Fundraising Expert Roundup
We asked a number of great nonprofits what they do or have done to create their best fundraising successes and these are their first hand expert insights.
What's your Secret Sauce?
“Our secret sauce is communicating the direct impact of donations combined with imagery of children. Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease for children in the United States. So our year end campaign in December 2021 urged donors to fight today for their tomorrow. We asked several children what future they dreamed about, what they wanted to be, and what experiences they wanted to have. We combined their answers with their pictures and asked our donors to fight for them by joining our mission to fund life-saving cancer research. We had our highest December fundraising totals to date.”
– Mark Myers, Director of Communications
CURE Childhood Cancer
– Keila M. Gilbert, Esq, Board Chair
Alpha Resource Center
(https://www.alpha-divorce.com)“Here at Emmaus Oxford we’ve received a couple of really significant donations over the last year. In both cases, we knew the donor well and had spent years building up a good relationship by listening to the donor and making sure that we communicated with them in the way they wanted. People’s lives are busy, and quite often less communication ends up being more meaningful.
I think our ‘secret sauce’ is probably tailoring our communications to our supporters’ interests and very regularly saying thank you! The last two years have changed everyone’s lives and perspectives, so we keep that in mind when we’re talking to our donors. A core of our work as a charity is to believe in positive change and hope, and those messages have kept us and our supporters engaged.”
Hannah Hutchings, Head of Fundraising
