely. Just don’t include any language referring to specific campaigns or dates.

In the study, the average nonprofit sent 18 emails to new donors over a four-month period. That’s about one per week. So no, you aren’t sending too many emails. More than likely, you’re sending too few. See how many emails you should be sending.

Interestingly, in the nonprofits being studied, the ratio was about 1.8 to 1 for cultivation emails vs appeal emails. In other words, if you send 18 emails, between 10 and 12 of them don’t need to specifically ask for donations. Those are cultivation emails. And, the average date for the first solicitation email was 27 days after the first donation was made.

Image by Dean Moriarty from Pixabay

The idea here is, your email follow-up should be weighted toward cultivation, especially at first.

What is a cultivation email?

Cultivation emails attempt to bond your new donor with your nonprofit. You can do this in a number of ways, including:

• Send stories of impact – how your donation made a difference
• Send a survey or quiz to get them thinking and more engaged
• Invite them to a volunteer or training opportunity – especially for local nonprofits
• Invite them to a local event or celebration – especially for local nonprofits
• Ask them to sign a petition, share a link on social, or take some other action
• Educate them about the issues related to your mission and the people being served
• Direct them to blogs on your website

These sorts of emails are not asking for money, though you can include a donation button at the end if you want. But by devoting more attention to these sorts of emails than to always asking for money, you are cultivating the relationship with the new donor. This will greatly increase the chances of getting a second gift.

5. Personalize Your Email Appeals

When you do send email appeals asking for a second gift, do everything within your database-driven power to personalize them.

Many nonprofits fall far short on this one.

NextAfter has consistently found that simply calling people by their name leads to increased giving. Just saying their name! Yet, in the study, 36% of nonprofits did not include the name of the NEW donor in their emails.

But in addition to that, consider these fundraising statistics from the study:

• 92% of nonprofits did not reference the first-time donation in their email appeals
• Only 18% asked for a monthly gift
• Only 19% used a story or narrative to communicate impact in a compelling way
• 77% used more than one type of call to action in their email appeal

If you don’t ask, you don’t receive. Not asking for a monthly gift is a major oversight. Again, this is personalization: “Thank you for your gift. Would you like to consider giving a small monthly gift?”

But only 8% of nonprofits even mentioned the earlier gift. While the very best method is to include the actual dollar amount given, that requires a robust database system linked to your emails. Smaller nonprofits probably can’t do that.

But you can still mention the gift in a general way like in the example above.

Finally, the 77% figure points to a disjointed, unfocused purpose. If your email is a fundraising appeal, then that should be your only call to action. Not to like us on Facebook. Not to share this blog or take this survey. This is a fundraising email. Minimize distractions. Ask for money. Their only choice is to say yes or no.

6. Ask for a Monthly Gift

If you can turn a first-time donor into a monthly donor, that’s a huge win, because monthly donors stay loyal and give far more than sporadic donors. And monthly donors are more likely to become mid-level and major donors. Plus, it’s reliable revenue.

You saw the statistic on this a moment ago. Only 18% of nonprofits are asking new donors to give monthly. It should be 100%. This is the second easiest step in this new donor fundraising cultivation blueprint.

This is a chasm of missed opportunity. Make sure to include this ask in your new donor cultivation sequence. And you should be asking this, once again, in multiple channels. Ask for recurring monthly gifts in your email appeals, and in your direct mail fundraising appeals.

Image by Piyapong Saydaung from Pixabay

7. Call the New Donor – And Do It Right

Nothing is more personal than calling a new donor to thank them, other than doing it in person. In a study of thank you calls made within 90 days of the first donation, donor retention was 8% higher, and they saw a 100% increase – that’s double – in the average size of the second gift.

If one of your senior leaders, like a board member or founder, makes the call within 48 hours of the donation, those numbers get even better.

Yes, phone calls take more time. But you’re a fundraiser! And this is a proven way to increase fundraising revenue. So…isn’t it worth the time?

The phone represents a third channel of fundraising, distinct from online and from direct mail.

Not surprisingly, phone calls are the least-used method of fundraising cultivation of new donors. Less than 10% of nonprofits called back to thank the new donors in the study. Of those, only 8 left a voicemail. 18 others called but left no voicemail. Why???

Leaving a voicemail isn’t just less time-consuming and ‘awkward’ than having to actually talk to someone, but it allows you to simply read your script and get your message across. They will appreciate the voicemail, because it’s personal. A voicemail is still a win.

Only one nonprofit, out of 102 in the study, sent a thank you text.

This is also why your online giving form needs to ask for a phone number. You can’t call them if you don’t know the number. But – don’t require it. Not everyone wants to give their number, and requiring it will depress donations. But for those who choose to give their number, now you can call them.

Astonishingly, 17% of nonprofits in the study did require a phone number, but then none of them called to say thank you! Why require a number if you aren’t going to use it?

Here are even more ways to cultivate relationships with new donors.

New Online Donor Fundraising Cultivation Plan

Here are the seven steps once again:

1. Send a Thank You Email – Immediately After the Donation
2. Send a Thank You Card
3. Send a Direct Mail Appeal within Four Months
4. Send 10-20 Follow Up Emails to New Donors
5. Personalize Your Email Appeals
6. Ask for a Monthly Gift
7. Call the New Donor – And Do It Right

Want more content? Get weekly nonprofit fundraising and copywriting tips, strategies, and motivations in the ProActive Insights newsletter.